FREYA NORTH: THE MCCABE GIRLS COMPLETE COLLECTION

Cat

Fen

Pip

Home Truths

Freya North

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Freya North 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007462247; 9780007462223; 9780007462261; 9780007325788

Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008160098

Version: 2015-08-25

FREYA NORTH

Cat

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

William Heinemann 1999

Copyright © Freya North 1999

Afterword © Freya North 2012

Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

Source ISBN: 9780007462230

Ebook Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462247

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

For Emma O’Reilly
Honest and true.
And a great friend.

Contents

Cover

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Cat McCabe and the Tour De France

Jules Le Grand and Team Systeme Vipere

Rachel McEwen and Team Zucca Mv

Ben York and Team Megapac

Setting the Wheels in Motion

Prologue Time Trial: Delaunay Le Beau, Saturday 3 July

Stage 1: Delaunay Le Beau-Rouen. 195 kilometres

Stage 2: Rouen-Vuillard. 260 kilometres

Stage 3: Vuillard-Plumelec. 225 kilometres

Stage 4: Plouay-Chardin. 248 kilometres

Stage 5: Nantes-Pradier. 210 kilometres

Stage 6: Pradier-Bordeaux. 215 kilometres

Stage 7: Computaparc - Individual Time Trial. 54.5 kilometres

Stage 8: Sauternes-Pau. 162 kilometres

Stage 9: Pau-Luchon. 196.5 kilometres

Stage 10: Luchon-Plateau de Boudin. 170 kilometres

Stage 11: Tarascon sur Ariège-Le Cap D’Arp. 221 kilometres

Repos

Stage 12: Frontignan La Peyrade-Daumier. 196 kilometres

Stage 13: Valadon-Grenoble. 186.5 kilometres

Stage 14: Grenoble-L’Alpe D’Huez. 189 kilometres

Stage 15: Vizille-Gilbertville. 204 kilometres

Stage 16: Gilbertville-Aix-les-Bains. 149 kilometres

Stage 17: Aix-les-Bains-Neuchâtel. 218.5 kilometres

Stage 18: La Chaux de Fonds-Lautrec. 242 kilometres

Repos: Transfer by road and rail. Lautrec-Disneyland-Paris

Stage 19: Disneyland Paris, Individual Time Trial: 63 kilometres

Stage 20: Disneyland-Paris. 149.5 kilometres

Day 27. Monday

October: Paris. The launch of next year’s Tour de France

Acknowledgements

Afterword

Acclaim for Freya

CAT McCABE AND THE TOUR DE FRANCE

‘I know that your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Django McCabe reasoned with his niece, ‘but you chasing through France after a bunch of boys on bikes – well, isn’t that taking the family tradition to new extremes?’

Cat McCabe, sunbathing, eyes closed, in her uncle’s Derbyshire garden, smiled.

It feels funny smiling with closed eyes; like you can’t really do both.

So she opened her eyes, stretched leisurely, sat up cross-legged, and picked blades of grass from her body, fingering the satisfying striations they had left on her skin.

‘Lashings of lycra!’ her elder sister Fen offered from her position under the pear tree.

‘Oily limbs a-plenty,’ connived her eldest sister Pip, suddenly cartwheeling into view.

Cat tried to look indignant but then grinned. ‘The Tour de France is the world’s most gruelling sporting event,’ she said defensively, hands on hips, to her audience. ‘It demands that its participants cycle 4,000 k in three weeks. At full speed. Up and over mountains most normal folk ski down. Day after day after day.’

‘And?’ said Django, rubbing his knees, bemoaning that the sun wasn’t doing for his arthritis what it did last year.

‘And?’ said Fen, an art historian who was much more turned on by bronze or marble renditions of Adonis than their pedal-turning doppelgangers her sister seemed so to admire.

‘And?’ said Pip courteously, more interested in perfecting her flikflaks across the lawn for her new act.

Cat McCabe regarded them sternly.

‘A Tour de France cyclist can have a lung capacity of around eight litres, a heart that can beat almost 200 times a minute at full pelt and then rest at a rate at which most people ought to be dead. They can climb five mountains in a row, descending them at up to 100 k per hour.’

‘Wow,’ said Fen with sisterly sarcasm, ‘I bet they’re really interesting people.’

‘Greg LeMond,’ countered Cat, ‘won the Tour de France in 1989 by eight seconds on the final day.’

‘Bully for him,’ Pip laughed, doing a handstand and wanting to practise her routine right the way through.

‘And that was two years after coming back from the brink of death when he was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law in a hunting accident.’

Now you’re impressed!

Fen nodded and looked impressed.

Pip executed a single-handed cartwheel and said, ‘Mister LeMond, I salute you.’

Django said, ‘Bet the bugger’s American.’

Cat confirmed that indeed he was.

‘In what other sport would you have participants called Eros? Or Bo? Or teams called BigMat or OilMe or Chicky World?’

‘Topless darts?’ Pip proposed.

‘They can also pee whilst freewheeling,’ Cat slipped in before anyone could change the subject.

‘In their shorts?’ Pip asked, quite flabbergasted.

‘Nope,’ Cat replied in a most matter-of-fact way. ‘They just whip it out, twist their pelvis, and pee as they go.’

‘So,’ said Django, ‘you’re off to France to experience a great sporting spectacle performed by superhuman athletes with great bike skills but no sense of urinary decorum?’

‘Partly,’ said Cat with dignity, ‘and because hopefully there’ll be a job at the end of it.’

Fen raised her eyebrow.

Pip regarded her youngest sister sternly.

Well aware that her sisters continued to stare at her, Cat looked out over Darley Dale and wished she had her mountain bike with her.

‘Oh, all right!’ she snapped whilst laughing and covering her face, ‘I’m not just pursuing the peloton because there’s a job at the end of it if my freelance work is good enough.’

I wish I had my bike. I could just ride and ride and be on my own.

‘You are pursuing the peloton—’ started Fen.

‘Because there’s a—’ continued Pip.

‘Hope of adventure?’ Cat tried contemplatively, still covering her face.

‘Lashings of lycra,’ Fen shrugged as if resting her case.

‘Silky smooth shaven thighs,’ Pip said in utter agreement. ‘Big ones.’

‘Over the sea and far away,’ Django mused. Everyone mused.

Cat nodded. ‘It’s time to move on,’ she said thoughtfully. Everyone agreed. No one had to say anything more.

‘I am Catriona McCabe,’ Cat muses to herself, sitting under a cedar in the grounds of Chatsworth House, not two miles from where her uncle lives and from where she was brought up when her mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, ‘and I’m twenty-eight years old.’

And?

And I’m going to the Tour de France, with full press accreditation, to report on the race for the Guardian newspaper.

And?

If my reportage wins favour, I might land the job of Features Editor for the magazine Maillot.

Jersey?

Maillot.

And?

I’ll be sorted. And happy.

OK. But all things on two wheels aside, what else?

I’m twenty-eight.

We know.

I live in London. In Camden. In a tiny, rented one-bedroom flat with gay neighbours, a tapas bar opposite, and my two sisters near by.

We met them.

Fenella is a year older than me, Philippa two. Fen’s an art historian. Pip’s a clown. We’re close but different.

Certainly. And you’re into journalism?

Actually, I’m into cycling. The journalism part just enables me to indulge my passion.

Isn’t a passion for pedal sport rather unusual for a British female? Wouldn’t it be more common for you to be into three-day eventing? Or tennis? Or soccer, even?

Cycling is my thing. It is the most beautiful, hypnotic sport to watch. The riders are consummate athletes; so brave, so focused, so committed. My heart is in my mouth as they ride and I watch.

But how and why?

Because I.

That’s a fine sentence, Cat.

Because I was … with … a man who kindled my interest. He left. The interest didn’t.

When did he leave?

Three months ago.

A time trial indeed.

Indeed.

So France will be good.

France is my dream. France can mark a new me. France can help me heal. Can’t it?

I’m sure.

Cat was helping Django prepare supper. Though the McCabe girls visited their uncle monthly, it was rare for them all to be there at the same time. June was turning into July but with his three girls with him, Christmas had come early for Django.

‘I’m going to do a Spread,’ Django announced. For three girls whose mother had run off with a cowboy from Denver and who were brought up by a man called Django in the wilds of Derbyshire, the Spread was nothing to raise eyebrows at. For normal folk of a conventional upbringing and traditional meal times using regular foodstuffs, a Spread by Django McCabe would cause eyebrows to leave the forehead altogether.

Django McCabe is sixty-seven and, in his jeans with big buckled belts, faded Liberty shirts and trademark neckerchiefs, he looks like he should be an artist, or a jazz musician. In fact, during his lifetime, he’s dabbled in both. Twenty-five years ago, in Montmartre, he combined the two rather successfully and sparked a certain trend for neckerchiefs. But then his sister-in-law ran away with a cowboy from Denver and he had to forsake Parisian prestige for the sake of his bereft brother and three small daughters and an old draughty house in Derbyshire. The two men and the three girls lived harmoniously until their father died of a heart attack when Pip was ten years old.

The house is still draughty but Django’s warmth, and his insistence on multilayered clothing and his obsession with hot thick soup at every meal during the winter months, ensured that the McCabe girls’ childhoods were warm and healthy. They have also developed palates that are robust and tolerant. Soup at every meal throughout the winter months is one thing; that the varieties should include Chicken and Apple, Celery and Baked Beans, and Tuna Chunks with Pea and Stilton, is quite another. Luckily, it is June and there is no call for soup today.

Pip is having a rest in the back bedroom following further exertion on the lawn. Fen is sitting quietly on the window seat in the room whose name changes according to time of day and current season. On winter mornings and evenings, it is the Snug. On spring afternoons it is the Library. On weekday evenings, if the television is on, it is the Family Room. On weekday evenings if the television is off, it’s the Drawing-room. On summer afternoons, it is the Quiet Room. In mornings, it is the Morning Room. When the girls were young and naughty, it was Downstairs. Fen is in the Quiet Room which, after supper, will no doubt be the Drawing-room. Cat is in the kitchen, peeling, scrubbing, grating and chopping and being as diplomatic as possible in dissuading Django from adding Tabasco to the trout, or to the mashed potato, or to the mint and cranberry sauce.

‘It’s best in Bloody Mary,’ Cat informs him. So Django finds vodka but no tomato juice and just mixes the Tabasco in anyway.

‘Cheers!’ he says, knocking his drink back.

‘Cheers!’ Cat responds with a hearty sip only to fight back choking and tears.

‘I think I’d better name this drink, Bloody Hell, Mary,’ Django wheezes, but takes another glug regardless.

Cat nods and wonders if chopped apricots will really add much of consequence – good or bad – to the trout.

They’ll counteract the olives, I suppose.

‘So, Cat, you’ll be a good girl? You’ll be careful in France? I know all about Alain Delon and Roger Vadim.’

‘I don’t,’ Cat laughs.

‘You watch yourself,’ Django cautions, absent-mindedly pointing a knife at her and then apologizing profusely.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Cat assures him, ‘I’m in the press corps. There’ll be 900 journalists. The Tour is a movable town, a veritable community. I’m in it for the ride, for the duration.’

I’ll be safe.

‘You look after yourself,’ Django repeats, thinking a dash of stout might be welcomed by the mashed potato.

‘That’s precisely what I’m doing,’ Cat says pensively.

The Spread ready, the four McCabes assemble. They stand by their places and look from one to the other in silence. Django gives the nod and they sit. And eat. He’s all for picking and dipping and having a taste of this, a soupçon of that. So arms stretch amiably and serving spoons chink and dollop. There’s much too much food but whatever’s left will be blended together tomorrow, liquidized the next day and then frozen, to reappear as soup in some not-too-distant colder time.

In the Drawing-room, over coffee and some dusty but undamaged After Eights which Pip discovered in her bedside table, Django looked to his three nieces. Fen looked wistful as ever, her blonde hair scrunched into a wispy pony-tail which made her look young and vulnerable and like she should be living at home. Django noticed that she was visibly thinner than when he saw her at Easter and knew that this could be attributed to one of two things.

‘Love or money, Fen?’ he asked.

She jolted and looked at each of her palms as if assessing the merits of telling him one thing or another.

‘Both,’ she said, folding her hands in her lap.

‘Has he too much or too little?’ Django enquired.

‘It depends,’ said Fen.

Django looked puzzled. Cat couldn’t resist. ‘One is loaded and the other is broke.’

‘Good God, girl!’ Django exclaimed in honest horror, much to Cat and Pip’s delight. ‘Two of them?’

‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked Fen. ‘Have you decided yet? The old or the young?’

‘Who’s the one?’ Pip pushed. ‘The rich or the poor? Did you toss for it or did they have a duel?’

‘Neither,’ Fen wailed. ‘Both.’ She looked out of the window, unable to decipher the night from the moor, or the merits of one love from the other. Django, Cat and Pip gazed at her for a moment.

‘Pip,’ Django said sternly, ‘love or money?’

‘I can live most comfortably without either,’ said Pip, secretly wishing she had just a little of each.

‘Well, a pink afro wig, copious amounts of face paint and an alter ego called Martha the Clown can’t help,’ Django reasoned.

‘I.e., get a proper job,’ Pip groaned to Fen whilst ignoring Django. Django turned to Cat who was staring out of the window and way into the night. Her green-grey eyes glinting with the effort of uninvited memories, her sand-blonde hair suddenly framing her face and dripping down over drooping shoulders, her lips parted as if preparing for words she’d never said and wished she had. She looked distant. And sad.

‘She’s in France already,’ Fen whispered to Django, secretly worried that Cat should not be going on her own.

‘Best place for her,’ Pip colluded, secretly pleased that Cat was guaranteed time alone and away.

‘Cat?’ Django called softly. Cat blinked, yawned and smiled, hoping it would deflect attention from the obvious effort of pulling on a brave face at that time of night.

‘Mario Cipollini’s thighs have a circumference of 80 centimetres,’ she told them.

I could hear them, my sisters. And they’re right – I am in France, sort of. And I wonder if I shouldn’t go. I mean, if I stay, maybe He will pop round some time over the next three weeks. Say he wants to change his mind but I’m not here? Might he come back? And say sorry?

As if.

No no.

That’s over. Move on, Cat.

But he might.

No, I don’t think he will.

How can he love me and then not? And in the same day too?

‘I love you,’ he said in a rare phone call from work that morning. ‘I’m leaving,’ he said, as so often he did, later that night. ‘So go then,’ I said, thinking if I stood up to him it would give him the reality check he needed. ‘Go then,’ I said, presuming he’d stand stock still in horror, sweep me off my feet and cry, ‘Never never never.’

Instead?

He went. He ran.

Three months since.

And I cannot bring him back. Yet I left the door metaphorically wide open, hoping he’d come back and bang on it, proclaiming, ‘I want to be here with you. Always. What can I do, sweet love?’

So now I think I regret what I did. But they all tell me not to.

The door’s still ajar. Soon I’m going to have to shut it. For my safety and my sanity. Let go.

I don’t want to. Won’t letting go be just that – letting go?

Giving up? Admitting failure? Admitting that it is really, truly over?

And if I let go, am I not saying that I relinquish my hope? Because who am I, Cat McCabe, without my hope?

France. Le Tour de France. La Grande Boucle. A dream I’ve had for five years. He was a dream I had for five years – at least this is one I can make come true, all the way to the Paris finale. I will follow the Tour de France, become a part of this fantastic travelling family. From start to finish. All the way, over the flat lands, over the Pyrenees and Alps, through the vineyards and home to the Champs-Elysées. Me and my heroes. Fabian Ducasse. Vasily Jawlensky. Luca Jones.

You can keep your Brad Pitts and Tom Cruises. You can even keep your George Clooneys. If you want a hero, choose anyone from the Système Vipère or Zucca MV teams. Brad and Tom couldn’t do a fraction of the twenty-one hairpin bends on L’Alpe D’Huez. Mr Clooney wouldn’t dare descend a mountain with the grace and speed of a peregrine falcon in full plummet.

Bollocks! What on earth has got into me? I mean, I know I have to move on now – but fantasizing about professional cyclists is not only unrealistic, it’s daft and it could be detrimental. Exactly. I’m a professional journalist about to infiltrate a male-dominated world. Not a groupie. Even if I was a groupie, why would they look at me? Put me next to a podium girl with their lips and their legs and their kisses and mini skirts, and I rest my case.

Exactly.

Anyway, the riders are mostly in bed by nine.

And I read something somewhere that hours in the saddle means impotence in the sack.

Only one way to verify that, I suppose.

Cat McCabe!

I meant, talking to the riders’ wives and girlfriends.

When Cat arrived home from Derbyshire, her neighbours had left a note inviting her upstairs for a snack and a chat. Eric and Jim (whose fifth anniversary that weekend Cat had missed for Django’s Spread) saw Cat’s emotional and physical welfare as their responsibility. They were positively parental though they were, in fact, but a year or two older than her. When she had food poisoning, they brought her tonic water and the bucket. When her flat was broken in to, they insisted she slept on their sofabed. When He left, they brought her ice-cream and comfort. They were almost as excited by France and the notion that an adventure and a change of scenery would work wonders for Cat, as they were by the thought of one hundred and eighty-nine amply muscled men in lycra shorts.

‘We have a present for you,’ Eric said. ‘We wanted to give it to you before you leave on Wednesday – by the way, if it doesn’t start till Saturday, why are you going so early?’

‘Because I have to organize my accreditation and then during Thursday and Friday there are press conferences, team by team,’ Cat explained, ‘and stuff.’

‘Are you excited?’ Jim asked, because he was. ‘Aren’t you nervous?’

‘I’m very both,’ said Cat. ‘If that’s a sentence.’

‘You’re vulnerable,’ Jim warned her. ‘Don’t expect too much from France. I know it’s a goal that’s kept you going, but don’t expect too much.’

‘And don’t go on the rebound,’ Eric added, wagging his finger. ‘I mean, those riders are considered gods, rock stars, over there, aren’t they?’

‘I think what he’s trying to say,’ said Jim, ‘is that if you’re to go on the rebound – which we sincerely hope you will – a professional cyclist might not be the most suitable participant.’

‘I mean,’ said Eric, ‘just imagine the effect of a night of non-stop debauchery – the poor sod will be too knackered to turn the pedals the next day.’

They all imagined it quietly for a moment and then burst out laughing.

‘Which somewhat makes a mockery of our gift,’ Eric then continued. ‘Here. It’s your survival kit.’

They handed Cat a shoebox. She lifted the lid, twitched her brow and then laughed as she fingered through the contents.

‘Condoms?’ she exclaimed, while Jim shrugged and Eric looked out the window.

‘Bic razors?’ she asked, counting four.

‘We weren’t sure if they use Immac on their legs,’ said Jim.

‘And there’s nothing quite like being shaved by someone you fancy,’ Eric furthered.

‘And there’s a lot of leg on some of those boys,’ Jim reasoned.

‘So am I to suppose that this bumper-sized bottle of baby oil is for after shave and not for me?’ Cat asked to meek smiles apiece from the two men.

‘Why do they shave their legs?’ Eric asked.

‘To show off their tans and muscles,’ Jim cooed.

‘Aerodynamics?’ Eric pressed.

‘Or just a tradition that I, for one, sincerely hope will continue,’ Jim said breathlessly.

‘Road rash,’ said Cat, most matter-of-fact.

‘Eh?’ said Eric.

‘If they crash or fall,’ Cat explained, ‘it’s easier to clean cuts and grazes on smooth skin.’

Jim looked most disappointed with this information. Cat returned her attention to the shoebox. ‘Vaseline?’

‘We read somewhere that it gives them a, um, more comfortable ride,’ Jim said ingenuously.

‘Not that we’re suggesting you offer to apply it,’ Eric rushed. Cat raised her eyebrows and held up a wildly patterned bandanna.

‘They all wear them,’ Eric said, ‘we saw them on the TV last year.’

‘Extra strong mints,’ Cat said, taking the packet to her nose.

‘For any, er, passing horses,’ Eric said.

‘I’m frightened of horses,’ Cat said.

‘You can befriend them with the mints,’ Jim said.

‘And that’s why you’ve included them?’ Cat pressed with a wry smile. ‘Not because I’m going to a country where you have meals with your garlic?’ They smiled back at her. Wryly.

Plasters. Antiseptic. A hundred-franc note. A packet of energy bars.

‘We’ll follow your progress in the Guardian,’ Eric said.

‘It’ll be good,’ Jim assured her with a squeeze, ‘you’ll be fine.’

I wonder who’ll end up in the yellow jersey? Cat ponders, sitting up in bed with current copies of Marie Claire and Procycling to hand. It’ll either be Fabian Ducasse or Vasily Jawlensky and I love them both equally but for different reasons. Fabian is stunning in looks and riding, his arrogance is compelling. He exudes testosterone – hopefully in doses that are natural and not administered. Vasily is fantastically handsome too but he really is inscrutable – an enigma. Who do I want to see in the maillot jaune? I don’t know. May the best man win.

And the polka dot jersey for King of the Mountains? I’d put my money on Vasily’s team-mate, the personable and rather gorgeous Massimo Lipari; the media’s dream and a million housewives’ darling. I’d like him to make it his hat trick though he’ll have to watch out for his Système Vipère rival, the diminutive but charismatic Carlos Jesu Velasquez.

And the green jersey? For points? Can Stefano Sassetta take it back from Jesper Lomers this year?

Then there’s the American team, Megapac – Tour virgins, just like me. Maybe I’ll try for some exclusives. I’d love to meet Luca Jones – he seems to typify the international camaraderie of the peloton, living in Italy, riding for Great Britain and racing for an American pro team. He’s meant to be something of a character – but when you’re that pleasing on the eye, it would be a disappointment not to be.

God, I wish I could speak Spanish or Italian. My French is crap. I should have studied harder for Mamzelle at school instead of – how did she phrase it? ‘Day-dreaming won’t get you a job, O levels will.’

But actually, I’ve day-dreamt about following the Tour de France for years. And now it’s my job to do it.

JULES LE GRAND AND TEAM SYSTEME VIPERE

Swarthy, handsome, smelling of Calvin Klein scent and looking very much like someone who might well advertise their wares if he weren’t a professional cyclist, Fabian Ducasse strolled through his luxurious Brittany apartment and put a George Michael CD into his Système Vipère mega micro hi-fi station.

‘If I rode for the Casino team, ha! I would have only a discount in the sponsor’s supermarket chain!’ he laughed out loud. ‘Or a new vacuum cleaner if I was with Team Polti. If I was with Riso Scotti, I could have all the rice I could eat – so, Système Vipère suits me.’ He turned up the volume, reclined his six-foot and twenty-nine-year-old frame on to a leather sofa and listened to George Michael singing about Faith.

Faith. That’s what I got to have. Got to win the race or no more super hi-fi for Fabian. Must win. Must conquer. Must blast away any challenge. The maillot jaune must be mine.

‘Hey, but if I ride for O.N.C.E. or Banesto, I could open accounts with the banks themselves and they could invest all my money and make it even bigger!’ He slipped his hand down his tracksuit trousers and grabbed his cock. ‘Jawlensky? What can Zucca MV give him but building materials? He has a house, so what can he do with more bricks? You can’t listen to a brick. A brick doesn’t look cool in the lounge.’

With his hand coaxing and rewarding his erection, Fabian walked over to the window and gazed down on the women sipping coffee in the terrace cafés below.

‘In four days, the Tour starts. I must win it this year. I should not have let it go last year. I do not like it that this year I am to be categorized “The Pretender”. In four days, my future starts again.’

Jawlensky? He took yellow last year only because I wasn’t at 100 per cent after that bug. This year is pay back. No one has the maillot jaune but Fabian.

One of the women looked up from her café au lait. She was blonde and beautiful and he’d seen her before.

‘Four days until the Tour. Bien. I need coffee. Caffeine is good. And it tastes better when sipped alongside a beautiful woman.’

He made a phone call. ‘Hélène? You can get away? Coffee?’ His girlfriend of three weeks reminded him that she was at work, in the next town, so he would have to be content that she was having to be content with coffee from the vending machine. Fabian shrugged as he hung up. He went down in to the square and had coffee and an ego-massage by the blonde woman whose name he asked but forgot immediately. He felt incredibly horny. But he forgot that too because he wanted to do 80 kilometres on his bike. Fast.

‘Fabian?’ Jules Le Grand, Système Vipère’s directeur sportif, phones his team leader from his mobile phone whilst walking across town from appointment to appointment. A suave man of forty-seven, with an impressive shock of well-styled grey hair, a pair of fabulously expensive gold-rimmed spectacles, a discerning penchant for meticulously designed suits and an almost uncontrollable fondness for exquisite calf-skin loafers, Jules Le Grand would almost look more at home in the offices of a Parisian couturier than amongst the chain grease, muscle embrocation and general blood and sweat that accompanies his job on a daily basis.

Cyclisme is my life, my passion – but why compromise on style? It is not necessary. Only lazy. Laziness is anathema, the enemy, in all to do with cycling, in all to do with life. In that order – compris?

With a phenomenal amount to organize, check and double-check in the rapidly diminishing days, hours, prior to the Tour, the mobile phone, in Jules’s mind, is as great an invention of the modern age as the carbon-fibre bicycle frame.

‘Fabian?’ Jules checks his watch and allows himself the rare luxury of making the call at a standstill.

With a white towel, shorter than necessary (but that was the point entirely) wrapped around his waist, Fabian crooks the phone under his neck whilst trying to figure out the lesser of two evils – to drip on his cream rug or on his fine wood floor. He is going to have to do one or the other because he couldn’t possibly tell his directeur that now isn’t a convenient time.

The Tour de France is not just about cycling your way to Paris, but to the next season also. It’s where contracts are confirmed. I must behave on and off my bike, before and during the race.

‘Jules,’ Fabian says warmly, ‘ça va? I have just done a good ride. I have pasta boiling.’

Shit! I made it sound like he is inconveniencing me.

‘I wanted to talk to you before team dinner tonight,’ Jules continues. ‘About next year. About you and Système Vipère. How is your stereo?’

As head of this company, negotiation is my forte. Or one of my many. As directeur sportif, it is my business to know what makes my riders click.

Fabian hops lightly from rug to floorboard, grins at his stereo and grimaces at the two damp indentations of his feet that appear to be indelibly imprinted on his luxurious rug.

‘My stereo is great – I hardly ever have it off. Listen.’ Fabian holds the telephone receiver out into the centre of the room, presuming his directeur can hear Prince. Jules can’t but he holds his receiver patiently, checking the battery level and signal strength, until Fabian decides to return to his. ‘Did you hear?’ Fabian asks. ‘Système Vipère is my life – on the bike and off. At all times, I am a Viper Boy.’

That’s good – yeah! Jules will like that – a strong commitment that is far more than just a job for me.

‘If you like,’ Jules says, ‘you can have a new stereo. That is, if you stay with us next year.’

The stereo was tempting enough, but Fabian knows it is worthless without a salary to echo, in his mind anyway, his value for the team.

I’ll stay silent.

‘Plus, of course,’ Jules furthers with elaborate sincerity, Fabian’s unsophisticated business strategy making him smile, ‘a substantial increase in salary. How would it feel to be the highest paid rider in the peloton?’

How does it feel? Fabian pondered moments later, staring at the replaced handset, glowering at his footprints on wood, glaring at the marks still defiant on the rug. It feels fucking great. I feel like fucking. See, it has made me hard.

But the Tour de France starts in four days. Shouldn’t you save your energy? Celibacy is team policy. Jules is fairly firm on where he stands on sex.

Fairly firm – ha! From where I stand, I am downright hard. I know my body. In bed. On a bike. No problem.

‘Fabian, Fabian,’ Jules cooed triumphantly, checking his messages and finding four were left during the call to his key rider. Before responding to any of them, he phoned the team’s sponsors.

‘Bien,’ Jules told them, ‘no problem with Fabian – unless Zucca MV try to sabotage him with a hundred blow jobs.’

‘And Jesper Lomers?’ they demanded to know. ‘Has he signed?’

‘Jesper will not be a problem,’ Jules assured them.

It’s his bloody wife who will cause trouble, Jules hissed to himself as he listened to yet another message left during his call. All wives are bloody – I’ve had three, I should know. Maybe Jesper would function better with a mistress – I certainly do.

I can focus all my attention on the team, Jules mused, and yet have a woman, at my behest, focus all her attention on me. Perfect!

His phone rang. It was one of the team mechanics. Jules listened, said, ‘Spinergy wheels of course – imbécile,’ and hung up. The phone rang again. It was the French sports newspaper L’Equipe. ‘Système Vipère are supreme at the moment,’ Jules quoted with bravado, ‘Ducasse, Lomers and Velasquez – they will be beautiful to watch. On paper, it is the toughest Tour for a long time, but the Vipers’ strength will be like venom to all other riders. You can quote me.’ He hung up.

Jules tried Jesper Lomers. No reply.

But no reply is good – it means he is training. And no reply is better than Anya answering the phone. Irritating female – she sees Système Vipère as the ‘other woman’. Would Jesper be happy if he was not racing? Would he be a good husband then? She thinks it is she who makes him happy, fulfilled, loved. I know it is Système Vipère. Luckily, I don’t think Jesper gives the theory much thought at all. I’ll try him again. No reply. Good. Later.

The phone rang again. It was a young rider. ‘If you have diarrhoea,’ Jules said patiently, ‘what must you eat? That’s right, hard-boiled eggs, rice and live yoghurt. How much water did you take? That’s not enough. We’ll put you on electrolytes tonight.’ He hung up and laughed.

Directeur sportif? Call me père des coureurs – am I a trainer, a manager or papa?

‘That is why I am strict, a bastard,’ Jules muttered, temporarily changing his pace to a stroll. ‘I can shout at a rider in the morning, yell at him from the car during a race, yet by the evening, when he has finished, he is desperate for my embrace. I have to be a father figure to my racers for it is essential that they trust me and crave my approval through their excellence. Why else would they ride? Fabian only for money? Jesper only for his wife’s love? Get real.’

Jules marched purposefully across the place to the restaurant he had granted the accolade of hosting that year’s pre-Tour team dinner. In the town of Eustace St Pierre, it was an honour that all restaurants strove for each year. The proprietors wanted to pamper Jules with complimentary drinks, some fish soup, tarte tatin. Jules refused. He was there to check on the menu and arrange the seating plan. Busy. Too busy to eat or socialize, no time for pleasantries at all really.

The Tour de France is on Jules’s mind 365 days a year. And because of this, his popularity never suffers. The Tour defines a Frenchman’s calendar – for Jules Le Grand to be so unwaveringly committed to it sets him up as a hero amongst his countrymen. The Tour de France preoccupies Jules throughout the season, even when it is still months away. Paris–Nice, Tirreno–Adriatico, Catalan Week, Criterium International, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, the Dauphiné Libéré. Though each race, revered enough in its own right, is given focused dedication, Jules thinks of them all as but preparation for the great one. The Tour de France is always on the tip of his tongue, behind the sparkle in his eye, ever simmering in his mind. The Tour commands his every thought, awake or asleep. Strategy becomes all-consuming.

Directeur sportif? I am a brilliant tactician.

Tonight’s strategy was for no strategy to be discussed and yet the very purpose of the evening was utterly strategic – team bonding and last mouthfuls of haute cuisine before all vestiges of normal life were relinquished to the clutch and drive of the Tour, to pasta at every single meal, to conversation, dream, thought, breath, devoted exclusively to the race.

More than father to the riders, more than director of a small company whose location changes on almost a daily basis, more than diplomat, or supreme strategist – ultimately I am an army general. The Tour de France is not just about teams of riders going to war against each other; frequently the most severe battle for a rider is an individual one with his own self-belief. I must try Jesper again. That is why I must get to Jesper.

‘Hey!’ Fabian drawls when he arrives at the restaurant and sits himself down, ‘it’s our Super Sprinter, the Blond Bomb, the Rotterdam Rocket – you’re looking good!’

The compliment, laced with sarcasm, is directed at Jesper Lomers. The Dutchman regards Fabian with a smile and a shake of his head to conceal any hint of embarrassment. Fabian lifts a lock of Jesper’s hair. It is very blond, like straw, but soft, a little spiky here, charmingly floppy there.

‘That crazy magazine,’ Fabian remarks, referring to a recent adulatory article in Italian Vogue in which he and Jesper were featured, ‘they’ll be mourning when your hair is shorn within an inch of your scalp for the Tour. What was it that they wrote about your legs?’

Jesper waves his hand dismissively and busies himself tearing open a bread roll, buttering it well, yet not eating it.

This is good, Jules thinks, humour, laughter, the team is reacting well.

He answers on Jesper’s behalf. ‘The article said – team, listen up – Jesper Lomers has the most beautiful thighs in the peloton.’

The team fell about laughing.

Jesper shrugs. ‘They’re the tools of my trade, guys, the tools of my trade. I’m a good rider – not a sex symbol.’

‘Where’s the problem in being both,’ Fabian comments, knowing his own blend is consummate.

‘Anya would beg to differ, I’m sure,’ chips in a team member.

‘Anya wants to go back to Holland,’ Jesper says to everyone but looking steadily at Jules.

‘And we want the green jersey,’ Jules responds, holding the eye contact whilst aware and pleased that the restaurant saw fit to serve him first, ‘and we want you, Jesper, to win it for us again this year.’ He regards his rider, one of the most consistent he has ever known. ‘The maillot vert is yours. You can take it again, your riding warrants it.’ Jules knows he can keep Fabian – a little flattery, a lot of money. Jesper he is not so sure about and it unnerves him.

I’ve never known a rider who can win so spectacularly but with such good grace. Nor have I known a rider so keen to kiss his wife whenever she’s at the start or the finish. Increasingly, though, she’s been at neither. It unnerves Jesper, I know. She wants to go home. And that unnerves me. Jesper must stay. She has plans. But so do I.

‘That’s why no wives,’ Jules, musing to himself over the three he’d regrettably suffered, proclaims. Luckily, Jesper is preoccupied dunking his bread into the soup like a tea bag and appears not to have heard, let alone taken offence. A couple of the other riders, however, shoot blade-sharp looks at their directeur. When they are sure he isn’t looking.

‘I ride better if I sleep better and I sleep well when I share with my wife,’ says one under his breath.

‘Vraiment,’ agrees the other. ‘I need a bed-mate on the Tour, not a room-mate. No offence.’

‘None taken,’ his team-mate confirms. ‘So, are we rooming again, this Tour?’

‘I would think so,’ the other shrugs. ‘I’ve requested it.’

‘So have I.’

‘You nervous?’ his team-mate asks, despite knowing it is a question that will never be answered directly.

‘You?’

Clever but fairly standard answer.

‘No Weakness,’ the rider proclaims as if it is some mantra.

‘Précisément!’ The team-mates, soon to be room-mates in lieu of their female bed- and soul-mates, chink glasses and drink the red wine as if it is nectar.

‘Jules, where’s Carlos?’

‘A Spaniard riding for a French team is a coup enough,’ Fabian interjects, touching his nose as if it is out of joint. ‘Can we really expect him to turn up any earlier than the last minute, for something as trivial as a team meal?’

Before Jules can answer on Carlos’s behalf, the waiters arrive with miniature portions of sorbet which everyone samples but, being tomato and basil sorbet (of which, undoubtedly, Django McCabe would have been proud), no one much likes.

Jules raises his glass of Burgundy. ‘Here’s to the jerseys. And they are most definitely plural. The yellow. The green. The polka dot. Fabian. Jesper. Carlos. Here’s to Système Vipère. Salut.’

‘Vive le Tour,’ says Fabian, gulping wine and then tucking into duck.

‘Vive le Tour,’ says Jesper, thinking of Anya, wishing she were here and apprehensive about a certain coldness that will greet him at home that night.

Carlos Jesu Velasquez had no compunction at being absent from the team dinner in France.

‘I am to spend over three weeks in your country so that night I will dine with my wife,’ he had said to Jules previously by telephone.

He must feel special, Jules had reasoned to himself, so I will make it seem a gesture of my respect that he needn’t be present for the dinner. Realistically, he would not add much in the way of scintillating conversation to the evening. In truth, it is not important to the team or the Tour whether he eats escargots with us or paella with his family.

Carlos Jesu Velasquez is nicknamed the Pocket Rocket, like the energy bars of that name which the riders carry with them, on account of his small stature but enormous potency. Carlos Jesu is also known as the Cicada for he speaks little. He speaks no other language than Spanish but even amongst the Spanish riders he is frugal with communication. He uses his tongue and his lips to address the peloton, hissing or clicking at riders to move away, to work with him, to get out of his line. Carlos is also known as the Little Lion, for when the little climber wins at a mountain finish he lets out a guttural roar utterly inconsistent with his diminutive size and quiet mien. His wife, Marie-Christina, however, calls him Jesu with a throatily pronounced ‘h’. His three children call him Papa.

This evening, he walked his three children across the street to his mother-in-law’s. He then went back to his house, closed the door and made love to Marie-Christina. Then he sang to her. Tomorrow, he will travel to Eustace St Pierre.

‘Away on business,’ he whispers soothingly to his wife, ‘but home again soon.’

If I were to meet the inimitable Fabian Ducasse, what exactly would I say? Cat wondered, on her way in to the Guardian office to discuss their requirements and other practicalities.

He’s famed as a womanizer, so should I concede that he might be more willing to talk, to grant me an audience, if I wore a skirt? I’d have to think of a slant – not just ‘Are you going to win the Tour de France, Monsieur Ducasse?’ Perhaps I could ask him about sport and adulation – would he do it if he didn’t get it? I want to tap in to that arrogance to see if it’s a front or genuine. Not that I care which – it has the desired effect on me for one.

Is there time to learn a little Spanish? Mind you, just a grunt from Carlos Jesu Velasquez would suffice. And how about Jesper? Is there anything that comes close to hearing English spoken with a Dutch accent?

I can’t believe I’m soon to be there. In France. With them. What’ll I say?

RACHEL McEWEN AND TEAM ZUCCA MV

‘Jesus!’ cried Massimo Lipari, grasping his left leg and stroking his hamstring tenderly. ‘Holy Mother Mary – you are in one fuck of a bad mood.’

Rachel McEwen looked down on the rider’s prostrate nakedness, his nether regions covered only by a towel, nappy-style; his lanky, lithe frame the colour of mocha ice-cream, which enabled him to skip up mountains like a gazelle, his huge brown eyes regarding her dolefully, full lips puckered into a somewhat theatrical pout. She looked at her hands, bit her lip and apologized.

‘I’m sorry, Mass,’ she said, using her hands more gently and reminding herself that his thighs were flesh and not meat, ‘I have a lot on my mind.’

Shit, poor Vasily – I must have pummelled him to hell and back half an hour ago. And yet I never heard even a wince – just a ‘thank you, Rachel, thank you’. Vasily Jawlensky, the committed and consummate sportsman for whom, no doubt, ‘pain is gain’, a man frugal with words but abundant in his triumphs. And now Massimo, Italy’s heartthrob, the team’s key personality, one who loves to make drama out of the ordinary, let alone a crisis. Was I rough? Did I hurt you? Sorry.

Rachel shook her hands as if they were wet and, despite fingers glistening with massage oil, scrunched her wavy hair into a haphazard pile on top of her head. She returned her hands to the rider’s inner thigh and then moved her fingers as if she was playing the piano.

‘You know,’ said Massimo, ‘when they said we were to have a female soigneur – well, I almost went on strike, I could have left the team, to and fro.’

Rachel laughed. ‘You mean there and then, Mass. I thought you’d have been delighted, being the Casanova that you are.’

Massimo grimaced as Rachel worked at a particularly tight knot near his knee, as if she was making pastry. ‘Well, girl, if they had said we were going to have a, how do you say, female doll?’

‘Mascot?’ Rachel suggested.

‘Si! Mascot – that would have been different. But I never thought the words female and soigneur could really be – how do you say? Married?’

‘What you mean, you nasty man,’ Rachel retorted with no malice, ‘is that you didn’t think a female soigneur would be any good.’

‘Si,’ said Massimo, his eyes still closed, ‘paint and pasta.’

‘Chalk and cheese,’ Rachel corrected. ‘You thought that she’d be too weak to give a good massage.’

‘Si,’ Massimo smiled, looking at the ceiling of Rachel’s office at the team’s Cambiago headquarters while she continued to untie his muscles and unravel his ligaments.

‘That she’d worry more about her fingernails than your welfare?’

‘Si!’ Massimo laughed, remembering how Rachel had stayed up with him during the Giro, the prestigious Tour of Italy, last month, so that he could repeat over and over his anxieties for the next day’s Stage.

‘And that she might shrink all your gear in the wash?’

‘Ha!’ said Massimo, suddenly realizing he didn’t even know what happened to his dirty gear once he had stripped after a race.

‘Moaning about boyfriends the whole time?’

‘That too,’ Massimo agreed, having no idea if Rachel even had a boyfriend, current or past.

‘So,’ said Rachel, lifting Massimo’s leg over her shoulder, pushing against it for the stretch whilst doing something extraordinary to a point just below the buttock, ‘all in all, I suppose I’ve completely let you down then? Utterly destroyed your preconceptions of a female soigneur?’

‘Rachel,’ said Massimo, turning to lie on his front and inadvertently presenting her with a sizeable portion of hairy bottom from behind the slipped towel, ‘you are my soigneur. You are the best soigneur for Massimo. I don’t think of you as a girl at all.’

Well, I suppose that was the definitive compliment, Rachel muses as she washes her hands of oil and changes the towel on the massage table in preparation for the next rider. But odd too. Out of all the soigneurs on the Tour – three or four for each of the twenty-one teams – I’ll be one of only two females. And though it’s nice that Emma and I, in this hugely male-dominated world, are not hassled, it’s a bit bizarre that everyone completely denies us our gender. It’s like, in life there are men, women and soigneurs. I mean, I know I’m a woman, but it is a fact of negligible interest to the cycling fraternity.

‘It doesn’t bother me,’ she says out loud, allowing herself a fleeting glance in the mirror and thinking her hair really does need a cut. ‘This is my job. It’s appallingly paid but I love it.’

Rachel McEwen is twenty-seven years old and looks far too slight to be hoiking the heavy limbs of exhausted men and dispelling the lactic acid in their tense, brutalized muscles. But that is what she does and she does it very well.

‘But what the fuck is a signor?’ her best friends had enquired when she told them she was leaving Edinburgh for Italy to be one two years ago.

‘Soigneur,’ she stressed. ‘It means “one who looks after” – the riders’ needs are my responsibility.’

This was greeted, much to her consternation, by a rapid chorus of wink-wink, nudge-nudging.

‘I’ll be doing their laundry, for Christ’s sake!’ she retorted, twisting her hair around and around in frustration before pinning it to her head precariously. ‘And preparing their race food each day. And going on ahead to the hotels to check out the rooms and the menus. And giving massage and minor medical assistance. And counselling – many riders look on their soigneur as their confidante.’

‘Back track, back track,’ they had implored, ‘to the “massage” bit.’

‘Yes?’ Rachel had replied ingenuously. ‘It’ll be good to put it to some practical use after two years of training.’

‘They’ll devour you,’ one friend said. ‘You’re such a wee lass and all that friction against the chamois lining of their shorts must make ’em horny bastards.’

‘Numb, more like,’ Rachel had said, ‘and anyway, I can’t be doing with love at my age.’

I haven’t the time, Rachel reasons, remembering that conversation well and realizing with horror that she hasn’t been back to Scotland for almost a year. She prepares the table for Stefano Sassetta’s arrival and skims through the sheaves of lists for the Tour that she started compiling during the Giro.

Shit! Frangipane.

Is that an expletive?

No, I really do mean the cake. It is a fantastic energy burst for the boys and it keeps moist and fresh for ages. I’m in cahoots with a local baker – he has broken an age-old family custom to make the cake square just for Zucca MV, because it’s much more practical to cut and divide.

So, a soigneur is a masseuse and a patisserie expert?

And a rally driver too – watch me bomb along the Stage route to the feed station or the arrivée where often I have to rescue my riders from the media scrum.

It is my job to be the first person my rider sees on finishing a Stage.

‘Shit,’ says Rachel, running fingers still rather oily through her long-suffering locks, ‘I must check on disposable flannels. Stefano is due in ten minutes and I’m a little concerned about that shoulder of his.’

Stefano Sassetta, who should have been on Rachel’s massage table ten minutes ago, was parading around his apartment in his Zucca MV team strip.

‘God, this blue and yellow suits me,’ he commented to his current girlfriend. ‘If I had taken up Team Mapei’s offer, I wouldn’t look half as good. It was reason enough to stay with Zucca MV.’

While Stefano gazed at his opulent if vulgar kitchen extension, a gift from the team’s sponsors and designed by Stefano himself, his girlfriend could barely keep her eyes from the semicircle of stitching around the reinforced groin area. It was like a magnificent sunburst and she was hot for what was behind it.

‘You want to work up an appetite, baby?’ she said coyly, fingering the spaghetti straps of her negligible sundress. Everything about the man was big – his baritone voice, his legendary thighs, his hands, his nose; they all complemented the biggest treat of all, currently concealed but far from hidden behind his shorts.

‘I just did a good ride,’ Stefano countered as if his appetite were indeed her exclusive concern.

For Zucca MV’s Stefano Sassetta, Système Vipère’s Jesper Lomers was his nemesis. Jesper was undoubtedly a better rider technically; Stefano knew it and loathed the Dutchman for it; loathed, too, the way Jesper was always so courteous and affable towards him. Jesper might be the better rider but the crowds loved Stefano’s flamboyance. However, though the fans might adore Stefano, the peloton had more respect for Jesper.

Whereas Jesper regarded his physique merely as a by-product of his career, at this point in the season Stefano was increasingly obsessed with his own beauty. Specifically, his thighs. Measurements, dimensions and cross-comparisons with last year, and with the thighs in the peloton in general, had become a fixation. Stefano was almost more preoccupied with having his thighs praised over Jesper’s than he was with taking the green jersey off him. He thus presented his body to his girlfriend as if it were a statue. You can look but you cannot touch. He has told her to expect no sex until September.

Consequently, it is also around this time of year that a change of girlfriend is imminent. They leave him. It’s an occupational hazard. He would never ask them to stay. For Stefano, riding slowly is boring. It’s nice to have a change of strip.

‘Did you read that thing?’ Stefano asks Rachel who is trying to loosen his right shoulder.

‘God, you’re tight,’ Rachel murmurs.

‘Hey,’ Stefano jests, ‘that’s my line.’ Rachel does not react. ‘Did you?’ he repeats, his contrived nonchalance failing to mask his unease.

‘Did I what?’ Rachel asks, feeling something give high in his neck, and glancing at the flicker of subconscious relief across Stefano’s face.

‘Read that thing?’

‘What thing?’

Stefano, you’re such a dick. It’s the bloody Jesper issue, isn’t it?

‘That thing. About Lomers. In Vogue.’

‘Stef,’ Rachel chides in a very grave way, ‘would you give up? The look of a thigh is utterly superficial. It’s what they can do that’s the issue.’

She rubs his hard for emphasis.

He looks like a sulky schoolboy. And he won’t race well. OK, Stef, for the millionth time, I’ll say it again.

‘Don’t your women go wild for both the look and the feel of you?’ Rachel asks in a totally fresh way, despite it being an enquiry Stefano likes to hear on a weekly basis at least. Nevertheless, Stefano squints at Rachel as if she has just posed a really taxing question.

‘Who does the crowd love?’ she presses kindly and with convincing ingenuousness.

Stefano pulls a face as if assessing every member of the peloton. ‘Stefano Sassetta,’ he declares, as if it was a most considered answer.

‘How many Stages did Lomers win in the Giro?’ Rachel asks. Stefano holds up one finger.

‘And how many did you win?’ she furthers. He holds up three fingers and then starts laughing.

That’s better, thinks Rachel, laughing at him and not with him.

‘And how many are you going to win in the Tour?’ she pushes, taking his foot in her hand to work on.

‘It is not the Stages of the Tour,’ Stefano says, his eyes dark and glinting, ‘but the colour of the jersey. You know, I think green on your back completely alters the impression of the thigh. If they see me in green, they’ll think of my physique as supreme within the peloton. I want it to be written that Stefano Sassetta, this year’s winner of the green jersey, has the thighs of a Greek god.’

‘Och, you’re so full of crap, Sassetta,’ laughs Rachel, for whom it is impossible to look on Stefano’s thighs as anything other than pistons for which she is caretaker. ‘What was that saying you taught me?’

‘More shit than in the backside of a donkey.’

‘Aye, that’s you,’ Rachel laughs again. ‘Now turn over. I need to do your glutes. By the way, how are your haemorrhoids? I think that new cream is probably better – yes?’

‘Oh la la, chica chica la la. Le Tour, oh yeah, le Tour. Yeah. Yeah. Le Tour. La!’

Massimo Lipari, pleasantly rejuvenated from his session with Rachel, is singing in his apartment, gyrating his way from bathroom to bedroom, giving a good shimmy by the cupboard door and then delving around his quite extensive wardrobe. Never mind the imminence of the Tour de France, it is the team supper itself tonight that requires greatest application from Massimo. He repeats his song and sings it fortissimo.

If I were not a professional cyclist, I would be a pop star. He regards his handsome reflection and gives himself a wink. His cheekbones are as sharp as his eye reflexes when he’s descending mountains at 100 kilometres an hour. His smile is as dazzling as the way he can dance up the ascents of the most unforgiving climbs. He sings his pop song again. The tune is the one he recorded as the official song of the Giro D’Italia last year which made it into the top ten.

It was almost as thrilling as finishing third overall in the race itself Almost – but not quite. Cycling defines me. A cyclist could, conceivably, become a celebrity. But a pop star could not decide to become a pro racer.

Off his bike, Massimo lives as a star and loves it. He’s on adverts on television and billboards, he’s been in the hit parade, his face is on a particular brand of chocolate-hazelnut spread and his local bar is bedecked with Massimo memorabilia. And yet astride his bike, he is utterly focused, racing brilliantly and seemingly independent of crowd adulation. The transformation to superstar occurs the moment he crosses the finish line. He always wipes his mouth and zips up; there are thousands of cameras, press and TV, fans staring everywhere – he believes it his duty to delight them both in and out of racing conditions. He wants to take the King of the Mountains jersey this year, to make his hat trick.

He goes to the vast gilt mirror above the flamboyant paved fireplace that his sponsors built for him. He gazes at himself and nods.

‘I am Donna magazine’s “Sexiest Man on Two Wheels”,’ he remarks. ‘Nice! But if I can take the polka dot jersey for a third time – well! National hero comes home to party time!’

Looking like a healthy composite of mafioso, pop star and Milanese advertising executive, Massimo Lipari leaves his apartment for the team dinner. He could drive. He could take a cab. He could have taken up Rachel’s offer to taxi him there as she is doing for other members of the team. But Massimo decides to walk. He likes to hear the calls of ‘Ciao, Massimo!’ He likes to feel people looking, he likes to sense the recognition, he likes to imagine what they say to each other when he has passed by. He is a local hero, all the Zucca MV boys are, living in close proximity just north of Verona and in the shadow of the foothills of the Dolomites.

With his hair gelled and tweaked, his goatee beard clipped to perfection, his jet-black eyes hidden from view behind Oakley sunglasses despite it being dusk, Massimo Lipari cuts a dashing figure, slicing into the fantasies of the women he passes on his way to the restaurant with much the same force as when he slices through the pack on a mountain climb.

Rachel is wearing a skirt, not that anyone has noticed and not that she’s noticed that it’s gone unnoticed. It is pale blue linen, straight, and to the mid-calf. She has teamed it with a white linen shirt and white lace-up pumps. It suits her. Her hair is down but scooped away at the sides. She is wearing perfume but no make-up, her fresh complexion giving a radiance to her already pretty features.

It’s the last bloody time for over three weeks that I’ll be able to wear light colours and not smell of embrocation. The Tour de France, and the perils of being a soigneur, mean dark plain clothes are not just practical but a necessity. Anyway, I still haven’t had the chance to do my own laundry. Poor Paolo has had a very bad stomach which he is playing down because this will be his first Tour and he doesn’t want to miss it. However, his shorts have really taken the brunt. Terrible mess. It’s taken me most of the afternoon. Poor boy.

Rachel, you’re a saint.

Bollocks. I’m a soigneur. It’s my job.

She looks around the table at the team and realizes she is on tenterhooks on their behalf.

Look at you all, seemingly so relaxed. My God, when I think what’s in store for you.

And for you, Rachel. It’s your first Tour de France.

Me? Oh, I’ll be fine. The Tour, the Giro, the Vuelta – surely just the scenery is different. But the boys have the Col du Galibier, the Madeleine, L’Alpe D’Huez – not to mention the fucking Pyrenees beforehand. Shit, I must remember cashmere socks.

‘I must remember cashmere socks,’ Rachel all but shouts. The table falls silent, pieces of pizza halt half-way to mouths; spaghetti unravels itself from motionless forks.

‘Huh?’ says Massimo shooting glances to his team-mates.

‘In case it becomes cold, in case you develop sore throats. If Benylin is a banned substance, a cashmere sock worn round the neck at night surely is not.’

‘Rachel,’ said Stefano very seriously, stretching his arm across the table and laying his hand on her wrist for emphasis, ‘we finished work for the day. Shut the fuck up, relax, eat. Please.’

The team cheered and raised their glasses in support. Rachel twitched her lip and then raised her glass too.

‘Here’s to you lot,’ she said with immense feeling. ‘Have a good race.’

Rachel knows that she is to be one of only two female soigneurs on the Tour de France and the thought doesn’t worry her in the least. Cat has no idea that, in the salle de pressé of 1,000 journalists, she will be one of only twelve women.

If I were to meet Vasily Jawlensky, Cat muses, coming home from the Guardian office, what on earth would I say to him? Ought I to bow? Curtsey? In his presence, surely major genuflection is highly appropriate. I wish I could speak bloody Russian.

I can’t wait to meet Massimo Lipari, he always kisses everyone three times, regardless of their sex or relationship to him. Remember how last year, Phil Liggett from Channel 4 was given the Lipari smackers live on TV after Massimo won at L’Alpe D’Huez? Liggett looked lovestruck and told the viewers he’d never wash his face again. I’d like some Massimo kisses. But how would I go about getting them? What exactly would I ask him?

I’d love to set Stefano Sassetta off against the inimitable Mario Cipollini. They’re both the most extravagant, over-the-top personalities in the peloton. Stefano tall, dark and handsome; Cipo with blond highlights, a pony-tail and a great line in outrageous one-liners. There’s Stefano banging on about the aesthetic excellence of his thighs, and there’s Cipo saying if he wasn’t a cyclist he’d like to be a porn star. Italian stallions, both.

But.

I suppose it’s not so much what I’d say to them, but whether or not they’d talk to me.

Oh.

BEN YORK AND TEAM MEGAPAC

Ben York, born thirty years ago in Hampshire, studied medicine at Guy’s Hospital, London. It was perfectly reasonable for his mother, his father, his friends and his then-girlfriend Amelia, to assume he’d take the position offered to him by Guy’s, further his career, become as brilliant as everyone had always anticipated, marry Amelia (as she anticipated), afford a very lovely place in Notting Hill and take up golf.

Ben York, however, hates golf.

Ben turned down the job at Guy’s, let down Amelia, appalled her parents and stunned his parents when he announced he was going to downtown Chicago to live and work.

‘Chicago, Ben?’ his father had protested. ‘When you have so much going for you here, why move to America of all places? What about the lovely Amelia? And Guy’s? Have you really thought this through?’

I’ve thought of little else. Upsetting women is what I seem to do effortlessly if wholly unintentionally. This isn’t about the Ben you all want me to be, but about the one I know I am. I’m not a Guy’s man, and I can’t be Amelia’s man because, lovely as indeed she is, she isn’t Ben’s woman.

‘But sweetie,’ Amelia sobbed, ‘what about our life in London? Notting Hill, for heaven’s sake. Marriage and babies? And a brilliant career at Guy’s? How could you do this to me?’

I’m not doing this ‘to’ you, I’m doing this for us – because of me. I don’t want a place with you in Notting Hill – I don’t even like Notting Hill. Marriage and babies? Maybe one day. With you? No. We’re young. You’re staggeringly beautiful. You’ll be OK.

That was five years ago. Amelia married Charlie three years ago and has just given birth to baby James. The nursery at their place in Notting Hill is exquisite. She’s idyllically happy. Ben spent three years in Chicago, another in Denver and was then head-hunted by Team US Megapac who made it worth his while to embark on a new and unusual career based in Boulder, Colorado.

And I bloody love it. Not so much the US specifically, but the job itself. This is medicine, the fact that I am needed to oversee the health of these riders, that I must observe how their bodies work, how they need to heal and what I can do to help them win and what I must do to keep them healthy too. Many of my riders have wives, girlfriends – and it is for them that I keep their men safe.

And you, Ben?

I love watching a body function – and pro cycling often means that the body is at its absolute peak but also its ultimate limit. I have to keep those bodies continually at the summit of the climb – I cannot let them hurtle downhill. It’s my job.

Interesting, but I was referring to the ‘wives and girlfriends’ bit. Do you only live for your job? Who is Ben when he isn’t assessing tendons or administering balancing doses of B12 and electrolytes?

I don’t understand the question. This is my life.

It’s your job.

Exactly.

Exactly. Who are you when you’re off duty?

What the fuck does that mean?

I said ‘off duty’, not off your guard. Ben York, you’re a doctor, but you’re also thirty, brawny, caring (and don’t just say that’s your job) and something of a catch yourself. It is an undisputed fact that doctors are fantasy men for many women. Especially one with an English accent out in America. That you should also be aesthetically charming on the eye – by that I mean six foot, fit and handsome – well, you’re the cake, the icing and the cherry on top that most women would want to consume in its entirety.

Most women are too calorie conscious.

Oh, very droll. Come on, Ben, post-Amelia details?

In the States they call it dating. If dating goes well, one proceeds to going steady.

How’s the dating going?

Fine.

That sounds final.

I date. But then I steady up.

Why?

As I say to my riders when they ask, sex is very good for mind and body.

And love nourishes the soul.

And can be utterly exhausting. These chaps need to be focused to race.

I wasn’t referring to your riders.

Ben York isn’t the only one in Team Megapac whose accent gains him much attention. Luca Jones was born to an Italian mother and English father and his resultant Anglo-Italianisms are inimitable and do strange things to women. He lives partly in Italy, partly in America. Currently, he is in Colorado, at the team headquarters. They leave for France tomorrow. As is Luca’s wont, he met a pretty girl in a bar last night, stayed up far too late, went way too far and is now not only tired but also late for a physical with Ben.

‘I’m later than late, bugger damn.’

Luca hurries himself into a tracksuit, winces at the bags under his eyes, slaps his cheeks to shift the pallid evidence of the previous night’s over-exertion, and darts out of the apartment to cycle the short distance to Ben’s surgery.

‘Have you seen it?’ Ben laughed, holding aloft the beautifully bound press information booklet the Megapac PR department had produced for the Tour. ‘It’s a fucking novel! A cheesy, toe-curling, piss-takable collectors’ item.’ He took Luca’s blood pressure, unwrapped the band from the rider’s arm and then took a sample of blood from the crook of his elbow with no more ado.

Luca flipped through the booklet. ‘The media are going to love this,’ he said. ‘Have you seen the pamphlet Zucca MV produce? I thought the team looked ridiculous posing amongst the brick and cement of the sponsor’s factory. But at least their riders are wearing their kit and have their bikes. This bloody photographer took hours. They put make-up on me, goddamn!’

Ben took the booklet from him and found Luca’s page. The photograph flattered a face that needed no flattering. Underneath it was Luca’s ‘mission statement’. Under that, his biographical and career details. Ben skimmed through it and laughed.

I love riding a bike – the thrill of racing, the dream and possibility of winning. Being part of a team is like being part of a family. Racing for Megapac has been, well, MEGA! For our sponsors and our supporters, thank you – I’ll race hard for you.

Luca Jones

‘Did you write that all by yourself?’ Ben asked jovially, fond of Luca, six years his junior, looking on him as a kid brother.

Luca punched him lightly. ‘Some woman phoned me and we talked about bikes for an hour. Somehow, she got it all into four sentences. I was so impressed – and she had a very nice voice – that I asked her out for a drink.’

‘Unbelievable,’ Ben shook his head.

‘As old as my Mama!’ Luca rued. He took the pamphlet from Ben. ‘Ben York, a brilliant young British doctor,’ Luca read very theatrically, ‘whose wisdom we admire, whose care we are so grateful for, whose advice we trust, whose friendship we cherish.’ Luca regarded Ben, clicked his heels and saluted the doctor. ‘Hail, Mighty Medicine Man, my Lord, my Keeper, Great and Godly Giver of Vitamin B12 and Creatine.’

‘You know they’ve printed over 3,000,’ Ben informed him, taking the pamphlet from Luca to fan himself.

Luca nodded. ‘And have you seen the baseball caps and T-shirts? The journalists are getting them too.’

‘Not to mention the cereal bars,’ Ben elaborated. ‘You know they’re emblazoned with the logo and the words “as depended on by our brave team”?’

Luca’s jaw dropped. ‘I never bloody ate one in my life!’

Ben manipulated Luca’s ankles. ‘If you riders don’t impress the media, this treatise and accompanying branded freebies certainly will.’

‘We’re a friggin’ wildcard team,’ Luca exclaimed. ‘It was only confirmed we’d be racing the Tour a month ago.’

‘Megapac are a wildcard team only because they’re not ranked in the UCI top sixteen,’ Ben said, almost sternly. ‘It has nothing to do with the quality of the riders – merely that you’re a relatively new team and therefore have amassed no track record.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Luca said, leaning forward so Ben could listen to his chest.

‘Don’t rush your career,’ Ben mused. ‘If you went to Mercatone Uno or Saeco, you’d be a much smaller fish. You can really shine at Megapac – you already have. A Stage win in your first Giro – bloody marvellous. Now, let me listen to your heart,’ Ben said, stethoscope at the ready.

‘My heart,’ Luca proclaimed, with his right hand clasped at it for emphasis, ‘belongs to Megapac. God Bless America.’

Ben and he laughed heartily and then fell silent while Luca’s impressive organ was analysed.

‘Good,’ said Ben, ‘you’re really in good nick. Just take care, young man. Recuperation is the key to success.’

Luca sat up on the side of the examination table and took a couple of deep breaths. ‘Drink tonight?’

‘You can have a beer,’ Ben cautions, ‘and no women. Or vice versa.’

‘Yeah,’ Luca laughed, ‘something like that.’ He sprang down from the bench, slipped into his tracksuit, gave Ben a high five and arranged to meet him later.

Ben smiled as he prepared for the next rider.

For me, Luca personifies the point of the Tour de France – the international flavour and colour that epitomizes the peloton. He’s going to hit his peak during the Tour and do great things for the team. It’s going to be his first Tour de France, coming only a month after his first Giro where he won a Stage in fine style. He’ll go far. With my help. Ambition is in his soul but his body is in my hands. That’s the kick for me.

Ben is sharing beer and banter with Hunter and Travis, the two American stars of Megapac. Hunter Dean and Travis Stanton are as focused and earnest as Luca is cavalier and spirited. Both are all-American boys: Hollywood handsome, open demeanour, and awesomely fit, for whom Commitment is their creed, Dedication their dogma and very much with capital letters. They’re ambassadors – representing Megapac and the United States in general, cycling in particular, their families, their colleges, their home towns specifically. They love their bikes and their moms and dads and kid siblings, their buddies in the teams and their fiancées with dreamy daft names to whom they dedicate race wins, Stage wins, tough days or good rides.

‘Cycling is lucky to have been chosen by you,’ Ben says, eating peanuts, ‘because I suspect you could have turned to any sport you wished and excelled.’

They know more about vitamin supplements than I do. They love sports massage; they love citing their VO₂ Max and how many kilometres they ride a year. They love knowing what their ideal body fat percentage is and they love training hard and eating the right things to ensure that they maintain it. They love quoting their power output in terms of watts, and mantras which they chant and believe in. They believe in themselves. Belief is both the ultimate and minimum requirement for any cyclist who wishes to survive the Tour de France, let alone do well.

‘As I said in my mission statement,’ says Hunter, touching a peanut and then forsaking it, ‘When I was a kid, I had a dream and my dream was to represent a great national team, to represent my country. I’m living my dream, man, living my dream.’ He sighs and nods gravely at Ben. ‘My statement continued: They say that racing takes it out of you, but by racing, I believe I’m giving something back. I ride because I love it but I race for all of you. That’s me, Ben, that’s how it is for me.’

Ben sips his beer thoughtfully.

I don’t know whether to kiss the bloke or piss myself laughing.

‘Your mission statement,’ Ben says instead, ‘did you write it? Were you interviewed?’

‘Interviewed? Was I fuck,’ says Hunter. ‘Sure I wrote it.’

‘And you, Travis?’ Ben asks.

‘It’s a mission statement,’ Travis exclaims, as if Ben is mentally deficient, ‘of course you write it yourself. Or it ain’t yours. What would that make the mission? Fucking bogus.’

‘Do, er, you know yours off by heart?’ Ben enquires, grateful that Luca is out of earshot or keeping his straight face would be a physical impossibility and mental torture.

Travis balks, as if Ben has asked a most ridiculous question. ‘It starts off: They say you never forget how to ride a bike and I guess that’s true. Racing professionally enables me to make my living out of a pastime that is a pleasure for so many people.’ He pauses and shrugs. ‘And it goes on, you know?’

Ben is saved a rendition of the entire statement by a rumpus at the other end of the bar. It is Luca, surrounding himself with an impressive, hungry female entourage. ‘What is it about Luca?’ Hunter shakes his head. ‘Huh, Ben?’

‘A blend of sound and vision,’ Ben shrugs, raising a bottle of beer on catching Luca’s eye.

‘Huh?’

‘The aural senses send nerve impulses to woman’s carnal core,’ Ben expostulates, knowing it’s bullshit but that Hunter would never think so. ‘At least, that’s my theory.’

‘Huh?’ Hunter repeats, wondering whether it is a finer point of medicine, Ben’s grammar or the effect of the rare beer that is making comprehension a little difficult.

‘Ears, right?’ Travis clarifies.

‘The accent,’ Ben specifies. ‘Luca’s curious blend of Italian and Carnaby Street peppered with Americanisms causes an involuntary chemical reaction in womenfolk.’

Hunter laughs and chinks bottles with Ben and Travis. ‘Way to go, Luca!’

‘You can kissa my ass ’cos I’m not going up that fuckin’ ’ill,’ Ben imitates Luca perfectly.

‘Fucking Al!’ Hunter proclaims, chinking bottles again and taking a good swig.

‘Plus,’ Ben continues in all seriousness, ‘it comes out of the mouth of a perfectly formed, aesthetically pleasing twenty-four-year-old.’

They observe the younger rider, in his element, flirting for England, or Italy, or America. Wherever. Perfect white teeth surrounded by pillowy lips, set into a boyish face atop a beautifully athletic physique.

‘Look at those women,’ Ben remarks objectively, motioning to the throng with his beer bottle, ‘they are utterly bewildered. They are caught in an extreme dilemma.’

‘They are?’ Travis probes, inquisitiveness keeping him in the bar though he’s glanced at his watch and thinks that, at half past nine and after half a bottle of beer, he really should be leaving so he can get eight hours’ sleep. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Well,’ says Ben contemplatively, ‘they don’t know what they want more – to mother him or fuck him.’

‘Je-sus!’ Hunter exclaims. ‘He’s a fucking bike rider.’

‘Exactly,’ says Ben, ‘they can’t decide whether they’d rather run their fingers through those soft, Botticelli curls or grab hold of his buttocks and drive their nails right in.’

‘Go, Luca!’ Travis jockeys, ordering another beer and thinking what the hell.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Hunter agrees with admiration.

Luca extricates himself from the tangle of women and saunters over to his team-mates and doctor. ‘You guys, you talking about me, hey? What you saying?’

Bottles chink.

‘You’re a chick magnet,’ Hunter congratulates him so solemnly that it should be impossible to take seriously.

‘Cheers!’ Luca responds ingenuously. ‘Here’s to France and the belle femmes.’

‘Coming hot on the heels of the Giro and all those belle signorine,’ counters Ben.

‘Ah, the Giro,’ Luca says wistfully, as if it were something he’d done as a young man. ‘All those pretty babes in denim shorts and bikini tops, waving and calling your name from the roadside, coming to you at the village départs wanting an autograph—’

‘And being rewarded with your double kiss,’ Travis adds.

‘Gawping, in hot-flushed awe, as your legs were rubbed,’ Ben remembers.

‘All our legs are rubbed at the finish,’ Luca remonstrates.

‘Yes,’ Ben says, ‘but the rest don’t spread their limbs quite so wide while maintaining unflinching eye-contact and suggestive smiles with young ladies.’

‘I’m a young man, man,’ Luca shrugs, ‘and strong. I’m a bloke. The crowds, the passion, the girls – vive le Tour.’

‘OK guys,’ says Hunter, suddenly horny from the beer, the conversation, the freedom of the evening and the realization that he won’t see his fiancée again for nearly a month, ‘I’m out of here.’

‘Me too,’ says Travis. ‘All set?’

Ben nods approvingly and raises his eyebrows at Luca. ‘You should do the same.’ Luca looks petulantly over to the posse of pussy whose eyes have not once left him. He regards Ben and then nods.

‘I’m going to have a great Tour, hey doc?’ Ben places a supportive hand on his shoulder in response. ‘I’m going to make the sponsors proud and they’ll sign me for next year – with a raise, perhaps elevate my status in the team.’

Ben steers him through the bar and out into the night. The mountains lumber and slumber in dark mauve velvet masses against a sky smattered with an inordinate array of stars.

‘And my Mama and Dad – make ’em proud too,’ Luca continues. They stroll to their bikes. ‘Podium girls,’ Luca says, swinging his leg and freewheeling away. Ben catches him and they pedal slowly back to the apartments, the lethargic pace caused as much by their intent conversation as from a little alcohol.

‘Podium girls?’ Ben repeats.

‘Yeah! I want to be flanked, Ben – flanked, kissed and zipped into that yellow jersey – just for a day. I’d die happy.’

‘You can’t die,’ Ben reasons, ‘or you won’t be able to bask in glory, sign more autographs, dish out more kisses and increase your female fan base.’

‘I want to have fun,’ Luca says, ‘you know? On the Tour. On my bike and off. It’s the fuckin’ Tour de France, man – it’s my dream. I’m going to be living it. My goal is to finish in the top thirty in Paris. My dream is a Stage win. My ambition is recognition for my skill, to be recognized by the spectators, the media, my sponsors. Yeah, and the girls!’

They pedal thoughtfully, virtually tasting the imminence of the Tour, the hopes that might be realized or could be dashed.

‘You know,’ Luca says imploringly to Ben as they arrive outside the doctor’s apartment, ‘I don’t mind the hills, I like the flat, I enjoy Time Trials.’

Ben pats him on the back and bids him a good night’s sleep, stressing the word sleep with a slyly raised eyebrow.

‘You’ll have a great Tour,’ Ben says, ‘and it won’t end there.’

Luca grins and spins away.

I want to have fun. I am twenty-four years old and I want the world to know who I am. Luca Jones and the Tour de France – awesome.

Ben closes his apartment door and regards his suitcase, packed and waiting.

‘Let’s have a good race, boys,’ he says, wandering over to the window and rolling down the blind. He sits on the sofa and looks at his fingers. ‘I would rather they ride well enough and safe enough that I end up twiddling my thumbs instead of using healing hands.’

I know what the team are doing with their hands right now, Ben muses as he slips naked between his sheets. Hunter and Travis are running them all over their fiancées’ bodies, with courtesy and their partners’ sexual gratification leading the route. Luca, no doubt, now has a minimum of two pairs of tits to choose from and grope. I’ll put money on him having cycled back to the bar. No amount of sport – indoor or outdoor – alters his testosterone levels.

He switches off the light and wonders whether he’s too tired to masturbate or tired enough not to have to.

Shit, when was the last time for me? And not by me? That girl in Paris with the gecko tattoo?

What was her name, Ben?

Annabel? Annie? It was three months ago. I can’t remember. Well, I can add another month now – I would say that there’s not going to be time for anything on the Tour de France unless it’s cycling-related.

Cat’s mind is meandering while she deliberates over the pros and cons of a rucksack versus a suitcase for three weeks in France.

It’s not so much an ‘if I meet Hunter or Travis’ as ‘when’ – because I know that they’re happy to talk to any journalist who expresses an interest in their ride. So, when I meet Travis and Hunter, what shall I ask them? Dare I tap into their feminine sides and ask about the importance of their girlfriends to their performance? Would that be acceptable? Maybe I could find the girlfriends and ask for their stories – that would be a great idea. I could branch out, perhaps pitch an article to a women’s magazine.

Cat decides on the rucksack and proceeds to lay out the contents of her entire wardrobe on her bed, sectioning the clothing into don’t-take, might-take and must-take.

Mistake? Is He thinking of me preparing? Is He impressed? Untouched? Is He ever coming back? Please let France enable me to let go, to move on. Please let the physical distance mean that I won’t have to think of Him as much as I do now, when we still share the same city and my home houses His ghost.

Alongside shorts, cotton T-shirts and cotton short skirts, Cat chooses a couple of frocks but then wonders if she is being a little too hopeful. She knows there are dinners hosted by the teams, and parties on the Sunday evening of the Champs-Elysées finale. She should be ambitious.

What the hell, they don’t take up much space and they won’t crumple.

Yes, but you’ll need a suitable pair of shoes – trainers and pumps are certainly practical, but somewhat spoil the line of a nice little slip dress. And remember, the Alps and Pyrenees are prone to suddenly clouding over and becoming very wet and cold. You’ll need a fleece or two, and something highly waterproof. You’d better pack your Timberland boots.

I hope Luca has a good Tour – he’s a great rider and so colourful. The Brits are as sceptical of him taking our nationality as they are about Greg Rusedski, but I think Luca could be a useful sidekick to Chris Boardman as a publicist for the sport in my country. Chris is the consummate champ – he is to cycling what Gary Lineker was to soccer. So Luca, with his trendy haircut and his haphazard speech and flamboyant losses and crashes and triumphs, could play a different role entirely. He’d be as useful to the profile of cycling in Britain, especially awareness amongst women, as the Hollioake brothers are to cricket. I want my girlfriends to say to me, ‘Cat, when’s the Vuelta? Will Luca be racing? He’s such a spunk – that photo Marie Claire published of him alongside your article – well!’

You and me, Luca my boy, we can do something good for cycling – and, of course, for ourselves.

Cat props the packed rucksack upright on her bed and shuffles herself within its straps. She meanders around her flat and kids herself that the pack on her back is really rather comfortable and not nearly as heavy as, well, as it is.

It’s loaded – and yes, all symbolism absolutely intended.

My God, France tomorrow. I hate ferries. I can’t believe I’m almost there, that I’m going, period, that I will indeed be there. Cat McCabe and the Tour de France. Please let it last for ever.

SETTING THE WHEELS IN MOTION

Wednesday. The English Channel. 10 a.m.

How strange. On the ferry’s deck, Cat McCabe, who has fantasized about following the Tour for years, who has recently acknowledged that a change of country – if only for three weeks – would be a sensible and constructive option, has found that she is wishing she’d stayed put, that she could be back at home. She is very nervous, convinced she’s bitten off more than she can chew and fears she might choke. Oughtn’t she just to watch the Tour on Channel 4, in privacy at home as she always has? She could be on her settee, with a nice cup of tea, proclaiming aloud that the presenters, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen, should have their own TV series. Or run for Parliament. Or come over to her flat for coffee and a chat.

Maybe it would just be better if I had no interest in cycling at all.

Cat experiences lurches of homesickness when the white cliffs start to shrink. Wafts of the panicky emotion gust through her more strongly than the buffets of sea air which, she kids herself, are the sole cause for her smarting eyes. Having enjoyed umpteen imaginary conversations with real or fictitious characters in the months leading up to this day of departure, Cat suddenly realizes she has no idea where she’ll find the confidence to approach such people in the flesh.

I haven’t the balls. Quite literally. They’ll take the piss, surely. Me – British and female – amongst all of them.

Furthermore, she’s had her hair cut yesterday and, though merely a variation on her common theme of shoulder length plus fringe, she doesn’t like it and feels self-conscious. The blasts from the sea breeze seem alternately to blow and suck her hair into configurations she cannot see but is convinced are queer and most certainly unattractive. She gazes at the white cliffs for as long as she knows she can really see them, trying very hard to ignore the fact that she now feels seasick as well as homesick, attempting to focus instead on France France Tour de Bloody France and all it is going to do for her sanity, her career and her future.

When does the English Channel become La Manche? Soon? Already?

Only a good few moments after Dover has unarguably disappeared can Cat finally turn her attention from inward and England, forward to France and, for the time being, her immediate surroundings. She turns her back on all she is leaving and faces the direction of travel, France, forwards, ever onwards. She glances around the deck, simultaneously keen for someone to recognize her yet desperate that no one will.

It’s strange. I suppose I presumed the entire ferry would be peopled by those going to the Tour – that we’d all be recognizable as a club of sorts and, of course, that there would be this wonderful familial feeling amongst everyone. And yet now I’m here, I have no idea who is who. Most of the passengers look like standard holidaymakers. But what specifically distinguishes cycling followers? I don’t even see any of the stalwart, anoraked, club cycling crowd that spend their Sundays traipsing the Trough of Bowland or struggling in Snowdonia. I mean, there’s a small group over there in tracksuit bottoms who look young and sporty – but they’re just as likely to have hired a villa in Brittany.

Though Cat half wants to be recognized – as a cycling aficionado of the non-anorak genus if not as the sports journalist she is hoping to become – the other half of her is quite content to be invisible. She ventures inside the ferry and queues for rubber sandwiches and plastic coffee, trying not to scan the tables too obviously for that elusive quiet spot, a hiding place. She spies one that might suffice and heads for it, looking at no one and trying to look nonchalant herself despite her bulky rucksack and wobbling tray.

‘The Prologue will definitely be Boardman.’

The sentence causes Cat to slow up instinctively.

Brilliant! I think it’ll be Boardman too!

‘I’d say Jawlensky,’ comments another voice.

No, I think your colleague and I have it with Boardman. And it’s Yav-lensky.

‘Yav,’ says the first voice.

‘Hey?’

‘Yavlensky.’

See!

‘I hardly think my pronunciation will make much difference to the outcome. Jawlensky is going to take the Prologue from Boardman, thus ending his reign.’

‘Bollocks.’

Yeah – bollocks!

Cat aborts her journey for a place squeezed in at a table neighbouring that of the two men discussing the Prologue Time Trial, which forms the inauguration of the Tour de France. She eavesdropped as subtly as she could, listening without looking.

‘Did you go to the Giro?’ the man au fait with Russian pronunciation asks the other.

‘Nah. Actually, I haven’t covered a race since the Tour of Britain.’

But I was there! Cat starts to herself with pleasure superseded by dread. Oh God, who are you though? I did the whole of the Tour of Britain for Cycling Weekly – up and down the UK for seven days. Did I meet you? Have you already seen me today and decided not to say hullo? Or seen me, perhaps, hut not recognized me at all because you didn’t notice me on the Prutour?

She regards her sandwich as if staring at food might nourish her nerve.

Do I dare turn around? Nonchalantly or with intent? Brazenly or with contrived innocence?

She scrunches her hands into fists, digging her nails reprimandingly into her palms.

Come on Cat, get a grip.

She grips herself hard.

Right, I’ll turn around, pretend I’m looking for a – for a clock – then I’ll shift my gaze and say, ‘Oh hi! Weren’t you on the Tour of Britain?’ Or maybe just regard him like I know I know him but can’t figure out where from, and then snap my fingers and say, ‘Tour of Britain?’ Or maybe—

‘Shall we go on deck?’

No! Wait! I haven’t turned round yet.

‘Yeah, sure – another beer?’

‘Yeah – start as we mean to carry on.’

‘You’re telling me! Come on, let’s split.’

Wait – I’m going to turn around right now and say, ‘Hi, I’m Cat McCabe, I’m reporting for the Guardian – I think I met you at the Tour of Britain.’ See – now!

But it is too late. The backs of two men are all Cat sees and she cannot deduce whether or not she has met one of them.

Tomorrow. I’ll find them tomorrow and I’ll introduce myself then. And if they ask when and how I arrived, I’ll feign surprise that ‘No way! I was on that ferry too!’

Oh God.

Me, myself and I for over three weeks in France.

Wednesday. Hôtel Splendide, Delaunay Le Beau. 2.30 p.m.

Rachel McEwen banged her clenched fist down on the concierge’s counter. Her treacle-coloured hair was loose and rather wild and her eyes were ablaze with fury and indignation.

‘Mademoiselle?’ said the clerk, with a superciliously raised eyebrow that made Rachel clench and reclench her fist as if she was about to aim a blow.

‘Look,’ Rachel said in a cold, courteous voice that served to accentuate her outrage more descriptively than any physical attack, ‘it is not my room I want changing, but room 46. I am not having one of my riders sleeping on a camp bed in a cramped room with crap curtains.’

‘Wait,’ said the clerk witheringly, dropping the one eyebrow and then twitching the other, along with a slight smirk, as he disappeared. He returned with his smirk and also a smartly dressed woman.

‘Good afternoon,’ said Rachel. ‘I was trying to explain to your colleague that I find it unacceptable that there is only one decent bed in room 46. I have two riders sharing and I will not have either one sleeping on a camp bed.’

‘Miss?’ the manageress, as she transpired to be, enquired.

‘Mc–Ewen,’ said Rachel briskly, breaking her name as she only ever did when she was deadly serious and very annoyed. ‘I am soigneur for Zucca MV.’

‘Zucca!’ the lady marvelled quietly, flushing slightly. ‘Miss McEwen, I am terribly sorry. I will of course rectify this problem immediately.’ She rustled through an index file, tapped officiously at a computer and gabbled at the clerk who scurried off, the smirk wiped from his face. She raised an eyebrow in a much more impressive way than her male junior. ‘Room 46 – Massimo Lipari? Ah, and Gianni Fugallo – a good domestique.’

Rachel smiled.

Here’s the link. Here’s the bond. A passion shared is a problem solved.

‘I shall put them in room 40 – I don’t know how this could have happened and I apologize.’

‘Thank you,’ Rachel said, the relief in her voice softening her tone, her hair no longer seeming wild but, rather, merely unkempt through stress and a devotion to priorities in which concerns for coiffure were too petty to feature.

‘Miss McEwen,’ the manager cleared her voice, ‘if it is possible, an autograph? From Massimo? For me – Claudia?’

‘Bien sûr,’ Rachel nodded.

Funny how I know just enough idioms in French, Spanish, Italian – even Portuguese and Flemish – to get by! If we ever raced in Latvia, no doubt I’d learn the lingo for ‘no problem’, or ‘cheers’, or ‘put your hands away I’m not interested in sleeping with you’.

Rachel marched back to the lifts, back to room 46 and told a dejected-looking Gianni not to worry. Then she made two trips to room 40, transferring the riders’ bags and belongings while they sat on the one good bed, resting their legs and feeling the minutes ebb away and the Tour loom ever nearer.

Wednesday. Hôtel Splendide, Delaunay Le Beau. 5.30 p.m.

‘Yes?’ said the manageress to, remarkably, another British girl.

‘MissMcCabe,’ Cat strung in a rushed whisper, looking around the foyer, her heart still racing from the excitement of spying the cars of three different teams in the hotel car park, emblazoned with logos and crowned with the bike racks.

Cofidis! Banesto! Zucca MV!

‘Ah, Miss McCabe, your room is on the fifth floor. Number 50.’

When Cat arrived at the lifts she grinned, for there, as in all races, regardless of prestige, a list of the teams and their rooms was pinned unceremoniously.

Jesus – what a perfect, God-given sandwich I have become!

Temporarily flabbergasted, Cat scanned the list over and again, pinching herself that what she saw was correct.

It says so! Massimo Lipari and Gianni Fugallo directly below, Jose Maria Jimenez directly above. If Jimenez and Lipari want to vie for pin-up of the peloton, they can always meet half-way at room 50 and let me be the judge!

The fact that room 50 turned out to be rather small, with the teak veneer fittings and meagre chewing-gum-grey towels typical of a sub-2-star hotel, was of no consequence to Cat.

I’m here in France surrounded by the boys!

Wednesday. Hôtel Splendide, Delaunay Le Beau. 11.29 p.m.

Stefano Sassetta is delighted. Thanks to Rachel, his soigneur, he does not have to share a room. He had a great training ride this morning and is confident he will attain peak form during this first week, be invincible in the sprints and start hoovering up bonuses for the points in the green jersey competition. His thighs feel good and, after Rachel’s incomparable massage and Stefano’s lengthy scrutiny in the bathroom mirror, they look sublime to him. Stefano has been zapping through the television channels. His French is poor so he continues to flick the remote control, stopping awhile at MTV, enjoying a few minutes of boxing on Eurosport before it becomes tractor racing or dominoes, or some commensurately poor excuse for a sport. On he zaps. He is tired. He should sleep. But he is too psyched. If his manager came in and suggested a night ride, he’d be on his bike in a flash. He feels powerful and proud. And now he is delighted, for, two channels on from Eurosport, a porn movie is in its throes. Now he’ll be able to sleep. Masturbation is a great idea. Masturbation is better than sex – no energy wasted, as an ejaculation uses only sixty calories. No energy thrown away on pleasuring anyone but himself.

Thursday. Delaunay Le Beau. 10 a.m.

In the timescale of the Tour de France, Thursday is the dawn of two days of medicals for the riders, accreditation for the journalists and press conferences for both.

The previous evening, though Cat had tried valiantly to stay awake and recline demurely on her bed reading, neither Jose Maria Jimenez or Massimo Lipari had come to see her. She had woken in the early hours, dejected and still clothed.

As if they would have come to my bloody room.

Feeling a little foolish, she had crawled under the bedcovers, still clothed, for a few more hours of exhausted sleep.

Now, showered, changed twice, breakfasted and disappointed that there were no riders in sight, Cat left the hotel; the whirlwind of butterflies in her stomach at odds with the balmy climate outside. The trees, lampposts and road signs in the town of Delaunay Le Beau, which was hosting the Prologue and housing the Tour entourage, were bedecked with arrows pointing the colour-coded way for anyone who had anything to do with the Tour de France. For Cat, to follow the green pressé arrows was like being led on a treasure hunt.

Somewhat circuitously (the prerogative of the town’s chambre de commerce), the route took her past picturesque squares, the main shopping area, the university and the hospital – anyone who was anything to do with the Tour de France was to be subliminally persuaded that Delaunay Le Beau was a pretty town with excellent facilities. For Delaunay Le Beau, paying to play host, the Tour meant Tourism. Eventually, she arrived at the Permanence, an ironic title for the eternally temporary headquarters of the Société du Tour de France. In Delaunay Le Beau, it was housed in the grandiose town hall.

Cat McCabe had no idea what to expect – from Thursday, from the Permanence, from anything at all. For Ben York, however, an anxious female chewing her lip while her eyes darted as if on a pinball course was certainly not what he expected to see when he escorted his Megapac riders to the Permanence for their physical assessments. His groin gave an appreciative stir and his lips a flit of a smile at the sight of her. He felt almost privileged, as if spying the first swallow of summer before anyone else.

Here comes Cat, trying to saunter down the sweeping staircase of the town hall, hoping her grip on the banister seems nonchalant. She has been queuing for her accreditation in a vast room throbbing with strangers. Now she is wearing her green pass and she displays it with pride; it hangs from her neck and is as precious to her as pearls. It is the reason for her heightened state of excitement and the resulting lack of composure. It is her access to the real Tour de France; this year she has backstage privileges. Last year, and the years before, the cyclists were one step removed behind her TV screen.

I’m a journaliste. See? It says so: Cat McCabe, Journaliste, Le Guardian. That’s me. That’s what I do and who I am.

Ah, but Cat, how many journalists hover half-way down a staircase, fixated by the middle distance and gripping the banister with both hands?

I hate stairs. Please emphasize the ‘eeste’ – journaliste sounds far more delicious, much more prestigious than the English pronunciation.

All right, Cat McCabe, journaliste, walk on down the stairs and do your thing.

See her taking the stairs slowly, trying to absorb everything that is going on around her without looking quite the goggle-eyed devotee that she in fact feels?

I hate stares. Someone down there is looking at me. Keep walking. Oh Jesus! It’s Luca Jones! I’m going to have to stop again. That’s the medical check. Shit shit – what should I do? What am I allowed to do? What do journalists-istes do? Dictaphone? Yes, of course I have it with me. Ditto notepad. I have everything a journalist on the Tour de France could possibly need. But what I have most in abundance is nerves.

Establish eye contact with Luca, Cat. Why don’t you give him a smile? You needn’t say anything, but a smile today might mean recognition tomorrow, perhaps another smile the following day and huge familiarity thereafter.

I know. I know. I’m metaphorically kicking myself already for being so stupidly shy. But I have over three weeks. I won’t go home till Luca and I are on first-name terms.

We’ll hold you to that.

Don’t. Oh! It’s Hunter Dean! Dark, handsome and utterly Hollywood.

Hunter appears from his medical and beams at the loitering media consisting of six or seven tall men. Hunter really is the personification of his mission statement. Tipping his sunglasses up on to his head, courteously, he permits the clutch of journalists to surround him and systematically attends to all questions and answers them well, with considered replies and great charm.

Fuck fuck!

Cat is in a quandary. She has reached the bottom of the staircase and is so overcome by her proximity to her heroes that she feels much more like running from the building and hyperventilating somewhere in private, than in doing her job extracting soundbites.

What should I do?

They won’t bite.

Shall I just breeze up to the group and stick my dictaphone under Hunter’s mouth?

She ventures over and does just that. It’s the kind of thing a journalist does, Cat deduces from the bouquet of hand-held recording equipment already thrust at Hunter’s lips. She stares unflinchingly at the Megapac logo on the breast of Hunter’s tracksuit top. Hunter speaks, his voice pulls Cat’s gaze to his face while her dictaphone scrounges for soundbites with the best and rest of them.

Hunter’s lips. God, he has a beautiful neck.

Six male journalists stare at Cat who is incapable of controlling a creeping blush.

Oh shit, I didn’t just say that out loud, did I?

Cat nods earnestly at whatever it is that Hunter is saying. She praises gods of all creeds for the invention of the dictaphone because whatever he is saying, that the current thrill of it all prevents her from hearing, she can listen to later anyway. She focuses hard on the bridge of Hunter’s nose, to discipline her desperate-to-flit gaze.

‘Initially, Megapac may be an unknown quantity in terms of the Tour de France,’ Hunter is expounding, ‘but we’ll be the team on the tip of y’all’s tongues by the end – that I can assure you. You can quote me on that. We’re the best thing to happen in American cycle sport since Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong.’

‘Bonne chance!’ Cat surprises herself by responding unchecked, anticipating that Hunter might very well start to sing the Star Spangled Banner or quote the Constitution.

‘Hey, yeah, right!’ Hunter responds.

With a wink! Did you see that? A wink! I’ve died and gone to heaven. Does a wink come out on a dictaphone?

‘Cute,’ Luca nudges Ben, out of Cat’s earshot. Ben gives Luca an exasperated look that prevents him having to agree and thereby present himself as a contender. Fortuitously, Luca is called through for his medical and Ben can regard the lone female with a certain private pleasure while Luca creates a diversion. He sees her redden as she focuses on Luca.

Bastard boy racer, he frowns to himself, but why on earth wouldn’t she blush? There’d be something wrong with her if she didn’t. And, anyway, it’s proof to me that she’s a healthy, sexual person. And that’s good.

A couple of journalists call greetings to which Luca replies with the victory sign before disappearing into the open arms of the Tour’s medical team.

I should have called out something, Cat reprimands herself. Wouldn’t my voice have stood out, made him stop and perhaps notice me?

Cat looks a little forlornly at the space on the bench Luca has left. Her gaze shifts to the right and clocks a nice pair of Timberland boots, good legs clad in black jeans, a white shirt. Her eyes travel automatically upwards, over a strong neck, ditto chin, to a pair of just parted lips. She finally alights on very dark brown eyes which won’t let her go. She notes a handsome face enhanced by a wry smile, crowned by dark hair cut flatteringly close to the head and quite strikingly flecked through with grey. Momentarily, Cat wonders who he might be. But she knows he’s not a rider so her interest wanes.

Anyway, I have to go. I have to find the salle de presse. I’m working. It’s my job.

Ben watches her leave, rather gratified by the fact that he’ll see her again over the next three weeks.

Thursday. Salle de presse. 1 p.m.

Starving hungry, Cat’s appetite disappeared on entering the press room. Dread instead filled her stomach until fear was a hard lump in her throat and panic was a terrible taste to the tongue. She felt immediately that she had been transported back to Durham University, that she had just entered a vast exam hall and was ten minutes away from the start of her finals. The comparison was apposite but, as in an anxiety dream, disconcertingly twisted too. Noise. Too much of it. You can’t sit the test of your life amidst such a din. There again, you wouldn’t really sit your finals in northern France, in an ice rink requisitioned by the Société du Tour de France.

What had happened to the ice was initially of little relevance for Cat. Rather, she was transfixed by line upon line of connected trestle tables on which, at regular intervals, an army of laptops were positioned, gaping like hungry mouths eager to gobble down the information in any language as long as the topic was cycling. At the front and to either side, a brigade of industrial-sized televisions was mounted on tall stands, surrounding the journalists and perusing the scene like phantasmagorical invigilators.

If I’m not at Durham University, then I’m in a George Orwell novel or a Terry Gilliam film. Am I really at the Tour de France? It’s all so vast – anonymous, even. What on earth am I meant to do now? Where should I sit? This is my workplace for the next three days, how am I ever going to be able to concentrate?

Cat felt much sicker and far less steady on her feet than she had for any exam, or even on the ferry. But she made it to a space on a run of trestle conveniently close and which, to her relief, had an expanse of at least three metres between where she set up and the next journalist.

I’m in Babel. Did no one say hullo in Babel? Isn’t my pass enough – do I need a password too?

After a quick, furtive scout around, Cat plugged in her laptop, positioned her mobile phone near by and fanned out a selection of the booklets she had been given at accreditation.

See, now my workspace looks no different from any of those around me. I’m one of them, now. So, now someone should say hullo. I’m going to busy myself I’d like to scrutinize this one: ‘Les hotels, les equipes’ – see if any of my other hotels during the Tour might house teams too. Better not – that’s something I can look forward to doing later tonight when I’m in my room pathetically deluded that Jimenez or Lipari might come and find me.

I’ll start by flipping through this booklet – ‘Les régions, la culture’. Fuck, it’s all in French. I’ll just skim the pages as if I’m speed reading – oh God, but if I do, they might presume I’m fluent and come up jabbering away at me. PR packs from the teams. That’s better. I’ll start with Zucca MV.

She was staring at photos of the team when her mobile phone rang, causing her to jump and fumble with the handset.

‘Hullo?’ she whispered, her hand guarding her brow, her eyes cast unflinchingly down towards the keys on her laptop.

‘Bonjour!’ boomed Django so loudly that Cat glanced around her expecting to find the entire press corps listening in, knowing it wasn’t work, that she was but a pseudo journaliste. However, her presence, let alone that of Django’s voice, was obviously still undetected. Now she was relieved.

‘Hullo,’ she said, ‘Django.’

‘How are you?’ he asked, slurring his words in his excitement. ‘Where are you? What’s happening? Keeping a decorous distance from all that lycra, I do hope?’

Though she’d hate herself for it later, Django’s enthusiasm irritated Cat.

I’m working. This isn’t a holiday. Take me seriously.

Ah, but don’t deny it is a pleasure for which you yourself cannot believe you are being paid.

I bet nobody else’s uncles are phoning them.

Well then, you should pity them.

‘I’m fine,’ Cat said quietly, ‘but busy – press conferences, deadlines – and then some.’

Haven’t actually been to a press conference. My first deadline is tomorrow.

‘And the people?’ The pride in Django’s voice caused Cat’s eyes to smart. ‘Are they nice? Have you made friends? And the riders, girl – have you met and married?’

‘Oh,’ Cat sighed, swiping the air most nonchalantly, unaware that it was a gesture wasted on Django, ‘loads – great. Everything.’

‘Well, I’ll phone again,’ Django said gently, sensing her unease. ‘Just had to make sure that you’re really there – now that I hear you, I can continue with my jam-making. I’m trying damson and ouzo. I thought an aniseed taste and an alcoholic kick might be an interesting addition to an otherwise relatively mundane preserve. There’ll be a jar, or pot, probably plural, awaiting your return.’

Django’s culinary idiosyncrasies suddenly touched Cat. She closed her eyes and listened. It was like a voice not heard for a long while and yet its immediate familiarity was so comforting it was painful.

‘Thanks, Django,’ Cat said, smiling sadly, ‘but I have to go. Bye.’ She switched off, stared hard at the phone and forced herself to switch off. Back she was, in the formidable ice rink.

Too many people were smoking too many cigarettes. A man with a handlebar moustache was smoking a cigar. A large one.

He looks like an extra from a spaghetti western. What do I look like? A journaliste? I don’t think I’m noticeable at all. Do I want to be? And I haven’t done any work, I haven’t even switched my laptop on.

And there’s the Système Vipère press conference in ten minutes.

Good, I can get out of here.

Thursday. Team Système Vipère press conference. 1.30 p.m.

Cat just sits and stares. Her physical proximity to Fabian Ducasse is causing her to hold her breath. It is as if she fears that if she doesn’t, unless she keeps utterly still, he’ll disappear and all of this will have been some tormenting apparition. And what a shame that would be, with Fabian currently smouldering at the press corps, his mouth in its permanent pout, his eyes dark, his focus hypnotic. He is taller, broader, than Cat had previously assumed from television appearances. His skin is tanned, his hair now very short and emphatically presenting his stunning bone structure. His cool reserve, the aloof tilt of his head draw all present to his every move, his every word, at the expense of his equally hallowed team-mates sitting alongside. The conference is conducted in French and fast and, to Cat, the very timbre impresses her far more than the specific words she can pick out and string, if not into a sentence, into the gist of one. The room is charged. Or is it? Is it Fabian Ducasse’s doing? Or is it just Cat?

On the platform at one end of the conference room, Jules Le Grand has flanked himself with Fabian Ducasse, Jesper Lomers, Carlos Jesu Velasquez and the youngest member of the team, Oskar Munch, whose first Tour de France this is. Oskar appears as awestruck as Cat – if they caught sight of each other they could exchange empathetic gazes. This, though, is unlikely to happen in a room of at least two hundred people.

For Oskar, I’d like to write a piece about domestiques, the unsung heroes who work away selflessly for the greater glory of their leader, their team.

Carlos is about to speak.

Fuck, all in bloody Spanish! Mind you, he’s a man of few words and his grunts are unilaterally understandable. He’s probably just been asked if he feels in any way compromised riding for a French team. That shrug-mutter I take to mean ‘Amigo, I am doing my job – a fine company wishes to employ me, to pay for my skill – where’s the conflict or compromise?’ Ah Oskar, someone’s asked you your ambition for the Tour.

‘Paris!’ Oskar announces as if to an idiot.

Shall I ask him about preparation? How well he knows the route? How much is a technical, theoretical study of alpine gradients and Pyrenean cross-winds, how much is physical familiarity with specific climbs? Oh, and mental attitude – will his spirit ensure entry into Paris even if twenty-one arduous days have broken his body?

Yes, Cat. Go for it.

Me? No. Maybe tomorrow.

This is Oskar’s press conference today.

In twenty-one teams, there are approximately six domestiques in each. I’ll have my pick.

You’re contradicting yourself – you just said how much you respect domestiques as riders in their own right. I think you should go for Oskar.

This is my first press conference. Give me a break.

The Guardian newspaper is giving you your break, remember.

Thursday. Salle de presse. 2.30 p.m.

There’s a lot of bad typing in the press corps and a quite startling array of awful footwear, thought Cat on returning to the press room and making it back to her seat without anyone acknowledging her presence, which, in truth but to her surprise, caused her a little consternation. All around her, mobile phones were bickering to outdo each other with terrible jingles in place of regular ringing tones.

Cat opened a new file in her laptop and plugged an earpiece into her dictaphone, swooning slightly and smiling broadly at Hunter’s American tones. The blank screen was far too intimidating so, etching an expression of utter concentration over her face, Cat looked up and around her, as if deep in thought rather than analysing the particulars surrounding and distracting her.

I mean – look at him, very thin and pale, wearing too short shorts, no socks and shiny black brogues. And that one looks like something out of a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale in those suede pixie boots. And with toes like that, that man there should certainly refrain from putting them on public display.

Cat placed her fingers rather primly on the keys, then took them off again. What to write, what to write? What on earth was everyone else writing?

I don’t want to start – not that I know where to. I’m surrounded by two-digit keyboard bashing and inefficient finger knitting – how can they manage entire articles using the index finger of their left hand and the third finger of their right? There again, I can touch-type – and fast – but I can’t write a bloody word.

Cat was subsumed by an illogical fear that, as soon as she started typing, there’d be silence and all eyes would be on her, assessing how fast she types, how she types, what she writes, even what shoes she wears. She stared at her screen then glanced around her, momentarily bolstered by the fact that though everyone’s screens were on view, it was impossible to discern what they’d written, never mind in what language. Her fingers hovered and then alighted softly on the keys. She cocked her head, as if Hunter had said something of supreme interest, and allowed her fingers to skitter randomly over the keyboard.

akdjoii sdiuej fdiknvoiq=- jdoaign kdjlau SODIJA L.upoadj lkduflakdkruoqemma d OKLAKEUR .kdug; ae#q, dkafp9cekjr9 diuarslkqjwlfreO dpsofiqawe.wer fdfpiaduf lksadurmq pe9981ek cagl9igdam.s .. diew r l;sie. 932 ..xouawpoe w.e;

She looked away from the screen and was momentarily staggered, soon relieved, as she realized her hot flush and racing heart were pointless. No one met her gaze, no one laughed at her work, everyone was utterly preoccupied with all things other than Cat McCabe, journaliste. Cat allowed herself a smile, looked at her screen and thought, well – it could be Finnish, deleted the lot and started to transcribe Hunter’s soundbites. Her typing speed matched the pace of his voice perfectly.

Now I’m going to sketch out a piece for the Guardian focusing on the non-European element of the Tour de France – mention Luca Jones and whether winning a Stage in the Giro D’Italia can translate to winning one at the Tour de France.

‘Hullo.’

I might do an ‘introducing Megapac’ – use my Hunter quotes, bring the riders of this wildcard team to the public’s notice.

‘Bonjour?’

In fact, it would be interesting to do a piece as an exposé of the cliques in the peloton according to nationality or language.

‘Buenos dias?’

There’s often inter-team friction, or factions, due to language – how does that change within the peloton at large?

‘Buon giorno? Guten Morgen? Hola!’

Cat looked up with a jolt.

‘Bonjour,’ she mumbled, wondering if she’d been talking her ideas out loud. She glanced at the man and was able to assess immediately that he appeared, physically at least, non-intimidating and relatively normal. For a start, he was wearing khaki shorts of decent dimensions and had a pen rather than a cigarette between his fingers.

The man flicked over a page of his notebook, squinted and then spoke.

‘Cat-riona McCabe?’ he asked. ‘Guardian?’

And he’s British.

‘Yes,’ Cat beamed, standing up and shaking his hand.

‘I’m Josh Piper,’ he said, extending his hand.

‘Oh – Josh-ua!’ Cat proclaimed, with a familiarity and joviality that made her cringe because they far exceeded the mere expression of recognition and relief she’d actually intended. ‘You’re English and you’re Joshua.’ She shook his hand anew.

‘Er, yes,’ he said, regarding her quizzically, ‘but please – it’s Josh and I’m relieved you’re Catriona McCabe – I’ve been standing here for ten hours saying hello in every language I know and some I probably don’t. You were miles away – where were you? Half-way up L’Alpe D’Huez already?’

Cat gave a guilty grin. ‘Not quite, but I was preoccupied. I’m sorry.’ To emphasize the point, she sat down again and stared concertedly at her screen.

Noticing that she still had her earpiece in place and that the dictaphone appeared still to be whirring and that her fingers were over the keys, Josh put his hands up in surrender.

‘You’re going to share the driving with us – right?’ His hands were now on his hips, as if it aided him in assessing her potential behind the wheel.

‘Yup, absolutely, thanks so much,’ Cat rushed.

‘This is your first Tour,’ he told her.

Am I that transparent?

Cat shrugged and nodded, trying to wipe the daft grin from her face.

But this is my first Tour – I’m here at the Tour de France – automatic smile drug.

‘It’s my seventh,’ Josh continued. ‘I read your Tour of Britain report for Cycling Weekly – I thought it was quite good.’

‘Thank you,’ Cat smiled, closing her eyes temporarily, revelling in such praise from a seasoned and respected journalist.

‘Good,’ Josh said. ‘How’s Taverner doing at the Guardian?’

‘My boss?’ Cat smiled on. ‘He’s fine – stressed out, as ever, but fine. Still racing a fair bit, winning not a lot but forever exhibiting his war wounds!’

‘I bet he was pissed off having to delegate this job out – it would have been his thirteenth tour.’

God, I have so far to go. So much to catch up on. Shoes to fill. A spectre to cast off. An impression to make.

‘Well,’ Josh continued, ‘nice to meet you. I’ll see you around.’

‘Thanks,’ said Cat, watching Josh blend with the press corps and suddenly kicking herself for not asking for his mobile number, or where they should meet on Sunday for Stage 1, or what she should do with her bags and what sort of car it was she was to help drive.

Why didn’t he invite me to sit by him? Or suggest coffee or sandwiches? Or ask where I’m staying?

Because you’re at work, not at a dinner party. Anyway, he was friendly and he did come to find you. Now write. Work.

I don’t know where to start. I’m still starving. Anyway, it’s the Saeco-Cannondale press conference in twenty minutes and I want to get a seat near the front so I can concentrate on Mario Cipollini.

Ten minutes later, as Cat was on her way out of the main ice rink to the press conference room, she came across Josh Piper headed in the same direction. It transpired they were staying at the same hotel.

‘Cipo, Cipo,’ Cat whispered as they took their seats and waited for the team. She turned to Josh and regarded him earnestly. ‘Mario Cipollini,’ she said, eyes asparkle. The sentence was complete, the profundity of its meaning and the depth of associated emotion were encapsulated in those two words.

‘I fucking love Cipo,’ said Josh, ‘I love him.’

‘So do I,’ Cat breathed, ‘I love Cipollini too.’

Josh shook her hand. ‘Can I call you Cat? We should meet for dinner this evening,’ said Josh, ‘there’s a few of us at the hotel.’

‘That would be lovely,’ said Cat earnestly, ‘and of course you can. Can I have your mobile number?’

Josh tipped his head. ‘Won’t it be easier if I just call your room from my room?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Cat, biting her lip and hoping that a grin might, in some way, counteract her inanity. Josh looked ahead and nudged her. She grinned at him again.

I have a friend!

She nudged him back. He turned to her, swiftly regarding her with a flicker of a frown, tipping his head towards the platform at the front, giving her a sharp nudge. Cat followed his gaze.

‘Cipo!’ Cat proclaimed involuntarily, her voice hoarse and regrettably loud. The two rows in front of her turned and stared. Mario Cipollini, however, nodded at her. Josh nudged her. She could feel him smile. Cat swelled.

Friday. Salle de presse. 10 a.m.

The press room wasn’t quite so unnerving, did not seem nearly as cavernous or quite so cacophonous the next morning, nor did the press corps seem as intimidating. Not least because there were now two faces known to her. Nevertheless, Cat set up her work space, settled herself down, opening a file and typing a few lines, before she scanned the mêlée and finally recognized the backs of Josh and also Alex Fletcher a few rows in front of her. She grinned at their shoulder blades, felt settled and keen to work.

I do hope Jimenez and Lipari weren’t twiddling their thumbs and at a loose end last night – because I was otherwise occupied. Josh did indeed call my room and we went out for a meal, with Alex Fletcher who is also travelling with us. Alex is very tall but his stature seems disproportionate to his demeanour – he’s like an excitable schoolboy – deplorable expletives every other word and a quite staggering lack of respect for his expense account. I had heard he can be brusque, that he requires an ego massage. But I like him, he’s amusing – it might even be fun with the three of us in the car.

‘Morning, Cat,’ said Alex, right on cue and towering above her, ‘fucking shit night’s sleep last night.’

Cat wasn’t quite sure how to respond, because she had slept very well, so she gave what she hoped was a sympathetic tip of her head. Alex loped off. Cat returned her attention to her still ominously blank screen.

I have to write my piece – Taverner wants 800 words on the Tour de France in general for Saturday’s issue as a prelude to the daily reports on each Stage.

‘Coming for coffee?’ said Josh. ‘Then the Zucca MV press conference?’

‘Sure,’ said Cat, quickly exiting her empty file as if it was full of secret scoops; grabbing her notepad and dictaphone, checking her back pocket for francs. ‘Bugger,’ she said, looking aghast, ‘I’ve come with no money.’

‘Money?’ Josh laughed. ‘You won’t need it – did you not eat during the day yesterday?’ Cat shook her head. ‘Well, Cat, Christmas comes early for the salle de presse – follow me.’

Josh took her out of the main ice rink and through to a much smaller hall where three sides of the room were lined with tables heaving under what appeared to Cat to be a veritable banquet.

‘No one loses weight on the Tour de France,’ said Josh, assessing Cat openly and deciding, in her case, that was a good thing.

‘Apart from the riders,’ said Cat.

‘Huh?’ said Josh, looking at his watch and then taking some baguette and brie.

‘The riders,’ Cat repeated, sitting down beside Josh and Alex, ‘they lose weight – they can lose around 4 pounds of muscle alone when the body starts to use it for energy.’

The baguette Josh was about to eat stopped midway to his mouth. Alex had a mouthful of coffee but put the gulp on hold.

‘How many calories a day do the riders consume?’ Josh asked, as if merely interested though Cat could tell she was being tested.

‘Between six and eight thousand,’ she shrugged, ‘60 per cent from complex carbs, 20 per cent from protein and 20 per cent from fat.’

‘Liquid?’ Alex demanded, having swallowed his.

‘Well, on a long Stage, and if it’s hot,’ Cat recited, ‘they need about 12 pints – but you see, the body can only absorb around 800 millilitres an hour, so fluid is always going to be a major concern. That’s why the drinks must be cold and hypertonic – they need to be absorbed quickly and to work efficiently.’

‘Also—’ Alex started but Cat hadn’t finished.

‘All riders fear thirst,’ she said gravely, taking a contemplative sip of Orangina, ‘because if you’re thirsty, it’s basically too late.’

‘Who rode the most Tours?’ Josh enquired, as if he had temporarily forgotten.

‘Joop Zoetemelk,’ Cat reminded him kindly, ‘sixteen in all.’ She regarded Alex, who was obviously musing over some taxing question. She saved him the trouble. ‘Maurice Garin,’ she said, ‘won the first Tour in 1903. Of course, the free wheel wasn’t invented until practically thirty years later,’ she added as an aside.

‘How many hairpin bends on L’Alpe D’Huez?’ Alex asked.

‘Twenty-one,’ replied Cat.

‘Fastest time trial?’ Josh pumped, raising an eyebrow at Alex over Cat’s split-second silence.

‘I reckon that would be Greg LeMond in 1989 – I think he averaged a fraction under 55 kph.’

‘Name the infamous Uzbekistan rider who won the green jersey and was—’

Cat interrupted Josh: ‘and was thrown off the 1997 Tour for testing positive?’

‘Him,’ Josh confirmed.

‘In fact,’ Alex mused, ‘spell him!’

Cat laughed. ‘I’ve named my two goldfish after him. Phonetically speaking, “jam-ollideen abdoo-jap-arov” have to be the most delicious words to roll off the tongue. Ever.’

‘Want a coffee?’ Alex asked, a certain reluctant admiration on his face. She nodded. He went off and brought back just the one, just for Cat. Josh took another chunk of baguette, laid two slithers of brie within it and proffered it to Cat. She accepted graciously.

Respect!

Friday. Zucca MV press conference. 12 p.m.

‘Come on, guys, or you’ll be late. Massimo – where’s Stefano? And where’s Vasily?’ Rachel McEwen was irritated; swinging the keys to the Fiat loaned to Zucca by the Tour de France, around and around her index finger. She had so much to do. Retrieving errant riders was not on her list.

Vasily Jawlensky, last year’s winner of the Tour de France, walked in a leisurely way across the car park. Rachel could never be cross with Vasily as he never intended to upset anyone.

‘Vasily,’ she said in a theatrical whimper, ‘where have you been?’

‘Viz my bike,’ Vasily replied as if Rachel really should have known the answer. Rachel smiled, nodded and laid a hand on his shoulder. She should have known. The majority of riders finish a race or a Stage, dismount and have no idea, or interest, in what happens to their bicycles. Most riders have little technical knowledge of their machines. But not Vasily. His first love, no doubt his dying love, is the bicycle.

Frequently, after his massage, he will venture to the car park of the hotel, to the team truck, and see to the wash-down and check-over of his bicycle himself. It helps him relax. He loves the company of the team mechanics. He is relaxed among them. When he looks back at the newspaper cuttings, the photos and film of his brilliant career, he does not look at himself, at the grimace of pain or the expression of elation he might be wearing, he does not look at the colour of the jersey on his back, or which rider is in front of him or, more likely, behind him. Unlike his team-mate Stefano Sassetta, Vasily would never consider analysing the dimensions of his thighs, the condition of his physique, the aesthetic merits of his categorically handsome face. Vasily Jawlensky’s attention in such instances is purely for the bike that is carrying him. He is the jockey, they are his transport to success.

To women, Cat most certainly amongst them, Vasily Jawlensky is a most gallant, enigmatic knight in shimmering lycra. For Vasily Jawlensky, his cycles are his magnificent steeds, his high-modulus carbon fibre and titanium chargers. He salutes them.

‘Just Stefano now,’ said Rachel, looking at her watch and then at Massimo and Vasily, who looked a little sheepish for having upset his soigneur whom he respected and liked. She unlocked the car and ushered the two riders in to the back.

‘You two,’ she said sternly, as if to a pair of dogs, ‘stay!’ They watched her sprint back into the hotel and, a few minutes later, pelt out again. She ran around to the side of the hotel where the team trucks were parked, disappearing from view just as Stefano appeared from the front of the hotel. He sauntered over to the team car and slipped into the front seat.

‘Ciao,’ he nodded to his team-mates.

‘Buon giorno,’ Massimo said.

‘How are you?’ said Vasily with great thought. The two riders communicated warmly but sparely in pigeon English.

Rachel reappeared, her hair loose and all over the place. She saw the laden car and walked briskly to it, settling herself in to the driver’s seat, studiously ignoring Stefano.

‘Ciao, Rachel,’ Stefano beamed, ‘where the fuck you been, hey?’ Rachel knew this scenario well. Accordingly, she switched on the ignition calmly and drove away. However, the frequent screech of brakes, the taking of liberties as she took corners, coupled with her loaded silence and wild hair told Stefano all he needed to know. He sat quietly and listened to Vasily and Massimo read all the signs they passed.

‘Bou-lang-er-ie.’

‘Mon-o-prix.’

‘Lin-ger-ie.’

Stefano tittered.

Rachel escorted her precious load to the conference room, swinging the car keys around her fingers. She smiled at Vasily. She smiled at Massimo. She even smiled at Stefano. When he took her hand to kiss, she stared at him very coldly, kept her hand to herself and marched away.

‘Where were you?’ Vasily asked Stefano as they took the stage in the conference room.

‘In the bar,’ Stefano shrugged, ‘coffee. With a nice girl.’

‘What are Vasily Jawlensky and Stefano Sassetta saying? Can you lipread?’ Cat urges Josh, who sits beside her. He shakes his head forlornly. ‘Can Alex?’ Cat implores, looking past Josh to the other journalist.

‘Only if the language is foul enough,’ Josh whispers, ‘or the topic suitably scandalous.’

Alex leans across them and giggles. ‘What a cunt!’ he exclaims; the fact that, being so tall has indeed brought his face about in line with Cat’s nether regions is momentarily alarming for the young journaliste who has known him for less than twenty-four hours. But Alex talks quickly and Cat, to her relief, discovers his foul fulmination is in fact peculiar praise for Stefano Sassetta. ‘He just said to Vasily that he was in a bar all night surrounded by women.’ Chinese whispers on this year’s Tour de France have begun.

Alex can speak Russian, Italian and French; his German is good, he can get by in Spanish and understands Portuguese. Zucca MV have no French riders and though they are predominantly an Italian team, the presence of their leader Vasily Jawlensky, last year’s yellow jersey, ensures that English is their chosen language when in any country other than Italy. Alex, however, giving Josh a nudge which, from its severity, is passed through his body and on to Cat, decides that familiarity will win him friends. And friends in the peloton will be an enviable commodity. So, in Russian, he asks Vasily probing questions about whether his new Pinarello bike for the Prologue Time Trial will reward him with the yellow jersey; then, in Italian, he asks Stefano Sassetta directly about his rivalry with Jesper Lomers.

Cat has been building up her nerve to ask Massimo’s opinions on the climbs of this year’s Tour but Alex’s bravado, his confident language-hopping, intimidates her and the confidence and acceptance she sensed from her facts-and-figures discourse over coffee evaporates. She is not consoled by the fact that Josh has just called Alex a show-off wanker, which, perversely, he has taken as a compliment. She wants to return to the salle de presse and make an inroad into her first article. Deadline is five hours away. She ought to start.

Stay put, Cat, the rest of the room is. Megapac are about to come in for their press conference.

Friday. Megapac press conference. 12.45 p.m.

Alex leans across Josh to Cat and racks his body into a brief silent laugh. Cat wonders which term for the female genitalia can possibly come out of his mouth next, most having done so already this morning. Alex surprises her.

‘Hey, Cat,’ he whispers, while the Megapac boys, a vision in burgundy and forest-green lycra, take their seats and tap their microphones and Josh regards Alex’s body sprawled again over his knees with exasperation, ‘what would you bid for Luca Jones?’ Alex winks suggestively. Cat regards him full on, glances at Luca and then back to Alex.

‘Why,’ she says with a very straight face, ‘everything I own and my soul to boot.’ This delights Alex. Cat and Josh share a flicker of a raised eyebrow and all three look at Luca, sandwiched between Hunter and Travis as if it is team strategy that some of their upright morals might just rub off on the young Lothario. Neither Josh nor Alex seem particularly interested in Megapac’s presence in the Tour de France but for Cat, there is a certain resonance for they, like her, are new to the show. On show. On trial. In France with dreams in their hearts and hope in their legs. Accordingly, fresh-faced earnestness replaces the showmanship exhibited by players in more established teams. Cat salutes Megapac.

The sight and sound of Hunter Dean, twice in twenty-four hours, lulls her into a false sense of familiarity and friendship.

He gave me a wink, remember.

Of course. Keep grinning and gazing at him as you are, you may even be awarded another.

Alex and Josh are comparing mobile phones like errant schoolboys might electronic pocket games during morning assembly. Somebody has asked the directeur sportif about sponsorship and the directeur is coming to the close of an informative but monotone soliloquy. For Cat, her surroundings have suddenly become dark, the sounds around her muffled. She feels detached and yet focused. She clears her throat, swallows once, carefully sets her pad and dictaphone to one side and then stands up.

‘Hunter?’

God, that was my voice. What the fuck was my question?

Cat’s voice seems to her too loud, too detached even to be her own. Its very femaleness has created a hush around her. Alex’s and Josh’s jaws have dropped.

‘Hi there,’ says Hunter, tipping his head and granting Cat his undivided attention. The other members of Megapac, racers and managers alike, are regarding her too. She daren’t look. She stares fixedly at Hunter.

Oh Jesus, Hunter Dean has just said hullo to me.

So, say hullo back.

‘Hullo. Um,’ Cat coughs a little, ‘what’s the strategy and is it personal or team?’

Hunter licks his lips and Cat, to her horror, realizes she has inadvertently licked hers in reply. ‘Huh?’ he responds.

‘Are you – singular – after a Stage win for yourself,’ Cat enunciates, involuntarily loudly, terrified she might fart or lose her voice with nerves, ‘or are you – plural – pursuing a complete team finish in Paris? Which is the greater glory?’

That sounded good! Very professional. Very salle de presse. Cat McCabe – journaliste.

‘Man,’ Hunter responds in his North Carolina drawl, ‘who says we can’t have both? The team’s strong – hey, y’all? I’m real strong. Mental confidence and physical strength feed each other, you know?’

Cat nods earnestly, hoping Josh has all this in shorthand or on tape. Luca leans forward to the mike, nods at Cat and then bestows upon her a dazzling smile that she is too stunned to reply likewise to.

‘You know,’ Luca says, keeping eye contact direct, ‘I would say each and every Megapac guy has a Stage win in his legs plus – plus – the desire for us to arrive together in Paris in his heart. We’re a team – you know?’

Now Hunter is nodding alongside Luca and Cat wonders if the three of them shouldn’t just quit the room and go and have a coffee somewhere. Which is pretty much what Luca is thinking, observing the pretty girl all serious and attentive – although he would of course drop Hunter from the equation.

‘The Tour de France,’ says Hunter, ‘is about team effort, team spirit, personal triumph plus – plus – pain. We’ll all be suffering, but hey, you’re not given a dream without the power to realize it!’

‘We are nine great riders racing under the Megapac flag,’ Luca proclaims in his gorgeous accent which today he sees fit to infuse with a twang of American. ‘You watch us go.’

‘I will!’ Cat enthuses. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ says Hunter, who’s never been thanked in a press conference before.

‘It’s a pleasure,’ Luca smiles, thinking that a one-on-one interview with this girl would be a dictionary definition of pleasure.

‘You’re well in there,’ Alex growls under his breath, most impressed as Cat takes her seat, stares at her lap and wonders just how red her cheeks are. A healthy blush? Or downright crimson?

‘Good call,’ Josh says, reading through his notes and congratulating Cat genuinely, the facial colouring of his now-esteemed colleague being of little consequence to him.

I’m a bona fide journaliste, Cat thinks, trying not to let an ecstatic smile expose her as an adoring fan foremost.

‘I got propositioned by a total babe,’ Luca told Ben an hour later.

‘Oh Jesus!’ Ben exclaimed, dipping litmus paper into urine samples. ‘Are the groupies out in force already?’

‘Actually,’ Luca explained, ‘this one is a very welcome addition to the press corps – cor blimey!’ he added, tittering at his pun.

‘And she propositioned you?’ Ben laughed. ‘In the middle of a fucking press conference? Now, what did she say, I wonder? “Luca, Luca, after Stage 3, can we shag if you’re not too tired?” Something along those lines?’

Luca looked quite hurt. ‘Fuck you,’ seemed the most appropriate response, ‘she questioned me, man.’

‘And what did she ask?’ Ben asked with a wry smile giving a lively sparkle to his eyes. ‘Did she enquire as to the dimensions of your cog? How long you can keep going for?’

Luca did indeed hear the word as ‘cock’ and gave Ben a larky look which, predictably, said ‘fuck you’.

‘Well,’ he rued, ‘she actually asked about Personal Glory and Survival to Paris and shit – but she was a babe, let me tell you.’

‘I do believe you already have,’ said Ben. ‘Please ensure that for you, Personal Glory on the Tour de France is about racing your brilliant best. Keep your head down and direct all your energy – physical and mental – to la Grande Boucle.’

‘The big, beautiful, killer loop,’ Luca sighed, the route of this year’s Tour clearly mapped out in his mind’s eye. ‘Sure, Pop. Work first, then play – hey? That’s what I’m paid for.’

Ben cuffed Luca’s head and sent him on his way.

Friday. Team presentation. Hôtel de Ville, Delaunay Le Beau. 7 p.m.

Cat finished her piece. She polished the words and tweaked the punctuation until her brain felt frazzled. But the true headache befell her when she tried to e-mail it to the Guardian. In the phone room, the expletives in various languages from fellow journalists suffering similar telecom trauma were mildly comforting. She swore with the best of them for half an hour before technology kicked in and swiped her work away from her in a matter of seconds.

‘It’s the team presentation,’ she said to Josh and Alex, who were still in the throes of adjective selection.

‘It’s just the entire peloton in their gear but minus their bikes, poncing across the stage,’ Alex dismissed. Cat could think of nothing she’d like to see more.

‘It’s more for the VIPs and local dignitaries,’ Josh added, ‘like in horse-racing when the nags are paraded around before the off.’

‘Well,’ Cat said breezily, ‘this is my first Tour and I feel I ought to experience everything that’s going. So, à demain, mes enfants.’ She left the salle de presse and made her way to the town hall. It was humid, the still air hanging thick with the sense of anticipation felt by all connected with the race.

As thrilled as Cat was that she had made friends already, now, at the town hall, sneaking a seat near the front, she was most pleased that she was by herself. She wanted to soak up, savour and smile her way through the team presentation without being laughed at by Alex or, worse, perhaps to be judged and discredited by Josh.

I want to see my boys, standing before me, complete as teams, their bodies unharmed as yet by the traumas of the Tour. I want to keep the image – it’s important. Tomorrow changes everything.

Cat had come into close quarters with lycra-clad bike racers many times but it was bizarre, unsettling almost, to see the élite peloton so very out of context, paraded before her, for her, strutting their stuff without a bike in sight.

I almost don’t know where to look – because wherever I try to look, my eyes seem drawn back to the bulges. They’d give male ballet dancers a run for their money.

It was like a fashion show. Deutsche Telekom team, looking pretty impressive in pink, left the stage and Cofidis filed on, the riders’ chests and backs emblazoned with a vibrant golden sun symbol. Système Vipère looked stunning in their predominantly black lycra, a viper picked out in emerald and scarlet curling itself round each rider’s body and left thigh. Despite it being almost eight o’clock, Fabian Ducasse was wearing his Rudy Project sunglasses but Cat was perfectly happy that he should for he looked utterly stunning.

‘What do you miss?’ Cat understood the compère to be asking Fabian. Fabian replied with an expressive Gallic shrug-cum-pout and said wine and women. ‘What does Paris mean to you?’ the compère furthered. Fabian looked at him as if he was dense. ‘Wine and women, of course.’

And the yellow jersey, perhaps, thought Cat, not that Vasily will let it go easily, Oh, why can’t you both have it?

Zucca MV, in their blue and yellow strip, striped into rather dazzling and possibly tactical optically psychedelic swirls, sauntered on to the stage next and stood, legs apart, hands behind their backs. Though there was no music, Massimo Lipari was tapping his toe, nodding his head and grabbing his bottom lip with his teeth as if he were in a night-club and on the verge of dancing his heart out. Cat smiled. Stefano Sassetta smirked arrogantly, his torso erect, his thighs slightly further apart than those of his team-mates and, Cat noticed, tensed to show off their impressive musculature. Her eyes were on an involuntary bagatelle course; if they moved upwards from Stefano’s thighs, they hit his crotch from where they rebounded back to his thighs before being sent north again.

There’s padding and there’s padding – and I estimate that only a fraction of what Stefano has down there is padding. Blimey!

Zucca’s six domestiques, staring earnestly into the middle distance, same height, same build, same haircut, now the same peroxide blond, looked utterly interchangeable and Cat cussed herself for confusing Gianni with Pietro or Paolo and Marco and Mario or Franscesco.

They’re the cogs that keep Zucca’s wheels turning. If these boys weren’t domestiques, they’d most probably be working in their fathers’ restaurants. Not as head chefs or maître d’s, but as waiters, scurrying back and forth, keeping everybody happy. And they would indeed be happy – working for others is what they do. And they do it brilliantly and with pleasure. Their sense of family is strong. A family is a team. A team is a family. Put any obstacle in front of a line of soldier ants and they will not look for a way around it, they will climb up and over it and so it is with the Zucca MV domestiques. Their selflessness is legendary within the peloton. I’d like to write a piece about them.

Cat was making a mental note to phone the publishers of Maillot on Monday morning to propose such an article, when Megapac replaced Zucca MV on stage, the nine riders fresh-faced grinning virgins in comparison to the suave comportment of the Italian team who had a long-standing relationship with the Tour de France. She had to physically stop herself from leaping to her feet and waving at Hunter and Luca whom she now thought of as personal friends.

We meet again. You all look so lovely. Please take care. Have a good race. See you tomorrow. Adieu.

Catriona McCabe. Journaliste.

Cat McCabe is exhausted. She is back at the hotel, in her room, praying that neither Alex nor Josh will call for her. In fact, tonight she wouldn’t even open the door to Stefano Sassetta or Jose Maria Jimenez, no matter how insistently they knocked. The team presentation has been a reality check; she is truly here, on the eve of the Tour de France. She really is a journalist and a journaliste. She’s written her piece which Taverner rather liked, allowing her to keep the extra forty-four words which exceeded his word limit, and it will be published tomorrow morning.

Will He read it, I wonder?

He? Taverner? He has already – he liked it.

No – Him.

Why are you thinking about him, Cat? Aren’t your three weeks in France meant to be putting that all-important distance, in time and space, between you and all that?

I’m just wondering. I still miss Him, all right?

Who, Cat, or what? Do you miss the status of what he was – a long-term boyfriend – or do you miss the person he is? If it’s the former, that’s understandable; if it’s the latter, it’s unacceptable.

I know. It’s just the world seems a very spacious place without Him.

And your world was an unhappy one with him. Let him go. Let go. Here you are – just look where you are. You’re going to be fine.

Am I?

See her sitting up in bed. She is wearing a Tour de France T-shirt and a Team Saeco-Cannondale baseball cap. All the journalists are bribed with branded clothing and yet none are wearing them in public. Cat is disappointed. How can so many seem blasé when she herself is brimming with excitement? Cat has noted how it appears to be cool to wear branded items from previous Tours, but no one wears the current gifts as if somehow that would be too obsequious. Next year, though, no doubt they’ll be an enviable commodity and worn with pride and panache.

Cat, anyway, is wearing hers in bed, scanning L’Equipe and pleased that she can understand most of what she reads. She hauls her laptop from chair to bed and reads through her article. She pulls the neck of the T-shirt up and over her nose, inhaling deeply and knowing that, whenever she smells this T-shirt again, it will say to her ‘Tour de France, eve of the Prologue, Hôtel Splendide, Delaunay Le Beau. Room 50. Jimenez above, Lipari below. Alex Fletcher and Josh Piper in the bar. I was there.’ Cat pulls her cap down over her brow and reads.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CA TRIONA McCABE IN DELA UNA Y LE BEAU

The Tour de France is the most prestigious bike race in the world. It is also the most extravagantly staged event, not just in cycling but in sport in general.

La Grande Boucle does indeed trace a vast if misshapen 3,800 km loop across France. An entourage of 3,500 people, the Garde Républicaine motorcycle squad, 13,000 gendarmes, 1,500 vehicles and a fleet of helicopters escort the peloton whilst 15 million roadside spectators salute its progress as it snakes its way through France with speed, skill and tenacity in a gloriously garish rainbow splash of lycra.

The Tour de France is the race that every young European boy fantasizes about riding just as soon as the stabilizers are removed from his first bicycle. It is the race that is the inspiration for an amateur to turn professional, that every professional road-race cyclist desires to ride. It is the pursuit of a holy grail: to wear the yellow jersey, to win a Stage, to ride in a breakaway, or just to finish last in Paris albeit having lost three and a half hours to the yellow jersey over the three weeks.

Hell on two wheels, the Tour de France breaks bodies and spirits as much as it does records. It is also a beautiful and frequently moving event to watch, to witness. It is an adventure, a pilgrimage, a piece of history, of theatre, a soap opera unfolding against a stunning backdrop of France. For riders and spectators and organizers alike, it is a journey.

The Tour de France is a national institution raced by a multinational peloton, accompanied by an international entourage and broadcast to the world. It defines the calendar in France in much the same way as Bastille Day or Christmas. Similarly in Spain. And Italy. Belgium. Switzerland. Just not in Britain.

Ask any child anywhere European and hilly for their great idols and they will always name a cyclist. Ask any European sports star to name a hero, they will always hail a cyclist. Ask anyone, in fact, about their country’s key national figures, and they will invariably list a cyclist among them.

Why? Cyclists are heroes because of the bicycle itself; the ultimate working-class vehicle. Many cyclists come from modest beginnings and then achieve something great with their lives. Anyone can ride a bike. Anyone who rides a bike knows the effort it takes and will at some time experience pain – if it’s hot, cold, wet, hilly. The knowledge of that pain and that it is but a whisper of the pain and suffering which will be confronted and vanquished by a Tour de France rider, is why the peloton is considered to be made up of superhumans. They cross the Pyrenees and then head straight on to the Alps. Triumph over adversity. Man against mountain. May the play begin. Let the battle commence. May the best man win. Vive le Tour.

<ENDS>

PROLOGUE TIME TRIAL
Delaunay Le Beau, Saturday 3 July

Zucca MV’s Vasily Jawlensky, last year’s yellow jersey and riding now with Number 1 on his back, had been awake, steeling himself for the day ahead, for hours before Cat arrived at the salle de pressé as soon as it opened. He had reviewed the Prologue Time Trial course again and again before retiring last night; had ridden it in his sleep and awoke with his legs twitching. Lying awake, yearning for dawn, he pelted the course in his mind’s eye, waiting for it to be light enough, for the roads to be closed to traffic, so that he could be on his bike analysing the route and his form for real. Resting his long limbs on top of the bedcovers, his hands clasped behind his head, he contemplated the day ahead. He knew well how all eyes would be on him and yet his sole focus would be on the tarmac unfurling ahead of his front wheel. Vasily is one of the sport’s great heroes. However, unlike Massimo or Stefano, the fair, blue-eyed Russian projects no secondary image as pop star or superhunk. Nobody really knows Vasily. His fame comes solely from the genius of his riding. Everybody wants to know him because he is such an enigma. A courteous yet non-committal character. Statuesque. As silent as a sculpture. As beautiful as one too. It’s a challenge that journalists and groupies, even his team-mates, relish; to get blood from a stone. That scar slicing his cheek – how did he come by it? No one has been able to find out. Did the sculptor’s chisel slip? Is it the only scar he carries? Are there any inside? His heart is huge, twice the size of a normal man of his build. It can pump at almost 200 bpm. It rests at an awesomely relaxed pace. Is that all it does? Is that all he commands it to do? Does it carry anything other than oxygenated blood? Memories? Hurt? Passion? Who knows? Who can find out?

As Cat begins planning her article, Vasily’s Zucca MV equipeur Stefano Sassetta is yawning leisurely, deciding to rise in a short while and ride the course once or twice. He shaved last night and is somewhat appalled that razor rash on his right leg sullies the sculptural beauty of his famous thighs. Massimo Lipari is singing in the shower. Their soigneur Rachel has already mixed the energy drinks, thrown out a box of energy bars a day off their sell-by date and prepared the panini – scooping out the centres of sweet rolls and packing in honey and jam.

The Megapac guys are breakfasting as a team, squashed around a long table, interrupting mouthfuls of pasta with the occasional ‘yo!’ and high five. Luca is positively hyper, Hunter is focused, Travis contemplative.

At the Système Vipère hotel, Jules Le Grand is having to recharge his mobile phone already. Jesper Lomers has phoned home but found no answer. Anya must be on her way to Delaunay Le Beau. He hopes. Fabian Ducasse is staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, giving himself a pep talk concluding with a quiet, prolonged chant proclaiming himself invincible. His brow is dark, his excessively fit heart is thumping its extraordinary resting pace of 30 bpm. To Fabian, it is like a portentous, growing drum roll. In the depth of his soul and absolutely out of earshot of the salle de pressé, he ranks Chris Boardman’s chances more than his own but he knows that public consensus fancies his adversary Vasily Jawlensky over Boardman. What can he do about it? He does not want the man who wore yellow in Paris last year to begin the race in yellow again tomorrow, but what can he do about it?

Fabian joins the rest of Système Vipère, along with many other teams, to ride the Prologue course, to learn the corners, the cobbles, the drag in the middle off by heart. He is focused and tense and his team know to give him a wide berth. He has sworn at the domestiques and he has snapped at his soigneur. He has said not a word to Jules Le Grand, even ignoring his directeur’s morning salutation.

Tour personnel are checking the barriers, hanging banners and liaising via walkie-talkies. They hardly notice the riders warming up. Spectators have already started to mill about, gazing almost in disbelief as riders zip by. The circus has come to town. This year’s Tour de France will soon be under way.

Jules Le Grand’s mobile phone lives again. He is wearing new shoes today, exquisite Hermes loafers. He has opened a new bottle of aftershave even though he has a bottle three-quarters full.

‘Everything starts again. Today is the first day of this year’s Tour de France and our lives begin anew. There is no continuation with last year’s race. No link. We start afresh. Jawlensky taking yellow last year is now history, I see it as a gauntlet he threw to us last year. We accept. We take it. Jawlensky can only defend what he took last year. It is us who attack. We are the aggressors. We are ready to duel. He should be afraid. En garde.’

Jules regrets the fact that it is only to himself, to his reflection in the team car’s rear-view mirror, that he has just spoken.

‘L’Equipe would have loved that. Never mind, I can regurgitate it at will for the salle de pressé and I shall be sure to do so later on.’

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN DELAUNAY LE BEAU

The Prologue Time Trial, the inauguration, the thrilling fly-past, of this year’s Tour de France will take each of the 189 riders in turn 7.3 km around the pretty town of Delaunay Le Beau, hosting the race for the first time (check with Alex or Josh how much tourist blurb is the norm). Today’s distance, from the total of over 3,500 km, might seem insignificant but with no great time gaps achievable, a rider’s placing today can have a psychological bearing on himself and his competitors. Prologues are won and lost in fractions of seconds so the riders must race on the rivet. They are set to race at an average of 51 kph to complete the challenge in around 8½ minutes (check with Josh), confronting a couple of taxing corners (two or three – check), dealing with a drag quite soon after the start, a stretch of cobbles half-way and then a 400 m straight run to the end. Whether Vasily Jawlensky wins today or not, the pressure will be firmly on his back regardless of the colour of jersey he will wear tomorrow for Le Grand Départ.

‘I really can’t do any more,’ Cat decides, after reading her paragraph, ‘not until it’s all over.’ She lays her hand on her diaphragm. She is brimming with adrenalin. How on earth must the boys feel?

Her Tour de France is about to start, her sense of anticipation is as much for her own race as for the riders for whom she feels so much.

None of us can do more just now – it’s a waiting game. First rider on the course in just under four hours’ time. Vasily goes last at 18.33. How on earth can they be feeling?

‘Coming to the village?’ says Josh.

‘Sure,’ says Cat.

Josh had to contend with Cat stopping still every now and then to focus on riders warming up along the circuit.

‘You’ve got three weeks of them,’ he said, over his shoulder as Cat focused on Bobby Julich until he was round a corner and out of sight, ‘you’ll be sick of the sight by the end of it.’ He laughed, knowing that she wouldn’t, nor would he, or any of the entourage of the Tour de France. ‘In truth, Cat,’ he said surreptitiously, ‘we’re a bunch of frauds. First and foremost, we’re fans. This isn’t a job, it’s pleasure for which we’re paid.’

‘Jalabert!’ Cat, giving immediate flesh to Josh’s theory, gasped and clapped as the legendary French cyclist zipped past them. ‘Allez, JaJa!’

If Cat had been surprised by the lavish buffet provided for her and the other journalists at the ice rink, the village had her positively gobsmacked. The large courtyard at the Hôtel de Ville, through which she had walked last night to the team presentation, was now plotted and pieced by a vast array of marquees, canopies and awnings, each commandeered by a sponsor and bedecked with an array of refreshments, brochures and promotional merchandise. The air was perfumed with the smell of coffee, of meat, of wine and cheese. There was an entire suckling pig gracing a table on which cold cuts from surely a whole herd of suckling pigs were laid artistically amidst a tapestry of fruit. Further on, an enormous omelette pan was being put to great use by three moustachioed chefs. Tables heaved under huge cartwheels of soft cheese amidst forests of baguette, counters groaned under the weight of local wines and liqueurs and all the Coca-Cola in the world seemed to be available right there. Everywhere Cat looked, people were eating and drinking.

They could be at a wedding, a ball, as much as the Tour de France. Do they actually realize where they are? I do. I couldn’t possibly eat – my stomach’s full of butterflies. God knows how the riders can eat – and yet they must.

Despite the opulence, variety and availability of all the hospitality, Cat took only a small nutty roll and a plastic cup of orange juice as she circumnavigated the village. She grinned at Channel 4’s Phil Liggett who had no idea who she was and she found the courage to say to his co-presenter Paul Sherwen, who also had no idea who she was, ‘I’m Cat McCabe – this is my first Tour.’ She glimpsed Josh with his notepad tucked under his arm so that he could hold a laden paper plate and plastic wine glass. She glanced at the roll from which she’d taken a few small nibbles and deposited it in a bin. Even the juice tasted too sharp to be pleasant and was no longer cool so she threw that away soon after. She was too excited to eat, too nervous to drink but too worried about missing a thing to phone home and recount her surroundings with glee. She checked her watch. Three hours to go.

Come on, come on – start!

Outside the hallowed area of the village, into which admittance was strictly by pass only and controlled by scrupulous sentries, the public was gathering along the Prologue route. The crowds were massive, holding flags that they’d wave frantically every now and then if any Tour vehicle should pass. Cat felt enormously privileged, being able to walk inside the snaking barriers, on the very surface that each of the 189 riders would soon be pedalling for position. Just then, she did not feel like a journaliste at all, merely an ardent admirer blessed with a pass and she felt extremely lucky. She would walk around for a while, soak up the atmosphere whilst noting specific details of the course. If she could infuse her article with her experience of the former, the details of the latter would surely interest her readers all the more.

‘I want to do eight thirty,’ Luca says to Ben. The doctor nods, just as he had for Travis, who wants to do eight thirty-two, and just as he did for Hunter, who wants to do eight twenty-seven.

‘You coming to watch?’ Luca asks. Ben hadn’t intended to but as both Hunter, Travis and two other members of the team had asked the same question, he has changed his mind.

‘Of course I’ll be there,’ he says to Luca, ‘just don’t make me scrape bits of you off the tarmac. Have a good ride. Go for your eight thirty but remember there’s tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’

‘Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,’ Luca says wistfully.

‘Fuck me!’ Ben exclaims, looking at Luca in genuine amazement. ‘You? Shakespeare?’

‘Fuck you,’ says Luca, frowning, ‘and I’ll tell you something for free, I’m not going at a creeping, petty pace. I’m going to ride for all I’m worth, race my heart out.’

Over an hour before the start, the colourful conga line of the 220 novelty vehicles in the publicity caravan was delighting the crowds, already six deep, with their flamboyance and freebies. The riders were arriving in their team buses and campers, parking en masse in the Place Victor Hugo. Bikes were held stationary on blocks and the riders were warming up, their fans gawping just inches away from their noses. Some riders stared fixedly at the frame of their machines, or their knuckles, or the ground, as they pedalled; others gazed, glazed, directly ahead, directly at some stranger without seeing them at all.

Cat caught sight of Alex chatting to a girl at the Zucca MV bus and walked over to see if chance might provide her with Massimo Lipari or Stefano Sassetta. Or even Vasily Jawlensky.

For a soundbite. OK, then, just for a glimpse!

She smiled quickly at Alex and the woman.

‘Cat, this is Rachel – the soigneur nine out of ten riders said they’d like to, er, have.’

This typical remark from Alex enabled Cat and Rachel immediately to share a look that shot heavenward and was followed by a conspiratorial smile apiece.

‘Cat McCabe,’ said Cat, holding out her hand.

‘Press?’ Rachel asked. Cat nodded. ‘First Tour?’ Rachel enquired. Cat nodded again, matching the girl’s smile with one of her own. ‘Me too,’ said Rachel. ‘Welcome.’

‘Thanks,’ said Cat. ‘It’s great to be here.’

She seems my type – I could have a good natter with her, but I’d better be a bit more journalisty.

‘How’s the team?’ Cat asked nonchalantly. Rachel looked over her shoulder to the closed door and blacked-out windows of the camper.

‘Tense,’ she said.

‘I’ll bet,’ Cat colluded. Massimo Lipari appeared and Cat had to ensure she did not break into a wild grin though a small smile crept out unannounced anyway.

‘Hey, Massimo,’ said Alex. The rider tipped his head in recognition, asking Alex, in Italian, how he was and Alex, in Italian, rabbiting away until he had achieved an obvious goal of making the rider chuckle. Rachel was gladly telling Cat about how she came by her job – she’d never had a journalist express interest in her career, she’d never actually talked directly to a female journalist – when Massimo tapped Rachel on the shoulder, stood for a moment before tapping her again, staring intently at Cat all the while.

‘Rachel, I need the jacket, yes, for here?’ he proffered his left elbow displaying a glistening and pretty grave graze acquired from a careless fall whilst training yesterday.

‘Jacket?’ Rachel asked, shooting a glance at Cat. ‘You mean the gauze tube? Excuse me,’ she said to Cat with an apologetic shrug, ‘it’s been nice talking. Pop by again some time, hey?’

‘Brilliant,’ Cat enthused. Massimo stared at her again. It was only when Rachel had turned from her and led the cyclist into the secret interior of the van that it struck Cat that Massimo had actually stared at her quite accusatorially.

And why shouldn’t he? I was hogging his soigneur. How awful of me.

Alex had disappeared. Josh was nowhere to be seen. Cat turned and decided that to walk around with purpose even if she hadn’t a clue what to do next, was a sensible option. Everywhere she looked, she now saw the faces and bodies of the men she had previously known only second-hand, behind the glass of a television, or two-dimensionally in print. Now they were surrounding her, life size, in the flesh, en masse. It was so overwhelming, she found herself unable to establish eye contact with any of them. In turning away from the awesome Mario Cipollini whom she could see from the corner of her eye, hands on hips and a vision in a red lycra skinsuit, she found herself by the Megapac vehicles. By concentrating on not catching sight of her best friends of yesterday – Hunter or Travis or Luca (whose eyes were in any case shut as he pedalled the course in his mind whilst his bike remained stationary on the blocks), her eyes went instead to someone else. Or were they pulled there? Or were they caught?

It’s that guy. The one who sat by Luca at the medical. Oh blimey, what a smile. Hey! I didn’t say that I could smile back.

The man stepped towards her and fingered her pass. ‘Hullo, Catriona McCabe,’ he said, ‘journaliste, the Guardian.’

‘I’m, er,’ she cleared her throat, ‘Cat.’

‘Are you now?’ he said. ‘I’m er doctor.’ Cat regarded him. He gave her an open smile.

‘I’m Ben. York. Hullo.’

Cat nodded rather enthusiastically because she had no idea what to say. She then smiled fleetingly but not directly at Ben York, sweeping it instead quickly and non-commitally over the riders, the Megapac vehicles, and Dr York’s shoes before nodding, biting her lip and moving away, rifling through the pages of her pad whilst chastizing herself silently.

He’s English. That’s nice.

It was gone three o’clock and she thanked God that it was. Cat made her way slowly to a vantage point near the starting ramp and gazed at Travis Stanton as he and his bike were held steady or, Cat felt, perhaps embraced, by a blue-blazered official. She watched another official count the rider down, she observed the rider’s face, the focus, the deep inhalation and exaggerated exhalation. The official’s fingers had finished the count and he sliced the air with his hand. Off. Go. The rider swept down and away towards a lonely, strenuous eight and a half minutes. Cat found that she was holding her breath and had her fingers crossed.

‘My legs. My heart. My mind. My soul.’

Hunter Dean chants the familiar phrase to himself as he pedals slowly through the mêlée around the team cars and on towards the starting ramp.

‘My legs. My heart. My mind. My soul.’

He spits. He is wearing his burgundy and green skinsuit and space-warrior style helmet.

‘I am aerodynamic. My legs. My heart. My mind. My soul.’

He spits again. He does not notice the crowds, nor does he hear them banging on the barriers, cheering. He does not listen to the fading, megaphone drone from a team car out on the course yelling ‘Allez! Allez! Allez!’ at the rider it is following. Hunter notices in a glance that his own team car is ready and he sees his name, printed on a board positioned above the front bumper. Dean.

‘Hunter Fucking Dean. Strong legs. Strong heart. Strong mind. Strong soul.’

He sweeps his bike through two controlled circles and ignores a fellow competitor leaving the ramp.

‘I am fit for this. I am prepared. I am built for this Time Trial. Legs to pump. Heart to pump. Mind steady. Soul ready.’

He takes his position, aware there is a man’s arm under his saddle, which presses lightly against his back.

‘Backbone – strength. Legs – stamina. Heart – power. Mind – focus. Soul – commitment. I am good. I am ready.’

The official is counting him down.

‘Open, lungs – fill. In. Out. Ready.’

Away. Allez.

‘Corner. On. On. Go go go. Corner. Done. Propel me, legs. Drive me, back. Cobbles. Take them. Take them. On. On.’

Hunter is riding well. He is surrounded by noise, but that of the ecstatic crowd is but a sub layer deep in the recesses of his awareness. What he hears is his breathing. As he sweeps the wide arc which takes him to the finishing straight, he does not listen to the growing clangour of the spectators thumping the barriers, he hears instead the pounding of his heart banging in his chest and in his mouth and in his stomach, flat out.

‘Legs. Legs. Legs. Eight twenty-seven. Eight twenty-seven. Come on, you fucker, go.’

Hunter is out of the saddle, stamping down hard, making a great sprint of his final metres. His head is down as he thrusts forward for the line, then it is up and over his shoulder immediately, to clock the time.

Eight minutes, twenty-seven point six eight seconds.

‘Point six eight. Shit.’

Django McCabe took three plain chocolate digestive biscuits and carefully swiped a lick of Marmite over the chocolate sides. He steeped three tea-bags in a small teapot, added three spoonfuls of sugar to the inch of milk in the china cup, selected a non-matching but china saucer and put everything on a tray. He went into the Quiet Room and turned it into the Family Room merely by way of flicking on the television set. He selected Channel 4, muted the volume on the closing scenes of Brookside and made to telephone both his nieces, sipping tea but saving the biscuits until later.

‘Fen, darling, Django here – are you switched on? The bike race is starting in five minutes or so.’

‘God, I almost forgot,’ said Fen, untying and then rebunching her pony-tail two or three times, the telephone receiver tucked under her chin. ‘Does Pip know?’

‘Isn’t she with you?’ Django enquired, a little perturbed. For some reason, Fen actually looked around her flat before replying.

‘No, she isn’t – should she be?’

‘Well, you two live in the same town, I thought perhaps you’d be sharing the experience together.’

‘Django,’ Fen laughed, ‘London’s a sprawling metropolis. I don’t think the bike race is an experience I, or Pip, have been waiting with bated breath for.’

‘I didn’t really mean that,’ said Django, ‘not those shiny boys and bikes themselves, I meant your sister. I meant Cat. This is her experience – I think we should take an interest.’

Fen felt humbled. Suddenly, she wished Pip was here. ‘You’re right,’ she said quietly, ‘maybe we might catch Cat on screen. She’s there, after all, in the thick of it. So we should switch on and tune in.’

‘And share,’ mused Django, quite relieved he was on his own and could have his biscuits to himself.

‘Don’t worry about phoning Pip, I’ll do that right now,’ Fen said. ‘You warm the TV up,’ she told her uncle, using a phrase Cat had frequently employed in childhood.

(‘Cat? Where have you disappeared to? Pip’s clearing the table. Fen’s washing up and there’s a tea towel with your name on it.’

‘Oh. Sorry. I was just warming the TV up.’)

‘Hey, Pip, it’s me.’

‘Hi, Fen. Get off the phone. The Tour de France is about to start.’

Half an later, the phone lines of Django, Fen and Pip were jammed engaged as each tried to contact the other. Ten minutes on, Pip arrived at Fen’s flat and they called Django together.

‘Wasn’t that exciting!’ Django boomed, wishing they could see the two uneaten biscuits as proof.

‘It was,’ Fen agreed, ‘I had no idea!’ Pip, bobbing up and down on the spot, took the phone from her.

‘That famous bloke won!’ she exclaimed breathlessly. ‘I remember Cat talking about him.’ She handed the telephone back to Fen and executed a handstand against the wall in celebration.

‘Josh,’ Cat asked, ‘might you cast your expert eye over my piece?’ Though she was confident about the quality of her copy, her request had a twofold function. She was rather proud of her first race report and felt it warranted immediate approval before she wired it to London. Also, she still wanted to consolidate her new colleague’s respect for her journalistic abilities and her cycle sport knowledge. Josh was flattered, more so when Alex looked up from his laptop, regarded Cat with a ‘Why not me?’ glance and bestowed on Josh a glare that said ‘Wanker!’ a little enviously.

‘I like it that you’ve explained the gap of 53 seconds between first and last rider being in contrast to the hours that will develop as the race progresses,’ Josh defined and read on, sometimes to himself, sometimes out loud.

During a day in which the sun shone unabated and lively crowds chanted indiscriminately, Britain’s Chris Boardman, riding for the French team Crédit Agricole, equalled the great French rider Bernard Hinault’s five Prologue triumphs. He turned a heavy gear throughout, his extraordinary aerodynamic position complementing his futuristic Time Trial bike whose handlebars he designed himself.

‘Good for Chris,’ Cat mused, recalling the rider’s consummate Time Trial. ‘Might we raise a glass to him tonight?’

Aren’t I being brave, organizing après-race activities!

Alex, however, laughed. ‘If we manage to leave the salle de pressé before last orders.’

Cat shrugged as if to say ‘Whatever’, whereas actually she was shaking off the sudden embarrassment she felt. She read her article over Josh’s shoulder. He could feel her breath on the side of his neck. It felt nice. He didn’t comment.

‘So,’ Cat said, ‘Fabian stormed to second place today, 0.19 of a second faster than Vasily.’

‘Yes,’ clarified Josh, ‘but Jawlensky still has the incentive of racing with Number 1 on his back.’

‘But Fabian is tasting blood,’ Cat commented.

‘Well, it’ll be Boardman wearing the first maillot jaune of this year’s Tour when the race starts in earnest tomorrow,’ Josh said.

‘It will be interesting to see who makes the first assault on the jersey,’ Cat pondered, ‘Vasily or Fabian.’

‘I like the way you’ve commented on how Ducasse showed greater bravura but Jawlensky looked consistently more comfortable,’ Josh remarked.

Alex, who had left the salle, returned with cans of Coke for everyone. He read Cat’s work over Josh’s other shoulder. ‘I don’t know whether you should be using solely their Christian names, girl,’ he commented.

But they’re my boys! Cat protested to herself, with no intention of changing a word.

‘Good closing paragraph,’ Josh said.

Tomorrow, the Tour de France will be under way with a week of flat road racing Stages providing the spectators and sponsors alike with the flamboyance and daredevilry of the sprinters.

‘Good comment on strategy,’ Alex furthered, ‘to explain that those aiming for overall victory will be keeping quiet in the centre of the bunch, maintaining a safe distance from the unavoidable mayhem of sprint finishes.’

‘She calls it “the broiling hurl”,’ said Josh approvingly.

‘Come on,’ Cat tried again, ‘let’s finish up and toast Mr Boardman.’

‘Maybe,’ Josh said, to her satisfaction.

‘Could do,’ Alex said. Cat allowed herself an inward smile.

STAGE 1
Delaunay Le Beau-Rouen. 195 kilometres

When Luca Jones tripped on the stairs of the start podium to sign in, he did not see it as an omen for his ride but as cultivation of his popularity. He recovered his composure, signed the vast chart and beamed and waved at the crowd as his name was blasted out by the PA system.

‘Stage 1 of the fucking Tour de France,’ he marvelled to Travis as if he might not have realized, while, astride their bikes, they waited for the ceremonial off.

‘Watch yourself,’ Travis laughed.

‘Everyone’s watching!’ Luca responded. He felt absolutely ready for the day’s racing and was looking forward to enjoying himself. ‘It’s fairly flat today,’ he had reasoned to his soigneur who was slapping his legs warm earlier, ‘I’m just going to hang out with the bunch, turn and tune my legs. I’m going to clock the crowds, even the landscape – perhaps there’ll be some gorgeous scenery along the way, softly undulating and bikini-clad – you know?’

Luckily for the riders around Luca, the weather was dry, bright but too cold for bikinis. Crashes were a foregone conclusion without the added jeopardy of roadside distractions on Luca Jones. The peloton rode in unison for a while, teams happily dispersing to chat in native tongues to fellow riders.

‘You’re a tart, Luca,’ Stuart O’Grady teased when Luca came back to the English contingent, having ridden leisurely with an Italian posse for a few miles.

‘Yeah, but my tan, man,’ Luca reposted, ‘better than you, Stu.’ After tapping on for a few miles more, the bunch stepped up the pace and began to race. For over two hours, the only view Luca examined was the colourful contours of the mass of torsos around him. He was well prepared therefore when a Banesto rider took down four others just far enough ahead and to the left to avoid the pile up. Lucky Luca, he said to himself. He worked his way to the front forty for a while, rode alongside Vasily Jawlensky who gave him a nod of recognition, which served as fuel injection to the legs. Lucky Luca, he said to himself, Vasily fucking Jawlensky.

Then what happened? To be suddenly staring at the still mass of blue sky after concentrating for so long on the multicoloured movement of the peloton was momentarily disconcerting and dazzling. It was not Lucky Luca who found himself all but sitting directly on top of JaJa. The famous Frenchman Laurent Jalabert had Fucking Luca Jones sprawled over the top of him.

‘Merde!’ Jalabert swore as he and Luca extricated themselves amicably enough from one another.

‘Wank,’ said Luca, seeing blood on his shin and wondering where his bike was.

‘Ça va?’ someone asked.

‘Oui,’ Luca muttered, ‘wank.’

There’s my bike. There goes Jalabert. Skill. How come I’m bleeding? Do I hurt? I don’t think so.

Riders were picking their way cautiously around Luca and a few other floored men. Luca was aware of the thrum of the TV helicopter overhead, of the whirr of press cameras near by, of the yellow-clad Mavic neutral service personnel swarming around like helpful worker bees. After so long in the saddle, to stand upright felt a little odd. To the French family previously enjoying their annual institution of picnic and peloton, the stooped Luca looked injured enough even before they saw his ripped shorts. It was time to do their bit; what an honour, what a conversation piece. Luca was bent over with hands on knees, collecting himself and his Oakleys, when someone put an arm around his shoulders.

‘Monsieur?’

Fuck, look at my shorts. Where is the blood on my leg coming from?

‘Monsieur – ici.’

Luca was gazing at the sky again.

I’m lying on a picnic table. I’m being photographed.

He sat up. On the road, riders were remounting. He looked to his right and stared blankly at he photographer. He looked to his left and a small child stared at him whilst sucking hard on a straw in an empty bottle of Coke. He looked down and regarded a pile of picnic victuals hastily dumped on a chair. He looked at his left thigh and observed slivers of baguette crust speckling his skin with shards of gravel.

‘Ça va?’ a photographer said perfunctorily, looking around for another photo opportunity.

Luca shrugged, got to his feet, set his bike upright, spun a wheel and grinned through 180 degrees. ‘Yeah – I’m fine.’ He saluted the family who nodded humbly. Off he went, shorts in shreds, left hip stinging, reputation intact, popularity increased.

‘It’s not your blood,’ said his soigneur, sponging Luca down at the team car when he arrived an hour or so later.

‘Huh?’

‘Not yours,’ the soigneur said, almost accusatorially.

‘Jeez, must be Jalabert’s,’ Luca muttered as if he ought to return it.

‘Great butt,’ Hunter laughed, raising his eyebrows at Luca’s flank on view through his tattered shorts.

‘You want to change?’ his soigneur asked.

Luca nodded initially but then said, ‘Nah.’ Narrowing his eyes, he correctly deduced that the three girls hovering would prefer him this way.

‘From Denmark,’ said one, holding out her T-shirt for an autograph and exchanging three kisses.

‘Me too,’ said the other, proffering a felt tip and her forearm for signing and her lips for direct osculation.

‘And me,’ the third said, offering Luca her autograph book and a respectful if solemn handshake.

I feel better already. Bye bye girls, come again. Oh look, there’s that girl from the press conference. Come and ask me how I am. Don’t just mouth ‘You OK?’ Come nearer. I don’t bite – unless you like. How about I give a shrug and look blue? Yes!

‘Hullo,’ the girl from the press conference said, ‘are you hurt?’

Luca responded with his heroic shrug.

‘What happened?’ she asked, pen poised, eyes concerned.

‘One minute I’m sitting on the bike,’ Luca drawled, staring at her steadily, ‘next I’m sitting on Jalabert. Hey, but we both live to ride another day!’

‘Hullo, Catriona journaliste McCabe,’ said Luca’s doctor, suddenly at his side.

‘Oh, hi,’ said the girl with a swift but sweet smile. Luca’s doctor looked hard at her, Luca gazed at her almost imploringly. ‘Just checking the wounded soldier is all right,’ she said.

‘Er, that’s my job,’ his doctor teased.

‘Yes, of course,’ the journaliste said ingenuously. She tipped her head and regarded the rider. ‘Glad you’re OK – good luck tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, Catriona,’ Luca Jones replied, rolling his ‘r’s and disjoining her name with strange emphases.

‘Cat,’ the journaliste all but cautioned. Rider and doctor regarded her. ‘I’d better go,’ she said, brandishing her notepad. ‘Bye – see you.’ She walked away briskly, scribbling in her pad all the while.

‘Close your mouth,’ Ben said to Luca, who didn’t know his doctor had only just shut his. ‘Do you hurt?’

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN ROUEN

For the first time in the history of the Tour de France, the yellow jersey and the first five places in Stage One went to English-speaking riders. Chris Boardman, losing only 2 seconds off his lead, keeps the golden fleece of his Prologue win. Stefano Sassetta of Zucca MV was relegated to the bottom of this first group for a flamboyant swerve dangerously close to his sworn rival, Système Vipère’s Jesper Lomers. Whether plain careless or downright malicious, Sassetta was not given the benefit of the doubt. In the city of Rouen, Sassetta should think himself lucky – Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake here in 1431.

Nice opening paragraph, Cat. But you’re reading it to yourself today. Wouldn’t Alex rather like your next sentence – ‘As Samson lost his strength when his hair was cut, so it appears the sprinters lose their memories once their legs are shorn’? Oh, Alex is sitting nowhere near you. Nor is Josh. You have a pungent Belgian journalist on one side and a hirsute Spaniard on the other. The salle de presse seems a little like the peloton itself as you describe it in your next paragraph, somewhat fresh and disorganized at this early stage. Where’s your Luca quote? Have you woven it in?

As in all wars, the innocent are frequently victims. Laurent Jalabert (O.N.C.E.), an elder statesman of the Tour peloton, and Luca Jones (Megapac), a virgin soldier, were amongst the casualties brought down when wheels touched ahead of them at the last sprint point. Jalabert recovered to finish with the main bunch, his fingers bloodied and his brow dark. Jones, whose major injury was dramatically ripped shorts, took time out prostrate on a spectator’s picnic table, much to the delight of the public. ‘One minute I’m sitting on the bike,’ he recalled, ‘the next I’m sitting on Jalabert.’

Good work, Cat.

The green jersey, worn by the rider with the most points accumulated en route and for finishing in the top 25, is on the broad shoulders of Mario Cipollini. The true contenders for overall victory were hardly seen today. Just as the villages along the route cluster around their omnipotent churches, so Vasily Jawlensky and Fabian Ducasse were flanked at all times by at least 3 devoted team-mates. Wisely, they kept well away from the broiling at the very front yet still finished with the same times as that group.

And so began the week-long campaign by the audacious pure sprinters to retain the top positions. Soon enough, the Pyrenees will rip the peloton apart.

<ENDS>

Right, Cat, it’s gone nine in the evening and you’re only just leaving the salle de presse. Alone. You’ve positively slunk out, hoping no one’s noticed. Why? Didn’t you bond further with your colleagues last night whilst toasting Boardman’s superb win? He’s in yellow again today – isn’t that carte blanche for a celebratory evening tonight?

There are no plans for tonight. The only toast last night, literally, was the tough bread roll I ate by myself in my room. That’s my phone.

‘Hullo?’

‘Cat?’

‘Hey, Fen.’

‘Cat?’ she said. ‘You OK?’

‘Tired.’

‘Where are you? George Hincapie is gorgeous! Did I pronounce that right?’

‘Spot on.’

Cat listened to her sister enthuse about the day’s Stage. She closed her eyes, wishing she was in Fen’s house, settling in for an evening of wine and wittering.

‘Pip and I watched it together at her flat this time. We spoke to Django during the adverts and then had a major three-way analysis when the programme ended. I love that nice smiley man from Channel 4 – Leggings.’

‘Liggett,’ said Cat with a little laugh.

‘Do you know him?’

‘No.’

‘Have you met him yet?’

‘Almost.’

‘What did you do today? I’m fascinated. I mean, we’re only granted half an hour’s summary of the whole day – how does it pan out for you?’

‘Oh –’ Cat said breezily, swiping the air nonchalantly with her hand, a gesture of course lost on her sister.

‘Cat?’ Fen asked again. ‘You OK?’

‘It’s odd,’ Cat defined softly, ‘I’m finding it difficult. I’m fighting homesickness already. I was hopeful of a family atmosphere here. I think that was naïve. We didn’t even have a drink to celebrate Boardman’s win.’

‘It’s very early days,’ Fen said sensibly, ‘riders and everyone else finding their feet, surely. Anyway, I’m concerned that drink, or lack of, is the prime reason for your melancholy.’

Cat sighed. ‘Don’t be daft,’ she chastized her sister, ‘today I was sent flying in the finish-line scrum.’

‘God!’ Fen sympathised.

‘I was pushed and shoved, trodden on and ignored,’ Cat elaborated. ‘I don’t stand a chance. Now, I feel on the verge of floundering, of becoming lost amongst it all.’

‘Is it every man for himself, then?’ Fen asked.

Cat nodded and then said, ‘Yes.’

‘Who’s the gorgeous one who stopped off for a picnic?’ Fen probed.

Cat grinned and felt a softening of her tangled brow. ‘Luca Jones,’ she said, ‘and he gave me a super quote.’

‘There you go!’ Fen encouraged.

‘I know, I know,’ Cat conceded, ‘but I just feel a little, I don’t know – out on a limb. It’s only just started, I’m here for a long time – and yet this was supposed to be my fantasy incarnate and a world in which I’d find all the answers.’

‘You’ve only just arrived,’ Fen pointed out. ‘I bet you anything tomorrow will be fabulous.’

‘Fen, I feel too small and female.’

‘Bollocks, Cat,’ Fen said strongly. ‘Yes, you’re an anomaly out there – small and female – so you must be a breath of fresh air. I’d use it if I were you.’

Cat observed Josh and Alex turning the corner a hundred yards away.

‘Fen, I have to go. This must be costing you a fortune.’

‘Phone bill? You’re far more precious, stupid!’ said Fen, thinking herself to sound like a mother – a proper one, not one that had run off with a cowboy from Denver.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ said Cat.

‘Promise?’

‘Yes.’

Cat walked off briskly. Her ears, however, were peeled. She was listening for a half-hoped-for ‘Wait up, Cat,’ from Josh or Alex. And yet half of her hoped they had not seen her, that she could go and sit by herself in her hotel room and ruminate on her day.

Rachel McEwen’s room at Zucca MV’s Rouen hotel was cramped enough as it was, without the addition of three strapping riders and the veritable grocery shop Rachel set up each day. Her portable massage bench held domestique Pietro Calcaterra. He’d swerved to miss the knot of Luca Jones and Laurent Jalabert but had careered into Fernando Escartin instead. Now his knee was hurting. Massimo Lipari sat at the small table, softly humming his Giro pop song, helping himself to a huge bowl of cereal and arranging a diced banana artistically over the top. Gianni Fugallo, the team’s super domestique, lay on Rachel’s bed reading her Cosmopolitan magazine whilst listening to a Walkman.

Suddenly, Massimo exclaimed, ‘StefanoStefanoStefano!’ through a mouthful of cereal. ‘Big trouble,’ he declared, ‘very big trouble for Stefano.’

Though the riders discussed their errant team-mate’s aggressive swerve animatedly, Rachel did not comment. The directeur had already forewarned her that Stefano would be coming for his massage after a strict pep talk; consequently, the rider would be either deeply despondent or darkly defensive. It would be Rachel’s job to massage his psyche into fit shape for the next day’s Stage.

When she had finished Pietro, she asked Massimo if he had had enough to eat and pinged back the earphones on Gianni’s Walkman to ask him if he needed anything. Massimo had eaten sufficient but took another banana, slipping it down his tracksuit bottoms so it poked out like an erection. The first time Rachel had seen this, she hadn’t known where to look. The second time, she hadn’t known how to react. The third time, she’d laughed heartily. Now (and Massimo was in to double figures) she just ignored him. As did the other riders. Massimo still found himself thoroughly amusing. Gianni asked Rachel if he could borrow the Cosmopolitan,

‘What’s mine is yours, Gianni,’ Rachel said magnanimously, ‘you know that.’

Massimo grabbed the magazine, flipped through it with much exaggerated ogling, fingered his goatee lasciviously, performed some lewd pelvic thrusting until the banana slipped down his tracksuit and poked out at the side of his leg like some gruesomely broken bone.

With the three riders gone, the room seemed temporarily vast until Stefano entered without knocking and filled it entirely with the thunder that was swept about him like a cloak. In fact, it was a voluminous, somewhat incongruous peach towelling robe but his blazing eyes and the muscles in his cheeks twitching furiously deflected attention from it.

‘Never do I be speaked to as that!’ he spat, his command of English suffering in the clasp of his indignation.

‘Never have I been spoken to like that,’ Rachel placated, smoothing a fresh towel on the massage bench. Stefano stripped and stood before Rachel in his naked glory though she had ceased to see it long ago. She handed him a towel, which he slipped between his legs nappy-style once he’d climbed aboard the table.

‘Lomers!’ Stefano growled like an expletive directed at the vigour of Rachel’s massage. Rachel took her hands away from his body, wiped them and put them on her hips.

‘Stefano,’ she said, ‘shut up. It’s Lomers who should be spitting your name.’

‘It was my line,’ Stefano protested, sitting up and regarding Rachel squarely, ‘I rode it correctly. I did not flick him.’

‘On the life of your mother?’ Rachel challenged him. Predictably, Stefano, ever the dutiful Italian son, fell silent.

‘Take risks by all means,’ Rachel said, gently pushing the rider’s shoulder so he lay back down. She looked down on him, her hands on her hips again, ‘but don’t ride dangerously. You will either get hurt or disqualified. Then Lomers will wear the green jersey and you will be watching him from the TV in your apartment. And your mother will weep.’

‘Still, no one speaks to Stefano Sassetta like that,’ Stefano said petulantly, referring back to the directeur’s rebuke.

‘They will if you deserve it,’ Rachel said. She massaged him hard. He stared unflinchingly at the ceiling. ‘Beware,’ she said as she sent him on his way, down to supper, ‘rain is forecast for tomorrow. The roads could be hell.’

Cat sits in her hotel room, ruminating on her day.

Three elements have made her Stage I not such a good one. Disappointment. Bewilderment. Trepidation. She had not considered having to confront such emotions, not on the Tour de France. She’d only anticipated tiredness, stress and irritability at some point surely much later in the race.

I need to consider these new three before I’m allowed to go to sleep.

Start with Disappointment.

I did not see one wheel turn of cycling today – not live. We drove directly to Rouen, missing the route altogether. The itinéraire direct was 46 k. We did it in forty-five minutes. The boys did 195 k in just over four and a half hours.

Couldn’t you have suggested to Josh that you drove the route ahead of the race?

I did. He frowned and laughed. It was embarrassing.

Number two, Bewilderment?

I miss the ice rink. I miss little Delaunay Le Beau. I knew it well – five days there. The salle de pressé in Rouen is this 1950s clump of glass and concrete – civic and austere. Josh and Alex.

That’s not a sentence.

Didn’t save me a place.

Oh. But on purpose?

I mean – I only nipped to the loo. This hefty German journo pushed by me. He dumped his stuff by Alex.

So they had saved a place for you.

But they didn’t defend it. They just shrugged. I had to set up in the smaller press room. The only cycling I saw was one step removed, via the press TVs.

Cat, can you hear yourself?

I know. I’m feeble. In the finish-line scrum, I was just plain flimsy.

Is that number three, Trepidation?

Absolutely. An all English-speaking result – not only did I not get a word in or out, I didn’t even manage to get close to any of them. I stood on tiptoes near the swarm around Hincapie but learnt my lesson when some Bavarian brute sent me flying. Then I tried for O’Grady, but a wall of men was formed around him, not even a chink to wriggle my arm and dictaphone through. Alex had just left the Jay Sweet mêlée and looked straight through me. Seeing Josh having to barge for a soundbite from Travis Stanton decided me not to even attempt to approach. So then I wandered off and came across the lacerated Luca.

How can you be glum about that?

Because I was pretty shaken and didn’t come across as I wished I had. As I’d envisaged I’d be.

Good quote, though.

I suppose.

And a smile from Luca and his doctor.

I suppose. He’s strange, that bloke, Ben. I find him a bit unnerving.

Because he’s good-looking and direct?

OK, don’t answer.

Sleep well.

STAGE 2
Rouen-Vuillard. 260 kilometres

The next morning, the whole of Rouen awoke to the incessant thrumming of rain. Rachel was pleased – Stefano would be forced to be more vigilant. On the whole, the riders from the lowlands didn’t mind such weather, but those from southern Europe mostly hated it. For physiques attuned to long hot summers, the cold or the damp could infiltrate their bodies swiftly and disrupt the pursuit of prime form. Stefano Sassetta was only too aware that he was of the latter persuasion but that his arch rival Jesper Lomers was of the former. In kilometres, it was to be the longest Stage of the entire race. If the wind was north-easterly, as it had been, it would be three-quarters behind them and the day would be fast. Breakfasting with the team, Stefano theorized that he would ride carefully, commandeer a posse of domestiques throughout and ensure he had at least two leadout guys for the final sprint. His directeur nodded his approval and team orders were given. Rachel, who had snatched a bowl of cornflakes two hours previously, was now hauling the team’s luggage from foyer to van.

‘Want a hand?’ Ben York, standing amongst the Megapac baggage, asked her.

‘No, you’re all right, Ben,’ Rachel replied.

‘Only all right?’ Ben teased.

‘In your dreams,’ Rachel responded, knowing full well that she’d never been in Ben’s dreams because, for the cycling fraternity at large, her gender went unnoticed.

The rain did not deter the crowds. The city of Rouen, birthplace of the great Jacques Anquetil, the first man to win the Tour five times, appeared to have turned out in its entirety. Cat went to the village, to the press stand to shelter and see if yesterday’s Guardian was there. It was. Taverner hadn’t cut a word.

‘Good work.’

She turned. Josh, in an extremely colourful cagoule, was reading over her shoulder. ‘Alex has wangled a ride in the Vitalicio team car,’ he continued, ‘so it’s just you and me. Shall we drive the route or the itinéraire direct?’

Cat beamed. ‘Route, please.’

Josh regarded her. ‘We might be able to nip in behind a break if we’re lucky – we’ll have to leave at the first bell, though. See you by the car.’

Cat felt back on track, read great significance in to the fact that the rain had abated, flipped over to a clean page in her pad and left the village to be amongst the teams.

‘Morning, Dr York,’ she said as she passed by, without stopping, without really looking.

‘Miss McCabe,’ he responded, businesslike in tone but with a glint in his eye which went unnoticed.

‘Cat,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘Ben,’ he called after her.

Ahead, Rachel raised her hand at Cat who waved back. Rachel beckoned her over.

‘Hey, Rachel,’ Cat said warmly.

‘I have something for you, Cat,’ Rachel replied, ‘hold on.’ The soigneur went to her team car and ferreted around in the glove compartment, retrieved what looked like a small make-up bag and rummaged around the contents. ‘This,’ she said to Cat, ‘is a talisman – and I think it’s my duty to pass it on to you.’ She proffered a closed fist. Cat held out her hand. A pencil sharpener.

‘The lovely Emma O’Reilly – US Postal’s soigneur, I’ll introduce you – gave it to me at my first Vuelta,’ Rachel explained, as if that was enough. ‘Now I pass it on to you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Cat, trying to figure out the symbolism.

‘It’s for your elbows,’ Rachel whispered, chuckling conspiringly. ‘I saw you yesterday, getting knocked and shoved and more than ignored. Bastards. Make sure your elbows are sharp. At our height, we can give a most efficient jab at their waist-height.’

Cat laughed and thanked her sincerely, touched by the gesture.

‘Keep it with you at all times,’ Rachel said.

‘You bet I will,’ Cat replied.

‘I have two more things for you,’ Rachel continued, ‘my mobile phone number and also some advice.’

Cat jotted down the soigneur’s number. ‘We could meet after school,’ Rachel suggested wryly.

‘Yeah, right,’ Cat responded, giving Rachel her number, ‘have a quick drink after work.’

‘Like normal people,’ Rachel said, shaking her head at such absurdity.

‘As if!’ they said, almost in unison.

‘Now for the advice,’ Rachel said. ‘This is also from the wise mouth of Emma.’

‘Shoot,’ said Cat, pen poised, feeling bolstered that there was a girls’ club.

Rachel regarded Cat, twitched her lips into a sly smile and whispered, ‘Never answer your hotel door after midnight.’

Then she winked, turned her hand into a telephone, turned from Cat and gave her attention to Stefano Sassetta who wanted more embrocation on his thighs.

‘So,’ said Josh, almost as soon as they’d driven out of Rouen, ‘who’s holding the fort for you?’

At first, Cat thought he said fork and had no idea how to answer him.

‘Fork?’ she asked, glancing around the Peugeot hire car that seemed the height of luxury after her clapped-out Beetle.

‘Fort,’ said Josh. ‘This rain is bollocks.’

‘The forecast says bright and dry later. I don’t have a fort,’ Cat added, regarding herself in the side mirror, noticing she looked tired already, ‘just a small flat.’

‘Who’s—’ Josh began.

‘I live by myself,’ Cat preempted.

‘Who’s keeping the home fire burning?’ Josh probed, peering through the windscreen wipers swiping at full speed.

‘I have gas central heating,’ Cat replied primly, now knowing exactly what he was searching for and wanting to deflect further investigation as politely as she could.

‘Got a boyfriend, then?’ Josh asked her.

‘Yes,’ Cat proclaimed. ‘You?’ It was a fair question to put to a man with fine features and closely cropped hair, who marvelled at bike boys.

Josh, however, swerved. ‘I’m bloody married,’ he said defensively. Initially, his information pleased Cat, made her feel safe and relieved. Then it worried her.

Oh shit, is he coming on to me? I’d better ask about his wife. Thank God I lied about having a boyfriend.

‘How does your wife feel about you being away so much?’

Why the fuck did I say ‘Yes I have a boyfriend’?

‘That’s cycling,’ Josh shrugged.

‘Par for the course,’ Cat defined, ‘riders and writers and mechanics alike, hey? A life on the road. Presence of partners rare, discouraged even.’

‘Exactly,’ Josh replied. ‘How does your bloke feel about you being out here? Surrounded by menfolk away from their womenfolk?’

‘He’s not bothered,’ Cat said quickly, wondering quite what Josh was trying to ascertain, ‘he knows that consummate athletes have very low levels of testosterone.’

Josh roared with laughter. ‘Should have! We’re in cycling – the levels should be low but most of the peloton probably have pretty normal levels.’

‘Hmm,’ Cat acted, holding her finger to her lip in exaggerated contemplation, ‘how can that be? Can you imagine! If all that training depletes their testosterone level to that of a normal man – imagine their levels if they weren’t pro cyclists. Stallions!’

‘Oh my God,’ Josh feigned, ‘Cat McCabe, is that sarcasm? You wouldn’t be suggesting that their testosterone levels are unnaturally enhanced?’

‘Doping?’ Cat gasped theatrically. ‘In cycling?’

‘Where does medical care end and doping begin?’ Josh said with a serious edge. ‘Low testosterone can cause osteoporosis.’

‘Too true,’ Cat replied honestly, ‘let’s not talk about it.’

‘You sound like the UCI,’ said Josh accusatorially, referring to an accusation frequently levelled at cycling’s international governing body.

‘Doping is cheating,’ Cat defined, ‘but health is another matter altogether. How does the UCI set this arbitrary level? They’re saying that if the cyclists take stuff to boost their levels to within a hair’s breadth of the set line, it’s not doping. But they’re taking stuff – period.’

‘There’s the rub,’ Josh said, ‘let’s not talk about it.’

‘More banned substances than any other sport,’ Cat continued quietly, looking out of the window at wheatfields winking in the sudden sun after the rain, ‘and more dope controls too. Let’s not talk about it. Not today.’

‘Sure,’ Josh said, ‘because there’ll be many occasions when we will.’

‘Is it still rife?’ Cat asked.

‘Some do, some don’t,’ Josh said, ‘it’s difficult to quantify, what with sophisticated masking agents and the fateful turning of blind eyes – which I would rank as being more criminal than substance abuse itself.’

‘Let’s not talk about it,’ Cat said for him.

Don’t fall from grace, heroes mine. Don’t shatter my admiration. Or that of that lovely old boy by the roadside over there with his grandson, waving. Don’t bring shame on your beautiful sport. Don’t harm yourselves. Ride well. Ride from the heart, but use your heads.

They drove on, noting banal agricultural details of the route that would nevertheless add essential colour to their reports.

At least I’ve deflected attention away from my love life.

‘Anyway,’ Josh said, ‘before diving off on such an unsavoury tangent, I do believe we were talking about testosterone and your bloke.’

‘Who?’

‘Your boyfriend.’

No he’s not. Not any more. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’ve lied and I don’t know why and I don’t know how to get out of it.

Cat, you should say something. Your silence is too loaded. Josh might read into it; might think he’s in with a chance if that’s what he’s into.

‘Does he not mind you being in such a vastly male-dominated world?’

‘Oh,’ said Cat, noticing with great interest that the blue tone to the land had changed to lime green over the last few miles, ‘I can look after myself.’

Get yourself out of it – tell him ‘Actually, we just broke up’. Say ‘Sorry, Josh, I don’t know why I said that because, in truth, my boyfriend left me’.

Yes, but if I do, he’ll know I’m available. It will be hassle I don’t need and I’ll be judged on my sex first, my journalistic skill second.

Luckily for Cat, Josh was suddenly far more interested in the race report coming through on Radio Tour. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked, turning up the volume. ‘Fabian Ducasse and the Viper boys are still at the front – I don’t know why they’re putting on pressure today.’

‘It’s probably like an army parading tanks and weaponry,’ said Cat. Josh agreed.

‘One six three,’ Josh said, quoting riders’ numbers off the radio, ‘thirty-one, seventy-five.’

Cat checked her list of riders. ‘Thirty-one is Cipo,’ she said, ‘seventy-five – Tom Steels. Hey! 163! Go Travis!’ she cheered for the victor of the first hot-spot sprint. With the memory still vivid of Hunter Dean’s wink, of her quote from Luca Jones, US Megapac had swiftly become her personal team.

‘Stanton’s good,’ Josh nodded, ‘maybe not quite a Stage winner but his riding’s already respected.’

‘Look at this road,’ Cat remarked. It ribboned out before them, seemingly for miles, straight and mostly flat.

‘Meaning?’ Josh tested.

Why are you still testing me, Josh?

Why not ask him?

No. I’ll just answer him. Obviously I still need to earn my wings.

‘Well, a road like this hardly encourages anyone to attack – it would be much ado about nothing. The pack would just watch such a rider peg off. He might manage around 45 kph but the bunch could stream after him at 60. Of course, there was that Stage where—’

‘Jesus!’ Josh whispered, his hand on the volume control. Cat concentrated hard.

‘Fuck!’ she exclaimed. Josh had been about to say the same.

‘Two-thirds of the bunch have gone down,’ he murmured.

‘Shit!’ said Cat and Josh in unison.

Gratitude to God spread through the sixth of the peloton ahead of the crash like a united whisper. Luca Jones, however, thanked Rudyard Kipling. Walt Disney, rather. The Jungle Book was still his favourite film (joint first with The Exorcist, followed closely by 9½ Weeks). He especially loved the scene where Kaa hypnotizes Baloo. He had been riding in the middle of the bunch when the magnetic pull of the nine Système Vipère riders leading the race had lured him through the pack. The Viper boys rode in a long sinewy formation, taking turns at the front to confront the headwind before peeling off to take a rest in the slipstream of the eight team-mates. Judging the wind like migratory birds flying long haul, they chevroned themselves across the road when the wind decreed it. It was textbook team riding. To ride in such formation brings a rhythmic security, even a certain vicarious peace. To observe a team working so adeptly is thrilling – for spectator, seasoned hack or fellow racer. And so it was for Luca Jones. With the ‘Bear Necessities’ song on his mind, his eyes were drawn to the snakes slithering around the lycra torsos of the accomplished team. His directeur would want to know what the fuck he was doing, taking chances at the front, especially after his tumble the previous day. Hunter and Travis would have liked him to have looked over his shoulder to locate them. What if they needed him? But Luca was fixated on Système Vipère. For a few miles, he eschewed his Megapac colours and imagined himself to be a Viper Boy, a member of the highest-ranked team in the world. He did not feel a traitor to Megapac but an honoured young citizen of the peloton. The fantasy not only sustained him on the long, arduous Stage, it kept him out of danger too.

‘How on earth does one relate the drama of six hours, twenty-four minutes and sixteen seconds in only 500 words?’ Cat complained, mainly to herself but loud enough to amuse Alex and touch Josh.

‘Practice,’ Alex defined.

‘Passion,’ Josh added.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN VUILLARD

Chris Boardman gladly relinquished his yellow jersey today. On a day when crashes made nightmares of the dreams of a handful of key riders in the Tour de France, Jesper Lomers won the 260 km second Stage from Rouen to Vuillard and took the yellow jersey. ‘He’s welcome to it,’ Boardman said. ‘Sprint mayhem and mass pile-ups? I’d rather make it to Paris in one piece.’ With the long straight roads which dominated the Stage discouraging lone attacks, the peloton surged forward together at a high speed, riders occasionally going for a sortie at the front merely to give their fresh legs a stretch and their sponsors a few metres’ exposure before slipping back to the pack. A touch of brakes can cost a rider up to twenty places, but to keep off the brakes keeps the pace fast and dangerous. As the peloton journeyed from Rouen through the Eure to Calvados, a consistent north-easterly wind propelled the bunch even faster and Lomers won a clean sprint to take the Stage in 6 hours, 24 minutes and 16 seconds. Consuming two out of the three intermediary sprint bonuses, Cipollini retains the green jersey on points, today resplendent in matching shorts.

For five riders, the Tour de France ended way before the Stage finish in the heart of Basse-Normande. Jalabert and Olano most notable among them, retired gracefully. Pietro Calcaterra, an esteemed domestique for Zucca MV and key lead-out man for Stefano Sassetta, was scraped off the road and helped back to his team car, too devastated to cry. He had landed heavily on a knee already bandaged from his collision with Kelme’s Fernando Escartin yesterday. ‘Though the pain from his knee must be excruciating, it doesn’t even register against the agony he feels at the termination of his race,’ said Rachel McEwen, his soigneur.

Lomers’s victory is a popular one. Though the crowds love Stefano Sassetta for his flamboyance, it wins him few friends in the peloton. Jesper Lomers, universally respected, may find that his triumph today is redefined by Sassetta as a veritable gauntlet. Demoted yesterday for dangerous riding and held up today by the crashes, Sassetta will be tasting blood tomorrow; primed, charged and desperate for a good ride.

<ENDS>

‘Brilliant!’ Cat says quietly to herself, stretching her fingers out and glancing around the salle de pressé, the majority with heads down, cigarettes hanging from lips, fingers scooting in organized chaos across keyboards. ‘I’m pretty pleased with that. I had a good day. I hope Rachel likes her soundbite. Oh God, poor Pietro Calcaterra.’

Poor Pietro Calcaterra indeed. But his girlfriend was waiting for him at the team hotel. Her tenderness dressed his injuries far more curatively than the stitches from the Zucca MV doctor; her support settled his psyche much more quickly than his meeting with his directeur; her embrace was infinitely more soothing than Rachel’s massage.

Poor Jesper Lomers, therefore. On paper, as all the journalists were busy lauding, Jesper won not just the Stage but the yellow jersey too. However, though he has a wife, she is not here. Nor was she at home. She had left no message on his mobile phone. Jesper craved her congratulatory embrace but he had to settle for his directeur’s praise, his team’s delight, the deluge of attention from the media. Though Jules Le Grand did not particularly like Anya Lomers, banned mere girlfriends of riders from the Tour and actively disapproved of the presence of wives during the race, today he would have welcomed her. The key sprinter of his Système Vipère team should be euphoric, buoyed by his victory and hungry to keep the maillot jaune for the team. Instead, Jules observed him at the team supper looking detached.

If I offered him the maillot jaune in one hand, Jules contemplated, his wife in the other, I fear I know which he’d choose. Wives are more disruptive, more harmful to my Viper Boys than the crashes. They can cause my riders more pain, more suffering, than back-to-back mountain Stages.

‘Women!’ he hissed with venom under his breath.

Fabian Ducasse heard him. Women indeed! he smirked to himself. I am Ducasse. I am a national hero. I can have any woman I want.

Système Vipère are having supper when Cat gathers her laptop and cables and goes to send her article down the line.

What a day!

She returns to the main hall and searches out Josh.

‘Coffee?’ she asks.

‘Can’t,’ he says, looking frazzled.

‘Alex?’ she offers. He’s typing so hard he does not answer, so she does not press.

‘I’m through,’ she says apologetically to Josh who regards her accusatorially as if she can’t possibly be a bona fide journaliste then.

‘Lucky you,’ he says, not unkindly.

‘I thought I’d phone Maillot,’ Cat whispers, ‘see if they’ll take an article. I so want that Feature Editor position, I thought some earnestness now wouldn’t go amiss.’

Alex and Josh nod politely but she sees they’re too engrossed in their work to be especially interested in her career development so she goes to the hotel to make her call.

‘Sutcliffe.’

‘Andy? This is Cat – um, McCabe.’

‘Hi Cat, how’s the Tour?’

‘Fine, brilliant – have you seen my daily reports?’

‘All two of them?’

‘Oh. Um. Well – I’ve had an idea for an article for Maillot, can I run it past you?’

‘Are you sucking up to me?’

‘No! Well – I’m serious. About the job – I know I don’t have it yet, that I have to earn my position, I know I’m out here for the Guardian, but I’m thinking ahead, thinking laterally.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Well,’ Cat clears her voice and wonders whether this conversation is as bad an idea as foisting even more work upon herself, ‘how about an interview with Rachel McEwen – Megapac’s soigneur?’

‘I know who Rachel McEwen is,’ Andy replies in a tone of voice Cat can’t really decipher, ‘but I don’t think it’s fleshy enough.’

‘OK, not an interview,’ says Cat, not wanting to sound disheartened but not wanting to sound like she’s clutching at straws either, ‘how about an article on soigneurs?’

‘I’ve asked Josh to do something along those lines.’

‘Female soigneurs?’ Cat specifies.

‘There are only two.’

‘Women in cycling?’

‘Why don’t we discuss your ideas after the Tour?’ Andy suggests. ‘See how it goes.’ There’s not a lot Cat can say to this. She nods at her hotel room walls and says OK as brightly as she can.

I’m not going to give up. Nor am I going to be fobbed off. I’m going to formulate my ideas and bloody bombard Maillot again. Before the end of the Tour.

It was nine thirty. Neither Josh nor Alex were in their rooms but, aware that she was sharing the hotel with Megapac, her confidence and determination in fact bolstered by her potential future boss’s rejection, Cat left her room and, eschewing the lifts, meandered along the corridors as if that was the way to reception anyway. She was on a quote hunt; not quite brave enough to phone specific riders’ rooms, she was hoping to come across them accidentally-on-purpose.

She should have known that Megapac, by this hour, would mostly be asleep. She would not have known that Luca and his room-mate Didier LeDucq were deep in the pages of Penthouse and a Dutch magazine that made the former look like the Beano, but as all doors were shut, she was saved this unsavoury revelation. She found herself in reception with no real purpose at all. However, a huge rumble from her stomach suddenly gave her one. The humiliation of Ben York’s presence was almost enough to make Cat want to march purposefully back to her room but her hunger and his hypnotic eyes kept her exactly where she was.

‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘was that thunder?’

Cat swallowed down an embarrassed laugh but this lacked the substance and nutrition that her stomach needed so it groaned again, loudly in protest.

‘Yes,’ said Cat, surprisingly cool, ‘there it goes again.’

‘I was going to the bar for a quick drink,’ Ben said. ‘Do you want to join me?’

‘OK,’ said Cat, hoping she looked neither keen nor shy, for suddenly she was feeling a very odd combination of both. She was following Ben, just about to make small talk, when her phone rang. She stopped, Ben turned to her. She shrugged and regarded her handset.

Fen. It’s bloody Fen. No, not bloody at all. I have to take it.

Take it then.

‘Aren’t you going to take it?’ Ben asked, not moving a discreet distance away, if anything leaning towards her, appearing closer, invasive almost.

‘Hullo?’ Cat said.

‘Hullo!’ Fen replied.

‘Hey girly!’ Pip cried, from another extension. ‘We’re a bit drunk. We want to know about lycra.’

Oh God, thought Cat, holding the phone tight against her ear in the hope that her sisters’ voices were not transmittable to Ben who continued to stand close.

‘Please can you explain what on earth is going on?’ Fen asked.

‘And can you tell us what the jerseys are actually for?’ Pip interjected. ‘And why that gorgeous Dutchman took the yellow one from Chris Boardman today?’

Oh God, thought Cat, I don’t want to explain such rudimentary details. Not here, not now. Not at this time of night.

Not in front of Dr York?

What’s he got to do with it?

What’s the time got to do with it? It’s hardly late. What you mean is, you’d rather drink with your doctor than speak with your sisters.

Bollocks. He’s not my doctor. He’s physician to US Megapac.

‘How exactly do you win the Tour de France?’ Fen was asking.

‘Um,’ Cat replied, ‘what is it you don’t understand?’

Don’t turn your back on Ben, it’s rude.

Yes, but so is hovering. See? I’ve now turned my back and he hasn’t budged. It’s a bit – odd.

So move.

I can’t – it’s a bit odd.

‘What exactly is the yellow jersey?’ Pip all but whined.

‘Et le maillot vert,’ Fen said extravagantly, ‘oh, and that spotted one too.’

I’m not going to look at you, Ben. Stop it. I’m going to stare at your shoes and speak to my sisters.

‘At the end of each day, the race leader – the yellow jersey – is the rider who has spent the least amount of time in the saddle so far in the Tour,’ Cat said, trying to infuse her voice with a tone that would inform any eavesdroppers that she was having to assist some imbecilic person with no knowledge of the grand sport. She knew Ben was regarding her unwaveringly. For a split second, Cat wondered whether her answer had been wrong.

Go away, Dr York. This is not a good time. You’re off-putting.

‘And the green?’ Pip was asking. ‘Vert?’

‘Each day,’ Cat explained, ‘there are points to be won at hot spot sprints along the route, as well as finishing in the top twenty-five. The green jersey is thus for the most points, for the most consistent daily finisher. It’s the second most important accolade. Cipollini took sprint points along the way today, plus finished high – giving him green. Lomers has the fastest time – a further twenty seconds were deducted for him winning the Stage today – hence the yellow.’

Oh. Ben. You’re going.

‘So he’ll wear it tomorrow?’ Fen asked. ‘He’s winning?’

‘Who?’ said Cat, noticing that Ben was wearing a very nice polo shirt which caught his shoulder blades most becomingly.

‘The flying Dutchman?’ Fen prompted.

‘Yes,’ Cat expounded, ‘yellow is supreme.’

Is that the bar through there? Should I move in a bit?

‘And the dotty?’ said Pip, correcting it to ‘spotty’ to prevent insinuation from either sister.

‘Each day, the hills are marked according to their steepness,’ Cat explained most informatively. ‘Today, as yesterday, there were only fourth-category climbs. Climbing points are awarded to the riders reaching the tops first. Hence our David wearing the King of the Mountains jersey at this stage in the race.’

Maybe I should go back to my room and just order room service.

‘Who’s “our David”?’ Pip asked in a whisper as if, unbeknown to her, he might be related.

‘David Millar is a British rider in the French team Cofidis,’ Cat elaborated. ‘He’s not a specialist climber but a very promising rouleur – all-rounder. At this stage in the Tour, the hills are not taxing enough to be the exclusive domain of the grimpeurs, the specialist climbers, who are wiser to save their energy and steer clear of trouble in anticipation of the main mountain Stages later.’

If I say ‘I’d better go now’, they’ll ask why. If I tell them, they’ll make me go to the bar and not my room.

‘So it’s fifteen minutes of fame for Our David,’ said Pip.

‘I think he’ll have more than that,’ Cat said, ‘just you watch him in the Time Trials.’

‘Not another bloody jersey,’ said Fen.

‘No,’ said Cat, ‘no jersey for Time Trials.’

‘I think we understand,’ said Pip, ‘do we?’

‘Yes,’ said Fen, ‘we’ll ring Django and tell him. Who should we look for in tomorrow’s Stage?’

‘I’d better go now,’ said Cat.

‘Why?’ said Pip. ‘It’s our call – we don’t mind.’

‘I’d better go to my room,’ said Cat, who’d noticed that the bar was filling up.

‘Why?’ Fen probed.

‘Where are you?’ Pip asked.

‘In the foyer,’ Cat said, a little deflated, ‘near the bar.’

Both her sisters were silent.

‘So?’ said Fen.

‘Sounds good,’ Pip commented.

‘Don’t you scurry away,’ Fen said, ‘you’re no mouse, Cat.’

‘I know that,’ Cat remonstrated, ‘but it’s a tough call, trying to carve a niche in unfamiliar territory – especially in a new world where everyone but me seems so at home, so au fait with the routine.’

‘But you said they’re a friendly bunch,’ Fen said.

‘He is,’ said Cat, quickly changing it to ‘They are.’

Back in England, Fen winked at Pip who grinned back.

‘Who is he?’ Pip whispered.

‘Just a team doctor,’ Cat whispered back.

‘Just!’ Pip shrieked.

‘Just have a drink,’ Fen said nonchalantly, glowering at her sister who was doing a jubilant handstand against the wall.

‘OK,’ said Cat, who quite liked being told what to do.

Cat has switched her phone off. She has taken two deep breaths. It took courage not to go back to her room. It’s going to require pluck to walk in to the bar. In she goes. There he is. He’s sitting on a small settee in front of a low table. He is sipping from a bottle of beer. Cat doesn’t really want to notice that he has lovely forearms.

‘Sorry about that,’ says Cat, ‘my sisters are watching the Tour for the first time.’

‘And they are calling on your expertise,’ Ben reasons, ‘can’t say I blame them.’ He smiles at her. It is unclear to Cat whether this is a compliment for her knowledge, or a critique on the vagaries of the Tour de France rules.

‘Let me get you a beer,’ Ben says, going to the bar before Cat can say she’d prefer a glass of wine. He comes back with a bottle of Kronenbourg 1664. ‘Some advice,’ Ben says, whether she wants it or not, holding the bottle aloft, ‘if you want to impress, you abbreviate it to Seize.’

Do I want to impress? Cat wonders.

Of course you do. Sip Seize sexily, Cat. Ben does so quite inadvertently.

He does. He keeps his eyes on me while he swigs, they narrow slightly. They open when he licks his top lip.

Ben York is interested in Cat. He asks her many questions. The beer is cool and fizzy and, for Cat, on an empty stomach, pleasantly tongue-freeing. She answers him happily and slips in questions of her own. First about Megapac. Then about Luca. Soon enough about Ben. Momentarily, she is disappointed that it was not a love of cycling that saw him search out such a job, but she is impressed that his reputation as a physician saw Megapac approach him. Anyway, he speaks with enthusiasm and in depth about the sport and he is a kindred spirit for sure. Ben is friendly and attentive and she wonders whether he is flirting with her. She tells herself she must be imagining it, that it must be the beer. Certainly, it’s something of a novelty for her. It’s refreshing for Cat, having been the brunt of constant criticism and no praise for such a long time.

I’m in France. On the Tour. Away from home. Away for the summer. Away from Him. I’m glad I came. I’m pleased I didn’t go back to my room.

‘Croque monsieur, mademoiselle?’ Ben asks, raising an eyebrow which seems to insist his lips part.

‘Only if you have one too,’ Cat says, really quite coyly. They allow a look between them to linger before Ben grins and Cat grins back. He goes to the bar to order and her eyes follow him before she glances around the room as if to see who has observed. There are quite a few people but none seem remotely aware of or interested in her presence or the chemistry she feels she and Ben surely must have been exuding like a visible glow. He returns.

‘Do you like olives?’ he asks.

‘I love olives,’ Cat enthuses.

Ben leans towards her with a dish of olives; black, green, stuffed, glistening with oil, permeated with garlic, enhanced with rosemary.

‘Excuse me,’ says Cat, her thumb and forefinger hovering before selecting a particularly plump specimen.

‘What for?’ says Ben.

‘No,’ says Cat, still chewing, standing up, ‘I mean, excuse me but I’m going to the toilet.’

She takes a stone from her mouth and plinks it daintily in the ashtray. Off she goes, trying to walk slowly, trying not to wiggle, or wondering if she does indeed wiggle and whether it’s becoming. She sits in the cubicle and regards left hand and right hand like Fen tends to – but she has no dilemma on her hands, she is not searching for advice or answers. She just wants to collect herself, calm down and return to the bar, to Ben’s restorative and compelling company. When she washes her hands, she catches sight of herself in the mirror. She gives herself a little shrug, a little smile.

It’s OK. This. It’s good. I’m having a great evening. I think he really is flirting with me. I’m not sure. It’s been a while. Is he?

Go back and see.

Oh. Alex and Josh are sitting by Ben. Eating olives. Drinking Seize. Oh.

‘Hey, Cat,’ Alex says, a little dishevelled in the hair and somewhat wild about the eyes.

‘Finito completo,’ says Josh, who looks utterly exhausted.

‘Hullo, guys,’ says Cat, taking her seat, glancing at Ben and wondering if that really was a glimmer of a remorseful shrug he’s just given her. ‘I’m having croque monsieur,’ she announces as if her fellow press men had been pondering a reason for her presence at the table with Ben and his olives and the strong beer.

‘So are we,’ says Josh.

They eat. They talk. Cat concentrates only on Josh and Alex, studiously avoiding any eye contact, any direct anything, with Ben, though she so wants to. Ben, however, ensures he speaks to Cat directly; he buys her another beer, he even answers on her behalf.

‘No,’ he tells Josh, ‘the guy at Maillot didn’t seem very interested in her ideas for an article on female soigneurs.’

Josh yawned. ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘I forgot to phone home.’

Cat wonders whether this has been said for her benefit and wonders again whether Josh has designs on her. And she wonders if she has designs on Ben and whether it’s presumptuous or OK for her to wonder whether this is reciprocated. And then she thinks what utter nonsense. This is the Tour de France. It’s work. Her livelihood. Absolutely no room for anything else.

‘Beer?’ Alex asks.

Ben yawns. ‘I’d better push some zeds,’ he says.

‘Pardon?’ Cat says.

‘You know,’ Ben explains, with a chuckle at his wit, touching her arm, ‘like a cartoon character asleep with “z”s coming out of their mouth.’

Cat finds this funny. So do Alex and Josh. But Cat laughs longer, and more loudly. In fact, she gives Ben’s knee a quick push and wonders whether that’s OK. It felt OK to do it. More than OK. Was it OK for it to be felt by Ben? Witnessed by the other two?

Can’t we stay a while longer?

Alex stands and stretches and blasphemes whilst yawning. Josh rises too and does the same, without the choice epithets. Ben stands up. He doesn’t yawn but he clasps the back of his neck drawing Cat’s eyes to his elbows before they meet his. Cat is disappointed.

Please stay. I’m enjoying myself. This is what I was hoping for, camaraderie. Colleagues becoming friends. That we’d work hard and earn evenings like this.

Exactly. You’re all here working. So there will be tomorrow. Indeed, just under three weeks of tomorrows.

‘Night all,’ Ben says, heading for the stairs.

‘Later!’ says Josh, as is his wont.

‘See you,’ says Alex through a yawn, pressing for the lift.

‘Night, Ben,’ Cat says, though he has now gone.

‘I think you’ve pulled there,’ Alex goads, leaning against the mirror in the lift, regarding Cat quizzically.

‘Don’t be a wanker,’ says Josh, rubbing his eyes, his bristled chin, ‘she’s got a boyfriend back home.’

STAGE 3
Vuillard-Plumelec. 225 kilometres

I don’t want Josh to fancy me and I don’t want Josh to tell Ben, thought Cat, quite urgently when waking with a start in the early hours. I don’t want Ben to think that I have a boyfriend. Because, of course, I do not. Oh. But that means I actively want Ben to know I’m single. If I fancy Ben, which I do, it must mean that I now feel single. If I’m feeling single, it is the lid on the coffin of my time with Him. To fancy another, to want another, to be with another, would symbolize the ultimate sealing nail in that coffin. How do I feel about all that?

Her meanderings led her to a thick sleep for a couple of hours. She awoke again, still way before dawn.

Fancying Ben might allow me to bury my past relationship, those intrusive memories and my deluded hopes of Him. That would be wise.

Cat slept for an hour more and then rose before six thirty.

Bullshit, Cat. Ben has no purpose, nothing to do with Him back home. The point – and it is indisputable – is that I fancy Ben, full stop. He turns me on. I want him.

She rummaged around her rucksack and laid out a selection of her clothing in various configurations. Really, it was far too early to start dressing. The riders would not be signing on until 10.30. Cat therefore had four hours to decide what to wear and she tried on a number of alternatives. Soon enough she was sitting despondent on her bed, in a mismatched bra and knickers. She took her mobile phone and dialled.

‘Hullo?’ Fen was startled. It was an hour earlier in GMT after all. An early phone call was often a harbinger of death, of doom at the very least.

‘It’s me,’ Cat whispered, fearing the walls might be thin enough to entitle her neighbours access to her revelations.

‘Jesus, what’s up?’ Fen asked.

‘Up?’ Cat replied, concerned at her sister’s tone.

‘It’s so early – are you OK?’ Fen persisted.

‘Oh shit!’ Cat exclaimed, the time difference dawning on her. ‘I’m fine. I just wanted to call. To say hullo.’

‘I see,’ said Fen measuredly.

‘Um,’ Cat faltered, ‘also for some advice.’

‘Advice?’ Fen asked. ‘About—?’

‘What to wear today?’ Cat said meekly, peeping through the curtains and assessing the flat but dry prelude to dawn.

‘What to wear?’ Fen repeated, looking out the window to a rain-dressed pavement. Fen contemplated her sister’s loaded silence and wondered if Cat could sense that, back in Camden, she was grinning. ‘What to wear,’ Fen repeated, this time as a statement. ‘Tell me it’s the doctor and not some oily bike boy,’ Fen whispered with glee.

‘It’s the doctor,’ said Cat, eyes squeezed shut as if a revelation out loud might ultimately jeopardize the actuality of a currently non-existent situation. ‘Do you think that’s OK?’

‘More than OK,’ said Fen, ‘it’s about time.’

‘I thought of my khaki shorts,’ said Cat.

‘What’s his name and age and vital stats?’ Fen asked. ‘Khaki sounds good.’

‘And my little stretchy vest from Gap Kids,’ Cat furthered. ‘Ben York, probably a few years older than us, tall but not too tall – handsome, oh yes, very.’

‘I like your stretchy vest from Gap Kids but what’s the weather like? Perhaps add a white shirt, loosely tied not buttoned,’ said Fen. ‘So where is he from? Does he speak English?’

‘I have that great shirt that Pip gave me,’ said Cat, taking it from the pile on her bed and holding it to her nose. ‘He’s British but lives in America.’

‘That’s no good,’ Fen groaned.

‘The white shirt?’ Cat asked, scouring the pile for an alternative.

‘No – the America bit,’ said Fen, ‘an intense three weeks in France and then what?’

‘I hadn’t thought that far ahead,’ Cat said, ‘it’s nice just to feel those feelings of, well, lust – anticipation. Have we decided on the white shirt?’

‘Yes,’ Fen declared. ‘Is there chemistry?’

‘I think so,’ said Cat cautiously, hoping that she had neither misread nor read too much in to what she believed had been a mutual frisson, ‘it’s been a long time for me. Timberland boots or trainers?’

‘Sweet girl,’ said Fen, ‘I wish you all the luck and lust you’ll have time for once your reports have been filed. But be careful – it’s the Tour de France, you’re not living in real time or a real place. In reality, Cat, you need a fling. You deserve fun and frolics. He sounds perfect. Fling Thing. He sounds,’ said Fen, ‘pretty gorgeous. Timberlands.’

‘His name is Ben York,’ Cat remonstrated, ‘and you’re making him sound like a cheap package holiday. Timberlands it is, then.’

‘He’ll do you the same power of good – a golden tan from the sun equates with the healthy glow of a well-laid woman,’ Fen theorized earnestly.

‘Fen!’ Cat giggled. ‘What are you like? You loose lady, you – you who can’t decide between two – have you chosen yet?’

‘No,’ Fen said sadly after a long reflection. ‘Tell me more about Ben.’

‘He has odd eyes,’ Cat said with a swoon.

‘Odd?’ Fen reacted, imagining one brown, one blue, perhaps cross-eyed or else one lazy and staring.

‘I mean,’ said Cat, ‘strange – they’re the colour of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and they hold your gaze.’

‘Think about your underwear,’ said Fen. ‘Not that he should be seeing it quite yet but your deportment is directly accountable to the pants you wear.’

‘He has odd hair,’ said Cat. ‘I’ll wear my Calvins.’

‘Odd?’ Fen asked, imagining a ginger bonce of unruly curls not dissimilar to the wig Pip wore when she became Martha the Clown.

‘Short,’ said Cat, ‘dark but not really – heavily flecked through with light.’

‘You mean,’ Fen deduced, ‘he’s going grey prematurely. Well, George Bloody Clooney watch your back! Calvins – definitely.’

‘I think he likes me,’ Cat said. ‘I won’t bother with a bra – my Gap Kids vest is supportive enough. And clingy.’

‘Go girl!’ Fen marvelled. ‘Of course he bloody likes you – why on earth wouldn’t he? Can I tell Pip?’

‘Isn’t that tempting Fate?’

‘Bollocks, Cat,’ Fen laughed, ‘have a little confidence.’

‘I lost it a while back.’

‘No!’ Fen said sternly. ‘It was stolen from you. You’re entitled to its return. Can I tell Pip?’

‘OK!’ Cat laughed. ‘Tell her about his eyes – and that he’s a doctor and all.’

‘Can I tell Django?’

‘Wouldn’t that be bad karma?’ Cat asked. Fen, who felt more for karma than she did for fate, pondered this quietly. ‘Tell you what,’ Cat said, ‘if Sassetta wins the Stage today, you can tell Django.’

‘Better make that the maillot vert, Cat,’ Fen said very seriously. ‘If he scoops up the intermediary sprints and finishes higher than Cipollini, he needn’t win the Stage to claim the jersey.’

Cat smiled. Her sister had caught the bug. There was no cure. It was in her blood. She would never be rid of it.

Where’s Ben? Dr York – ou es tu? And can I ‘tu’ you or ought I to ‘vous’ you? You’re not with the Megapac entourage.

Cat was milling about the teams enclosure with hundreds of other journalists, Tour and team personal.

Oh, there’s Mario Cipollini.

‘Mario! Ça va?’

‘Buon giorno!’ said Cipollini whilst wondering who this girl was who greeted him with such warmth and familiarity. How charming. ‘I’m well – today SuperMario to be LionKing again – compris?’

‘Oh, compris very well, Cipo,’ said Cat, not giving the abbreviation a second’s thought. ‘Bonne chance.’

‘Merci, grazie,’ said the flamboyant Italian before brandishing his best English, ‘thank you so very much, signorina.’

Cat brazenly waved her hand as if to say heck, Mario, don’t mention it. Off she went in search of Dr York, smiling directly at Laurent Dufaux on her way. Jan Svorada, Jose Maria Jimenez, Jacky Durand all raised a hand at a girl they had never met, who was wearing a pair of shorts as flattering as her smile and who gave them salutations of great feeling as she strode past.

Where are you, Dr York? Might you be in the village? I’ll go and check. Bugger off, Alex, I’m on a mission. I’m thirsty. Ah, the Maison du Café stand. I’ll have an espresso, please. Merci beaucoup. Good God – Eddie Merckx – good God himself.

‘Bonjour, Monsieur Merckx.’

‘Eh? Ah oui – bonjour, mademoiselle.’

‘Café?’

‘Pour moi? Merci.’

Don’t mention it. It’s on tap. I can get another. Where are you, Ben? I’ll circumnavigate once. Well, if that’s Luca, his doctor surely must be close to hand.

‘Hey, Luca,’ Cat beamed, ‘how are you? Bloody good ride yesterday.’

‘Thanks, babe,’ said Luca, delighted to see her but wracking his brains for her name and squinting behind his Oakleys to try and read it from her pass.

‘Any thoughts on today?’ Cat asked.

Any idea where your doctor is?

‘Well, Catriona,’ said Luca, most pleased with himself, ‘it’s a weird finish – you hit Plumelec and then have to do a 12 k circuit before an uphill home stretch. Not really sprinter’s domain – but if anyone wants to win it more than Delongue, whose birthday it is, it’ll be Sassetta – he’s out to kill, man, out to kill. You know what I mean, Catriona?’

‘Luca,’ Cat reprimanded the rider lightly, ‘you really can call me Cat. You take care today.’

And tell your bloody doctor I’m looking for him.

Luca tipped his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said. Cat’s ‘Take care’ was so much more humane than the perfunctory ‘Good luck’ from most journalists. ‘Come find me at the finish – I’ll give you the scoop of the day!’

‘That, Luca, would be an honour,’ said Cat. ‘Promise?’

Make sure your bloody doctor’s there.

‘Sure,’ Luca shrugged. He tipped his Oakleys on to his forehead, flashed excellent teeth, held out his hand and kissed Cat’s when she took it.

If I feel this floaty from Luca’s kiss to my hand, how am I going to feel when Ben takes my mouth?

With Stefano Sassetta, he of the spectacular thighs, on the war path for a Stage win, or the green jersey, potentially both, Cat and her fellow journalists took the itinéraire direct to the salle de presse in Plumelec to scrutinize the race from the bank of televisions there. On the way, they pooled notes about the buildings changing in colour from grey to beige, that the small town of Josselin with its stunning river-hugging château and sharp right-hand bend over a narrow bridge was worthy of mention, that rosebay willowherb and other meadow flowers were abundant and that the villages became increasingly bedecked with bunting and Breton flags.

In the salle de pressé, one of the technicians tested the microphone with a lengthy impression of an orgasm. While most of the 1,000 press men shared a titter, the dozen female journalistes bonded immediately by locating each other to share eyebrows raised in exasperation. Having grabbed and then bolted down baguette and pâté from the buffet, Cat sat and allowed the live pictures of the peloton to seduce her, to mesmerize her. Had Ben York appeared, bollock naked with a rose between his teeth, Cat would have given him but a cursory glance and requested that he return later.

The bravery of a breakaway, the beauty of the bunch streaming along to bring them back. I love watching the Tour aerially – a flock of geese, a shoal offish, a single arrow – the comparisons are poetic. When seen from above, the pack moves as one, surging along harmonious and unified. See them approach that roundabout?

Cat’s lips parted as she watched the bunch split and streak around either side of a flower-encrusted roundabout before fusing together again and streaming ahead. Like mercury.

And yet, an aerial view of the Tour, aesthetically moving as it is, is somewhat misleading. Looking down on the peloton from on high, it is easy to forget that this apparently single mass is in fact 189 riders – oh, down to 184 – jockeying for position, shouting and swearing, psyching each other out.

Cat contemplated the fact that this beautiful streak of colour, skating along the tarmac, slicking around corners, enhancing the Breton countryside and the lives of the native spectators, was made up of each man turning his pedals, watching his line, monitoring his pulse, pacing himself, performing his job for his team, his sponsors, making it a day closer to Paris, surviving to ride another day, period. Twenty-one teams. 184 individuals at present. The peloton of the Tour de France. A river of bright energy when seen from above. Down there, in the bunch, in reality: war.

With over 100 kilometres to go, Megapac’s Hunter Dean and Travis Stanton grouped together with three other riders and shot away from the peloton.

‘Fuck, it’s humid, man,’ said Travis.

‘Wind’s behind,’ Hunter replied encouragingly, taking the front. The five-man break kept their heads down and pedalled with conviction.

Back in the bunch, Stefano Sassetta summonsed his team car. ‘Who’s gone?’ he asked his directeur. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘No one for you to worry about,’ his directeur answered him, ‘let them have the last sprint point. They’ll tire soon enough. They’re nothing. Some Americanos – let them fly their flag a while.’ Sassetta made his way back through the bunch, catching sight of the yellow-clad back of Jesper Lomers. He felt his blood chill and then immediately boil. He pedalled until they were shoulder to shoulder. The Dutchman was looking studiously ahead. Apart from gesture, English was the only language in which these two riders could communicate.

‘Enjoy your shirt,’ Sassetta hissed, ‘you no have it long time. Green suit me only anyway. Bad with your hair colour.’

Jesper regarded Stefano briefly and then returned his concentration directly ahead. Jesper had no intention of reacting. It was not his style. He was a sportsman. For him, manners were integral to his vocation. And his mind was on Anya, who was never at home.

With just over 25 kilometres to go, Travis and another rider dropped back, eased off and returned to the peloton. Hunter and the other two soon hit Plumelec, knowing there were a further 12 kilometres to race. Looking briefly over his shoulder, Hunter knew that the bunch would be on them soon enough but the Stage might, with a miracle, be his. Just. Was it worth riding himself out today? What would be the consequence for his legs tomorrow? There were two Stages later in the race he had earmarked for himself. But the opportunity was here.

‘6 k to go – I’m out of here,’ he said to himself, summoning up reserves to surge away from the other two. Hunter was riding at 46 kph. With 3 kilometres to go, Hunter’s lead was eleven seconds and he was charging along on adrenalin and desire. With just 1 kilometre left, he swept perfectly around the right-hand bend and narrow bridge, stood on his pedals and honked towards the finishing climb.

Then he heard it; it was all he could hear. Not his heart. Not his breathing. Not the yelling crowd. What he could hear he could sense too. He wanted to go forward yet sensed he was being sucked backwards. As his legs and arms felt the drag of the finishing incline, Hunter took a fateful glance over his shoulder. The motion cost him seconds yet he knew the sight he would see was of the deafening, deflating sound that was filling his ears. The peloton of the Tour de France was surging towards him, a swarm in a heat haze with no affection for him, no malice either, but certainly no consideration for the stamina he had exhibited for over 100 kilometres. With dignity intact, Hunter sat up. He was caught. He was back in the bunch. He was anonymous once more.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN PLUMELEC

Mario Cipollini conceded the green jersey to fellow Italian Stefano Sassetta in Stage 3 of the Tour de France. In an uphill finish not conducive to sprints, the powerful Zucca MV rider pumped away from the bunch. As he crossed the line he punched the air, perhaps not so much in ecstasy of the victory as in the sweetness of revenge. He won the Stage; tomorrow he will ride in the green points jersey. Jesper Lomers is in yellow for another day but soon he will relinquish the jersey when the true all-rounders come to the fore. Lomers will no doubt do this with grace and equanimity. He will then focus his efforts on the maillot vert. To claim it will require more than excellent riding – it will demand a certain stoicism to disregard the crowd-pulling arrogance Sassetta displays when flaunting his power in the maillot vert. There will be as much a fight for the green jersey as there will be for the yellow. The Tour de France this year is a duel between Système Vipère and Zucca MV.

Against the verdant verges of cycling’s heartland, speckled with rosebay willowherb and throbbing with Breton aficionados, a five-man breakaway led the race in the last 100 km, at one time achieving a 3-minute lead over the pack. A bid for freedom by the US Megapac star Hunter Dean, with 6 km to go and the bunch hot on his heels, was more heart-rending than it was realistic. However, success in the Tour de France can often be achieved with the spirit stronger than the body. If Dean’s passion can be maintained, even if the mountains mangle his muscles, he might well shine in one of the final Stages of la grande boucle.

Tomorrow, the 184 riders of the Tour de France will race 248 km from Plouay to Chardin. With wide, flat roads, the winds could well be strong and potentially disruptive. The peloton should devour the tarmac and rebuff the wind with textbook team riding – a pleasure for the spectators to observe but in truth the only way the riders are going to get from A to B as unscathed as possible.

<ENDS>

‘Because of the bloody cricket, Taverner gave me only 350 words today,’ Cat says petulantly to Josh. ‘I chose to slip in the rosebay willowherb, rather than to mention that Millar gave the polka dot jersey to US Postal’s Jonathan Vaughters.’

‘Alan Titchmarsh will be pleased, but you’ve probably blown your chance of a ride in the US Postal team car,’ Josh said before returning his focus away from horticulture and chit-chat, back to his laptop.

‘I’m going out for quotes,’ said Cat, leaving.

To try and find Luca. For his promised soundbite. And his doctor. Oh – there’s my friend Rachel.

‘Hey, Rachel,’ said Cat, standing by smiling, watching Rachel wipe down the legs of the team’s super-domestique, Gianni Fugallo, with a wet flannel.

‘Not a good time,’ Rachel said, barely looking up. Though momentarily taken aback, Cat quickly reminded herself where she was and why she was there and thus held her hands up in affable surrender, telling Rachel she’d give her a call.

‘Cheers,’ said Rachel, who was hot and tired, ‘that’d be great.’

There’s the Megapac lot. Where’s Luca? There’s Hunter.

‘Hullo, Hunter,’ says Cat, ‘great ride.’

‘Hey, thanks,’ says Hunter, vaguely recognizing her.

‘Yo, Catriono!’

Luca!

‘It’s Cat,’ she says, delighted none the less. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m good,’ he says, looking very tired, his eyes a little bloodshot, their sparkle somewhat dulled, his blond curls slightly lank, ‘thanks. Cat.’ He approaches her, his hard shoes giving his walk a Chaplinesque gait, and at once she wants to gently put her arms around him, to lead him to a chair, sit him down and put his brave legs up. She notices a fleck of dried spittle on the corner of his mouth, grime on his calves; the paradox of the impressive musculature of his legs against the fragility of his gait which six hours of racing have caused.

He needs his soigneur. Or his doctor. It always gets me – on his bike, a rider looks so strong. Off it he appears almost vulnerable.

‘Have you a quote for me?’ Cat asks.

‘Sure,’ says Luca, hands on slim hips. ‘Where you staying, babe?’

‘Plouay,’ Cat replies.

‘You come round the hotel, to my room, I’ll give you soundbites,’ Luca says, his accent making her smile more than any ulterior motive detectable.

‘That would be great,’ Cat enthuses, ‘I’ll see you later.’

‘Ciao, bambina,’ Luca says.

Cat hovers.

I’d better go. I need the doctor. Where’s Ben?

There’s Ben. With a woman. She’s standing coyly with her back against the truck of that tree. He’s standing in front of her, as close to her as he was to Cat yesterday. Not so much invading the woman’s space as dominating it. There’s a difference – Cat has already experienced it. It’s subtle – the former would be undesirable, intrusive. The latter is disconcerting and compelling.

Poor Cat. This is not jealousy but despondency. There’s Ben, whom Cat has longed to see all day. But he has not been looking out for her. His attention has been caught by this other woman. Look at them now – Ben has cupped the woman’s face in his hands and is looking into her eyes intently. Look at her, all legs that are brown and a face that is perfect. It doesn’t matter that she is wearing a minuscule scarlet frou-frou frock, nor that her head is crowned with a ridiculous hat in the shape of a Coke bottle top. The point is, she is a podium girl and she is stunning. Cat is a journaliste in a pair of now creased khaki shorts, a vest from a children’s department and a white shirt with ink on the cuff and a coffee stain down the front. She is also wearing boots that might very well carry the Timberland seal of authenticity, but objectively they are what her Uncle Django calls ‘clodhoppers’.

Oh God. Uncle Django. I told Fen that if Sassetta won, she could tell Django about bloody Ben.

Cat turns her phone off, turns and walks away quickly but not briskly. There is no spring in her step. She takes herself off to an area behind the finish line where officials are busy dismantling the temporary grandstands. She finds a crate and sits down, head in hands.

Shit and double shit. Now everyone at home knows about Ben bloody York – whose attraction for me obviously doesn’t exist apart from in my delusions. Josh, whom I like and respect, now knows and defines me by a boyfriend who doesn’t exist – which leaves me vulnerable. For Ben York, though, I don’t exist.

Cat, you sound adolescent and rather pathetic.

I’m trying to fucking heal, to make my way forward.

Does that take a man? How about Luca then?

Fuck off. He’s a rider in the Tour de France. He’s superhuman. I absolutely wouldn’t dare touch him or even encourage him. Think of the consequences.

What about Josh?

I think I’ll end up adoring Josh. But for me, there’s no possibility there beyond good friendship.

‘I’m a journaliste,’ Cat says softly, repeating it louder. ‘I’m here working. I have an idea for an article for Maillot. I must phone them.’

Cat returns to the salle de pressé and phones Maillot.

‘Hullo, it’s Cat McCabe – how about a feature on podium girls?’

‘Podium girls?’ Andy responds.

‘Getting to the substance behind the skirt?’ Cat elaborates, a twang of desperation to her voice causing Josh to look up and regard her with a flicker of concern.

‘Perhaps,’ Andy says. ‘OK?’

‘OK,’ Cat says forlornly, ‘podium girls – who the fuck are they?’

‘Sure,’ says Andy, ‘let me think about it.’

STAGE 4
Plouay-Chardin. 248 kilometres

Ben was concerned about Didier. Didier LeDucq was an accomplished domestique; professional for four years, he was riding his second Tour de France in his first season for Megapac.

‘What worries me,’ Ben said to himself whilst examining his chin and wondering whether he need shave that morning, ‘is that Didier has been so damn quiet. Over meals he usually regales the team, all of us, with tales and anecdotes of his antics on bike and off. Yesterday he was all but silent. If he’s sickening, I wish he’d tell me now.’

I’d better shave. You never know whom you might come across.

Ben was concerned about Hunter Dean. Patting foam across his bristles, he stared at the vision of Santa Claus in the mirror. He bared his teeth, observing that they did not appear unduly yellow next to the shaving foam.

Hunter is so focused, he feels so much for the team, for the sponsors and his belief in himself is immense. Good. Great. But we’ve only had three days of racing. I can’t have him burn out. He’s a potentially brilliant all-rounder. He can delve into all the disciplines of pro cycling and come up with results. But I don’t want him riding like a sprinter. Or anywhere near them really. I’ll talk to the directeur. Maybe his soigneur too. I’ll talk to his girlfriend. Maybe I ought to talk to him. I’ll go down to the start today.

Looking out through the curtains, Ben saw clear skies and a breeze that gave the impression that the trees were breathing gently. He dressed in shorts, slipped bare feet into docksiders, wrapped a sweatshirt around his waist and headed out for the village.

I’ll breakfast there. The company is usually good.

‘Hey, Alex.’

‘Morning, Josh.’

At a rickety table in the breakfast-room of their hotel, which was really a glorified pension without the nice personal touches, the men rubbed bleary eyes and bemoaned the stream of beer which had found its flow down their gullets the previous night.

‘Have you seen Cat?’ Josh asked, picking up a croissant, scrutinizing it from various angles, before forsaking it in favour of a second cup of black coffee. Alex, who had a mouth full of croissant and lips coated with crumbs, shook his head.

‘Nah – not since she left the salle de pressé yesterday.’

‘Talking of the devil,’ Josh said, ‘morning, Cat.’

‘Morning,’ said Cat.

‘Have some breakfast,’ Alex said, offering her a croissant in his fingers and munching on it himself when she refused.

‘Coffee?’ Josh offered, pouring himself a third cup when she declined.

‘I’ll see you at the village,’ Cat said. ‘Are we going avant or arrière?’

‘Who’s driving?’ Josh asked.

‘I’m probably still over the limit,’ Alex said with a certain pride. Josh looked beseechingly at Cat.

‘I don’t mind,’ Cat said, ‘the route is pretty straightforward – shall we follow it?’

‘Avant!’ Alex proclaimed, like an army general.

‘Can you load my stuff if I leave it in reception? I’m going to stroll over now,’ said Cat, ‘we’ll meet by the Maison du Café stand at the second bell.’

‘Sure,’ said Josh.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Alex, saluting and burping simultaneously.

‘Is she all right?’ Josh asks Alex, glancing at Cat disappearing from view, thinking how this morning she looks somewhat deflated.

‘Huh?’ Alex responds, turning to scour the space she has left.

‘She’s all right,’ Josh declares.

‘Then why are you asking?’ Alex retorts.

‘I mean,’ Josh says, ‘I was sceptical initially but actually I rate her – her writing’s good and her knowledge is sound.’

‘I must admit,’ Alex nods, drinking the juice set for Cat, ‘I agree. She’s one of us – but with great tits. Which is refreshing.’

‘God, you’re a twat,’ Josh laughs.

‘Street cred for us in the salle de pressé,’ Alex shrugs. ‘I’ve seen the L’Equipe hacks regard us approvingly.’

‘We must remember that this is her first Tour,’ Josh reasons, ‘and that she’s a girl.’

Alex winces and tuts theatrically. ‘You sexist sod, you!’

Josh is serious. ‘Fuck off. She is one of us but she is not one of us. I mean – she is a girl. And she is a novice. We must remember that and we should respect it. But don’t you think she seems a bit – I don’t know how you’d call the condition – quiet?’

‘Maybe,’ says Alex, reaching for the remainder of Josh’s croissant.

‘Hey, Hunter,’ said Ben, laying a hand on the rider’s shoulder.

‘Yo,’ Hunter replied. The rider was sitting on the steps of the Megapac van in a picturesque green, plotted and pieced by birch trees – near the start line. Just one rider from the group of 184 wondering how his day would pan out and how much control he could ultimately exact on the outcome.

‘You have a nice mention here,’ Ben said, holding up the Guardian.

‘What is that?’ Hunter asked.

‘A newspaper?’ Ben cajoled before answering honestly, ‘It’s British. Listen up. If Dean’s passion can be maintained even if the mountains mangle his muscles, he might well shine in one of the final Stages of la Grande Boucle. She terms your ride yesterday “heart-rending”.’

‘Who the fuck is “she”?’ Hunter asked.

‘The journalist – the British one.’

‘Oh sure, right,’ Hunter nodded, ‘Luca’s one.’

‘Luca’s?’ Ben asked quizzically.

‘Sure,’ Hunter shrugged, ‘he feels like she’s his – saves up his best quotes for her. I was in his room yesterday. He put on aftershave after dinner even though he hadn’t shaved. And clean track pants. Said he’d invited her for a soundbite.

‘And?’ Ben enquired.

‘She didn’t show,’ Hunter said. ‘Hey, let me read that.’ He scanned the article quickly, then folded the paper angrily and thrust it back at Ben. ‘I’m not waiting till after the fucking mountains to go for it.’

‘Hunter,’ said Ben sternly, ‘that’s the point – if you go for broke now, you’ll bonk – you’ll hit the wall – you’ll break. This first week is for sprinters, some of whom won’t even make it half-way up the first hill – you know that. Be consistent. You’re a rouleur. You’re team captain. Why else would the bunch insist on chasing you down? Your strength is known – you’re a rider to be reckoned with. And you’ve got to get yourself and the boys to Paris. What sort of example are you setting the likes of Luca, Travis even, if you don’t?’

Hunter regarded his legs, smooth, hard, glistening, and glanced across to Ben’s which looked unnaturally hirsute in comparison. It made him remember who he was and where he was and his function here, his purpose, his gift, his aim in life. He looked up at Ben and rose. ‘Sure thing, Doc. You’re right. I’ll ride as I should. I’ll lead the guys home.’

Hunter Dean, Ben marvelled as he tweaked the peak of the rider’s logoed baseball cap, when you hang up your pedals you can slip straight into Congress. Or Hollywood. You’re a star.

Ben went in search of Didier LeDucq. Luca said he’d seen him heading off towards the toilets. Luca looked at his feet. Then Luca told the doctor he’d heard the French rider throwing up before breakfast. Then he looked down at the doctor’s feet. When his doctor ventured off to track down his ailing equipeur, Luca winced.

If I felt shit, but I wanted to race, would I want my doctor to know? If I felt shit but I wanted to race, would I tell my team-mates? If I’d thrown up and chosen not to tell my teammates, would I want them to dob me to the doctor behind my back? Fuck me. I’m a jerk. I’ll go find Didier – before Ben. Oh. But not before I have a quick chat with my journaliste.

‘Gatto!’

Cat turned, wondering who was crying for cake. Luca walked towards her.

‘I’m calling you Gatto,’ he declared, kissing her somewhat startled cheeks once apiece. ‘I’m basically bilingual but Gatto is Italian for cat.’

‘Oh,’ Cat nodded, her eyes caught by the tan line on the rider’s arm, revealed by his jersey sleeve being a little bunched up. Seeing the glimpse of pale skin created similar maternal affection in her as witnessing the riders tottering in their cycling shoes.

I want to straighten his sleeve for him.

Go on then, no doubt he’d love you to.

Don’t be ridiculous.

‘I like pussy,’ Luca said, regarding her directly. Cat jolted and any feelings of maternal affection were swiftly replaced by consternation. She tipped her head to one side, hoping she was regarding the rider in a suitably stern way.

‘Is that a quote for me?’ she asked, matter of fact and tongue in cheek.

‘I mean,’ Luca said ingenuously, frowning for good measure, ‘I like “pussy” – but “gatto” is better. Italian is a beautiful language. Italian is really my mama tongue. I just speak English also.’

‘You could just call me Cat,’ the journalist suggested, ‘it’s simple English.’

‘No no no,’ the rider said emphatically, ‘I want a special name for you.’ Luca narrowed his eyes, straightened his shoulders and poked Cat gently in the stomach. ‘Last night, how come you didn’t want me?’

Cat clasped her hand against her mouth. The gesture was immediate and honest. She had indeed completely forgotten, having wrapped herself in her insecurity blanket just as soon as she’d reached her room. Luca grinned outwardly, felt appeased inwardly and was suddenly keen to find Hunter, to restore the American’s belief in Luca’s irresistibility.

‘I was knackered,’ Cat said apologetically whilst reprimanding herself. Unprofessional. Stupid. A wasted opportunity.

‘You were shagged,’ Luca elaborated very seriously. Again Cat jolted. Luca was a little alarmed. ‘It’s a good English expression – very, very tired. Right? Poor pussy Cat,’ he continued, ‘let me give it to you later. I want to.’

‘What?’ the journalist exclaimed quietly, her eyes skittering all over the rider’s face.

‘You come and see me – we’ll have a good long one,’ Luca shrugged, wondering why Cat continued to look less than ecstatic.

‘Pardon?’

‘We’ll go somewhere quiet,’ Luca said openly, ‘and I’ll give it to you there. You staying in Chardin tonight? I don’t know where the fuck the team are staying. You find me. You call me. We’ll take it from there.’

Cat stood and stared at the rider.

‘You want it – don’t you?’ he asked.

Though she was listening hard, Cat could not hear any lascivious undertone lacing what appeared to be genuine concern.

‘Come after dinner,’ Luca said, ‘I do it better on a full stomach. Ciao, Gatto.’ He walked away from her, turning his attention to Didier’s whereabouts.

Alex walked up to Josh, who was talking to Ben and Didier at the Coeur de Lion marquee in the village. Didier ambled a few strides away to his bike and cycled off slowly, through the village and back to the team van, via an undisclosed visit to the toilets. Josh had got to the rider before Ben had and now the rider had left before Ben had him alone.

‘He says he feels strong,’ Josh said, looking at his notepad. He looked at Ben. ‘He looks like shit.’

‘Who are we talking about?’ said Alex, now joining them.

‘LeDucq,’ said Josh.

‘He always looks crap,’ Alex said, laughing, ‘he should get rid of his stupid pony-tail. I’m going over to catch Max.’ Ben and Josh watched Alex join a small posse of journalists surrounding the ever popular Max Sciandri. Neither of them could see Cat amongst them. They turned their attention back to each other and the absent LeDucq.

‘I’m his doctor,’ said Ben, remembering he was talking to a journalist. ‘He’s fine – if he isn’t, I’ll know about it. That’s my job.’

‘It’s going to be hot today, I reckon,’ said Josh, still thinking LeDucq looked awful. Ben nodded. The men looked at the sky and noted the very few, high clouds that were there.

‘It’s bizarre, isn’t it?’ the doctor said. ‘Talking about the weather is never idle chit chat here at the Tour.’

Josh laughed and nodded. A bell rang. The VIPs started to gather together, leaving the village to be transported along the route to hospitality at the arrivée, wined and dined with elaborate packed lunches on the way in cars invariably driven by ex-Tour racers.

‘I think we’re staying at the same hotel tonight,’ Josh said.

‘Great,’ said Ben, ‘maybe we’ll have a few beers later.’

‘Providing Sassetta behaves,’ Josh reasoned. ‘Zucca are staying there too.’

‘There’s your colleague,’ Ben said, nodding towards Cat who had just appeared in the village, making her way straight to a booth and taking a long drink of juice. ‘Is she staying with you?’

‘Cat?’ Josh replied, glancing in her direction. ‘Yeah, she is, all the way. I didn’t know her before – shit, I’ve actually only known her a week. But she’s OK, she really is.’

‘Yes, she is. Her work’s good too,’ said Ben, flashing the Guardian as emphasis.

‘Yup,’ said Josh, ‘it’s great to have her on board.’

‘Makes a change,’ Ben said, his eyes not having left her.

‘Doesn’t it just?’ Josh agreed. They regarded her as she meandered from one stand to the next. She was wearing a short denim skirt and white pumps, a T-shirt and a Nike baseball cap. She looked preoccupied. Ben fixed his gaze on her face to no avail. Josh raised a hand in a futile wave. A few stands on, she caught sight of the two men. She stood stock still momentarily before turning on her heels, leafing with urgency through her notepad and walking with huge purpose out of the village.

Neither Ben nor Josh knew she’d gone directly to hide behind a tree, feeling knotted. Ben presumed she was gleaning gems from Luca. Josh assumed she was just going about her job.

‘Catch you later,’ said Ben, catching sight of Didier sitting with Travis, both with cups of coffee. Travis sipped his with his little finger extended genteelly; Didier just raised his cup, contemplated its contents and then replaced it. Ben was alarmed. Few riders forsake their legal caffeine entitlement.

‘Yes, this evening,’ said Josh, suddenly feeling the impact of the vast amount of restorative breakfast caffeine and thinking he really ought to piss before they set off, ‘we’ll have a few beers.’

‘Hey, Cat,’ says Rachel, the boot of the car open to reveal a veritable booty of clothing, bidons, food, and first-aid accoutrements. ‘I’m sorry about yesterday.’

‘Sorry?’ Cat asks. ‘For what?’

‘I was so stressed out I might have to borrow back the pencil sharpener,’ Rachel says, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Stefano is – well, he drives me mad, let me tell you!’

‘Do tell me,’ Cat implores.

‘Yeah, right,’ Rachel laughs, ‘but as a mate, as a fellow female – not as a journaliste.’

Cat holds her hand to her heart. Rachel beckons her closer until both women are leaning deep into the car. ‘When he won the Stage yesterday? He said to me – and excuse my accent – Where is Lomers? I want give him these flowers – I want say him “Hey Lomers – give these for your wife because she think you no love her because you no fuck her no more”.’

The women regard each other and then laugh in horror but not quite in disbelief.

‘What did you say?’ Cat gasps.

‘I said I would tell Jean-Marie Leblanc,’ Rachel says, referring to the revered and omnipotent Director General of the Société du Tour de France.

‘What did Stefano say?’

‘He gave me the fucking flowers and looked pretty sheepish. I massaged him viciously last night,’ Rachel declares with certain glee and sparkle, ‘viciously.’

‘What a character,’ Cat laughs, adding, ‘Bloody men!’ as an aside.

‘Stefano’s a prat,’ Rachel says, not unfondly. She tells Cat the name of the hotel that Zucca are staying at that night.

‘I’m pretty sure that’s where we are,’ Cat responds, delighted.

‘Cool,’ says Rachel, ‘let’s have a beer later.’

‘You’re on,’ says Cat.

‘Ciao, Cat,’ Rachel says, though Cat has gone. She slams the boot of the car, consults the map and heads for the feed zone midway along the route. Then she’ll head straight for the finish line, stocked with everything a rider could ask for after racing for 248 kilometres. Everything from antiseptic to a quick leg rub, from fresh socks to a banana, from tracksuits to a warm and welcoming smile.

‘You’re happy about driving on the wrong side of the road?’ Josh asked Cat as she took her seat behind the wheel.

‘I’ll take it slowly,’ she replied.

‘No you fucking won’t,’ Alex cried from the back. ‘To the salle de pressé – and don’t spare the horses.’ He leant forward, removed her baseball cap and thwacked the roof of the car with it. ‘Vamoose!’

Josh and Cat shared a quick glance of exasperation. Cat drove off, cautiously but at a pace that could not be castigated.

‘You OK?’ Josh tried.

‘Fine, thanks,’ said Cat from behind sunglasses.

‘You’re not your usual perky self,’ Alex said, replacing her baseball cap sideways on her head so she looked quite the little urchin. ‘Tell Uncle Alex what’s wrong.’

‘Alex, fuck off,’ Josh said, shaking his head, catching Alex’s glance in the rear-view mirror and giving him a loaded look. Cat removed her sunglasses, righted her cap and looked at both men, assuring them she was fine, just tired.

Bloody boys. Males. The lot of them.

She only swerved twice. First when Alex enquired, innocently enough, after what Luca had had to say that morning – all of which Cat was still trying to remember word for word, the intention in particular. Then she swerved again, with equal severity, when Josh remarked that both Zucca MV and Megapac were staying at their hotel.

‘Ben said to meet in the bar for a drink,’ Josh said.

‘Ben?’ Cat said.

Bloody Ben.

‘Yeah, you know, the Megapac doc,’ Alex said rather slyly, leaning forward between the two front seats and grinning at Cat.

‘I was talking to him at the village,’ Josh said. ‘We saw you and tried to call you over but you were on a mission.’

On a mission not to be seen by him. What did he say? Did he mention podium girls? What did you say? Did you mention my fake bloody boyfriend?

‘He asked after you,’ Josh continued.

‘Oh?’ said Cat, eyes on the road but mind far from it. ‘What about?’

I don’t want to know. I do want to know. What did he want to know? That I have a boyfriend? Please say you didn’t say so. Because I don’t. Oh, but what does it matter – Ben’s hardly interested anyway.

‘This and that,’ said Josh casually, ‘where you fit in – he’d read your report of yesterday.’

‘Oh,’ said Cat.

Mine? He searched it out and read it? What should I read into that? Shut up, idiot girl.

‘Anyway – he suggested beers tonight,’ Josh continued.

He did? With whom? All of us? Just me? Or minus me?

‘I’m having a beer with Rachel,’ Cat said, almost as a safeguard.

How on earth am I going to concentrate on the race, let alone write the report, with the distraction the impending evening poses?

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN CHARDIN

After just over sixteen hours of racing, with just under seven minutes between the maillot jaune of the leader and the Lantern Rouge of the 184th rider, the Tour de France left Brittany today for the Vendée with a 248 km road race from Plouay to Chardin. For 96 km, while the landscape masqueraded as Cornwall, a 30 kph north-westerly wind gave the peloton a helping hand, propelling the bunch forward together and providing light relief from a sticky 29 degrees. However, as the riders crossed over the mouth of the Loire via the stunning Pont du Saint Nazaire, no doubt they would have preferred high humidity to the sly crosswinds which slicked about the bridge, disturbing the bunch.

‘I’m stuck,’ Cat sighed, observing with envy that both Josh and Alex were not. ‘I’m going out for a breather,’ she said, disappointed that her colleagues were not just staying put but far too preoccupied to have even heard her.

What is going on with Luca? Cat wondered, walking fast to she didn’t know where. And Ben has suggested a drink to Josh. Is that why my work is slow today? Because I’m disconcerted? Some time with Rachel will be good.

She found a small café, ordered a latte and made a conscious decision to devote no more time to fretting about Luca, Ben, beer and her fabricated boyfriend.

I must head back and wrap up my report.

‘The bunch devoured the final 20 k of tarmac in twenty minutes flat,’ Cat marvelled out loud.

A very chic lady, sitting at the neighbouring table with a tiny dog on her lap and a Chanel handbag by her feet, looked at Cat. ‘That touch of wheels,’ she said, clearing her throat as if to lighten her accent to complement her very good grasp of English, ‘when the road drops with 500 metres to go!’

Cat smiled and nodded and suddenly her closing paragraph was clear. She asked for the bill but the lady waved her hand and insisted on paying. ‘Tomorrow,’ she asked Cat, ‘what are your thoughts?’

‘Keep an eye on Tyler Hamilton,’ Cat said.

‘Bonne chance, mademoiselle,’ the lady said.

‘Bonne chance, Tyler Hamilton!’ Cat laughed.

Cat slips back into the salle de pressé unnoticed by Josh and Alex, by anyone really. She doesn’t mind. She has work to do. She skims through the first chunk of her article and raps out the concluding paragraph with speed.

A touch of wheels with 500 m to go brought down the section of the peloton containing nearly all the key sprinters. While the speed meisters untangled themselves from each other, their lead-out men hammered ahead unaware. Luckily for Chris Boardman’s Crédit Agricole team, Australian Stuart O’Grady was not down under and utilized an excellent if wholly unintended lead-out from Zucca MV’s Gianni Fugallo to take the Stage. Fugallo looked simultaneously staggered and quite horrified to see the befreckled Antipode on his wheel instead of his dark duke Stefano Sassetta. Jesper Lomers and Stefano Sassetta hold on to the yellow and green jerseys respectively. The next two Stages will suit them well but the Time Trial on Saturday will suit their team leaders Fabian Ducasse and Vasily Jawlensky better.

<ENDS>

‘How bizarre,’ Cat says aloud, laying her palms on the trestle table and leaning back in the plastic chair.

‘Huh?’ mumbles Josh, swigging from one of the three Coke cans lined up in front of him.

‘You wha’?’ Alex mutters, not looking up from his laptop.

‘The Time Trial is on Saturday,’ Cat proclaims in a tone of disbelief. Her colleagues regard her. ‘Today is Wednesday – right?’ Alex and Josh look at each other. ‘How amazing!’ Cat declares.

‘What the fuck are you on?’ Alex asks, regarding her two cans of Orangina and a fairly decimated packet of Petit Beurre biscuits.

‘I forgot all about days,’ Cat says, offering the biscuits to the men. ‘To me, today is Stage 4, the day after tomorrow is Stage 6. None of this Saturday Sunday Solomon Grundy nonsense.’

‘Welcome to the Tour,’ Josh says, realizing he would have had no idea what day it was had he been asked.

‘What are you going to be like when we hit altitude?’ Alex teases affectionately, cramming a whole biscuit in his mouth, rubbing his hands and returning his fingers to the keyboard.

‘Is Taverner going to let me get away with “dark duke Sassetta”?’ Cat wonders. Josh roars with laughter. Alex buries his face in his hands.

Jesper Lomers and Fabian Ducasse walk down their hotel corridor to Jules Le Grand’s room to which they have been summoned for a strategy meeting. Apart from riding for the same team and being pretty much the same height, similarities between the two end there. The Dutchman is blond and brawny, the Frenchman dark and lithe; Jesper is courteous and temperate with the team, the peloton, the media, Fabian is indiscriminately temperamental. Jesper exudes a modesty for his successes, for which he is universally admired; Fabian’s arrogance when victorious augments his magnetic appeal. Jesper will actively try to put anyone at their ease (‘I’m just a guy who can ride a bike,’ he shrugged to Alex who interviewed him after his victory at Milan–San Remo), whereas Fabian relishes the fact that his stature and demeanour are famously intimidating (‘En Français!’ he demanded witheringly of Josh who merely wanted to congratulate him on winning the Dauphiné Libéré). Though they have little in common on a personal level, they are good colleagues, respectful of each other’s strengths and supportive during and after racing.

‘I am keeping the maillot jaune warm for you,’ comments Jesper, who knows he can never win the Tour de France.

‘Green’s more your colour,’ Fabian laughs, with deference to Jesper’s consistency as a rider – the domain of the maillot vert contender. Jesper knocks on Jules’s door but Fabian opens it and walks straight in.

If I venture out of my room, Cat considered, in her small room in a nondescript motorlodge on the ring road of Chardin, I might come across Luca or Ben. She unpacked the entire contents of her rucksack, hanging as many garments as she could. I don’t really want to see either as I really don’t know what to make of them. If I stay here all night, I’ll forfeit my drink with Rachel – which I’d really like to have.

She ran a bath, squirting in a little shampoo to give the semblance of bubble bath.

Luca bloody Jones. Was that humour or was I missing the point? Or did I have the point perfectly? Mind you, at least he’d like to give me one, which is more than can be said for his doctor.

Her bath was ready. The phone rang. It was Josh, informing her that he and Alex were driving in to town for dinner in half an hour.

‘I’m not really hungry,’ Cat said, ‘I stuffed myself at the press buffet and then all those biscuits.’

‘Are you OK?’ Josh enquired.

‘I’m fine,’ Cat said.

That’s kind of him.

‘Are you sure?’ Josh pressed.

‘Honestly,’ Cat stressed, suddenly wondering if his probing had a motive.

‘Women’s things?’ Josh attempted.

No, he’s just being kind.

‘Yes,’ said Cat smiling, glad that she didn’t have him wrong, ‘women’s things.’

After her bath, swathed in a towel pleasingly luxurious for the rating of the hotel, Cat phoned reception for Rachel’s room number. There was no reply from the soigneur’s quarters.

She’s probably in the team bus, preparing for tomorrow. I’ll get dressed and go for a recce.

‘Luca Jones!’ Ben exclaimed, coming across the rider in the foyer.

‘Hey, Doc,’ said Luca, ‘I’m fucking knackered.’

‘Have an early night, then,’ Ben said, as if to an imbecile, ‘it’s almost eight thirty.’

‘I’m waiting,’ Luca said.

‘For what?’ Ben asked.

‘For my journaliste,’ Luca said.

‘Who?’ Ben asked.

‘The lovely pussy Cat,’ Luca said openly.

‘I hope you don’t call her that to her face,’ Ben exclaimed.

‘Yeah,’ Luca said, ‘I tried but she didn’t seem to like it. I went for Gatto. She did say she’d rather just be a simple Cat but I won’t listen.’

‘Why are you waiting?’ Ben asked. ‘When are you meeting?’

‘Yesterday I asked her to come to me if she wanted one. This morning, I told her if she found me tonight, she could have it.’

Ben stared at him. ‘You said what?’

‘That I’d give her one,’ the rider shrugged, ‘a long one even. Somewhere quiet, I told her. After supper.’

‘You said that?’ Ben asked, not able to mask amazement.

‘Sure,’ Luca shrugged, ‘she told me she was shagged last night.’ Ben’s jaw dropped. ‘So,’ Luca continued, ‘perhaps tonight.’

‘And she’s on for it?’ Ben enquired nonchalantly.

Luca looked at him in amazement. ‘She’s a fucking journaliste – why wouldn’t she want an exclusive interview with Luca Fucking Jones? Man!’

Ben bit back laughter, nodded sincerely and then walked away.

I must find her. This is too good to miss. She can’t not go to Luca Fucking Jones if he wants to give her a big one somewhere private.

If I take the stairs, Cat theorizes, I can avoid bumping into anything I’d rather not.

She takes the stairs, forgetting it is the mode by which Ben chooses to travel upwards. She is humming the jingle played each day at the village. She skips down a flight, turns a landing, skips down another and all but collides with Ben on the next landing.

‘Miss McCabe,’ he says, staring at her measuredly, his hands on her shoulders to steady her but, in reality, making her quiver all the more.

‘Oh,’ says Cat, not able to look anywhere but right at him, ‘Ben.’

‘Where are you skipping to, all merry?’ he asks, removing just one hand from her shoulder.

‘I’m going to find Rachel McEwen,’ Cat says, wanting him to take away his other hand but also to leave it put. ‘We’re going to have a quick drink.’

‘A quick one,’ Ben plays with a wry half-smile. Cat frowns fleetingly. ‘And young Luca?’ Ben asks.

‘Luca?’ Cat responds, regarding Ben warily.

‘He tells me he’s going to give you one,’ Ben informs her, ‘this evening.’

Cat bites her lip. ‘I know,’ she says quietly.

‘What exactly did my rider say?’ Ben asks sternly, his voice low and doctorly and coursing through the blood in Cat’s veins like a tonic.

She drops her gaze to his lips fleetingly then regards him full on. ‘Your young rider invited me to come and find him tonight if I wanted it – that he’d take me somewhere quiet and give me a long one.’

‘Cat McCabe,’ Ben breathes, ‘my rider is waiting for you in the foyer. He needs an early night. He needs minimal exertion. I think I’ll join you both on this one. Come on.’ Ben takes her elbow. ‘I promise to be just a silent observer.’

Cat is too stunned to respond, let alone stand her ground or insist on her intended path to Rachel.

‘Do you use a gadget?’ Ben asks, innocently enough. ‘The riders usually prefer them – it makes it so much quicker and smoother.’ He looks at Cat. ‘Don’t you agree?’

Poor girl – I am a sod.

In the foyer, Ben and Cat come across Luca talking to Rachel.

‘Hey, Cat,’ Rachel says. Luca stares intently at the journaliste who is trying to transmit to the soigneur desperate pleas for assistance via eye flickers, lip twitching and general woman-to-woman telepathy.

‘Luca tells me he’s having you to himself for a while,’ Rachel says. ‘I’ll meet you in the bar. How long will you be, Luca?’

‘As long as it takes,’ Luca replies, looking adoringly at the journaliste. ‘It’s up to my feline friend, hey?’

‘He won’t last long,’ Rachel whispers to Cat. ‘God knows why he wants to do it now – he’s shagged already.’ She winks. ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ she says to Luca and Cat, ‘see you in a while.’

Ben is hovering.

‘You want to join us?’ Luca asks him begrudgingly.

‘Cat?’ Ben asks her. She does not know where to look, what to do. She turns her head towards the bar. She cannot see Rachel.

‘You have that thing?’ Luca asks her, ‘the machine? The batteries?’

Cat shakes her head and upends empty palms. She is wearing an obviously pocketless tube skirt. She looks down, wondering if her knees are knocking. Certainly they feel that they are.

‘Oh,’ Luca says, ‘why not? It’s better for you, no? Personally, I like the machine – I prefer it that way – and it is better for you, no? The results are stronger, in my experience.’

Ben can’t bear it any longer. He is about to laugh uncontrollably and Cat looks like she is about to weep. ‘Call yourself a journaliste?’ he goads her gently, giving her shoulder a little shove. ‘It’s part of the job, isn’t it?’

Cat regards him blankly.

Bloody fucking men. I’m in the wrong fucking job.

‘Necessary equipment?’ Ben furthers, captivated by the sight of her heaving chest.

She’s not wearing a bra.

‘A dic-ta-phone?’ he enunciates clearly.

‘Ah!’ Luca responds cheerfully, ‘that’s the sodding word – dictaphone.’

‘How are you going to remember Luca giving you a long one if you don’t have a dictaphone?’ Ben asks her, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow.

Cat’s jaw drops. She looks from one man to the other. Luca with his lovely, boy-beautiful open face; Ben, handsome and magnetizing. She could cry.

I could kiss them both.

But of course, she does not. She gives Luca a gentle shove. Then she gives Ben a sly, sideways glance coupled with a fleeting squeeze to his biceps. Just to steady herself. Just to feel. An exploratory squeeze? A gesture of gratitude? She’s not about to tell us, she’s far too absorbed by the fact that Ben’s hands are lightly at her waist and he has kissed very quickly, just catching the tip of her earlobe with his lips.

‘Luca,’ she beams, ‘you know what? I do want my dictaphone – and I want to speak to my boss about the slant of the interview. It’s late – it’s nine o’clock. Tomorrow is a short but intense Stage for you, the first Time Trial is looming too. I want you to have a good sleep,’ she says, looking from Luca to Ben and then moving back to Luca, ‘more than I want you to give me your big one in private.’

‘You are so much more than a journaliste,’ Luca praises her, ‘you care.’

‘I care about every pro cyclist,’ Cat says honestly, ‘you’re my heroes.’

Luca loves the compliment. ‘A good idea,’ he agrees, ‘let’s do it properly, let’s do it after the Time Trial. I’m going to bed. Buona notte.’

‘Good night,’ says Ben.

‘Sweet dreams,’ Cat says, waving as the rider disappears into the lift. ‘You’re a sod,’ Cat says to Ben, her eyes fixed straight ahead.

‘I couldn’t resist,’ says Ben, gazing at her neck.

Eyes meet and fuse.

Is it chemistry? Cat wonders, patting a hand unconsciously against the butterflies rampaging around her stomach. Ben’s lips part slightly as his gaze burrows further into her.

‘Cat,’ he says. She purses her lips and then licks them, observing how it releases his eyes from hers to focus on her mouth. ‘You’re having a drink with Rachel.’ It is a statement and not a query.

Cat nods.

‘I’m having a drink with Josh and Alex,’ Ben says.

Cat nods again. She clears her throat.

‘We could join forces,’ she suggests.

‘We could,’ Ben answers, ‘but where’s the fun in that? I’d rather have you to myself.’

His tone is matter of fact. His eyes have her captive again. ‘Another time,’ he says. He smiles at her and then heads off into the bar. Cat remains stock still.

Chemistry. Undeniably. I don’t need my O Level to tell me so.

But yesterday?

The podium girl?

He held her face and looked into her eyes?

Maybe he’s morally inept.

The thing is, my desire is so strong I’d probably sleep with him regardless. What would that make me? And where would that leave me? And what if Josh tells him about my non-existent boyfriend?

It was a relief to be with Rachel. Cat chose to sit with her back to Ben, Alex and Josh, who were at the other side of the bar. The room was crowded and noisy. Rachel was relaxed and she and Cat chatted easily, whiling away the evening, sipping Seize and eating garlicky olives. By the time they suggested they really ought to retire, they knew each other well. Well enough to kiss goodnight, to look forward to seeing each other the next day, to hoping that there’d be many more occasions both during the Tour and after when, as friends, they could indulge again in each other’s company.

Cat is knackered, shagged, bush-whacked, simply exhausted and desperate to ‘push some zeds’. She’s made the fateful move of flopping on to her bed fully clothed and is tempted to greet sleep dressed as such. So what if she hasn’t cleaned her teeth? So what if she hasn’t checked whether her mobile phone needs charging? So what if she hasn’t examined tomorrow’s route or found where she needs to be and when?

I’m so tired. What a day. Fucking Luca Jones. Bloody Ben York. Lovely Josh. Inimitable Alex. Fantastic Rachel. I’ll just have a quick shut-eye. Just for a mo’ or two.

No you won’t. You’ll sit bolt upright at the sound of knocking at your door. You’ll check your watch. It’s almost midnight. Heed the advice of Emma O’Reilly, the soigneur’s soigneur, passed down to you by your friend Rachel.

Yes, but it’s not midnight for another seven minutes.

Cat pads over to the door. There is no spy hole.

‘Hullo?’ she asks, through the wood, her hand hovering over the handle.

‘It’s me,’ comes the unmistakable voice of Ben York.

Oh fuck.

Cat bites her lip and regards her left hand on the door knob.

What do I do now?

It’s six minutes to midnight. You’re wasting time.

Cat opens the door a little and looks up to Ben’s face slowly, via his legs, quickly over his crotch, his torso, his gorgeous strong neck, over his chin, hesitating at his lips – parted and dark – and suddenly swiftly upwards, on and into his gaze.

‘What do you want?’ Cat asks softly.

‘What do you want?’ Ben echoes. They stare at each other. ‘I need to give you something,’ he is saying, making to take a step forward as Cat instinctively takes a step back. He has crossed the threshold. It’s OK. Midnight is still a few minutes off. He is inside the room. It’s OK. The door has not quite closed. ‘I need to give you something,’ he repeats, ‘before it is offered to you by anyone else.’ He steps towards her, glances down at her bare feet, up to her knees, lingers over her breasts. With one hand, he gently holds her neck so that his thumb is at the base of her throat, his index finger is behind her ear and the remaining fingers are encircling the back of her neck. Cat can’t breathe. He can detect her quickening pulse.

Fuck. It must be midnight.

No, not quite.

Ben dips his face down a little, comes closer, their clothing touches. He takes her wrist with his other hand and puts his lips against hers. They alight softly for just a fraction of a second and seem to heat on impact. Suddenly Ben is kissing Cat so intensely and she finds herself responding likewise. She’s grasping his neck. She’s grabbing his trousers. She’s pulled him against her and has herself been thrust against the wall. They are tonguing each other with abandon. Cat can taste toothpaste. Ben can detect beer, garlic. Who gives a fuck? They taste fantastic to each other. Ben pulls away.

‘I wanted to give you that,’ he says hoarsely, ‘I’ve been carrying it around with me since I first saw you.’ Staring at her, he backs out of the room and does not relinquish eye contact until the door is closed completely.

Cat regards the door. She takes the fingers of one hand to her lips, she places her other hand between her legs. She’s throbbing, she’s on fire; everywhere. She glances at her watch. It’s midnight.

STAGE 5
Nantes-Pradier. 210 kilometres

‘Cat? It’s Andy – from Maillot. Is this a good time?’

A good time? It couldn’t be better. I’m having a fantastic time, here in Nantes, in a particularly opulent village on a glorious morning, awaiting the off for the fifth Stage of this year’s Tour de France. It’s a shorter Stage today – which is a good job really, as Ben York has just brushed past me, turned and winked, and I can hardly wait for later, that we might track each other down long before midnight.

‘I can call back later,’ Andy was saying, ‘if it isn’t.’

‘It’s fine, Andy,’ Cat said. ‘How are you? I’m brilliant.’

‘You are, are you?’ Andy responded. ‘Now, podium girls.’

‘They’re nothing,’ said Cat absent-mindedly, grinning as she placed herself far higher on Ben’s dais in her mind’s eye.

‘Sorry?’ said Andy.

‘What?’ said Cat.

‘No go, I’m afraid,’ Andy said, ‘we don’t feel there’s enough substance – not what the readers of Maillot want.’

Cat felt momentarily deflated, but then she heard Luca’s name being announced at the signing-on stage.

‘How about an exclusive interview with Luca Jones?’ she suggested brightly. ‘He’s keen. It’s all organized.’

‘Luca?’ said Andy. ‘Farrand did one last month – of course, he’s fluent in Italian. It’s coming out next issue.’

‘Oh,’ said Cat, ‘but mine would be different.’

‘How?’

‘A mid-Tour analysis?’ Cat clutched. ‘A woman’s perspective sort of thing?’

‘Sorry, Cat,’ Andy said, ‘just bad timing on that one. Look, your reports are good – I’m sure we’ll be able to find you something here at the end of it all.’

Cat went cold. ‘You mean the Features Editorship isn’t in the bag?’

‘We agreed it would be dependent on the quality of your race reports,’ said Andy, now sounding disconcertingly officious.

‘But you just said they were good,’ Cat all but whispered.

‘They are,’ Andy reassured her, ‘they’re excellent – even the “dark duke Sassetta” stuff. But the job is dependent on whether or not it exists, you see. Nothing personal.’

‘No,’ said Cat, quite cross and taking it personally, ‘I don’t see.’

‘We’re having something of a reshuffle – the staff, the layout – everything. But don’t worry – I’d love to have you in some capacity.’

‘OK,’ said Cat, appalled that she sounded so grateful and meek.

I’m bloody worth more than that.

‘Do you mind if I continue to bombard you with my ideas?’ Cat asked, wincing at her tone of near-desperate deference.

Andy laughed. ‘I wouldn’t expect anything less from you,’ he said.

Some hours later, Cat was feeling stressed and distracted in the salle de pressé, today a large marquee set up in the grand municipal park of Pradier. Josh and Alex had no advice for her – they assured her that her ideas for articles were sound, that no one at Maillot was remotely sexist.

‘You’ve chosen to fall in love with a minority sport in Britain,’ Josh said, by way of explanation, ‘that’s all.’

‘The audience is limited,’ Alex furthered, quite serious for once, ‘and there are more than enough freelancers touting ideas.’

‘With a track record,’ Josh elaborated, no offence intended or taken.

‘Stephen Farrand lives in Italy and has been involved with the sport for some time – if he interviews Luca Jones, editors know what they’ll get. They don’t know what they’ll get with you,’ said Alex.

‘Why can’t they give me a fucking chance?’ Cat declared.

‘Because that’s mag publishing in Britain,’ Alex shrugged. ‘Took me fucking ages.’

‘Me too,’ said Josh. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure something will turn up.’

‘Jesus Fucking Christ,’ Alex shouted whilst around them, journalists fulminated equivalent blasphemies in their own languages. Everyone turned to the TV sets and stared. Riders were piling into each other, a couple were flung right out from the bunch, their bodies still attached to their bikes. Riders were lying all over the road, strewn like litter. They were in the ditches to the side, they were on top of each other. One somersaulted straight over the mêlée and landed smack on top of a flung bike. The salle de pressé watched in silent horror.

Not only the TV cameras and those of the press were trained on the carnage – an elderly lady stood in the road transfixed, her camera at her eye but her finger hovering above the shutter button. She’d only wanted to take a photo, that’s all. She’s from San Diego, here on holiday. Just wanted a snap of the bike race, that’s all. Didn’t mean to be a distraction. Didn’t mean to be a menace. Didn’t know the speed would be so fast. Didn’t mean for the men to fall off their bikes. Are they meant to do that? Is it like American football – part of the entertainment? Sure is exciting, and all.

The TV cameras, simultaneously vulturine yet providing essential service, focused mercilessly on the tangle of limbs and spokes. Gradually, the riders extricated themselves, retrieving their arms and legs from the knot of others, picking themselves up, sorting out their injuries and their bikes; spinning wheels, rubbing muscles, changing tyres. Most were remounted, pedalling off with a helpful running shove from their team mechanics or neutral service men. Two riders remained down. A Système Vipère rider was one of them, the snake encircling his body staring blankly at the TV cameras.

‘Ducasse!’ the murmur went round the salle de pressé.

‘Fabian!’ Cat exclaimed in horror.

Merde. I have to get up. I don’t want to eat tarmac. It tastes like shit. I must finish in the first group – as I have every day. I don’t want to lose a second before the Time Trial. It will make no difference if I do, but it would piss me off. I want my margin in the Time Trial to set the tone for the rest of the race. That is why I have ridden quietly this week, I have made no noise yet still I am up there, top ten. The day after tomorrow, I will take the lead. My body is so strong now, ready to Time Trial, eager to climb, fit to take me to the podium in Paris. So, Fabian, up you get. Carefully.

‘Ça va?’ the race doctor asks the rider, helping him to his feet. Ducasse looks himself over, straightens himself. Ça va? That’s a good question. How does he feel? Not broken but, having been hurled on to tarmac at 42 kph, somewhat winded all the same. But broken? Injured? No. At least, not enough not to go on. Jules Le Grand is at Fabian’s side, not saying anything, just standing tall in nubuck loafers the colour of Fabian’s bronzed legs. The directeur’s mind is racing – much faster, much harder than hitherto any of his riders have. And yet, there is nothing he can say or do – only Ducasse’s body can dictate what will happen next. It is one of the few things over which the directeur sportif of Système Vipère has absolutely no control.

‘Vélo?’ Ducasse says quietly at last, contemplating the somewhat mangled remains of his bike lying some metres away. Freddy Verdonk, who did not fall but has hung back to remain with his leader, pushes his own bike forward. Freddy rides anyway not at his measurements but at those of his leader so that he can be on standby for an occasion like this when it is quicker for Ducasse to change on to his faithful domestique’s bike. Verdonk can wait for his mechanic to bring a replacement. Patience and humility, rare in a team leader, being the defining qualities of the domestique.

The salle de pressé watch in hushed anticipation as Fabian Ducasse remounts. The race doctor is now looking him over, somewhat cursorily, as if Ducasse is a car that has been merely pranged. The wadge of gauze taped to the side of Ducasse’s knee will last the Stage through. This evening, the wound can be looked at more thoroughly. There is no reason why Ducasse shouldn’t carry on. Nothing is broken, not least his spirit. Jules Le Grand places his hand on Ducasse’s lower back and runs, pushing the rider for a few metres. Verdonk is given no helping hand; that’s OK, he doesn’t need it, he is the helping hand. Cat and the journalists watch in hushed reverence as Ducasse and Verdonk make their way through the convoy of team cars, past a posse of riders at the back, up and through a string of stragglers hanging like a tail to the back of the main bunch. Système Vipère are back in the race. Ducasse has lost no time at all; moreover he has gained publicity, popularity and respect. People will want to watch for him tomorrow, every day, a force to be reckoned with; they’ll be looking out for him, wishing him success. Hero.

The cameras pan back. The other rider is still on the tarmac, sitting up, hunched, head in hands. The woman from San Diego finally presses the shutter on her camera.

‘I got Bobby J!’ she says delighted to her husband. ‘That’s cool – I got Bobby J!’

In more ways than one.

Bobby Julich tries to stand. He manages it but he cannot walk. He is out of the race. His Tour stops here, but not his reputation. A battle-broken body leaves his heroism intact. There’s next year.

On the other side of the road, the cameras focus momentarily on two figures. One is an old farmer standing very still, clasping his cloth cap to his heart. The other is a young boy standing by his small, basic bike, holding on to the handlebars hard. His mouth is open, his eyes are huge. When I grow up, I will cycle the Tour de France. I will be that brave. I will be a hero.

It was just one more crash in the Tour de France but for Cat, the image of Ducasse fallen and then up and away, of Julich down and then stretchered away, lay resonant in her mind’s eye constantly. If the Stage had been as exciting, as traumatic, as exhausting for a mere journalist to experience, how can it have been for the riders? The atmosphere in the salle de pressé was thick and intense. It was also too hot, and somewhat odoriferous. Too many men with a dwindling awareness of personal hygiene, a slackening interest in the merits of laundry, an increasing appetite for nicotine and, Cat detected, for garlic sausages.

‘I need some air,’ she told Alex and Josh, ‘coming?’

‘Bring us a Coke, will you?’ Alex asked.

‘Just Evian for me,’ said Josh, eyeing up the line of empty cans in front of him.

It was still incredibly hot. Inland now, and with very little breeze, the peloton were currently racing in 30 degrees. Having been seated herself for almost three hours, Cat was stiff and sticky. Walking slowly amongst the trees, she chose a sturdy old trunk to lean her hands against, stretching out first her right leg then her left behind her. Then she picked up each foot in turn to hold against her bottom, giving the fronts of her thighs a good stretch. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her head very slowly about her neck. She reached up high above her head with arms extended, relishing the feeling of release from the pull on her waist. She swooped her arms down in an arc, holding them out horizontally at shoulder height before clasping them behind her back and pulling upwards. She held her pose and breathed deeply, her eyes closed.

‘Fantastic tits, Catriona McCabe,’ said Ben York desirously, feeling the objects of his adulation gently and swiftly before Cat could open her eyes in amazement. She grabbed her breasts protectively, glanced around aghast for fear of witnesses, and had no idea how to respond.

‘Cat,’ she corrected, indignantly.

Ben held her face and kissed her lips, flicking his tongue tip over them before standing back and grinning at her broadly.

‘Ready to play?’ Ben asked. Cat shook her head solemnly. Ben regarded his watch and then raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d timetabled you in,’ he said, ‘my only free slot, young girl.’

‘I haven’t finished my work yet,’ Cat apologized, ‘old boy.’

‘Fresh air and a banana,’ Ben proclaimed, ‘brain food – mark my words.’

‘Trust me, I’m a doctor?’ Cat cajoled. Ben acquiesced with a tilt of his head. ‘Well, here’s the fresh air,’ Cat continued, ‘and I’ll grab a banana from the buffet. Promise.’

‘Let’s go and sit somewhere,’ Ben suggested, his hand lightly at the small of Cat’s back, guiding her through the park, down a deserted narrow side-street and to a small tabac on the corner with just two tables outside.

‘How much caffeine have you had today?’ Ben asked. Subconsciously, Cat pulled her bottom lip through her top teeth as she thought. When it sprung out, Ben’s mouth was there. He bit her bottom lip and then sucked it quickly. His eyes open, observing that hers were closed. Cat had to sit down.

‘Five,’ she said at length.

‘Five?’ Ben asked. ‘Out of five? Out of ten – are you grading my osculation?’

‘Coffees,’ Cat explained, licking her lips to lap up the taste of him.

Your kissing is way off any scale I know.

‘You’re on the Tour de France,’ Ben said gravely, ‘you’re over the caffeine limit.’ He ordered two citron pressés. ‘Had a good day?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Cat forlornly, ‘poor Fabian, poor Bobby.’

‘But you,’ Ben stressed, ‘how’s your day been, journaliste McCabe?’

‘Not so good, Ben, not so good.’ Cat explained to him the uncertainties at Maillot in great detail. ‘I’m brimming with ideas and overflowing with passion.’ Ben raised his eyebrows in delight. ‘Seriously,’ Cat implored, punching him gently, jolting his glass and causing a dribble of citron pressé to course down his chin. She took her forefinger to it, ran it up to his lips and let him suck it. ‘I’d justified following the entire Tour as having supreme purpose: a dream job at the end of it. Now that is uncertain, being here feels like an indulgence. I’m barely covering my costs.’

‘Don’t go home,’ Ben said seriously. Cat’s look of utter distaste at the thought brought the doctor instant relief. ‘There are so many people here,’ he continued, ‘something’ll come up.’

‘Would Luca mind me interviewing him after the Time Trial?’ Cat asked. ‘Even if I can’t guarantee a publication date?’

‘Luca,’ Ben proclaimed, ‘would be delighted. Where are you staying tonight?’

‘I don’t know,’ Cat said. ‘Josh knows all that stuff. I just take my rucksack from his car to a different but basically interchangeable room each night.’

‘Well, I’m staying at the Ibis. Room 324. Finish your work, feed and bathe and revive yourself and then come to me. I’m going to have another pressé,’ said Ben.

‘I’d better have that banana,’ said Cat, feeling a little giddy. She rose and thanked Ben, leaning down to kiss his cheek and then taking her lips to his and giving him a hint of the tongue she intended to use to great effect in room 324 of the Hôtel Ibis later. He gazed after her as she walked away.

She looks quite lovely in shorts. And how I’d love to run my finger tips ever so lightly over the imprint the woven plastic chair has left on the backs of her thighs.

Ben looked at his watch. There was just time to enjoy his pressé before he went in search of Didier LeDucq’s soigneur to discuss the rider’s health.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CA TRIONA McCABE IN PRADIER

On a day when it seemed at times too hot for even the sunflowers to keep their heads up, the peloton rolled out of Nantes today at 11 a.m. this morning when it was 25 degrees in the shade, travelling south before scooping inland to Pradier. By lunch-time, when the bunch streamed past the feed station at Doré to pluck the cloth musettes filled with victuals held out by their soigneurs, it was over 30 degrees. It was here, at the 100 km mark, that Tyler Hamilton (US Postal) flew off, as if he had suddenly traded his bicycle for a 900 cc motorbike. The bunch were either too engrossed in the contents of their musettes or too sensible to exert themselves in such heat and so early in the race, Hamilton was thus left alone to establish a lead that at one time was just over 7 minutes. He needed to win by 1 minute 15 seconds to claim the yellow jersey. In the last 30 km, the peloton somewhat begrudgingly began to work to close the gap. Hamilton came in with 2 seconds to spare, the maillot jaune was his. Stefano Sassetta, lying a sulky second, is still triumphant in the green jersey two points ahead of arch rival Jesper Lomers. Jesper, however, lies two placings higher than his Italian adversary in the overall standings.

A horrendous crash at 34 km, just after the first sprint point at Courbet, took Bobby Julich not just out of contention but out of the race altogether. Fabian Ducasse was lucky; his was but a taste, albeit unsavoury, of tarmac. If he is sore tonight, racing to Bordeaux tomorrow will ease his joints and restore him for the Time Trial on Saturday when he will throw down the gauntlet to Zucca’s Vasily Jawlensky. Vasily has been as enigmatic as ever; keeping a low profile, riding quietly, steering away from the action, the cameras and Fabian Ducasse. He lies in twelfth place, just 18 seconds behind Fabian.

Tomorrow’s Stage will be the last opportunity for the pure sprinters to display their daredevilry and thrust their stuff at the finishing line before the toil of the Time Trial and the misery of the mountains will send some of them home.

<ENDS>

‘I need something,’ Cat wails, ‘can I have a quote?’ she asks Alex.

He rifles through his notepad and shrugs, ‘Can’t help you – I’m having enough trouble making mine fit.’

‘You owe me one,’ Josh says, moving his chair nearer to her. ‘I got Lomers at the media scrum. He said, “Good for Tyler. Strength is a system of will and fitness – he has the maillot jaune because he deserves it.” I’m using it, but you can too – there were quite a few people around him.’

‘Josh,’ said Cat whilst typing in the quote at the end of her report, ‘I love you.’

Josh looked rather pleased with himself. Alex looked somewhat taken aback and, after a surreptitious flick through his notebook, a little deflated too.

I need something, Fabian Ducasse thought to himself. I was down on the ground tasting dirt – that’s no place for me to be.

His body was sore and his psyche felt bruised. Sure, his soigneur could tend to the former, Jules Le Grand the latter, but Fabian knew his requirements better than anyone. He had to feel on top, in control; that he was a man who could dominate anything he wished. He needed to reassert his strength, his supremacy. He regarded himself in the mirror in his hotel bathroom. He needed a shave. More importantly, he needed to rid himself of the hint of unease he alone could detect in his eyes. Easy. It would take one thing. He pulled a baseball cap on low, donned sunglasses and a non-branded sweatshirt. He regarded his reflection again and nodded. He still needed a shave but he liked what he saw. He phoned one of the Système Vipère mechanics and demanded to be driven across Nantes to an insalubrious area he had discovered on a race some years ago, and had subsequently revisited on a few occasions since.

‘Wait around there,’ he ordered, watching until the mechanic was out of sight before opening a front door without knocking. Of course it was open. It was a brothel.

Fabian was out less than quarter of an hour later, the swagger in his step reflected in the burning glow of his steady eyes. He licked his lips and than spat in the gutter. He felt much better. Restored. And look! Only 8.45 p.m. He’d be asleep in an hour.

Cat was in her hotel room, doing as Ben had requested. She’d finished her work, wolfed down steak frites with Alex and Josh at a small brasserie just near their hotel, she had just had a shower and was contemplating what to wear and quite when to sneak out to the Hôtel Ibis when her mobile phone rang.

‘Darling?’

‘Django!’

‘Cat, my girl,’ Django said, ‘you sound quite awful.’

Cat was taken aback. ‘I feel,’ she told him, ‘fine. More than fine.’

‘Well,’ Django said, ‘you sound lousy. How is it all going? It was fantastically exciting today – all those bodies all over the place – and then that Yankee bloke winning.’

Cat smiled: that her passion for cycling should be so contagious was a delight. ‘I prophesied that – good old Tyler. It was a terrific Stage. Tomorrow should be more of the same – though rain is forecast here. How are Fen and Pip?’

‘Hooked!’ Django proclaimed. ‘We speak just before the programme starts, catch up briefly during the adverts and then have a full post-Stage analysis straight after. Are you eating? You do sound terrible.’

‘I’m fine,’ Cat pleads, ‘I just had steak and chips.’

‘I made pizza tonight,’ Django says proudly. ‘I had some bread that was going a bit off so I tore it up, added a little oil and beaten egg and a drop of ketchup, formed it into a base and baked the bugger.’

‘And?’ Cat asked, somewhat horrified.

‘Fantastic,’ Django swooned. ‘I added a topping of sardines, chicken liver, a little more ketchup and some Stilton.’

‘And?’ ventured Cat, clutching her stomach.

‘If I say so myself,’ Django proclaimed, ‘absolutely delicious. I’ll make it for you girls when you’re next here all together,’ he continued, ‘perhaps garnish it with a few pickled walnuts.’

‘Can’t wait,’ said Cat sincerely, about the visit more than the meal.

‘Darling girl,’ her uncle was saying, bringing her back from her family in Matlock to the bedroom in the hotel, ‘you really don’t sound good.’

‘I’m fine,’ Cat said, feeling her forehead and poking out her tongue at the mirror for good measure.

‘Well,’ said Django, ‘I rather think you should go and see the doctor.’

Cat and Django were quiet. As Cat watched herself break into a smile, she heard her uncle’s triumphant sniggers.

‘That is precisely what I’m about to do,’ she said.

‘Can I tell your sisters?’ Django asked.

‘If you can name the maillot jaune,’ Cat demanded.

‘Tyler Hamilton,’ Django replied, as if she was dim, ‘fellow US Postman Jonathan Vaughters is in polka dot and Stefano Sassetta in green. Must go, I have two phone calls to make.’

‘And I have a doctor’s appointment to keep,’ Cat said.

Cat needed to be incognito. Though she would have loved to have worn her floaty short bias-cut skirt and clingy little top, she opted for cream jeans and a denim shirt. She remembered Fen’s advice and chose underwear that gave her walk a wiggle and her eyes a sparkle. She took the fire escape stairs, ducked out into the night and walked very quickly down a number of streets just to put some distance between her and anyone who might know her. When she found a quiet bar and asked the whereabouts of the Hôtel Ibis, she discovered she had charged off in completely the wrong direction. Her composure remained intact and she enjoyed the walk to Ben’s hotel.

In the car park, she noted that the Cofidis team was staying there too and wondered if many journalists would be loitering for news on Bobby Julich. She could see the foyer clearly and that a number of people were milling about. She circumnavigated the building, found a side door, said a quick prayer that the entrance would not be alarmed and gave a pull. She was inside. She scaled the stairs. When she came to what she deduced to be the third floor, she stopped. She pressed herself against the wall, turning her cheeks one at a time against the cool concrete.

My heart is going fifty to the dozen. Am I about to have sex? It’s been so long – since I’ve had sex with a man other than Him, since I’ve had sex full stop. Shit, I don’t have any condoms – I’ll be telling Ben ‘if it’s not On, it’s not In’. Oh God, is this a good idea, a bad idea or a crazy idea? Is crazy good or bad? It’s ten past nine. Fuck, I’m excited. Deep breaths. Ready. Off I go. Wish me luck. And fun.

Cat is in the third-floor corridor of the Hôtel Ibis in Pradier. The carpet is new and makes the hallway smell vaguely like an aeroplane. She passes doors that are closed though sounds of life can be heard within: showers, television sets, animated conversation, singing. Then she passes doors that are shut but with the Megapac riders’ names tacked to them. There is nothing but silence emanating from these rooms. 329. Sweet dreams, Luca. 327. Other side, Cat. 328. How are you feeling, Didier? 326.

Oh God oh God oh God.

The door of room 324 is opening. A woman steps out into the corridor. She is laughing over her shoulder. She is out of the room. She turns back towards the door and waves; smiling, gorgeous. It’s the podium girl. The same one. The same fucking gorgeous, leggy, luscious woman. She’s laughing. She’s been in Ben’s room and now she’s leaving it, laughing. Not a hair out of place. Lips licked with lipstick, requisite almond eyes enhanced with a lash of mascara. She’s wearing a skirt shorter than that of her uniform. No daft hat to detract from her silken tresses. She’s been in Ben’s room, this vamp has. Number 324 at the Hôtel Ibis in Pradier. What is Cat meant to do? How is she meant to feel?

She feels sick. She turns on her heel and walks away, retracing every step that brought her here.

STAGE 6
Pradier-Bordeaux. 215 kilometres

‘Are you OK, Cat?’ Josh asked, handing her a can of Minute Maid orange juice at the Pradier village. ‘You look shagged.’

Cat couldn’t even be bothered to muse upon the irony to herself. ‘I didn’t sleep well,’ she told Josh.

‘Are you homesick?’ Josh asked gently.

‘Homesick?’ Cat retorted, banishing an intrusive image of her sisters from her mind. ‘No way. Not at all.’

Go away, Django. Derbyshire, be gone!

‘I am,’ said Josh, ‘I miss my wife and my dog.’

Oh Josh, why don’t I just tell you that again I feel I shouldn’t be here, that I feel a little fragile, that it’s exhausting to feel I’m constantly swinging from new confidence back down to plain old inconsequential.

Cat had no need to tell Josh any of this. He saw a tear smudge across her right eye and decided not to pry in case she broke down right then and there, in the middle of the village, twenty minutes before Stage 6 began, twenty yards away from five times Tour winner Bernard Hinault. But he did lay a hand on her arm and give it a conciliatory squeeze which made both of them feel a little better.

‘Let’s try and get behind a breakaway today,’ Josh suggested. ‘I’ll put money on some loopy Italian fucker going for broke.’

‘Look! There’s Vasily,’ Cat cooed, welcoming the all-encompassing distraction of the tall Russian tottering his bike through the throng of VIPs and media. They watched him ride to the barber’s booth where two other racers were having their hair cut.

‘Have you met Jawlensky?’ Josh asked her. Cat shook her head. ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you, he’s lovely.’ Cat looked at Josh and beamed. ‘Were you too tired to put your top on the right way round?’ Josh continued with a grin. Cat was horrified. Not only was her top inside out, it was back to front too. ‘Go and change,’ Josh said. ‘I assume you want to make an impression on Jawlensky – and the information that you’re a small, Dorothy Perkins, wash separately, no tumble dry, kind of girl might detract from your journalistic credentials.’

Cat went hastily to the women’s portaloo, smiling to herself that a Banesto rider came out of it with not so much as a shrug of apology, let alone a glimmer of embarrassment. If the men’s loos were engaged, why shouldn’t a rider have priority for any cubicle currently vacant?

Pro cyclists really do have the most uncouth urinary proclivities, Cat mused to herself as she took off her top, hitting her elbow against the formica partition and crying ‘merde!’ It’s a perverse reworking of Pavlov’s theory. Prior to the final départ bell, riders naturally use the conventional facilities – regardless of the gender ascribed to a cubicle. As soon as the bell has sounded, even if they’ve just emptied their bladders, the boys piss everywhere and in full view. Maybe Maillot would like a wry little piece about that? I’ll call them later.

Cat righted her top, cleared her throat, tucked her hair behind her ears and wondered if the Tour barbers could trim her fringe. She gave herself a supportive smile. She was going to be introduced to Vasily Jawlensky and she was more than ready to meet him.

She was not ready, however, to bump into Ben. But there he was, talking to Emma O’Reilly and Rachel, the two soigneurs and the doctor right in Cat’s path. It was impossible to pretend she hadn’t seen them, especially with Rachel calling to her. Cat waved swiftly and tapped at her watch and her brow to justify what she hoped was a plausible exit. At the entrance to the village a few metres later, a hand caught her by the shoulder.

‘Cat?’

Ben, of course.

‘Oh,’ Cat said, not establishing eye contact, ‘I can’t talk, I’m expected elsewhere.’

‘Where were you?’ Ben asked with a hint of rejection which made Cat want to hit him.

‘Where were you?’ she countered, brandishing her pass at the sentries on watch at the village entrance. Ben, of course, had a pass too.

‘I was waiting for you,’ Ben said, following her through, ‘I thought we had a date?’

Cat stopped, turned, and regarded him directly, wishing he wasn’t so handsome, nor that she should so crave a kiss right there and then. ‘You,’ she declared, ‘can have too much of a good thing.’ It irritated her that he should stare back and look perplexed.

Don’t play with me, Dr York.

‘Now excuse me,’ she ordered, turning and marching purposefully away.

Too much of a good thing? Ben pondered as he strolled back out of the village having high-fived Hunter on the way. What was she on about? How can I have had that if I’ve hardly had her at all.

‘Oh well,’ he said out loud, nodding to Jules Le Grand as he passed.

Maybe she just got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.

The fact that it wasn’t my bed means it was wrong, full stop.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CA TRIONA McCABE IN BORDEAUX

With the first Time Trial tomorrow, tension was high in the peloton today. It was the last chance for the pure sprinters to grab the limelight and also for the opportunists to make a name for themselves by making a break. The serious contenders needed to keep out of danger. Ominous cloud cover hung like a headache throughout the Stage but ultimately, all that rained down was trouble, giving practically every rider on this year’s Tour de France a liberal dousing.

‘Hung like a headache,’ Cat repeated out loud.

‘I’m hung like a horse,’ Alex quipped.

Josh regarded both his colleagues and looked baffled.

‘Clouds,’ Cat explained.

‘Oh,’ said Josh.

‘Maybe a pony then,’ said Alex, ‘if I’m honest.’

At 80 km, just after the Category 4 climb of Côtes de Morrisot, Max Sciandri (Le Français des Jeux) surged away with Paolo Gabicci (Zucca MV) and Franz Marc (Telekom) in keen pursuit. Lying in 51st place and 1 minute 52 behind the yellow jersey of Tyler Hamilton, it was not unfeasible for Sciandri to bring to fruition the attack he engineered with Freddy Verdonk during Stage 4, to take the Stage and the yellow jersey. Initially, it seemed a dose of luck might assist when, soon after the three attackers had honked away, a crash in the main bunch floored scores of riders, slowing up those behind and putting the brakes on those in front who needed to ascertain whether their leaders had been involved.

Sciandri’s group rode positively, retaining a 4 minute 40 second lead for some distance. Though the Anglo-Italian was deserving of victory today, the peloton was not in a generous mood and had their sights set on capture. The last 10 km was slightly downhill which would have been much to the breakaway’s advantage. But with a gentle but lengthy drag before that, the peloton pulled together to swallow back the three riders and the Stage headed towards a classic sprinters’ finish on the majestic Quai Louis XVIII.

The average speed today was a swift 41.8 kph, touching almost 60 kph in the closing straight. The sprinters certainly gave the crowds something to remember them by; all the key players were there, all desperate to win. None wanted victory so badly as Stefano Sassetta who’d squandered all of the hot-spot sprints to arch rival Jesper Lomers. Pietr Rodchenko was disqualified for hurling his bidon at Stuart O’Grady for no other reason, it seemed, than that the Australian was riding a clear, clean, straight sprint much faster than him. Sassetta crossed the line first but was later demoted to last in the group and fined for dangerous riding, having crashed shoulders with Mario Cipollini and then impinged on Jesper Lomers’s line. Lomers’s consolation was taking the green jersey away from Sassetta.

The Tour de France has reached the eve of the first Time Trial. New names will no doubt grace the leaderboard tomorrow and then new terrain beckons as the bunch commence their journey south to the gateway to the Pyrenees.

<ENDS>

Bordeaux. Beautiful, elegant, quintessentially French Bordeaux. Cat was pleased to be back there, a place she had liked but not returned to since visiting as a backpacking student with a summer’s railcard and a shoestring budget ten years before. She was surprised to remember sections of the town. If she took a left and then first right just there, she would arrive at that lovely little boulangerie. If it was still there. It was. She would treat herself. She would treat herself to half an hour of life outside the entourage of the Tour de France, to food other than the now somewhat monotonous press buffets. She would grant herself a little peace and quiet, a café au lait, a slice of tarte aux pommes, a glass of Badoit too. She fancied citron pressé but it was too Ben York. She wanted just to be a young woman, sitting by herself at one of the shop’s impromptu tables. Though verging on sacrilege, she even removed her press pass. She just sat awhile, did Cat McCabe, sat and sipped and munched and looked around her. She didn’t think of bike riders and she tried not to think of their support teams, certainly not their medical men. She switched her phone off, put her sunglasses on, hitched up the sleeves of her top and concentrated on nothing but the warmth of the afternoon sun seeping through her arms.

There is only so long that surroundings can be observed before they are known off by heart. There is only so long one can watch a game of pétanque and retain concentration. There is only so long one can smile blandly at nothing in particular before the mind wanders. What are you thinking about, Cat, sitting there, gaze flitting from building to tree to Gitanes packet in the gutter?

Him and Him.

Who and which?

Ben.

And?

Him – back home.

In that order?

Yes.

Well, there’s a start.

Do I really want either?

Do you?

Do I want both?

Do you?

No.

No? To which?

I don’t know. I tried, you know. I tried very very hard to make Him happy, to make Him want to stay, to furnish His life with all He could ever require. I feel I’ve failed in some way.

We gather that. Move forward – and stop capitalizing the ‘H’. Move forward – you’re allowed to, because you can rest easy that you did do everything you could for that relationship. You also mourned at base level. You swept nothing under the metaphorical carpet. You reached absolute rock bottom emotionally but therein lie the strongest foundations upon which to build. Nothing hidden. Nothing more you could have done, should have said. You do know that?

Yes. I’m just not good at goodbyes. They make me sad. Amor vincit omnia – and all of that.

It is good that you feel that way. It means you are undamaged. Imagine if you felt bitter and twisted – how destructive would that be? How awful would it be if you were now hardened and cynical? He was mean to you, Cat.

He was mean to me.

Ultimately, it had nothing to do with you. You do see that?

It had nothing to do with me.

That’s right. That’s to be your mantra.

It had nothing to do with me. I was dealt a bad card, hey?

Good theory. On to Ben. Another good theory, I think.

I don’t.

Have another café au lait. No, Cat, have the citron pressé that you really want. Add some sugar. Have a sip. Nice?

Lovely.

As nice as in Pradier? Nostalgic? If a day’s grace can amount to the past? OK, don’t answer, just enjoy.

Ben York.

How do you feel?

If I’m truthful, I feel disappointed. If I’m completely honest, I feel insecure. You see, I don’t really know Ben at all, do I? And yet there’s something there – physical attraction is uppermost at the moment and it’s exhilarating to feel this frisson. But I really quite like him too. If I didn’t, if I just wanted a fuck, I’d go get it from him – regardless of podium girls or Josh’s opinion of me.

You’re trailing off.

I’d like another pressé.

There. Continue?

I didn’t have the chemistry wrong, I’m sure of it. I don’t know what I want from Ben, or what I can expect, or to what I’m entitled. I’m cross with myself for having revelled in being the centre of his attention – and yet, I was obviously foisting on him an attachment that in reality isn’t actually there.

Podium Princess?

Yes. I know exactly what Fen would say to me. I’d be calling him a bastard and my sister would calmly theorize that I’m mad at him because of my own indignance that his interest is not exclusively focused on me. That’s a distorted view of myself, isn’t it? Ben is Ben – Ben is who he is. But, and here’s the rub, my consternation, my dejection – OK, my petulance – doesn’t really stem from Ben at all. I wanted him to want me, you see. That he doesn’t, or at least not in the capacity I’d ascribed to him, makes me hurt, makes me doubt myself, makes me feel insecure. Oh, the ignominy of it all.

You’re rambling there. You mean, outwardly you’re doing the ‘men – pah! – bastards!’ and within you’re whimpering for what you perceive as inadequacy, as rejection?

I suppose. Yes.

But the crux is that it hasn’t actually dampened your ardour. Ben continues to make you swoon. You’d like to go to bed with him, become tangled, embroiled, involved.

Yes.

So, perversely, you’re on your high horse with your nose in the air, primly principled when still you’re craving to have sex with him?

Yes.

It’s called self-protection, Cat.

I’m in Bordeaux. I’d better go. I need to speak to Taverner. To Andy at Maillot. I need to find Josh and see where we’re staying for the next two nights. I’m working. I’m a member of the press corps of the Tour de France. I haven’t got time for sex or romance or any of that fluff.

So you’re going to ride your high horse all the way back to the salle de pressé?

Sorry, she’s decided not to answer.

Half an hour later and Cat suddenly loved Podium Princess, felt immensely strong and wanted Ben York’s blood. As she and Josh left the salle de pressé they passed by a bench on which sat two podium girls. There was a Crédit Lyonnais girl, dressed of course in the yellow of the bank’s sponsored maillot, the other was Cat’s podium girl, or Ben’s, or Coca-Cola’s actually. The Crédit Lyonnais girl was talking quietly but in audibly soothing tones to Miss Coca-Cola whose eyes were very red, swollen and watery. Cat felt vindicated.

So all men are bastards.

She felt sudden sympathy for the girl.

He’s not worth crying over.

She felt relief.

Thank God it’s not me weeping.

‘What are you grinning at?’ Josh asked Cat as he unlocked the car, threw her the keys and slumped into the passenger seat, rubbing his eyes and flexing his keyboard-weary fingers.

‘Oh,’ Cat breezed, turning on the engine and giving it a good roar, ‘women’s things.’ Josh nodded sagely, rather keen to pry but far too nice to do so.

Auberge Claudette was a breath of fresh air. Two star, of course, but a welcome change from the recent nondescript hotel chains. Cat loved her bedroom, furnished with an old iron bed once painted white, a Lloyd Loom style chair a little threadbare, a clothes rail behind a swathe of calico and a rickety chest of drawers lined with the same Toiles de Jouy wallpaper which decorated the walls in a lovely time-faded hue. The tiny en-suite bathroom had a small but deep sitting tub, an incongruously vast porcelain basin and a very low toilet. Best of all, it had a window and Cat realized how, prior to this, she’d been tolerating neon strips and no natural light. There were long windows in the bedroom with shutters inside and out. Cat leant out of the window and smiled into the first signs of sunset. She wasn’t so much on the Tour de France as in a Louis Malle film and, to her delight, she could string out the fantasy for more than just a night. With the next two Stages starting so close to Bordeaux, Auberge Claudette was home for the time being.

What better way to settle than to unpack, to hide her rucksack under the bed and to run the tub and luxuriate. Who had tied the pale lilac ribbon into a bow on one of the bedposts? A previous guest? The patronne? Was there any significance? Could Cat please have it? She pulled at it gently and then utilized it to fix her hair into a high pony-tail while she had a bath. With the tips of her hair and the ends of the ribbon tickling the nape of her neck, she closed her eyes and momentarily traded her Louis Malle role for that of bathing belle in a bubble bath advertisement. She giggled, opened her eyes and cleared her mind. She sat a while longer in the warm water, grinning at the walls, humming the soundtrack of Betty Blue and planned to forsake the hotel breakfast the next day for a circuitous trip to her boulangerie so she could complete her picture by strolling the streets with a baguette tucked under her arm.

It was still very warm, even the breeze that whispered in to the bedroom, so Cat let her body air dry. She lounged naked on her bed, reading (Rose Tremain and not La Route, Les Etapes), running her fingertips along her thigh and now forsaking an imaginary part in a Jean-Jacques Beineix movie for that in a Degas pastel. She felt soothed and contented and was enjoying her own company immensely until a gentle rap at her door disrupted her peace.

Bugger, must be the patronne – I asked for an extra pillow.

‘Un instant, s’il vous plaît,’ she called, grabbing a little floral sundress and slipping it over her nakedness. Barefoot, she crossed the floorboards lightly, the lilac ribbon starting to work its way loose from the hasty pony-tail she had tied.

‘I’m coming,’ she said, her hand already opening the door.

Ben York pushed into her room, shut the door more strongly than was necessary, scooped Cat against him so tightly that she was momentarily lifted off the floor, and plunged his tongue deep into her mouth (which was so startled that it was conveniently open anyway).

Don’t let him kiss you. Don’t! Pull away. Don’t bloody kiss him back. Don’t fling your arms around his neck – take them away! Don’t drop your hold to his biceps. Why are you grabbing his shirt? Stop it! Pull back.

‘Don’t pull back,’ Ben murmured, standing still while Cat all but leaped backwards. She was speechless.

Say something!

‘Say something,’ Ben said, hands on hips and forearms distractingly on display. ‘What’s with you?’

Say something – what should I say to him?

Ben advanced towards her more quickly than she could retreat. He pushed her on to her bed and fell on top of her, his lips at her neck, his hand at her thigh. Get the dress up. His hand at the flesh of her thigh. Cat wriggled away from him though her body begged her to writhe against him.

‘Fuck off!’ she hissed. Ben looked utterly taken aback but he broke into a broad smile, reclined on her bed and raised an eyebrow at the obviously furious girl who now stood by the window unaware that her dress was enticingly transparent.

She’d know if she chances upon the state of my cock. Ah! She’s seen. She knows. But see? She doesn’t move.

‘Go,’ she said, ‘please.’

‘Why?’ he replied, not moving an inch and pulling his infuriating, gorgeous smile over his mouth and into his eyes.

‘Because you’re a wanker,’ Cat protested, clenching her fist when she observed him bite his lip to conceal his amusement.

‘Well,’ he said with consideration, ‘that must make you a cock-teasing bitch.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Cat, now flushed, and quite the picture of consternation which made Ben’s cock twitch with delight.

‘What’s with you, Catriona McCabe?’ he asked again.

‘You need to ask?’ Cat responded.

‘I need to ask,’ Ben replied, propping himself up on an elbow and anticipating Cat’s reply with genuine interest.

‘You shouldn’t need to,’ Cat protested rather primly, ‘I’m not joining the queue.’

‘The queue?’ Ben repeated, really looking quite puzzled.

‘Kiss the girls and make ’em cry?’ she elaborated, knowing it sounded daft. He considered the accusation but looked just as bewildered after a moment’s contemplation.

‘Sorry, Cat,’ he said, ‘you’re talking in rhymes, or bullshit, or something. And I’ve got to have you,’ he said, laying his hand over the bulge in his jeans ‘– and soon.’

Leisurely, he left the bed and came towards her, observing that her hastened breathing presented him with those gorgeous breasts heaving away in earnest. He didn’t touch but he looked long and desirously. He cupped her face in his hands and made to kiss her again.

‘Fuck off,’ Cat implored flimsily.

‘Why?’ he whispered, hovering his mouth over her forehead so that she could feel his breath trickle over her face like a waft of warm silk.

‘Because!’ she proclaimed in a whisper.

‘Because what?’ he murmured back, tracing her eyes, her nose, her chin, with his lips. He laid his lips over hers but did not move them.

Don’t kiss him! Don’t.

But Ben detected her lips give an almost imperceptible tremble so he encouraged them by parting his just slightly.

‘Why not?’ he mouthed, barely speaking.

‘Because!’ Cat tried again. He pulled away and treated himself to the sight of her; momentarily, her eyes still closed, her cheeks flushed, her lips waiting, worried. God, he found her gorgeous.

‘Because what?’ he asked loudly.

‘Because you,’ Cat hissed, ‘you asked for me but you hadn’t even finished with her and if I’d have been earlier or later – well! Well then! Fuck you!’

‘Huh?’ Ben shook his head.

‘Yesterday,’ Cat said, stamping her bare foot indignantly, ‘I bloody came to your sleazepad and saw her coming out – all right?’

‘Her?’ Ben queried.

‘You know who!’ Cat growled. ‘She was coming out of your room!’

‘Yesterday?’

‘Don’t play naïve!’ Cat shouted. ‘And today I saw her crying!’

‘Who?’ Ben implored.

‘Jesus! How many were there traipsing in and out of your bloody room?’ Cat remonstrated. ‘The podium girl, of course! Miss Coca-Cola!’

‘Monique?’ Ben exclaimed, placing his hand over his mouth, concealing whatever reaction was there.

‘Whatever her name is,’ Cat said, frowning with intent, ‘and today, I see her crying her eyes out!’

‘Crying?’ Ben pressed from behind his hand.

‘Yes!’ Cat yelled. ‘You’re not going to do that to me!’

‘Monique was crying?’ Ben repeated. ‘You heard her?’

‘She was crying,’ Cat growled.

‘Did you hear her?’ Ben persisted.

‘I saw her!’ Cat spat. ‘Her eyes were red raw, for Christ’s sake!’ She stamped. ‘She looked utterly miserable.’

Ben stared at Cat, took his hand from his mouth and regarded her.

‘So would you be,’ he said to Cat, ‘if you had raging conjunctivitis.’

Cat stares at the Great Ophthalmologist, her eyes criss-crossing his face trying to absorb what she’s just heard, make sense of the tangle, and figure out how she should respond. Turning away from him, which she does momentarily, seems like a good idea. But when she turns back he’s still there, still silent, regarding her with a blend of reproach and amusement. The onus is on Cat and it’s onerous. She’s biting her lip so hard that it’s throbbing but she can’t seem to release it. Slipping past him to take refuge in the lovely bathroom seems like another good idea so she does just that.

She’s sitting on the edge of the tub regarding her feet, now she’s sitting sideways on the toilet looking at her knees. Now she leans her back against the basin. She’s now knocking her head gently against the window. She turns and glances in the mirror, imploring her reflection to tell her what to do.

Jesus, have I blown it now! Stupid stupid girl.

Say sorry.

As if that would suffice.

Laugh it off?

That would seem too trite.

Give him a blow job?

My jaw is too tense. And anyway, he’s hardly likely to rise to the occasion for a girl who’s thrown slanderous accusations at him, for a girl who’s made an utter fool of herself.

Well, what are you going to do?

Tell me what to do!

No, Cat – you figure it out.

Oh Fen, where are you!

Over the sea and far away.

Reflection – help!

It’s only you in the mirror. Your call, Cat McCabe.

Shit! Have I been in here ages? Say he’s left?

Cat opens the bathroom door. Ben is sitting in the chair seemingly engrossed in Rose Tremain. He glances up and then returns his attention to the book. Cat pads across the room, walks around the bed and sits on the edge so that her knees almost touch Ben’s. She tips her head to one side, silently imploring him to look up. He’s reading. She clears her throat, hoping she might gain his attention. He’s reading. Rose Tremain is bloody good. Cat sighs, hoping he’ll take sympathy on her humiliation. Nope. She gazes over to the window. It’s gloriously dusky now, the portion of sky visible streaked with amber, the room bathed so aesthetically in half-light that Monet really should have been there. Incongruous though it might seem, Cat feels an enormous sense of tranquillity, the willing captive of some strange hermetically sealed moment placing her in a beautiful room on a sultry evening with a man quietly reading. A blink returns her to the situation in hand. A glance to Ben reveals that Rose Tremain’s text is closed around his index finger and his attention is focused on Cat entirely.

Cat licks her lips fleetingly and speaks without preparation or agenda.

‘I. Am. So. Embarrassed.’

Ben does not reply but something about his demeanour enables Cat to smile apologetically.

‘What can you think?’ she continues with a humble shrug superseded by a sorry slump. Ben tilts his head and closes the book, clasping his hands loosely, sitting back in the chair, relaxed.

‘Please forgive me,’ Cat says, now sitting very tall, her hands demurely in her lap, her eyes cast down.

‘You’re fucking gorgeous when you’re angry,’ Ben says, deadly serious and with no jest.

‘I’m sorry,’ Cat says, looking straight at him, ‘I hope I didn’t offend you.’

‘On the contrary,’ says Ben.

‘And I really hope,’ says Cat, very measuredly, eye-locked, ‘that I haven’t gone and ruined any prospects here.’

‘You’re also very sexy when you’re meek,’ Ben tells her.

Cat can’t hear the compliment, her concern to appease Ben, to undo any wrongdoing, her sole focus.

‘I didn’t mean to insult you,’ she says.

‘I’m pretty flattered, actually,’ Ben says, ‘that you should have thought me such a gigolo and so in demand.’

‘What can you think of me?’ Cat laments, looking at her lap but immediately yearning for Ben’s gaze.

‘I think you’re a feisty girl who won’t tolerate any crap,’ Ben says openly. ‘Fuck, what a challenge!’

They regard each other in the fading light, the soft tones, the hush of the evening, enhancing their reciprocated allure. Cat flops herself backwards on to the bed, her arms above her head, and scours the ceiling. She hears the Loom chair creak. Her heart is beating fast and goes into overdrive at the touch of Ben’s fingers on her knees. Goosebumps tingle their way over her skin as she feels her dress being lifted up and then lowered back.

‘Cat McCabe,’ Ben marvels in a low voice, leaning over her, his hands either side of her torso, ‘where are your knickers?’

‘Obviously, they were in a twist!’ Cat jests softly. Ben sits on the edge of the bed and Cat runs her hand lightly up and down his back. She pulls at his shirt, gently at first, then with an insistent tug. He lies next to her. They look up at the ceiling and then, with film-worthy timing, they turn and look at each other. The shared gaze, the mutual desire caught in a sealed second of fabulous intensity before they are at each other’s mouths; kissing and tasting and biting and uncontrollable.

Ben flings Cat’s dress up so that she is naked apart from one breast and her shoulders. He has a hand enmeshed in her hair. The other is everywhere and fast. Trickling over her legs, brushing her bush, sweeping over her stomach, up her waist, into her armpit, over her exposed breast where he stops awhile. She wants to taste every part of his mouth. His body feels so tantalizing behind his cotton shirt. Off. Off. She pulls at buttons, at the tails, she slips her hand underneath and finds his flesh. Warm, prickling under her touch, a strong body, a little hair to the chest, to the lower stomach. His skin is so soft, almost incongruously so for his defined musculature and masculinity. She straddles him, she has to get that shirt off. As she is unbuttoning, he runs a hand up her inner thigh, cups it over her sex and inserts his finger effortlessly, deep inside her. She’s gasping, he’s glazed. He’s moving his finger and she’s moving on it. His thumb is stroking her clitoris. She wants the shirt off his back. Get it off. She wants to come. Fuck the shirt. Her whole body wracks with the orgasm, her voice comes through her gasping. She’s coming on his finger, his thumb, in her stomach, through her nipples. Her body crumples with the pleasure of it all. She lies beside him, her leg slung over his, her sex grazing his jeans. He brings his finger to his mouth and sucks it and then he takes it to her mouth and she sucks it too. That’s me. That’s you.

‘I’d like to have sex with you. Now. Please. Now,’ Cat says, easing his shirt away and gazing desirously at his torso. She unbuckles his belt, her eyes drawn to and delighted by the bulge in his jeans, her fingers tracing the shape of him, her sex anticipating the feel of him.

‘I’d love to have sex with you,’ Ben says, his hand up the back of her dress, softly feeling her buttocks and tracing the crack down and under to her damp mound.

‘Now,’ Cat implores, leaning over his face and licking his lips, ‘I want to have sex with you now.’

‘I don’t have any condoms with me,’ says Ben, stroking her face and tracing her lips.

‘I don’t have any condoms with me,’ Cat bemoans. Then she smiles mischievously, eyes his insistent bulge and regards him with delight.

‘There are plenty of other ways I can think of,’ she says.

‘And,’ Ben reasons, unpopping his jeans, bucking his hips to wriggle free from boxer shorts too, ‘there’s tomorrow. Come to me when you’ve had Luca.’

‘Metaphorically speaking,’ Cat chides, walking her fingers tantalizingly up his shaft.

‘Come to me then,’ Ben murmurs, closing his eyes with the pleasure of Cat’s hand encircling his cock; gasping as he feels her lips at the tip of him, can sense them opening, anticipating her mouth taking him deep.

I want you to come in my mouth, Ben.

I’m coming, Cat. Jesus. Fuck.

STAGE 7
Computaparc - Individual Time Trial. 54.5 kilometres

‘Rachel – help.’

Vasily Jawlensky entered the Zucca camper van.

‘Oh dear,’ his soigneur said from behind an architecturally intriguing tower of energy bars. ‘Och Jesus – look at you!’

She looked at him. Vasily Jawlensky, her team’s key rider on whose shoulders the hope of the yellow jersey was today firmly placed. And yet, unlike the brooding Fabian Ducasse, currently barking and snarling at everyone, Vasily’s comportment was no different than if he was merely going out on a training ride. His tall body, on to which lycra had seemingly been sprayed, dominated the interior of the camper van. He regarded his soigneur steadily and shrugged at her almost apologetically. Rachel saw that his skinsuit was split from underarm to hip and was aware that his Time Trial start time was in half an hour. She helped peel her rider from the lycra and assisted him in slithering his way in to a pristine suit.

‘I go back to the blocks now,’ he said graciously, focusing so intently on her neck that Rachel found herself cupping her hand against it. ‘With thanks to you, Rachel.’

‘That’s good,’ his soigneur replied. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Tight,’ Vasily replied, ‘tense – you know?’

‘I can imagine,’ Rachel said. She stood in the doorway of the van and watched Vasily place himself on his stationary bike. He clipped his feet in and started to pedal, soon leaning down to take the handlebars. Rachel winced. The skinsuit had torn again, this time around the shoulders.

Fucking supplier – I’ll kill them.

Vasily calmly dismounted, feeling the ripped material, his skin. He looked at his soigneur.

‘You have another, Rachel?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ Rachel replied, closing the door on the fans craving every last glimpse, any glimpse, of the great Russian. Again, the two of them freed Vasily’s body from its colourful sheath and he stood naked and contemplative whilst Rachel delved around a bag for another.

‘Have you grown?’ she asked Vasily, eyeing him objectively, or as objectively as such a particularly fine specimen of masculinity could be viewed by a young woman.

‘No,’ Vasily said, ‘I am as I always am. No change.’

‘Bloody suppliers,’ Rachel elaborated with a thunderous frown.

‘Yes, bloody them,’ said Vasily ingenuously, liking the semantic taste of the word but intending no insult. Rachel puffed clouds of talcum powder over Vasily’s torso and patted his skin lightly. And then, momentarily, she wavered. She stroked him gently down his chest. Smoothing the talc. No, stroking his body. She turned him around. Again, she wavered. She looked at his back – no, gazed at his back – before applying more powder. Stroking gives better coverage than patting. Yeah, right, Rachel. She took the new lycra, assessing the material with much concentration, trying to pay no attention to the downy blond hairs furled about his forearms. She’d never noticed them before; she certainly wasn’t going to start noticing them now.

How can I not have noticed them before? How many times must I have massaged this rider?

Was Vasily staring at her? She didn’t think so. How could he be, with his Time Trial looming? His eyes might be focused on her, but she acknowledged that his mind was already engrossed in the Computaparc course. She’d obviously quite lost hers. She helped Vasily dress again, checked the seams of the new skinsuit and asked him to bend, to stretch.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘that’ll last you the 54 and a half k and the short trip to the podium this evening.’ She winked at him supportively, wished him good luck and told him to go and finish his tuning up.

‘Thank you, Rachel,’ Vasily replied, continuing to stare at her so intently that she wiped her hand across her chin to remove whatever it was that had so caught his attention.

‘Go!’ Rachel said, glancing at her watch and wanting Vasily to be warming up five minutes ago.

‘Yes,’ said the rider. And then Vasily Jawlensky kissed Rachel McEwen. Quite quickly but very intensely. Too swiftly for her to have pulled away; too adeptly for her to have wanted to. He encircled her waist, lowered his head and took his lips to hers, slipping his tongue into her mouth immediately on contact. She’d never had a kiss like it. His eyes were open and so were hers. Their tongues danced slowly. It lasted seconds yet it was luxurious and measured rather than urgent. Then Vasily went directly to his bike and continued to warm up in earnest. Rachel closed the campervan door and sat down heavily on the bench. She placed her head in her hands and took deep breaths. She could smell talcum powder. She inhaled deeply.

Then she wiped her hands urgently on her jeans.

What the fuck just happened?

There had been no warning, no prior hints, no clues at all in all the time she’d known Vasily. Not from him. She knew so little about the person behind the champion cyclist. Not within herself; she’d rarely thought about the personality behind the body which raced bicycles.

Have I ever fancied Vasily? Have I ever thought he’s fancied me? Hand on my heart, no. I’m his soigneur. He’s my charge.

What just happened?

I have absolutely no idea.

How can that be?

I don’t know. I hardly know Vasily. Few people do. He’s such a closed book – one so many are desperate to read. Not me. I know his joints and muscles off by heart but I’ve never really stopped to contemplate the man they belong to.

Why did you stroke and not pat?

I don’t know. But I don’t think it was me, if you see – I don’t think he meant to kiss Rachel. Maybe it was an instantaneous reaction to me stroking, not patting – a chemical, hormonal, non-cerebral, male response. Shit, maybe it was the talcum powder itself. Maybe there’s a substance in it that’s banned. But it wasn’t me. It can’t have been. I’m just his soigneur. How can he know me as Rachel? He does not know Rachel at all.

You should get moving. You have a million and one duties to attend to.

I need to sit a while.

‘I know what I need,’ Rachel said, standing, glancing around the interior of the van, ‘I need a girlfriend – I need the insight of a woman. I need female company, complicity – a confidante.’

Contre la montre.

What a lovely phrase. It was Cat’s chant that morning as she gathered together her wits and her work effects. She was running late, having not been able to leave her bed for all the reliving of the night before and the projected ponderings for the day ahead. Sex? Perhaps. More than likely. Hurry up! Contre la montre. Against the clock. Morning, Josh. Morning, Alex. Hurry up, Cat. Sorry. Sorry. Allons!

‘You’re perky,’ Josh remarked, pleased that she was.

‘I had,’ Cat reasoned, ‘a very good – night.’

‘Moi aussi,’ Alex said, ‘like a fucking log. Out for the count.’

‘I slept really well too,’ Josh added, glancing in gratitude at Auberge Claudette before driving away.

‘Me too,’ Cat recapitulated.

I am going to sleep with Ben tonight and I’ll be most wide awake.

‘I’m interviewing Luca this afternoon,’ Cat said. ‘He’s riding early so I’ll disappear for an hour or so. Will you fill me in?’

‘Sure,’ Alex said, looking to the back seat where Cat was sitting and staring out of the window with an inordinately expansive smile on her face, ‘as long as you share any juicy Luca-isms.’

‘Where are you going to do him?’ Josh asked, curtailing any insinuation from Alex by stamping on the brakes to allow the race commissaire’s car priority.

‘In his hotel room,’ Cat replied. Alex tittered. The others didn’t.

The only time Jules Le Grand was going to leave Fabian Ducasse’s side was when the Système Vipère rider and overall contender for the maillot jaune was actually on his bike riding the course. The rider had all but sleep-walked to his directeur’s room at four in the morning to say one thing.

‘The Time Trial is a test of truth.’

For all Fabian’s outward arrogance and confidence, he needed the support of his directeur if he was to take yellow at the Time Trial that afternoon and define the ultimate outcome on the podium in Paris a fortnight later. Though Fabian had returned to bed and, amazingly, to a deep sleep, his directeur stayed awake for him. In silk pyjama bottoms, Jules had gazed out of the window witnessing night simper into dawn.

Fabian needs me to yell ‘Allez allez allez!’, to torment him, to demand that he ride harder for fuck’s sake.

Jules showered and shaved and treated his underarms and cheeks to liberal applications of Gucci toiletries.

Fabian also needs me to listen attentively when he repeats his concerns arid strategy for the course.

‘Often he does so in silence but it is always audible to me,’ Jules said out loud, wondering if 6 a.m. was too early to phone Système Vipère’s eponymous sponsor. He would leave it half an hour. No doubt his favoured journalist on L’Equipe would be glad to take a call.

‘Ultimately, it is the paternal support of the directeur sportif that the rider requires after a Time Trial,’ Jules said down the line to the reporter, ‘to lift his spent body from his bike, to be there for him whatever the outcome.’

‘Merci,’ said the journalist, hoping Jules Le Grand had not heard him stifle a yawn, could not envisage him as he was, crumpled, in bed and still half-asleep.

Jules was dressed in Gucci top to toe. He phoned the team sponsors.

‘Whatever the outcome, today,’ he told them, ‘Ducasse will ride the Stage as if his life depends on it which, to him, it does. The team are pleased that you will visit today to watch the Stage. It will be good for Jesper Lomers to see you.’ There was a pause. ‘Yes, yes, he is on the verge of renewing his contract – of that I’m sure.’

He’d better be – or Anya will have me to answer to. Not that she’s answered any of Jesper’s calls, I am informed. At the moment, that is not good for my rider’s morale. But I can turn it to the team’s advantage, I’m sure of it. When the time is right.

Jules Le Grand plucked at grapes from the fruit bowl and sipped at Evian from the minibar. He phoned L’Equipe again, making a well-rehearsed soliloquy sound positively conversational; so eloquent that the journalist could quote him word for word.

‘Today, Fabian Ducasse will not be merely going to work, doing his job, earning his salary. For Fabian, this Time Trial will determine his purpose on this mortal coil. He will challenge the demons within himself. He will emerge triumphant.’

Jules ended the call.

If not – then what? he contemplated quietly, bursting a grape against the roof of his mouth. What will it all mean? Who would Ducasse be? What would be the point?

‘He needs me,’ Jules said, leaving his room at 7 a.m. to check on the soigneurs, the mechanics and the weather.

Cat McCabe saw Fabian and Jules on her way to the village. Full of the bounce and confidence that the headiness of new passion can instil, she approached the two men.

‘Bonjour,’ she said, turning back on herself so she could walk their way a while. ‘How are you feeling? What is your optimum time? If you don’t take yellow today, can the Tour still be yours?’

Fleetingly, Fabian looked at her darkly, frowning, turning to his directeur for support, to make her go away. Intrusion. Distraction. Pointless. Jules Le Grand glanced at Cat. He’d seen her around. English journaliste. Any other day, he would have granted her a suave smile, an audience with himself, with his riders. Today, though, at this time, he regarded her with undisguised contempt.

‘Leave Fabian,’ he commanded, his hissed order rooting her to the spot while the men walked away from her and ever onwards towards their fate.

Josh looked up from his laptop.

‘Hullo, Rachel,’ he said in amazement, ‘what brings you here? Fugallo had a great ride. Are you here to watch Vasily?’

‘Actually,’ Rachel said, ‘I was looking for Cat.’

‘She’s interviewing Luca,’ Josh informed her. He glanced at his watch. So did Alex.

‘She’s been bloody hours,’ Alex remarked, ‘little minx.’

‘Is she coming back here?’ Rachel asked, eyeing the unmanned laptop next to Josh.

‘She has her report to file,’ Josh said, glancing at his watch and shaking his head. ‘You bet she’ll be back.’

‘We’re all going out tonight,’ Alex said thoughtfully, distracted from his work by the sight of Rachel’s bottom which he thought very nice indeed, ‘why don’t you come too?’

Rachel swiftly assessed all she had to do, then she nodded. ‘Cool,’ she said, ‘that would be great. Will Cat be there?’

‘Of course,’ Josh said, ‘she’s one of us.’

‘Vasily’s about to start,’ Alex said, twisting his chair to focus on the screens. ‘Watch it here.’

‘Oh God no, I can’t,’ Rachel smiled, shaking her head, ‘I’m far too nervous for him. I’d better go, I’ll see you all later. Tell Cat I stopped by – that I’ll see her later too.’

No one responded and Rachel left a hushed salle de pressé, suddenly loving all the journalists for being so focused on Vasily’s ride.

Why did the sod kiss me? Why am I giving it so much thought? Do I want more? But where the fuck did it come from?

When Luca told Cat that Ben had offered his own hotel room for the interview, Cat had to stop herself from leaping into the air, hugging the rider and saying come on, let’s get it done quickly then.

‘I’m rooming,’ Luca had shrugged. ‘Didier might want to rest. Ben will come back in an hour because then I must rest. But hey! I did well, no?’

‘You,’ Cat had responded, walking alongside Luca down the corridor to the doctor’s room, ‘are a star. It was a great ride – I’d say this is going to be a really fabulous first Tour for you.’

‘You’re a babe, Cat McCabe,’ Luca had said as they entered Ben’s room. ‘Hey! I’m a poet! Let me be your boyfriend,’ he had continued, ‘we can make beautiful babies. Or we can practise anyway.’

‘Work first,’ Ben had cautioned the rider whilst glancing at Cat, ‘play later. No sex during the Tour.’

‘Fuck you,’ Luca had protested.

‘Fuck you,’ Ben had responded, staring at Cat. With a sly smile he had left the room, informing them he would return in an hour. Luca took to Ben’s bed. Cat set her dictaphone on the bedside table and coiled herself into the armchair.

‘So, Luca,’ she had said, ‘let’s talk about you.’

‘Love and sex, Luca?’ Cat asks, glancing at her watch and seeing that the hour is almost up.

‘Sure,’ Luca shrugs, ‘both – sometimes separately, occasionally together. This is off the record, right?’

Cat nods, regards the dictaphone but does not switch it off.

‘I’m a young guy,’ the rider shrugs, ‘and I’m horny. I do a job where you can be superhero to many women. They don’t know you – but they think they do. It’s flattering, you know? If they offer, I’ll take it – but only if I can make it the next day. So, even if there was a chick yesterday with tits out and legs open, I would have refused because the Time Trial was today. Yes? But tonight – tonight is different.’

‘So you’re going on the prowl?’ Cat jests.

‘If I can stay awake,’ Luca responds ruefully, ‘cos you know something? Soon the only humping for me will be going up and down those fucking mountains.’

‘Are you nervous?’

‘That is not a question for me to answer.’

‘Are you?’ Cat asks tenderly, as a friend. Luca regards her. Cat thinks how young he suddenly seems, how his body so lithe and virile in front of her is also one that could be destroyed without notice; a body, a spirit, whose strength is supreme and yet continually on the brink.

‘Are you scared, Luca?’ Cat repeats.

Luca observes her again. She has come to the edge of the bed and laid a hand over his wrist.

He nods, knowing it won’t come out on dictaphone. She strokes his forehead and smiles down on him. He nods again.

Darling boy. Please be careful.

‘Time’s up,’ says Ben. ‘Luca, how’s your pulse?’

‘It’s good,’ the rider replies, unfurling himself from the bed. ‘I’ll go rest and bring it down further.’

‘Thanks, Luca,’ Cat says, her hand on his shoulder.

‘Cat-the-Babe-McCabe,’ says Luca, standing up, suddenly clad in the colourful public persona everybody loves and expects, ‘my pleasure.’ He kisses her three times and then leaves.

‘Was that good?’ Ben asks, going to Cat directly and lifting her T-shirt off.

‘Great,’ Cat replies, unbuttoning his jeans.

‘How long do you have?’ Ben asks, nuzzling his way down from her neck to her right nipple. ‘Because I have about seven inches.’

‘I have to write my report,’ Cat says huskily. She takes his cock in her mouth.

‘Jesus, Cat,’ Ben pants. They gaze glazed at each other. Cat unzips her shorts and lets them fall. Ben cups his hand between her legs and can feel the heat and moistness seep through her panties. He moves his fingers as if he is playing a trumpet and watches as Cat sways with desire. He slips a finger inside the elastic and finds her flesh, burrows in a little and teases her. Her heightened breathing, audible, urgent, turns him on. The sight of his cock, stiff and straining and impatient, turns her on.

‘I want you now,’ he murmurs.

‘You can have me now,’ she replies. They wriggle out of their clothing, intermittently gorging themselves on each other’s mouths. Breathing is deep and desirous, interspersed with a little laughter. The bed is creaky in places. Cat loves the sound of Ben, that he sucks in his breath when she runs her hands over his torso, that he gasps when her fingertips skim his balls. Ben loves the sounds of Cat, the little inadvertent moans she gives when he tweaks her clitoris, he likes the sudden gasp he causes when he treats her nipples to a bite or a suck. She’s a sight to behold as he looks up her body while his mouth is buried in her sex. Her figure is trim and pert. She tastes delicious. He could drink her for hours. She doesn’t have hours.

‘Don’t stop,’ she pleads, moving against his mouth. But he takes his face away and now he is hovering over her, his cock probing at her bush, her stomach, her thigh, teasingly.

‘Later,’ he informs her, dipping down to kiss her.

‘Now!’ Cat remonstrates, smelling her scent on his face.

‘Such matters should not be rushed,’ Ben reasons, closing his eyes and groaning as Cat grasps his cock and starts to masturbate him. He steadies her wrist to his favoured pace and then holds it tight, motionless.

‘Stop,’ he tells her. ‘We both have jobs to do.’

‘But I want you,’ Cat pleads, opening her legs, ‘I do. Now.’

Ben smiles down at her, all lovely and soft and supine beneath him. ‘Look on this as a taster,’ he says, propping himself up next to Cat and slipping his hand between her legs. ‘I’m going to whisk you away tonight, I know of a place.’ He has two fingers inside her and her eyes are closed with the exquisite pleasure of it all. ‘It’s private and beautiful and we’re going to have sex there.’

Cat’s breathing is fast, she is moving herself against his hand, finding his fingers inside her, his thumb pressing lightly at her clitoris. She is feeling his cock. They are staring hard at each other, dipping faces close to tongue and bite, pulling away to breathe and gasp. Ben takes his hand away when he feels Cat’s sex start to quiver.

‘Don’t go – oh God, Ben!’

He sucks on his fingers as he watches and listens to her coming, her hand between her legs, her body bucking gently.

‘Tonight,’ he tells her, despite the post-orgasmic vision of her all languid and soft making him harder still. ‘Go now. I’ll find you.’

I can’t wait for tonight, Ben decides once Cat has left. Literally, I can’t wait. His erection has hardly subsided. He returns to the bed. Cat’s intoxicating scent lingers on the pillow. Ben breathes deeply and wanks to an explosive, vociferous reward.

‘What a day!’ Josh exclaimed, distributing bottles of Seize in an intimate bar near the Auberge, refreshingly if anomalously devoid of Tour personnel.

‘What a day!’ Rachel echoed, taking a hearty swig, closing her eyes and leaning back in her chair.

‘One fuck of a day!’ Alex said, raising his bottle and drinking most of it down in one.

And it isn’t over yet! Cat thought to herself whilst nodding in agreement with the others. They relived the Time Trials of the key players and asked Rachel how the Zucca boys had reacted. She was discreet and, when Vasily’s ride came under analysis, gave away even less. Cat observed her friend and thought she seemed quiet. She didn’t look tired, but preoccupied, distant – a little down, perhaps. Cat followed when Rachel went to the toilet.

‘Hey, Rachel,’ Cat said when she emerged from the cubicle to find Rachel staring at a streaming tap. Rachel regarded Cat, and then the water, and then the floor and then her friend again.

‘Are you all right?’ Cat prompted gently, busying herself by washing her hands and then drying them meticulously, not wanting to pressurize Rachel.

‘No yes no yes – fuck knows!’ Rachel declared almost miserably.

‘Do you want to talk?’ Cat asked. ‘Anything I can help you with?’

‘No yes – ditto ditto,’ Rachel smiled forlornly, ‘fuck knows.’

The women’s toilet was almost as large as the bar, airy, clean and really quite conducive to female revelations. There was a bentwood chair and a deep window-sill. Rachel chose the former and Cat happily settled herself into the latter.

‘Vasily,’ Rachel said quietly.

‘Well,’ Cat said supportively, ‘for what it’s worth, I think he’ll still do it. Fabian isn’t as strong in the mountains – but he won’t want to let go of the yellow jersey so he might well be spent by the last Time Trial.’

‘No,’ Rachel said, looking up at Cat, ‘I mean, Vasily.’

‘I know,’ said Cat eagerly, missing the point that Rachel wasn’t making very well. Cat slithered down off the window-sill and shuffled alongside Rachel on the chair. Rachel was about to speak when Cat’s mobile phone intruded.

It’s Ben!

‘Hullo?’ she said.

‘Where are you?’ Ben said. ‘You can talk, you can’t talk? Are you near the hotel?’

‘Yes,’ Cat responded, thinking she ought to dampen her elated grin.

‘Are you more or less than a five-minute walk away?’

‘Yes,’ Cat said again.

‘Yes, more?’

‘No.’

‘Ah! Less. Good. Meet me round the back of your hotel in five minutes.’

Ben hung up. Cat turned to Rachel. What had Rachel been saying? Something about Vasily. Poor sod who missed the maillot jaune by so little. He must have dumped the burden of it all on his soigneur, poor girl. Cat tipped her head and smiled at Rachel. She held up her mobile phone.

‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, careful not to lie, ‘I’ve been summoned – in context of this afternoon. I’m going to have to go.’

Rachel nodded, hiding her disappointment well. ‘Sure,’ she said to Cat, ‘you have a job to do.’

And this is one of the perks, Cat did not say out loud.

She observed Rachel still looking somewhat discomfited. ‘Rachel,’ she said, ‘can I shadow you tomorrow?’

Rachel looked at Cat. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘but there’s no feed as it’s a short Stage – how about the day after?’

‘That would be great,’ Cat enthused. ‘I might pop by in the morning as the start isn’t till one-ish.’

‘Sure,’ said Rachel. ‘You’d better go,’ she continued, suddenly wanting to be alone anyway. Cat went. Rachel remained in the toilet a few minutes more. She stared at her reflection.

Saved by the bell – if Cat hadn’t had that call, I’d be deep into revelation by now.

‘Fuck it,’ she said softly, ‘there’s nothing to discuss really anyway. It probably didn’t mean anything to Vasily – he’s more than likely forgotten it already.’

And for you, Rachel? What did it mean? You’ve thought of little else.

‘The clear light of tomorrow, after a night’s sleep, will render whatever it was insignificant.’

But you’re not speaking for yourself, that’s just your conjecture for Vasily.

‘It was just somewhat disconcerting, that’s all.’

Rachel returned to the bar. Alex and Josh had replenished her Seize and were on to their fourth apiece, aided and abetted by a packet of Gauloises with a fair few missing.

‘Are you all right?’ Josh asked, leaving the chair that had been Rachel’s and taking his place back on a stool.

‘Got the shits?’ Alex asked in his inimitable way.

‘I’m fine,’ Rachel said.

‘Where’s Cat?’ Josh asked.

‘Has she got the shits?’ Alex asked.

‘She got a call through,’ Rachel shrugged, ‘she went directly to work.’

‘Oh,’ said Alex.

‘Oh,’ said Josh. Both men wondered how the novice journaliste could possibly have usurped them in the scoops stakes. It was just somewhat disconcerting, that’s all.

Ben took Cat to Arcachon, where the sand dunes were emphatically moonlit and all was gloriously private and, though a short car ride from Bordeaux, a million miles from the Tour de France, from the times and trials of journalism and medicine. Foreplay hardly figured. The last twenty-four hours had seemed to both Cat and Ben to have been a prolonged preparation for penetration.

The sand was cool and though Ben had thoughtfully brought a towel, they did not lie on it. They undressed themselves; standing naked and silent, Ben passed Cat a condom which she unwrapped and placed on him. They knelt, kissed and he entered her smoothly, easily. The feeling of being filled by a man whom she so desired, the sensation of a cock inside her after a barren few months, the sensitivity with which he kissed her eyelids, licked her neck, slipped his tongue into her mouth, the adeptness with which he moved his body into hers, made her come almost immediately. He let her orgasm subside. The feeling of a tight pussy of a girl he was mad for, the pleasure of hearing her gasp, the excitement of sensing her sex quiver and pulsate around him, the surprise of her tongue dipping in and out of his nostrils, his ears, made him come soon after.

The towel did come in useful. Ben and Cat skinny dipped, talking to each other with ease, embracing in the water. Ready for more sex. No more condoms though. No matter – there would be tomorrow. And there really would be tomorrow. This wasn’t to be a one off. Neither of them knew what it was to be but they were aware that tomorrow they would be together, the day after too, and the notion thrilled them privately.

What happened today, Cat? Apart from your fair share of orgasms, a head full of daydreams and a heart newly nourished and beating hard for more? The Tour de France? The Time Trial? Who won? What’s happening?

Read my report, I’m tired. I want to go to sleep. I can taste salt water on my skin. I can taste Ben still. Good night.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CA TRIONA McCABE IN BORDEAUX

Against the setting of Computaparc, where a massive turnout of cycling aficionados rubbed shoulders with a huge crowd of somewhat nonplussed techno-geeks, the 54.5 km Time Trial of the Tour de France was run today and won in outstanding style by Fabian Ducasse of Système Vipère. Vasily Jawlensky, last year’s winner of the yellow jersey and contender for overall victory this year, rode brilliantly but Fabian rode better. It took 1 hour 9 minutes and 38 seconds for the French heart-throb to claim the maillot jaune and a 1 minute 18 second lead over the Russian defender, who now lies second.

Though there is no certainty that Ducasse will ride every day in yellow from here to the podium in Paris, the golden fleece will assist his passage and he will not relinquish it without the fight which many anticipate will take place between him and Jawlensky in the looming mountain Stages.

Fabian set his pace and held it, averaging just under 51 kph. He chose a huge gear and stuck to it, enabling his bike to gulp as much tarmac with each turn of the pedals as possible. He maintained his prawn-like position all the way; folded aerodynamically, his head tucked lower than his shoulder blades, his knees close to the frame, shoulders steady. Technique, however, went only part of the way in securing his victory today, determination played much the key role.

A Time Trial is lonely to ride and heart-wrenching to watch. Tarmac is ever unfurling and the wind seems to relish buffeting a cyclist out there alone, with no shelter, no slipstreams, no stretch where he can ease the pressure. How was it for Megapac’s Didier LeDucq, standing on his pedals to contend with the climb an evil 15 km from the finish, to have Ducasse power past him sitting deep and steady on the saddle? Time Trialling requires supreme strength, it needs calculation and brains and, ultimately, dogged determination to discredit suffering. Acknowledging pain does not win Time Trials. If your pulse is racing at 180 bpm and lactic acid is forming in your muscles but there are only a few kilometres to go – so what? Your soigneur, glucose and electrolytes can help later. Health does not matter to a rider midway through a Time Trial. A rider who can calmly dismount and walk himself to his soigneur did not Time Trial. Jules Le Grand, directeur sportif of Système Vipère, literally carried Ducasse from his bike. Similarly, Rachel McEwen, Jawlensky’s soigneur, eased the rider away from his machine, her supportive embrace holding him up, holding him together, as she escorted him to the privacy of the team bus.

<ENDS>

STAGE 8
Sauternes-Pau. 162 kilometres

Ben York awoke with an erection, as frequently he did, however this morning he knew it was not a physiological vagary of his reverie that caused it, but a lucid awareness of Cat’s existence down the road now replacing the image of her which had inhabited his dreamtime. He fingered his cock, gave himself a few soothing tugs and grinned, closing his eyes.

She’s quite something.

What are you going to do with her?

Something along the lines of what I did last night – but without the sand.

You have a sizeable grin on your face.

And a proportionately equivalent hard-on too.

You’re feeling pleased with yourself then?

Pleased? Yes. Happy.

You like her?

I’ve never met anyone quite like her.

You like her?

Yes, I think I do. I like the way that she’s a little naïve but feisty. She was so adorable all in a dither about Luca’s unintended innuendo a few Stages ago. And when she was mad at me with the Monique misunderstanding – all gorgeous fury and indignation in a see-through dress. Yet last night she blew my mind as much as she blew my cock. For one who’s so easy to wind up, she’s very sure of herself sexually. It’s surprising. I like that.

You like her.

I do.

Isn’t that something of a first for you? Recently, you’ve slept with women because you’ve liked what’s on offer more than you’ve considered whether you’ve liked their persons.

Touché. But true. I’ve had sex with women because I can. With Cat, I wanted to. I want to.

It was eight in the morning. Ben rose, showered, shaved, packed and then stood by the window of his hotel, its nondescript features providing an opportunity for his mind to wander approximately a kilometre away. He envisaged Cat sleeping soundly, her body supine, soft and at rest beneath the linen on the old iron bed in Auberge Claudette. He wanted to spy on her like that as much as he desired to be in the full throes of fucking her right now.

Is she awake yet?

‘I wonder if Ms McCabe would care to join me for breakfast.’

Fabian Ducasse awoke very much the accomplished pro cyclist with his mind settled, focused and full of his maillot jaune. Fabian also awoke very much the healthy virile man, his cock stiff and proud. He thought of his girlfriend. Fleetingly. He zapped through the television in search of porn but found only cartoons, quiz shows and the Tour de France. He began to masturbate but his right hand was not enough of a turn on, not even when coated with the hotel’s complimentary body lotion. And then he remembered one of the clerks at the desk. Fuck, remember her name. Shit, what was it. Ah! He remembered. He picked up the phone.

‘This is Fabian Ducasse,’ he barked with some irritation to the male voice which had answered. ‘Is Francine on duty?’

‘Oui, Monsieur Ducasse,’ the man informed him.

‘Give her to me then,’ Ducasse commanded.

‘Bonjour?’

‘Francine,’ Fabian drawled, ‘yesterday, you said if I needed anything, to speak to you.’

‘Bien sûr – what can I do for you?’

‘I need something in my room,’ Fabian explained. ‘You will come.’

‘Directly,’ said Francine, turning from her colleague to hide her flush and the surreptitious unbuttoning of her shirt by one notch.

Fabian assessed the room and looked at his watch. He would not be wanting her on the bed. Not least because, after he had done what he intended to do with her, he would sleep for another hour or so. He did not want her on the bed because he desired no intimacy. He had no need, no wish, for a woman to be curled up and languid under white cotton, not leaving. Fundamentally, he did not want her on the bed because it would add time and necessitate seduction; his time and his seduction skills were precious commodities Fabian was not about to waste.

There was a discreet knock at the door. Fabian padded across the room and let Francine in. He was a sight to behold; naked and with an erection so arrogantly defiant that it needed neither introduction nor justification. She was pretty with a lovely figure but Fabian hardly clocked the facts. All he knew was that she had previously offered her services which, he deduced, meant warm, welcoming pussy. That was enough. That was what he wanted. That was all he wanted. And if he knew women, or at least those who made overtures to him midway through a Stage Race, she would be pleased to be fucked by Fabian. So, everyone was going to be happy. Let’s get on with it, tout de suite.

He backed her up against the closed door, unbuttoned her blouse and feasted his eyes on her impressive cleavage. He wasn’t going to waste time unhooking and unfastening, he just yanked the bra cups down so that her breasts were squeezed out and on display. He reached up her short skirt and ripped down her panties. She wasn’t very tall so it was good that she was wearing high heels; they could stay on. The skirt would have to go, though, as it prevented her spreading her legs wide enough. But the clasp and the zip – too complicated. With a desirous growl, Fabian ruched the skirt up until it was bunched around her waist like a deflated life ring. He took a step back and regarded what was on offer. Great tits. High heels. Shaved pussy. Best of all, utterly silent. Yeah!

Fabian placed the palms of his hands on each of her inner thighs and spread her legs easily. He took his hands to her breasts and moulded and fingered and grabbed at them, fixating on her nipples between his finger and thumb. Then he grasped her buttocks, bent his knees and bucked up hard, entering her with what he assumed was pleasurable force. Certainly, her gasp would have him believe that. He fucked her hard and came in about ten thrusts. No doubt she came too, oui? He grinned triumphant, proud at the glazed response he’d caused in her. He righted her skirt, buttoned her blouse albeit wrongly, handed her the panties and kissed her on both cheeks. It was the first and only time his lips had touched any part of her.

‘Merci,’ he murmured, ‘merci bien.’

‘Bonne chance,’ she said, leaving his room.

He did not watch her walk down the corridor trying to restore order to her blouse and her mind despite the trickle of semen dribbling down her leg. The power Fabian experienced fucking the clerk had flooded him with strength he could utilize on his ride that day. But the desired result which he had attained fucking her was nothing compared to the power that saturated him when he put the maillot jaune on his back.

‘How do you feel, Didier?’ Luca asked, sensing that LeDucq was awake and staring at the ceiling.

‘Better,’ Didier answered.

‘Completely?’ Luca probed.

‘No,’ Didier confided, ‘but I haven’t been sick for two days and my arse is – how do you say?’

‘Bricks instead of mortar?’ Luca ventured.

‘I like that,’ Didier laughed.

‘Zucca make bricks and mortar,’ Luca mused.

‘And I shit on all of them,’ Didier bantered.

‘I need to have a wank,’ Luca said, rising from the bed and disappearing courteously into the bathroom.

As Ben walked through the streets to Cat, he placed a hand against his stomach. He felt a little queer but diagnosis of the symptoms eluded him. He decided that hunger and lack of sleep were to blame, that breakfast with Cat and then perhaps a spell in her bed, or in her bed under her spell, might be curative measures to take. It was only when his stomach turned over, shot down to the soles of his feet and then rocketed up to the base of his throat when the auberge came into sight, that Ben deduced from what it was that he was suffering.

Butterflies. Fucking butterflies. When did I last have these? I’ve gone soft.

He was so disconcerted by the affliction that he very nearly bypassed the auberge. But not quite. Soon enough, he was knocking at Cat’s door with tiger moths rampaging around his abdomen. Then Josh appeared down the hallway.

‘Morning, Ben,’ he said affably.

‘Hey, Josh,’ said Ben.

‘Are you looking for Cat?’ Josh asked.

‘Yes, I am,’ said Ben, ‘actually, yes.’

‘I think Rachel said something about she and Cat having breakfast together on account of today’s afternoon départ,’ Josh informed Ben. ‘We had a great night last night – how come you didn’t show?’

‘Oh,’ Ben said breezily, ‘I had medical matters to attend to – bodies, rest and motion – you know the kind of thing.’

‘All in a day’s work,’ said Josh, nodding ingenuously. He regarded Ben. ‘Why do you want Cat?’

Because she’s gorgeous and sexy and I haven’t wanted anyone so much for bloody years.

‘She left her dictaphone in my room,’ Ben said.

‘What was it doing in your room?’ Josh asked, now just a little intrigued.

‘It was picking up the glinting gems which trickled like a golden waterfall from the ruby lips of one Luca Love Me Jones,’ Ben said wryly.

Josh laughed and then held out his hand. ‘Do you want me to give it to her?’

No. That’s my privilege – I’ll be giving it to her. And I’ll be returning the dictaphone too.

‘You’re all right, Josh,’ Ben said. ‘I feel I should deliver it to her myself – it’s safe in my hands, you might steal her scoops!’

Josh shrugged. ‘Ben?’ he called after the doctor who was about to descend the stairs. Ben turned and regarded him. Josh wavered and then waved the air dismissively. ‘Nothing,’ he said, returning to his room. Josh was going to say something, and he knew what it was he was going to say but the fact that he was unsure quite why he wanted to say it ultimately prevented its disclosure.

Josh always thinks before he speaks. Alex, however, does not. When Ben passed him on the stairs on his way out, Alex also asked his purpose in the auberge.

‘I’m after Cat,’ Ben explained.

‘Who isn’t!’ Alex exclaimed with an excited growl.

Cat McCabe had awoken early and sat up in bed gazing at her surroundings, already missing the room she’d have to check out of later. She committed the wallpaper design to memory, soaking up the beauty of the light filtering through from the bathroom like a waft of fine muslin. She felt so at home here and suddenly she thought of her family. She called Fen but there was no reply. She tried Pip but finding only her sister’s voice on the answering machine, albeit claiming to be Martha the Clown, she decided not to leave a message. Finally, she dialled Django.

‘Who’s there good God?’

Django only ever answered the phone like that when he was elbow-deep in some culinary venture. Forlornly, Cat cancelled the call. Less than a minute later, her phone rang.

‘No recipe,’ Django boomed, ‘no matter how intricate the instruction – regardless of milk curdling, sauce clogging or egg whites misbehaving – no recipe takes precedence over any of my nieces.’

‘Hullo, Django,’ Cat said.

‘What’s up, pretty girl?’ Django asked, slipping a wooden spoon, sticky with something resembling wallpaper paste, into the back pocket of his jeans.

Cat smiled small.

How can he tell?

‘I did something last night,’ she explained, with no shame, no embarrassment, but quietly.

‘With whom?’ Django asked, taking the spoon from his pocket and seeing whether it would stick to the glass pane in the kitchen door. It did.

‘With the doctor,’ Cat confided.

‘How lovely,’ Django enthused, because his other two nieces had provided enough details for him to deduce that the doctor was a very good idea indeed.

‘I know,’ Cat said, her voice faltering beyond her control, ‘I know.’

‘Why the tears?’ Django asked while all around him the sauce separated, egg whites collapsed and bananas went brown.

‘Because it means He’s gone,’ Cat said, ‘I’ve made Him go.’

‘Don’t capitalize that scoundrel,’ Django all but barked before softening his tone. ‘I know, darling. But you’ve let go because you could. Well done you.’

‘Haven’t I gone and scuppered any future chance?’ Cat asked, knowing the answer full well.

‘Catriona,’ Django said gravely, ‘that man deserved neither your future nor your sparkle. That he dared to try and strip you of the one means most certainly that he was never entitled to the other.’ Cat nodded. Django could sense it. ‘It’s good,’ Django continued, ‘believe me. Those who love you are so excited for your life – great things come to those who deserve them. Dr Who is one of them. Good for you.’

‘Think so?’ marvelled Cat on the verge of amazement.

‘Know so,’ Django declared.

Half an hour later, Cat all but skipped to the Zucca MV team hotel, forsaking forays into foyers in search of riders, for swift circumnavigation of the grounds to locate the Zucca team bus and soigneur. She found Rachel sitting on its steps, face up and eyes closed into the morning sun.

‘Rachel,’ Cat greeted.

Rachel opened her eyes and blinked, continuing to squint at Cat even when she could see her clearly. ‘Hey,’ Rachel said, ‘you look very chirpy.’

Cat smiled. ‘You wouldn’t have a spare pair of Oakley sunnies I could borrow?’

Rachel disappeared into the bus and came out with a pair of sunglasses. ‘They’re Vasily’s spares – I gift them to you for an hour!’

‘Thanks,’ said Cat, greatly honoured, putting the glasses on and seeing from her reflection in Rachel’s that she looked quite good in them.

‘So?’ Rachel probed, suddenly realizing how relieved she was for the excuse not to talk herself.

Cat tipped her head to one side. ‘It’s funny, isn’t it? The more you’re surrounded by men, the more you crave and value female company.’

Rachel frowned and cast her eyes down, suddenly realizing she’d love the excuse to talk, to confide her antics for constructive analysis.

‘Are you OK?’ Cat asked, suddenly sensing Rachel’s introspection. Rachel wiped her hands on her jeans and said she was fine and would Cat like to help mix the dextrose powder into the bidons? They performed their duty in affable silence until monotony made Cat’s mind meander.

‘Hey Rachel,’ she said, alighting on a fine topic, ‘pick up where you left off yesterday. You were talking about Vasily.’

Rachel was silent for a second too long.

‘Vasily?’ she replied in a way simply not noncommittal enough.

‘In the bar,’ Cat said in what she hoped was a tempting way, ‘in the loos?’

‘Vasily,’ Rachel declared, ‘nothing to say. Yesterday was the Time Trial. He wasn’t himself.’ Cat said nothing because Rachel needed to say nothing more. Cat knew that intonation, those kinds of sentences. She turned to Rachel, screwing on the lid of a drink bottle and giving it a good shake. ‘Tell me,’ she suggested, Rachel’s lack of eye contact confirming Cat’s hunch.

‘It’s nothing,’ Rachel said, fiddling with things that needed no attention, ‘it was nothing.’

‘What was nothing?’ asked Ben, suddenly at the foot of the bus.

‘Ben!’ Cat exclaimed with joy without checking.

‘Hullo, Ben,’ said Rachel, the briefest glance at Cat’s illuminated face telling her all she needed to know without recourse to the glint in Cat’s eyes which the Oakleys were hiding from view anyway.

‘Cat,’ said Ben quite formally, ‘here’s your dictaphone.’

‘Thanks!’ Cat said effusively.

‘Do you women want breakfast?’ Ben asked.

‘We’ve had,’ said Rachel, speaking for both, though Cat would have been quite content with a second sitting. Cat looked at Rachel. Slowly, she removed the loaned sunglasses and handed them to the soigneur. The girls conversed expertly by glances.

You’ve slept with Ben Bloody York, haven’t you!

I know! What do you think?

Go for it.

‘Wait up, Ben,’ Cat called after him but only once she’d been granted Rachel’s nod. Ben stopped a few yards off, the morning sunlight catching his features so aesthetically that Cat had to catch her breath.

‘Tell me,’ Rachel said connivingly, ‘why does he have your dictaphone?’

‘I must have left it in his bedroom,’ Cat said.

‘Oh,’ said Rachel, nodding sagely, ‘couldn’t he just have used his finger then, like a normal bloke?’

It took a while for Rachel’s jest to filter through Cat. When it did, she roared with laughter, nudged her friend, all but leapt from the bus and approached Ben most jauntily. As they walked away, Cat turned. Rachel was standing in the doorway of the bus, cleaning the Oakley sunglasses she had lent Cat, on the rim of her T-shirt.

Shit! Cat faltered, looking over her shoulder at the bus, Vasily! What were you going to say, Rachel?

It can wait, Cat – don’t worry about it – it can wait. It was nothing.

When Cat and Ben had disappeared from sight and the bidons were all done, Rachel cleaned the Oakleys once more.

‘Vasily, Vasily,’ she said under her breath, ‘what am I meant to think, let alone do?’

A little later, Rachel did something she had never done. She went to her rider. Two of the team had come to her room for a leg rub, another had come for fresh socks but she hadn’t seen Vasily. Vasily probably didn’t need clothing or massage or to be disturbed, but still Rachel went to his room.

‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hullo, Rachel,’ he replied.

‘Can I come in?’ Rachel asked.

‘Please,’ he said, holding the door and welcoming her. She was deflated that he left it ajar.

‘Can I do anything for you?’ she asked.

‘It’s a short Stage,’ Vasily shrugged. ‘I am fine, please do not worry.’ Rachel was standing with her back to the window, Vasily was leaning leisurely against the wall, the bed was between them. Rachel noticed that Vasily had, for some reason, made it.

‘OK,’ said Rachel, hovering, wondering if he’d forgotten, remembered or merely dismissed the day before. ‘About yesterday,’ she started.

Vasily raised a hand. ‘Please,’ he said kindly, ‘do not worry.’

Rachel regarded her feet.

I’m not worried. I just want to know if there might be more from whence it came.

‘Don’t worry,’ she echoed, her fixed smile contradicting the darting of her eyes.

‘Oh,’ said Vasily dismissively, ‘I won’t. I forgot it already.’ He wondered why Rachel had suddenly cast her gaze away. ‘Rachel,’ he said softly, advancing towards her, ‘it was not meant to be. If I am OK with it, I expect you – my soigneur – to be so too.’

Rachel looked up at him, he was close and lovely and she wanted to touch his lips with her fingertips. She nodded, not able to wrest a forlorn edge from her gesture.

‘You look sad,’ Vasily said.

‘I’m fine,’ Rachel said a little too loudly.

‘It won’t last,’ he continued.

‘You’re right,’ Rachel confirmed.

‘It won’t last, I will have it again,’ Vasily continued, his apparent contradiction distracting Rachel momentarily from the fact that he was fingering the buttons on her denim shirt.

‘I don’t think so,’ Rachel said, quite crossly.

Who does he think I am? Some fucking groupie willing to dispense sex when he so demands?

‘Rachel!’ Vasily remonstrated.

‘What?’ Rachel objected.

‘I say it won’t last, I will have it again,’ Vasily said, ‘and you tell me no, that I won’t?’

‘You bloody won’t,’ said Rachel.

‘I don’t need bloody shit like this,’ said Vasily.

‘And nor,’ Rachel declared, ‘do I.’

She brushed past him and made to go. Vasily caught her arm. ‘You think it’s not possible?’ he implored. Rachel looked at him coldly, her jaw locked with indignation and hurt. She snatched her arm away and stomped towards the door. ‘It won’t last,’ Vasily declared. ‘I will have it again.’

‘Fuck off, Jawlensky,’ Rachel hissed.

‘Yesterday meant nothing. You will see,’ Vasily proclaimed to her back, ‘I will take the maillot jaune in the mountains.’

Rachel stopped stock still, closed her eyes and grimaced.

You stupid, idiot girl. He’s a fucking cyclist. He was talking about a piece of bloody yellow lycra all along. Not you. Not kissing you.

Rachel turned.

And now he looks hurt and confused. And why wouldn’t he be? His faithful soigneur has just doubted his pedal prowess.

Rachel went back to her rider and laid the palm of her hand gently at his cheek. ‘Oh shit,’ she whispered, ‘I didn’t realize. I thought you. I meant about.’

Vasily tipped his head to one side and regarded her. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘you speak better for Vasily so he can understand.’

‘Understand this,’ said Rachel, standing on tiptoes and planting a small, apologetic but emphatic kiss on his mouth. Suddenly he was kissing her back, his tongue leaping around her mouth on a mission of its own.

‘Rachel,’ he murmured, wonderfully gravelly. He took her hand and placed it against his groin. She could feel him, rock hard. Rachel took his hand and placed it over her breast. Then she guided it under her shirt to her bare flesh, her nipple enticingly at the centre of his palm.

‘What do you want?’ she whispered, dabbing her tongue tip on the dimple in his chin. He encircled her with his arms, pressed his groin against her and moved his body gently.

‘I want to stay out of trouble,’ Vasily murmured into the top of her head. ‘I need to ride near the front today but not too hard. Tomorrow, the Pyrenees. Tomorrow, I am at war with Ducasse.’

Cat’s job was not just easy to do that day, it was a true pleasure. On a glorious sunny afternoon refreshingly punctuated by a gentle breeze, the race headed out from Sauternes and through lines of the famous lime-green vines striping the land like corduroy. The route headed due south, down through Gascony to the Beam region and its capital, Pau; gateway to the Pyrenees, harbinger of the first mountain trials of the Tour de France but also a lovely old university town crowned with a picture-perfect fourteenth-century château. Cat was excited to be there; not even a nondescript modern motorlodge could dampen her delight.

It was an easy Stage to report and she whacked out 500 words effortlessly. It was easy to work diligently when a certain euphoria tided you along, when the person responsible for that euphoria was willing you to finish your work because he was waiting for you. The route had been raced fast with an exciting photo-finish between three riders, a paragraph-worthy mass pile-up near Brocas-les-Forges, no change in the general classification nor the jersey wearers and no abandonments. Tomorrow, out of the original 189 starters, 180 would be heading towards their nemeses at altitude.

‘Finito!’ Cat exclaimed.

‘Are you on a mission or something?’ Alex probed.

‘Yup, Rachel and I are having a drink before dinner,’ Cat said, her eyes glinting, ‘so I’d better shoot. I’ll see you later, boys.’

Josh watched Cat all but skip out of the salle de pressé. He thought her to be ridiculously excited over a pre-dinner drink with a girl she’d had breakfast with that morning.

‘Rachel and Cat,’ Alex guffawed, nudging a bemused Josh for good measure, ‘kinky!’

‘You’re a prat, Fletcher,’ said Josh. ‘I’m going out for some air.’

And there was Rachel. And there was Ben.

‘Hey, Josh,’ Rachel called.

Josh approached them. ‘Cat’s just left,’ he said to Rachel, knowing instantly why Rachel looked momentarily puzzled. ‘You’re meeting for a drink?’ he said, as if reminding her kindly though he analysed her response. He glanced at Ben as if to say, my! aren’t girls dippy.

‘Oh yes,’ Rachel said, tapping her temples, ‘I’m losing my mind.’ She returned Ben’s shot glance in what she hoped was a legibly conspiratorial way.

‘I think she’s gone to phone her boyfriend first,’ Josh heard himself say before he allowed himself to check his words and consider his point. He was looking steadily at Rachel but he could feel Ben regard him abruptly. ‘Didn’t Cat say something about him coming out for some of the mountain Stages?’ Josh continued to Rachel.

‘Um,’ Rachel faltered as if pondering Josh’s query rather than wracking her brains for any clue that Cat had given her of a boyfriend back home.

‘Anyway,’ Josh said lightly, ‘that’s where she’s gone – her daily indulgence of long-distance sweet nothings.’

‘That’s nice,’ Rachel said distractedly.

‘I’d better shoot,’ said Ben, turning and walking away.

‘Me too,’ said Rachel, doing the same.

‘Yes,’ said Josh, ‘and me.’ He returned slowly to the salle de pressé hating himself but not kicking himself. What had he just done? Was he trying to protect Cat? From Ben? For her boyfriend back home? She so sparkled in the doctor’s company. Was he trying to keep Cat chaste? And if so, for whom? The boyfriend? Or himself?

Cat was waiting for Ben in her room. He was later than she had anticipated and she was so highly charged with desire that when he knocked, she flung open the door and greeted him with a torrent of kisses. She didn’t want him to use his mouth for an explanation, she didn’t need an apology. Kissing was all she required to come from his lips.

Ben, who was thoroughly disconcerted by what he’d just learned from Josh, had intended to ask Cat for some information and honesty. But her mouth was so sweet and kissing her was so tantalizing and her hands were running all over his body and his cock was responding in fine style. So, Ben allowed Cat to lead and she took to her role with relish, stripping herself first and then Ben. She went on top and held her position there. She felt fantastic to Ben and, as he came, his hands on her firm buttocks, his tongue deep in her mouth, his body thrust high into hers, their eyes locked together, he thought how he never wanted to let her go. As he left, he considered how she wasn’t even available for the taking.

STAGE 9
Pau-Luchon. 196.5 kilometres

Fen opened the door to her Kentish Town flat to find Pip clutching the Guardian and two cappuccinos in polystyrene cups. Pip had phoned not half an hour before and Fen had told her that she was working from home because she was desperate for no distraction. The fact that Fen was embroiled in a relationship with a colleague, as well as dithering over another man in Derbyshire, was distraction incarnate. Pip, who did not have a conventional job, never mind the choice of one man let alone two, assessed that if her sister was not physically at her place of work, or getting physical with a male, it meant she was at play and available for confabulation. The fact that Fen was visibly flummoxed, surrounded by papers and fluorescent Post-its, was of no relevance to Pip. She bustled in, removed the plastic lids from the coffee and licked each one clean. Fen, exasperated, motioned to her papers and files.

‘Very nice,’ said Pip, handing her sister a coffee, turning straight to Cat’s report on the procession down to Pau the previous day. ‘She’s very good, our baby sis,’ Pip murmured as Cat’s passion for the Tour filtered through the newsprint and infused the reader.

‘I’m dying to know what’s happening,’ Fen said, now enjoying the cappuccino and grateful for her sister’s intrusion.

‘Me too,’ Pip enthused. ‘Both Cat and that nice Paul Sherwen chap from Channel 4 say that the race starts in earnest now, in the mountains, that the challenge for the yellow jersey will be at its most intense and consequential.’

Fen stared at Pip. ‘All that – yes,’ she said, ‘and Fabian Ducasse is a spunk and a half, but I was referring to Cat – and the doc. Where do you think they’re at?’

‘Oh blimey, of course,’ Pip said, sitting cross-legged at her sister’s feet, ‘brawny Ben.’

‘Shall we phone her?’ Fen suggested, already dialling. Pip grabbed the phone from her, scooping cappuccino froth from the side of the cup with her index finger while waiting for Cat to answer.

‘Hullo?’ said Cat, sounding like she was just around the corner, sounding like she had just woken up.

‘Have you shagged him yet?’ Pip all but squealed.

Though she really shouldn’t have been startled by her sister’s trademark bluntness, Cat found herself answering with an affirmative giggle. While she listened to her sisters shrieking with delight in the background, Cat considered that, though she had indeed shagged Ben, that they had quite categorically fucked each other’s brains out, gorged on each other to satisfy a very base hunger, there had been an edge to it all. Right from the start. Sexual desire, yes, but something else, something more too. Merely confirming that she had shagged the man did both him and herself something of a disservice. It had been more than just sex, but what, exactly? Surely the sex could not have been so good without this enhancing extra layer of something or other? Physical attraction is one thing on but one level; to be mutually attracted to each other is something else and multi-faceted. And somewhat perplexing.

‘He’s lovely,’ Cat said to Pip’s ‘Come on come on come on!’

‘What was it like?’ Fen asked excitedly. ‘Was he good?’

‘It was great,’ Cat replied.

‘Where did you do it?’ Pip butted in. ‘When? How many times?’

‘I like him,’ Cat reiterated, thinking, deluded, that she was being discreetly noncommittal, ‘it was great.’

And then Cat changed the subject. ‘The weather is absolutely appalling here today – it’s cold and very wet. It’s going to be torture for the boys. Promise you’ll watch? Promise you’ll pray for them? You’re going to meet a host of new characters today – all those powerful sprinters so familiar last week will now be gone from sight. They’ve passed the baton to the grimpeurs – lithe, wiry, crazy, brave boys. Watch what the mountains do to them. Watch what they do to the mountains.’

‘The fact that she changed the subject in a way she thought was so subtle—’ Fen starts, replacing the handset, finishing the coffee and reordering her piles of papers.

‘Means one of two things,’ Pip completes.

‘Either the sex was a bit disappointing and reality has let her daydream down,’ Fen theorizes.

‘Or,’ Pip continues for her, ‘Cat’s gone and fallen for him.’

‘In some ways,’ says Fen, very slowly, ‘I rather hope she hasn’t.’

‘I know,’ says Pip, ‘I do too. She’d be safer.’

‘But I rather think it’s the latter,’ Fen clarifies, ‘and I don’t want her to be hurt.’

‘I mean, he’s probably a really lovely guy with honourable intentions,’ Pip says, ‘and has massive desire for Cat, which is great for her – but if she is falling for more than his ability to bring her to orgasm, she is somewhat vulnerable.’

‘And I don’t want her to hurt,’ Fen states, ‘she’s had enough of that.’

Pip was staring at Fen’s calendar from the Musée Rodin.

‘The Eternal Idol, 1899,’ Fen whispers rather hoarsely. ‘Isn’t that clit-quiveringly wonderful?’

‘Huh? Oh yes!’ Pip says, changing her focus to observe the photo of the sculpture. ‘But I was thinking – fancy a weekend in the Alps?’

Fabian Ducasse has spent the least accumulative time in the saddle which is why he is wearing the yellow jersey. He’s been racing for eight days and has covered over 1,570 kilometres in 41½ hours riding. He has over 2,000 kilometres to go, twelve further days in the saddle with two rest days during which he’ll be on his bike, of course. Fabian Ducasse, twenty-nine years old, will climb five mammoth Pyrenean passes today. Tomorrow, another five. All in all, there are seven days in which mountains are to be tackled. By our boys. On their bicycles.

As Cat told her sisters, we have new characters to meet who have spent the last week wisely sheltering safe in the air bubble at the centre of the bunch, conserving their energy for the mountains. The pure sprinters have now had their apportionment of fame. Their current concerns are merely to survive the next week if they are going to make it to Paris at all. Last week, they surged and pumped hard at the front of the peloton in front of the world, now they’ll gladly join the grupetto, the bus of riders that forms the back of the bunch, just keeping together, keeping going, living to ride another day, riding for a living though it nearly kills them. Jesper Lomers and Stefano Sassetta will continue to duel for the green jersey to prove who is the Tour’s most consistent daily finisher; one who can cope with the mountains in the second week, as much as he shone at sprinting in the first. Jesper’s wife Anya has not yet made an appearance. Jesper is doing battle with himself to keep his professional and personal lives separate. And he is at war with Stefano. A handful of points separate them.

We met the two major contenders for the polka dot King of the Mountains jersey before the race but we’ve hardly seen them since. Donna magazine’s ‘Sexiest Man on Two Wheels’, Zucca MV’s dashing Massimo Lipari; the face of a popular chocolate-hazelnut spread and a familiar fixture in the Italian music charts each summer when he releases synthetic Europop in honour of the Giro, his nation’s Grand Tour. Massimo has been King of the Mountains for the last two years. However, the man that Système Vipère transferred at great expense to put a stop to Massimo’s run is the Pocket Rocket – small but charismatic Carlos Jesu Velasquez. A Spaniard riding for a French team, he is taciturn, a family man. Lipari and Velasquez’s style on bike and off are vastly different. Their ability this year is neck and neck. Their aim is the same. The polka dot jersey. A slip of white lycra, spotted red, well worth the pain of pelting up peaks for points.

‘The hills are alive!’ Luca warbled at breakfast, the rest of Megapac regarding him with a mixture of pity and contempt. ‘Come on, guys,’ he continued quietly. Ben looked at him unseen, sensing the rider’s bravado was but a thin veneer laid unconvincingly over his truer anticipation, dread and fear.

‘Eat,’ Ben said, eyeing the plates of pasta. ‘Your bodies are going to use a lot of energy keeping warm today.’

The team were well aware of the rain teeming down the windows. ‘Climb every mountain,’ sang Luca, rather forlornly. Hunter pointed his knife at him but said nothing.

‘It’s wet but all of you must drink as often as you can,’ Ben said, ‘and lots of Vaseline on your feet so wet socks won’t rub.’

‘It’s too wet and cold for bikinis,’ Luca rued, taking more pasta though he wasn’t hungry in the slightest, ‘such a shame. Maybe there’ll be some wet T-shirts instead, hey guys!’ Travis shot him a withering look that went unseen.

‘Luca,’ Ben said, rising from the table, ‘take your negligible brain cells from out of your dick and stick them where they’ll serve you best. Jesus, you can be a bloody headache sometimes.’ Ben left the dining-room, refusing to acknowledge Luca’s look of hurt. Returning to his room, Ben hated himself for foisting his own unrest upon his young rider. He stood still in the centre of the bedroom, then switched on the TV, turning the volume high on whatever channel came on. He didn’t want silence; ironically, he wouldn’t be able to hear himself think. With the TV droning away, he began to bundle his clothes into his case.

‘Would I have felt differently about Cat had I not found out she has a bloke back home?’ he asked himself, sniffing at a shirt and tucking it deep down into the case. ‘Is it the fact that she is unavailable that makes me want her more?’ Ben sat on the edge of the bed for a moment before moving to the chair and then to the window-sill against which he rested the small of his back. ‘Is that what disconcerts me?’ He pushed himself away to lie down on the unmade bed. ‘Bloody women. It’s proof – as if I needed it – that any involvement that goes beyond a mere physical exchange is hassle I don’t need.’

Ben left the bed and went to the bathroom. He looked at himself. ‘Who the fuck said I was involved anyway?’ But the two images of Cat which solicited him in quick succession answered him. The first was watching her, unseen, engrossed in her work in the salle de pressé; her foot tapping, her lips moving – parting into a smile at certain sentences, into a pout when vocabulary eluded her – her whole self focused, a little frown now and then, a twitch of her nose, the brace of her back, accepting a drink from Josh, a quick banter with Alex, a glanced smile at an Italian journalist. She was in a little sundress that day, white pumps and a white, tight T-shirt. Ben had left the salle and walked away with a grin to his groin. The other image accosting him was of Cat climaxing last night, her eyes never leaving his, just glazing over with the pleasure and gazing deep into him. He’d found it an incredibly intense moment. She had been straddling him, gyrating to her peak, moving around and down on to him; his hands had been on her thighs, at her waist, cupping her breasts, and then she stilled herself, gasping and staring at him and he felt her sex suck him deep inside her, her gaze drawing him into her. And then she all but crumpled down on to him with post-orgasmic exhaustion and he wrapped his arms around her, tenderly encircling her as her throbbing subsided. She had smelt wonderful. He could have feasted on the scent of her, the sight and sound of her and never have had his fill.

That any imagery, let alone two vivid and contrasting ones, were deeply ensconced in his soul and mind’s eye, was a disconcerting fact in itself.

It isn’t that I’ve consciously not allowed many women to take residence in my head, to say nothing of my heart – it’s that none of them have really warranted the space. Bloody Cat is bloody everywhere.

Ben knocked his head gently against the mirror, knowing full well that the action would have done little to dislodge Cat from there, that when he turned away to drop his pants and have a piss, he needn’t even close his eyes to summon an image of her. Uninvited? Perhaps. But even if he wished to banish her, he would be unable to.

‘Hey, Rachel,’ Cat said, walking past the soigneur on her way to meet Josh at the car.

‘Morning – but not a good one,’ said Rachel glowering at the sky and then appearing to scrutinize Massimo Lipari’s legs before rubbing them with great consideration. Elsewhere, riders rubbed udder cream or Vaseline on to their nether regions to prevent chafing; the sight alarming neither girl.

‘I think I’d better leave shadowing you till tomorrow,’ Cat said.

‘Wise,’ said Rachel, ‘that’s fine by me. I’m going directly to the hotel anyway.’ Massimo stood, walked a step and a half to his bike and then cycled slowly away, for a last coffee and another piss before the start. Cat began to walk away. Rachel called after her.

‘Yesterday,’ she began, ‘I mean – I didn’t know.’

‘About Ben?’ Cat said with a spirited smile.

‘No,’ said Rachel, regarding her straight, ‘about the other one.’

Cat looked puzzled.

‘Ben’s a really nice guy,’ Rachel continued, ‘I’ve known him for a few years now.’

Cat grinned, reading this as Rachel’s seal of approval which she was flattered to receive.

‘So?’ Rachel prompted.

Cat shrugged.

‘This guy?’ Rachel continued. ‘Back home?’

‘Who?’ said Cat, genuinely confused.

‘Josh was telling us you are deeply involved with a guy back home.’

Cat was rooted to the spot, her jaw had dropped and her eyes were flitting all over Rachel’s face.

‘Us?’ Cat said in hushed horror, half-knowing what she’d hear. ‘Who was the “us”?’

‘Me,’ Rachel said, ‘and Ben.’

‘Oh God,’ Cat cried, turning away and then back again. ‘Oh fuck. Jesus. I’ve got to go.’ Rachel watched her jog away. She’d learnt no more. In fact, she felt she now knew Cat less. That upset her.

Alex and Josh told Cat she ought to drive the route to gain a true feel of the drag of the mountains and the plummet of the descents. Although she had wanted initially to confront Josh immediately, she was ultimately glad of the chance to restore her composure and concentrate on being a journaliste on the Tour de France.

Everything happens for a reason, she told herself in Django’s words and tone as they reached the base of the fearsome Tourmalet. What the reason might be, she was as yet unsure. The Tourmalet not only provided welcome distraction, it absorbed her entirely. She was driving the 18½ kilometres to the 2,115 metre summit of the mighty mountain. There was nothing average about the gradient; 7.7 per cent was the mean and it was just that.

How are the boys going to get up this, with the Aubisque coming right before? And the d’Aspin and Peyresourde after? In this rain and mist? With thousands of fans clinging to the slopes like birds on a cliff and the tifosi – the truly obsessed – thronging either side of the road as the summit nears; crowding in, yelling and running alongside, making it all so narrow, so claustrophobic, so treacherous. How can the riders descend as fast as they can, but safely? Far faster than a car can manage. Look at these bends, the drop. It’s wet. I can hardly see. How are my boys going to cope?

With wills of steel, legs of iron, the snap-quick eye reflexes of an eagle, hearts of a lion, and no nerves to mention.

The terrible grandeur of the mountains elicited fulminations from Alex so colourful and effusive that Cat wondered if he was suffering from Tourette’s syndrome. Josh was capable of little more than whistles and tuts. They made it in one piece to Luchon knowing full well that some of the riders would not.

If Cat had found the drive itself a physical and mental trial, watching the riders do battle with themselves, with each other, with the awesome gradients up and down, was emotionally exhausting. She swallowed down a sob as she watched the excruciating but not unfamiliar sight of a rider weave semi-deliriously all over the road at a snail’s pace half-way up the Tourmalet. Despite the impassioned pleas and helpful if illegal running shoves from fans, the rider finally stopped, quit his bike and the Tour, had his race number ceremoniously stripped from his back by an official before he was escorted to the ignominy of the broom wagon which transports deserters funereally along the route behind the race.

‘How on earth can you put into words what we’ve just witnessed?’ Cat marvels to Alex once the Stage has finished. ‘I’m utterly exhausted, I’m speechless. I want to cry and go to sleep.’

‘Fuck off and stop being so girlie,’ Alex declares, envious of Cat’s entitlement and ability to express emotions mirroring his own but which bravado in the salle de pressé dictates he should keep close to himself.

‘I know,’ Josh says sympathetically, giving her arm a squeeze, ‘I know.’

You know nothing, Cat thinks miserably, suddenly wanting to be shot of her work so she can enlighten Rachel and appease Ben. In privacy.

Her phone rings and she goes to the back of the salle before answering it.

‘Oh my God,’ Fen all but wails.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Pip whispers.

‘Jesus, what’s wrong?’ Cat gasps. ‘Is it Django?’

‘Django?’ Fen retorts, ‘God no. He’s fine. He’s having to have a stiff brandy though – we’ve just phoned him.’

‘Today, stupid,’ Pip cries, ‘how did they do that? Why were they made to do that?’

‘Huh?’ says Cat.

‘The Tour de Bloody France,’ Pip protests.

Cat grins.

My two sisters. In the fold. Part of the fraternity.

‘That guy – the weeny Spanish climber,’ Fen says, ‘how did he do that on the final climb? It was like there was suddenly a motor on his bike. Was it my imagination or did he actively choose the steepest part to suddenly power away from the faltering?’

‘Strategy,’ Cat replies, ‘undoubtedly – Velasquez always bides his time and then attacks. Imagine the effect it has on those he pulls away from.’

‘And all for a spotty jersey,’ says Pip contemplatively.

‘And Jawlensky finished ahead of gorgeous Ducasse and diminished the Frenchman’s lead to a minute,’ Fen rues. ‘Did I pronounce Vasily’s surname correctly? With a “y” not a “j”?’

‘Perfectly,’ Cat confirms. ‘What with Velasquez – that’s a “th” not a “z” at the end of his name – in polka dot, and Lomers and Sassetta still at loggerheads for the green jersey, this Tour is being waged on a personal level between Système Vipère and Zucca MV.’

‘But it was so cold, so misty and grim today,’ Pip says plaintively.

‘And that boy went careering off the side of the mountain,’ Fen remarks.

‘David Millar?’ says Cat. ‘He’s fine – thanks to a bush. He lost his bike but managed not to lose too much time.’

‘What do you think will happen tomorrow?’ Pip asks.

Suddenly, Cat wonders. ‘Today changed many things,’ she says, ‘tomorrow, I would say, even more so.’

‘What do you mean?’ Fen probes.

‘Read my report – it’s all in my concluding paragraph.’

‘Er, Cat,’ says Pip, her mind switching from lycra and bikes to flesh and beds, ‘how’s Ben?’

‘Fuck,’ Cat bemoans.

‘What?’ Fen says.

‘It’s complicated and horrible and I’ve created a sorry mess for myself.’

‘Details, please,’ Pip demands. Cat gives her sisters a nutshell version which more than suffices.

‘Well, don’t you dare back off from unravelling it,’ Fen cautions.

‘Humble pie can be quite nourishing,’ Pip says encouragingly.

Django phoned almost as soon as Pip and Fen had gone.

‘They’re bloody lunatics!’ was his opening statement.

‘Who are?’ Cat said, startled at the severity of his accusation.

‘Your bloody bike boys,’ Django brandished. ‘Fancy wanting to ride a push bike up five fuckers of mountains. Bloody mad. Are they on drugs? I’m on double brandy after that.’

‘Good question,’ Cat said a little despondently.

‘Why all the sex?’ Django demanded.

‘The sex?’ Cat exclaimed, wondering if Django would move on to rock and roll next. ‘Where?’

‘On the mountains,’ Django said ingenuously, ‘that lovely Liggett commentator was telling us that certain riders bonk whores.’

‘What?’ Cat exclaimed aghast.

‘Oh yes,’ Django continued, ‘on the mountains themselves.’

Cat fell silent and then grinned. ‘Are you talking hors catégories?’

‘That’s the one!’ Django confirmed. ‘Would it have something to do with those mountains being such a bitch to climb?’

Cat roared with laughter, much to the consternation of a posse of Portuguese journalists near by. ‘Hors,’ she stressed, spelling it out, ‘hors catégorie means “beyond classification” – and yes, I suppose they are the bitch climbs.’

‘And the bonking?’ Django probed, most interested.

‘When a rider bonks, it’s like a marathon runner hitting the proverbial wall,’ Cat explained.

‘Have you bonked?’ Django asked.

‘I am knackered,’ Cat conceded.

‘Yes but have you bonked,’ Django pressed, ‘your doctor?’

Oh God. Ben. The boyfriend. The bullshit.

‘Ben?’ Cat used the house phone in the foyer of the Megapac team hotel.

‘Not a good time,’ Ben said, quite plausibly, though there was no one else in his bedroom and nothing urgent requiring his attention.

‘Come to me later?’ Cat said softly.

‘Perhaps,’ Ben said. ‘Don’t wait up for me, though.’

‘Rachel?’ said Cat, using the house phone in the foyer of the Zucca MV team hotel.

‘Hullo,’ Rachel replied.

‘Can I come up?’ Cat asked. ‘I’m desperate for a chat.’

‘Of course,’ said Rachel, intrigued and feeling too that she was entitled to an explanation. She placed her portable grocery store at Cat’s disposal. Gratefully, Cat filled a bowl with cereal and munched thoughtfully.

‘It was bullshit,’ she said at length, ‘what Josh told you.’

‘You didn’t tell him you have a boyfriend?’ Rachel probed.

‘No!’ Cat wailed. ‘I mean, I did tell him I have a boyfriend.’

‘Do you?’ Rachel pressed, obviously suspicious.

‘No,’ Cat said a little sadly, but quite categorically, ‘I don’t. Not any more.’

‘Since when?’ Rachel enquired, wondering if Cat had chucked him that evening.

‘Since a few months ago,’ Cat defined quietly.

Rachel regarded Cat. ‘Why did you tell Josh that you did,’ she asked quite reasonably, ‘if he no longer exists?’

‘I regret telling Josh that I did,’ Cat said, ‘but I told him very early on because – well, because it felt like protection. I didn’t know if he was trying to come on to me. I didn’t know there’d be Ben.’

Rachel nodded slowly. ‘Did Josh come on to you?’

Cat smiled and shook her head. ‘He’s a lovely married guy,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t know until after I’d spun my yarn.’

‘Well, you’ve created some tangle. You should put him straight. He Who No Longer Exists – as I think I’ll call him – has a stature he obviously doesn’t deserve.’

‘I know,’ Cat sighed, ‘I know. There hasn’t been the right time.’

‘Och, bollocks,’ said Rachel with fine Scots directness, ‘there’s never a wrong time – not when it concerns people of whom you are fond and who care about you.’

‘I know,’ Cat nodded, ‘I know.’

‘Have you cleared things with Ben?’

‘Not yet,’ Cat said, ‘but not from want of trying.’

‘Bloody boys,’ Rachel said, somewhat connivingly. ‘Was he bloody? Your ex?’

‘Yes,’ Cat admitted, ‘he was.’ She would have been pleased to elaborate, to tell Rachel all about Him and all about Ben had there not been a rap at the door. Vasily entered wearing only a towel – a skimpy one – around his waist. Cat’s eyes bulged and she flitted an impressed glance over to Rachel whose gaze was exclusively focused on the rider.

‘Rachel,’ Vasily said in his gloriously Slavic way, ‘you said you had something for me.’

Cat bit her lip.

‘Of course,’ Rachel exclaimed, smacking her forehead, ‘I suggested a bath.’ She looked over to Cat. ‘Epsom salts and vinegar – soigneurs of yore swore by them. If it soothes, it’s good, I say.’

‘I’d better go,’ said Cat.

‘Yeah,’ Rachel said, sternly but kindly, ‘you have work to do.’

‘Great ride,’ Cat beamed at Vasily, who was used to such praise but always accepted it graciously. ‘You might do it tomorrow, hey? You need only put a minute into Fabian.’

‘Shadow me tomorrow, Cat,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m doing the feed. You’ll get a great view – you’ll get my view – there may be an article in it.’

‘Too right,’ said Cat, adding a call to Andy at Maillot slightly higher on her mental list than transcribing Luca’s interview.

Cat left the hotel, omitting to ponder on the Vasily-Rachel situation about which she was faintly curious. She was much more concerned with returning to her hotel room, for Ben to come to her. She didn’t wonder whether or not Rachel would slip into the bath with Vasily. She did not consider how recuperative a bath of Epsom salts and vinegar might be. Nor did she ponder the effect of 5 hours, 49 minutes and 40 seconds at an average speed of 32 kph on Vasily’s libido.

There is a rap at Cat’s door. It has gone midnight but she knows the code of Ben’s knocking. She does not put the light on. She answers the door and Ben pushes her back into the room.

‘Ben,’ she whispers, ‘I need to—’

He clasps his hand over her mouth. It turns her on. He pushes her roughly on to the bed.

‘But I want to—’

This time he hisses at her to shut up. His forcefulness is thrilling. She lies there and lets herself be taken. He places his arms under her waist and thrusts his cock into her with absolutely no preamble. He hasn’t kissed her yet. Hasn’t touched her at all really. Once he’s inside her, humping her vigorously, he finds her mouth and tongues her voraciously. Her hands are enmeshed in his hair, their mouths are fused together, their limbs are intertwined, their bodies moving in frantic unison. He comes very quickly. She hasn’t climaxed but the sex lacks nothing for her. Suddenly he’s away from her. She can hear him fiddling with the condom.

‘Cheers,’ he says, into the dark.

He’s left the bed.

‘Ben?’ she calls after him. ‘There’s something I—’

‘Not now, Cat,’ he says. He leaves the room. Cat is simultaneously exhilarated and yet unnerved.

‘Ben,’ she says quietly, though she knows he is gone, ‘there’s no one back home. You can have my undivided attention.’

And my affection, I rather think.

Say that out loud.

God no. Far too risky.

STAGE 10
Luchon-Plateau de Boudin. 170 kilometres

If she was to shadow Rachel intently, it meant following in her footsteps from the moment she woke. As Cat left for the Zucca hotel, Josh and Alex were still fast asleep, Ben was tossing and turning. Though Cat was eager to talk to both Josh and Ben, she was also looking forward to the refreshing and welcome opportunity of a whole day in female company. She’d never seen so many men en masse. Though she was increasingly fond of those with whom she travelled, worked and ate, though she was admittedly smitten by him with whom she slept, if she was brutally honest she was starting to crave quality time with her own sex. Chatting with her sisters had highlighted this; as had the lengthy periods spent with Alex and Josh. The very presence of Rachel, that work commitments and the pressure of the race made extensive exchanges rare, underlined it. Josh and Alex were touchingly protective towards her – Josh to an extreme (he’d raid the press buffet for her even if she wasn’t remotely hungry and had, on occasion, insisted on swapping hotel rooms on some pretext or other – towel quality, hanging space, number of mirrors), but Cat was starting to feel swamped by the unremitting prevalence of males. Even the timbre of their voices, whatever their language; the gait of their walk, whatever their footwear, could make her feel somewhat isolated.

Rachel drove Cat along the route, through the stunning Haute-Garonne and on to the Ariege region, with the luxury of a classical music channel rather than Radio Tour providing a rousing score to the scenery. The land was quite staggeringly verdant and lush, the villages gorgeous, all being blessed with unabated sunshine and no remnant of the cloud cover which had scourged the race the day before. The mountains looked woolly with their cloaks of vegetation and seemed to encircle the valleys in an amicable embrace. Whereas yesterday’s foul weather had made the mountains all the more menacing, this morning, in 27 degrees, they seemed almost benign. For those experiencing them on anything other than a bicycle, that is.

When the girls had set up at the feed station some 95 kilometres along the route, they indulged in sunshine and time on a grassy bank, tanning their legs with eyes closed and ears tuned gratefully to the novelty of hush, the gift of shared solitude. The riders, however, had three mountains and a sprint point to contend with before they could fly past and snatch their lunch musettes. Yesterday, the peloton had been hammered by rain. Today, they would be drained by the heat. Tomorrow, their bodies would pay. The pace of climbing, at about a third of a rider’s normal speed, provides only minimal draught. In this heat, Cat hoped they’d be taking it sensibly, for their own sakes primarily, but also to permit her and her friend the luxury of let-up.

‘This is the life!’ Rachel proclaimed as if she was on holiday, stroking the downy grass as if it were Caribbean sand.

‘This is the life!’ Cat echoed and meant it. With eyes closed, her sense of scent was highly attuned. France. Definitely not England. Specifically, midway between Biarritz and Perpignan, close to Spain, far from Camden Town. Behind closed eyes, she replayed her coupling with Ben and projected imagery of future liaisons with him. She turned on her side, propped herself on an elbow and regarded Rachel. The soigneur looked at her, but was obviously seeing something quite else. Cat knew that look.

‘Vasily,’ Cat prompted, with what she hoped was a conspiratorial tone of camaraderie.

Rachel said nothing but nodded very slowly, rolled on to her back and remarked that the publicity caravan of floats and music preceding the race by an hour would soon be approaching.

I’ll let it lie, Cat decided thoughtfully. There’s a time and a place – it isn’t here but hopefully she might let me take her there sometime soon. She lay on her back and her mind streamed off to the tangents that sky-gazing generates.

‘We,’ said Rachel breezily, before closing her eyes to forestall the tongue-loosening effects of the troposphere, ‘oh. Nothing. I was. I was just.’

Cat knew very well what incomplete sentences were all about. She also knew that silence was not the best medium for revelation. The gaiety of the caravan, however, could well provide the perfect ambience. She awaited the raucous, garish publicity snake; daydreaming and sky-gazing until she could detect the distant toots of the approaching carnival.

‘Tell me,’ she prompted gently while the floats came upon them in a wave of colour, lousy music and grinning personnel scattering freebies like modern-day winnowers. Bolstered by a panini, Rachel spoke. Sustained by a ham roll, Cat listened attentively.

‘We kissed,’ Rachel began, with the hint of a grin she then saw wise to curtail. ‘I don’t know why,’ she shrugged, ‘but we kissed. Just before the Time Trial. I mean, really kissed.’

Cat’s jaw dropped.

You and Vasily – wow! Hearts will be breaking amongst the female fans world-wide.

Cat regarded Rachel. ‘Lucky you, I’d say. Just the once?’

Rachel shook her head. Then she shrugged. She did not look as ecstatic as Cat felt that someone kissed regularly by Vasily Jawlensky really ought.

‘Well,’ Rachel declared, standing, ‘it was probably nothing. Anyway, they’ll be along soon – come on, Shadow Girl, action stations.’

‘You liked it?’ Cat encouraged, following Rachel to the trunk of the car, thrilled to be given a Zucca MV jacket to wear to assist the riders looking for their lunch. ‘Or you didn’t? You want more – or you don’t?’ Cat observed a blush, barely perceptible but emphatically there, bloom across Rachel’s cheek.

Isn’t it funny what a man can do even to the most seemingly sussed and self-contained, self-content woman. Strong, sassy Rachel who keeps Zucca MV in order, shipshape, is here beside me churned up by a kiss.

‘It’s odd,’ Rachel elaborated, handing Cat a clutch of musettes like a bunch of balloons upside-down, ‘in all the time I’ve been involved in pro cycling, I’ve never even had to keep my professional and private lives separate – the one has never infringed on the other. I’ve not really been tempted. To be honest, apart from a wee dalliance last year with a journalist – a Dutch one, in case you’re wondering – I haven’t really had a private life at all and it’s not something I’ve minded. I’m a soigneur – I’m at the beck and call of the team. I don’t resent it.’

‘And now there’s a spanner in the works?’ Cat broached.

‘Yes,’ Rachel agreed, ‘I don’t know how to deal with it. I can’t really figure out what the fuck happened.’

‘Did you see Vasily this morning?’ Cat asked.

‘I’m his soigneur,’ Rachel said simply. ‘Of course I saw him, I massaged him.’

‘And?’

‘I had a job to do, massaging my rider,’ Rachel shrugged. ‘He likes silence.’

‘Well,’ said Cat in a businesslike way, ‘have you ascertained what you want?’

‘I’m trying not to,’ Rachel said, ‘for fear of it not coinciding with what he may want. As I say, I’m at his beck and call.’

‘You can pander to the needs of your riders,’ Cat said emphatically, ‘that’s your job. But your own needs are paramount within the grander scheme of things.’

Rachel considered this. ‘I don’t know what I want. I was so damned tempted to get in to that salt and vinegar bath yesterday. But I didn’t. Because he didn’t ask.’

‘And you would have?’ Cat asked. ‘If he had?’

Rachel shrugged.

‘I can’t think why Vasily wouldn’t,’ Cat said supportively. ‘We just have to figure a way to verify his desire without disrupting his ride.’

‘Maybe snogging helps his ride,’ Rachel said wryly.

‘Thank God it’s you who’s his soigneur – not your portly, bearded colleague!’ Cat returned.

‘Vasily is such a dark horse,’ Rachel continued quietly, ‘you rarely know how he feels let alone what he’s thinking.’ She regarded Cat and winked. ‘But if he kisses like Casanova, even speculating on his bed skills sends me spinning.’

Cat laughed. And then she thought of Ben.

How can I miss him?

‘But,’ Rachel said with a touch of resignation, ‘it’s probably a terrible, crazy idea.’

‘Say he doesn’t think so?’ Cat posed, it suddenly dawning on her that, if she actively missed Ben, it meant she herself had become embroiled. With a lurch, she was at once aware of the merits and dangers therein. ‘What you need,’ Cat continued, keen to concentrate on her friend’s situation instead, ‘is clarification – on how he feels, what he wants and where you stand.’

‘You never know with Vasily,’ Rachel mused, ‘you just don’t know what’s in his head or if his heart races for anything other than cycling.’

‘Providing a leg rub is one thing,’ Cat said, ‘sexual therapy is something quite else.’

‘Well,’ Rachel replied, ‘it’s certainly not on my job spec!’

Suddenly, the police outriders were visible in the distance. Rachel and Cat took their action stations. Megapac’s Travis Stanton streamed towards them and swished past them in a blink.

‘Ready?’ Rachel yelled, not looking at Cat but at a small bunch pelting through the heat haze towards them. With her heart in her mouth, Cat held out her arm, proffering the musettes which were swiped away, whipped from her hand almost instantly. It stopped her heart and then sent it into overdrive. The hiss of wheels, the zip of colour, tension tangible, adrenalin a taste. Then they were away. Gone. Flashed past. And yet their impact lingered. Massimo Lipari. Gianni Fugallo. Speechless, grinning, transfixed, Cat had her gaze pulled after them until they were a blur and then out of sight. Suddenly, her attention was magnetized back to face the second rush, slightly larger, just coming in to view. The noise of the boys, shouting, whistling, swearing. The pace. The energy.

Luca! Fabian – oh my God – not with Vasily’s group.

Gone and distant more quickly than they’d approached; heading for the Col de Port, not particularly high but a 1-in-20 climb lasting 12 kilometres. Onwards to the Plateau de Boudin, the final climb and altitude finish; hors catégorie, viciously steep at the outset and almost 1,800 metres high. Best known as a cross-country ski station. Claim it by bike? Racing? After 154 kilometres in which there were four other mountains and two hot-spot sprints? Why? A touch of insanity? Or the pursuit of glory? What?

I’m going to have to confront her.

Ben York assessed the gash on Hunter’s elbow and decided three stitches would suffice.

But if I do, and she backs off, then I risk losing her altogether.

‘Cutting off my nose to spite my face, I suppose,’ Ben said out loud.

Why on earth do I even give a damn?

Hunter felt his nose. ‘Huh?’

‘Nothing,’ said Ben, ‘I was talking to myself. First sign of madness and all that.’

‘Well, can you kinda like fix my arm before you flip out?’ Hunter said, quite serious.

Ben smiled and drew thread through a needle.

If wanking can make you go blind, a lack of sex can make you go crazy.

‘Tell me about Tayla,’ Ben murmured whilst setting to work on Hunter’s elbow.

‘She’s my girl,’ Hunter sighed, suddenly missing his fiancée terribly, more so when he realized he hadn’t given her a second thought let alone a first one over the past two days.

‘How did you two meet?’ Ben probed.

Hunter, presuming Ben was trying to distract him from the unpleasant sting of the stitching, reminisced gladly. ‘I stole her from Richie Budd, just after the Motorola team disbanded, the season before I turned pro.’

‘Did she come willingly?’ Ben persisted, giving his head a quick shake to dislodge the sound of Cat coming willingly.

‘Sure did,’ Hunter nodded, ‘in fact, she made a play for me. But we’d known each other for a while, living in the same town and all.’

Ben swabbed the wound, dressed it, and sent Hunter on his way. ‘Well ridden,’ Ben said, wondering who had truly initiated whatever it was that was going on between him and Cat.

Is it simply control that I crave and feel I’ve lost?

‘I can smell the top ten!’ Hunter sang, loping out of Ben’s room.

Or, great sex aside, is it Cat herself that I crave and all the more so because she’s not mine?

Luca came in.

‘Yo, Doc!’

‘What’s up?’ Ben asked.

‘I’ve got the squits.’

Ben gave Luca a pill.

‘The Babe was asking for you,’ Luca said.

‘Who?’

‘McCabe!’ Luca elaborated. ‘The Babe. You know – the Babe McCabe. She hates when I call her that. She’s so cute.’

Ben glanced at his watch. It was eight thirty.

I wish I’d never met her.

I want her right now.

This is no good.

This could be brilliant.

What a head fuck.

It is 8.30 and the salle de pressé is chilly. Only a third of the press corps are left. Cat saw Josh briefly but decided Alex’s presence was a good enough excuse not to talk. She hasn’t seen Ben but she does want to talk to him. Cat has written less than a third of her piece. Taverner wants her copy by 11 p.m. at the very latest. She looks at her screen. She’s written but one paragraph. Not very well. She’s somewhat distracted and very tired. She only started work half an hour ago, having literally shadowed Rachel until she was off duty and about to take a shower. She stares at the screen but, instead of seeing the words she’s written, she can suddenly read the pith of her current situation.

Shit. If Ben knows that I have a boyfriend but is still happy and at ease about sleeping with me, what exactly does that say about how he views me?

A Swiss man called Franz is frowning at her, now raising his hands. Cat looks away, realizing she had unwittingly fixed her expression of horror on him.

He must think me an utter tart. What does that tell me about Ben?

‘I’m not!’ she declares, to the bewilderment of two Belgian reporters sitting in front of her.

But it doesn’t seem to bother him.

‘Fuck,’ Cat hisses, her head in her hands. The Belgians presume she’s struggling with how to report on the magic of Massimo Lipari’s triumphant attack on the Plateau de Boudin.

Is that all it is for him? A convenient fuck? He can’t respect me much.

‘I want him to like me,’ she whispers behind her hand clasped to her mouth, ‘I want that to be the driving reason why we’re sleeping together.’

I want him to know me. Obviously he doesn’t.

‘Do I want an embroilment with someone like that?’ Cat asks her keyboard softly. A Spanish journalist nearby regards her but doesn’t understand English.

I want Ben. But who’s who here? I want him to want to sleep with me because he knows me and likes what he knows.

‘But he doesn’t know me at all, then,’ she says ruefully.

‘Who does not?’ a French reporter called Pascal asks.

‘No one,’ Cat rushes, ‘nothing.’

I’m obviously a no one to him, a bit of nothing.

‘Time to back off, Cat,’ she tells herself, going to one of the fridges for a can of Coke. ‘I must look after myself – that’s what Fen would say.’ She returns to her seat. Her lower back nags after eleven days in ergonomically substandard chairs.

In fact, I’d better not tell Josh that the boyfriend doesn’t exist. If I do, and then Ben finds out, I’ll have made a fool of myself in his eyes as much as I’ve currently made a slut of myself.

Her phone rings. She looks at the number displayed. It is Ben. She bites her lip. Her thumb hovers over the answer button.

What should I say? Why is he calling? Because he wants sex? But I so want to sleep with him. Tonight. Again and again. But dignity – I need to leave here tonight, in a fortnight, to return home and to my future with my dignity intact.

She glances around the emptying salle de pressé. Her phone continues to ring. An Italian journalist tuts at her. She switches her phone off. She removes her treasured pass and holds it to her cheek. Catriona McCabe. Journaliste. Le Guardian.

‘This is the Tour de France,’ she almost shouts, ‘I’m here, I am!’ Journalists of many nationalities stare at her, wondering if she’s suffering from writer’s block or too much Coke or not enough caffeine. A French reporter called Jacques, who’s old and friendly, approaches and offers her a glass of the locally produced Fitou.

‘Merci,’ Cat says, downing almost the entire glass. Her body shivers as the alcohol slicks down to her empty stomach and the cold night breeze courses up her spine. She flexes her fingers, blinks hard, deletes most of her work and starts anew.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CA TRIONA McCABE IN PLATEA U DE BOUDIN

Though on paper not as taxing as yesterday’s Stage, with only one hors catégorie climb, the cyclists on the Tour de France left Luchon already disadvantaged – their limbs sore and stiff from the chill and damp of almost 6 hours’ exposure to terrible weather yesterday. Today, the sun shone unabated with little breeze on the climbs, little warning of the drop to 12 degrees at the summits and the shock of severe cold which lashed the riders on the descents. Such extremes in temperature can play havoc with a rider but the tifosi, the maniac fans, were there in force, handing out sheets of newspaper indiscriminately. This was not for the peloton to catch up on world news, but to use as padding beneath their jerseys to protect against destructive windchill on the descents. On the Col de Portet D’Aspet, the race was neutralized as the riders paid their respects at the stone memorial to Fabio Casertelli, the 1992 Olympic champion who was killed, aged 22, after a horrendous crash there in the 1995 Tour.

Fabian Ducasse, the current yellow jersey, punctured at the base of the penultimate climb, the Col de Port. Three Système Vipère domestiques dropped back to assist. The Viper boys had practically to ride a Time Trial up the mountain to minimize time loss. Using his domestiques’ slipstreams until they were spent, Ducasse had ultimately to make much of the passage by himself. His main contender, Vasily Jawlensky, observed peloton etiquette and did not launch an attack until Ducasse’s had rejoined the lead group. The Russian then motored away, flanked by his team’s superclimber Massimo Lipari. With no Viper boys in Ducasse’s group, if the yellow jersey wanted to catch Jawlensky he would have to do all the work. That’s the law of the race and four other riders just sat on his wheel as Fabian pursued his Russian adversary.

On the Plateau de Boudin, Jawlensky’s team-mate Massimo Lipari, defender of two consecutive King of the Mountains triumphs, launched his trademark attack. Riding out of the saddle, he found perfect rhythm and swallowed up the seconds, the gravelly tarmac, and soon enough two stunned riders who thought they were well clear. Ultimately, he had enough time to zip up his jersey and approach the summit finish, clapping, waving and blowing kisses to the fans and to the heavens. His rival, Carlos Jesu Velasquez, victor of yesterday’s Stage, still wears polka dot but Lipari is only a few points behind. With three days of a flatter profile, the battle for the King of the Mountains in this year’s Tour de France will resume in the Alps.

<ENDS>

Rubbing her eyes, Cat packs up from the table and goes to transmit her work down the line to London. She arrives at the hotel nearing 11.30.

Too late to talk to Josh.

She goes to her room and slumps into a chair.

Is it really too late to talk to Josh?

She goes and hovers outside his door, pressing her ear against it. There is no sound. She won’t disturb him. It can wait. Tomorrow. Definitely.

Back in her room, curled on the bed, she dials Ben’s mobile phone and stares at the number. Her phone beeps at her. Call? She leaves the phone on the bed and goes to the window. There’s a draught. She’s chilly. The phone beeps again. Call? Cat rummages around her rucksack and retrieves a sweatshirt. She hasn’t yet worn it. It smells of the fabric conditioner she always uses, of being tumble-dried in her local launderette. She inhales, closing her eyes. She can smell home. Now there’s a place! A beep from her phone brings her back to reality. Call? Cat goes to the bathroom and glances briefly at herself in the mirror.

That’s me. I know who I am.

She returns to the bedroom and stares at her phone. It beeps again. Call?

No.

STAGE 11
Tarascon sur Ariège-Le Cap D’Arp. 221 kilometres

Luca Jones had a childhood fascination with prehistory that has never left him. He collected fossils, knew everything about dinosaurs and still loves the idea of cavemen and women. However, that morning, with one Stage left to take him away from the Pyrenees and to the Rest Day, he was not remotely distracted by the fact that Tarascon-sur-Ariège, with its famous local caves, was one of the great centres for its study. Nor had he given much thought to, let alone passed comment on, the fact that they’d be riding through the hottest part of France where bikinis would abound, that the area of coast to which the race was headed was popular with naturists. Luca was anomalously quiet. Yet his spirit was good. He felt very well. His legs were tingling to get going. It was scorching hot but the sun’s rays seemed to be nourishing him deep to the marrow of his bones. He loved his job passionately on days like this.

There was a great turnout to see him and the remaining 177 riders on their way. As they rolled out and along the route, the crowds thinned but the strength of support did not diminish. On a quiet stretch of road, Luca saluted with heartfelt gratitude a corps of firemen standing to attention outside their fire station, the lights of the fire engines flashing, the hoses providing a refreshing arc of water. And then, despite an estimated further five hours in the saddle, in the heat, Jacky Durand, as was his wont, picked up the pace and the pack started to pelt along.

‘Jesus, we’ve covered a fuck of a lot this first hour,’ Luca yelled to Hunter who tweaked the computers on his bike and confirmed they’d been racing at an average speed of a fraction under 50 kilometres an hour.

‘You’re looking strong, Luca,’ Hunter shouted, ‘go have yourself some fun. Go flirt with the TV cameras and grab yourself some new fans.’

‘Whatever you say, boss,’ said Luca guilelessly, heading off through the pack as if the leaders were pulling his bike towards them.

‘Great tailwind,’ he said to Vasily Jawlensky who didn’t quite hear him but smiled warmly anyway. Vasily was cycling with his faithful domestique, Gianni Fugallo. Luca and Gianni knew each other well.

‘Stick with us,’ Gianni said as they approached the fourth-category climb Cote de Mouthoumet.

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Luca replied.

‘You are,’ said Vasily, ‘you’re coming with us.’ The Russian suddenly powered away, flanked either side by Luca and Fugallo, his wheel taken by a Belgian rider called Tommy, an old friend of Vasily’s from a previous team. The four-man break spoke little, they worked together to read the wind and build a good distance from the bunch. Cross-winds had splintered the peloton into small fractions and organization to bring back the breakaway was tardy. Luca swept to the head of his little group feeling utterly invincible, consequently he was somewhat disappointed when Fugallo came alongside to take the brunt at the front. The motorbike scoreman rode up, brandishing the blackboard which proclaimed they had a 2 minute 12 second lead. It meant Vasily was now the yellow jersey on the road. The peloton behind was in disarray despite the wrath of Fabian Ducasse, the frustration of Jules Le Grand barking orders to his Vipers through their earpieces.

65 kilometres from the finish, with the medieval town of Narbonne a few kilometres off, Vasily Jawlensky sat up, appearing to stream backwards as the other three, momentarily unaware, kept the pace high. When they looked over their shoulders, he waved them on. His hands were off the handlebars, he was sitting upright, pedalling leisurely, eating a power bar, enjoying a drink. They stared at him. Now he wasn’t so much waving them on as shooing them away. Emphatically.

‘What the fuck is he doing?’ Luca asked incredulously. ‘He’s giving up the fucking yellow jersey.’

Fugallo, listening to his directeur through his earpiece, had tears in his eyes. ‘Vasily is doing it for me. He knows the pack will chase hard – our directeur says that Système Vipère are now setting the pace very strong. Vasily knows that it is him they want. He knows that the bunch don’t care about us as we pose no threat in the overall classification. Vasily is doing this for me – giving me a chance for a Stage victory.’

‘He’s a fucking hero,’ Luca yelled and Tommy nodded vigorously.

‘Let’s not let him down,’ Gianni said. ‘You guys ready to work?’

‘Sure,’ said Luca, ‘and I’ll work for you – the Stage is yours in Vasily’s honour. Let’s hit it!’

Off they went, men with a mission, men riding on the legacy of a true champion.

‘Vasily does not want to take maillot jaune just yet,’ Fugallo reasoned, ‘too much pressure. He is only 53 seconds off Ducasse. The maillot is his for the taking whenever he so chooses.’

‘Let’s ride!’ Luca cried, heading off.

‘The bunch will subconsciously slow down when they’re retrieved him,’ Tommy judged.

‘Fuck, Luca, you’re on a roll!’ Fugallo marvelled. ‘What are you on?’

Luca shot him a look. ‘Passion,’ he said. ‘It’s legal, it’s effective, it’s safe, there are no side effects and the results are true.’

20 kilometres later, Gianni blew. Not a tyre but his legs. Having finished minutes ahead of Luca and Tommy in the previous two mountain Stages, after a week of hard work for Stefano Sassetta, the price of selflessness was unfortunately paid for by the body. Luca dropped back immediately, urging Gianni to dig as deep as he could to find a second spurt.

‘It’s no good,’ Gianni said magnaminously, ‘poor Vasily. But it’s no good. I’m hurting, I’m through. You guys go on. You take it. I don’t want to hold you back. The bunch are two minutes away. You’re wasting time on me. I’m spoiling it for you. Go, Luca. Tommy, go. Fuck off and go.’

Luca and Tommy were torn. They actively wanted Gianni to recover. They wanted to do justice to Vasily’s altruism, to bring to fruition the great Russian’s munificence.

‘Go,’ Gianni pleaded, ‘please. Another time. Another Tour.’

Luca and Tommy both put a hand on Gianni’s shoulders. And then they surged forwards again, without Gianni but on his wishes. However, at Beziers, with only 21 kilometres to go, Luca could sense Tommy was starting to flag.

‘Come on,’ he urged as the motorbike drew alongside and held up the blackboard which now said ‘1 minute 54’.

‘Go,’ Tommy commanded. ‘I can’t. You can.’

‘Please,’ Luca encouraged.

‘Think of your team,’ Tommy said. ‘You’re as strong as you were 50 k ago. Go for it. I’ve won a Stage in the Tour de France. I won’t win one today and that’s no reason for you not to.’

Luca looked at Tommy, bloodshot eyes, dried spittle at the corner of his mouth, his legs so tight they looked almost flayed.

‘You sure?’ Luca stressed.

‘Fucking go!’ Tommy yelled, his shoulders moving far too much.

All Luca had ever learnt from his trainers and managers, from listening to other riders, from watching miles of footage of pro cycling, surged through his blood and nourished his muscles. He went.

Don’t look over your shoulder. Keep your head down. Don’t even look ahead. You know the route profile off by heart because you studied it before you went to sleep.

Luca noted the red and white 10 kilometre banner.

Hug the side of the road, stay close to any fence or barrier, take any shelter from the wind, however minimal.

Luca could hear the crowds yelling for him. He picked out his name, time and again, from all the others painted in whitewash across the tarmac by the fans.

Jesus, I feel strong.

The motorbike pulled alongside. His lead was down to 1 minute 30.

I’m still 1 minute 30 ahead. I haven’t slowed down, they’ve picked it up, the fuckers. Let’s give the fans something other than a predictable sprint finish. Mama, this one’s for you.

Luca thought alternately of his mother, and of nothing but maintaining his momentum. His legs were stiffening, his arms were tired but his spirit was not phased by his lead diminishing. With 3 kilometres to go, he had just over a minute on the bunch. There was a taste in his mouth. Ambition. Victory. There was no way he was going to let anyone wrest this perfect moment from him. He thought of the great Miguel Indurain, he remembered Lance Armstrong, he recalled Vasily powering up the Col de Port yesterday.

They knew where to find that little extra. I need to access it right now.

He started to chant the names of past Tour giants. Merckx. Hinault. Indurain.

‘And Luca Fucking Jones!’

Merckx. Hinault. Indurain.

‘I don’t care to win the Tour de France five times. I just want to win today. On Stage 11. Tarascon-sur-Ariège to Le Cap D’Arp. 221 k.’

He passed under the final kilometre banner and the motorbike warned him 58 seconds. He ached across his shoulders. His throat was burning dry. He should have drunk more. There had been no time. His legs were hurting. His eyes were stinging. Mama.

And then just an atom of the combined gifts of Merckx, Hinault and Indurain seeped through into Luca’s soul and sent a current of strength through his knackered limbs. His legs did not feel so abominably sore. His arms were not insurmountably tired. Come on! Luca, ride for your life, take the Stage. Not just for your Mama, sitting at home with various family members all cheering and sobbing and clutching their hearts. Do it for everyone who knows you and all those who will know you ever after. Show them triumph over adversity. Become the personification of glory.

The crowds were roaring and thumping anything they could, including each other. Luca could see the finish. He allowed himself the briefest glance over his shoulder; the bunch were metres away. In a flash, he knew he was nearer to the line than they were to him. Near enough, moreover, for him to think not only of his Mama but of the TV cameras, the press photographers and his world-wide audience. Accordingly, he zipped up his Megapac jersey, clapped high above his head, punched the air, waved a double-handed victory salute, blew kisses to everyone and God, and gave his bike a final hurl towards the hallowed line. He crossed it 9 seconds ahead of the chasing sprint. Ultimately, he crossed it sitting up, not pedalling, his arms loose at his sides, his eyes closed, tears streaming, his smile ecstatic. The taste of tears. The taste of success. It was exquisitely beautiful. The greatest moment of his life.

I have won today. I am the Tour de France.

All journalists have not merely a favourite rider but one whom they feel they can appropriate as their own; whose career they always follow closely, whose triumphs they wax lyrical about, whose defeats they play down. It’s favouritism, it’s widespread and it’s allowed. For Cat, though mighty Miguel Indurain was her hero, Luca Jones had long been her special boy.

Cat had watched the last 10 kilometres of the race standing very close to one of the press TV sets. She winced at the welt of sunburn across the back of his neck. She noticed that he’d taken off his gloves, was transfixed by his hands, pale pink in contrast to his bronzed arms. She could practically count all the separate muscle groups in his legs. When Luca had only 700 metres to go she started jumping up and down. As he crossed the line, she leapt high into the air and cheered and squealed.

‘Luca!’

She kissed the person closest to her, which happened to be Josh, whispered, ‘Luca’s done it!’ and ran with the pack from the gymnasium requisitioned by the salle de pressé. Luca, of course, was swamped by a mass of men but she hugged Hunter, cycling to his soigneur hot, wet and ecstatic himself. Then she bounced on tiptoes at the edge of the swarm around Luca before skipping off merrily towards she didn’t know where. Just skipping. High. Delighted. Skipping towards – ah! The team cars.

She slowed her pace to a reverential walk as she neared the Zucca MV bus. Rachel was wiping down Vasily’s legs with a green flannel.

‘Thank you,’ Cat said, bowing her head at the rider. ‘How is Gianni?’ she asked Rachel.

‘He’s OK,’ Rachel nodded, ‘he’s OK. Exhausted. But he can rest a little tomorrow.’

‘Tell him he’s an absolute star,’ Cat said.

‘Ms McCabe,’ said Rachel, stepping away from Vasily and tipping Evian water on to the flannel, ‘have you done your work?’

‘Taverner says I can only have 400 words,’ Cat rued.

‘I meant,’ said Rachel, ‘your work. Ben? Josh? He Who No Longer Exists?’

‘Almost,’ Cat said, imploring her friend not to give her a hard time at such a joyous moment. Rachel raised her eyebrows. ‘Imminently,’ Cat promised. Rachel allowed her eyebrows back down. Cat walked away but within a few yards she was jigging triumphantly again. She practically collided with Fabian Ducasse talking with Jules Le Grand, but she gave them only a cursory ‘Pardon’; for her, Luca Jones might have been 42 minutes behind the yellow jersey in the overall classification but he was the true hero of the Tour de France that day.

Team cars were already whisking riders to their hotels, though the Megapac entourage was besieged by press men and TV crews. Cat changed direction and went to the podium instead, beaming and applauding extravagantly when Luca took to the dais to claim his fame, his trophy, his kisses from the Coca-Cola girls and adulation from the crowds.

Kiss him again, Cat implored them, whilst whistling hard through her thumb and little finger (a skill painstakingly learnt aged nine from Django and put to use only on the most special occasions).

Kiss him some more, he’ll like that and he deserves it.

She left for the salle de pressé while Fabian received his fifth yellow jersey of the Tour and his fifth Crédit Lyonnais toy lion and his fifth round of kisses from the sleek Crédit Lyonnais podium girls.

And then she saw Ben from behind and she felt her body swoon at the sight of him; his shoulders, the backs of his ears, his bottom, his walk. And she forgot about resolutely not phoning him last night, she forgot that she had decided he was not a very good idea, she forgot that she had work to do, she forgot that Rachel had told her she had work to do, she forgot Rachel, and Josh, and Him. She jogged to Ben, put her arms around his waist and spun herself around him as if he was a maypole. She threw her arms around his neck, kissed him clumsily and then proclaimed, ‘He did it! He did it!’ to Ben’s startled expression.

Only Ben’s startled expression did not abate, in fact it transmuted into one of polite irritation which Cat misread immediately.

‘He did it,’ Cat said earnestly, should Ben have missed her point. ‘Luca did it.’

Ben smiled and walked on, with Cat inviting herself to accompany him. She jabbered nineteen to the dozen, mainly analysing the race, until they reached the salle de pressé.

‘Can I see you later?’ she asked, a twinkle in her eye reflecting the sparkle of her intent, merely a glint of the shine that enveloped her.

‘I don’t think so,’ Ben said. Cat jerked. ‘It’s a bit –’ Ben continued, his hands churning the air in front of him for want of words, ‘it’s just – well.’ Cat’s focus was on him entirely but the only response she could give was via the immediate disappearance of her sparkle which Ben could not see as he was studiously not looking at her. ‘It’s a bit too complicated, wouldn’t you say?’ he said, though Cat was too dazed to detect the patronizing edge to his voice.

‘No!’ she whispered, ‘you don’t understand – I need to talk to you.’

‘Oh,’ said Ben nonchalantly, ‘actually I do understand. But it’s cool. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’

‘No,’ Cat said, ‘you don’t understand.’ Ben’s reply was a raised eyebrow; his aloof expression rendering him at once so unobtainable, and yet attracting Cat to him all the more, hopelessly, helplessly.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I have to shoot – we’ll have a drink some time. No hard feelings.’

As he walked away from her, as she found her legs taking her to her occupation, both of them touched upon the irony of hard feelings. Feelings had of course been there, over and above the physical evidence that Cat had aroused Ben to a level no woman had for ages; that Cat herself had not been made love to for a long, long time by a man so hard for her.

She returned to her seat between Josh and Alex without a word or a glance. Her mind was in a muddle. The Stage was being replayed on the televisions but it was Ben’s words, echoing in her head, which provided the incongruous commentary.

What should I do? Find him? Phone him? Phone Fen? Run to Rachel? Write? Cry? Hit Josh? Thump Alex? In what order? Oh, for order, for some sense of control.

‘Cat,’ Josh said, placing his hand on her shoulder and making her flinch, ‘can I borrow your Luca interview?’

‘God yeah,’ Alex enthused, ‘and me?’

‘I haven’t transcribed it yet,’ she said to Alex, unable even to look at Josh. ‘Perhaps once I’ve done so,’ she continued, staring at her screen.

With all that was buffeting around her mind, writing her article was the perfect way of taking time out from it all. Amazingly, the words flowed on the tide of emotion subsuming her whenever she replayed Luca’s victory in her mind or caught snatches of it on the screen. She pleaded successfully with Taverner to let her have an extra 150 words purely for the purpose of purple prose and finished her work well before Josh and Alex. When she came back from transmitting her piece, she took her seat, glanced at Alex and then turned to Josh.

‘Josh, I need to talk to you.’

He turned his cheek slightly towards her but kept his eyes on his screen and mumbled, ‘Sure.’

‘No,’ Cat said, looking at him, ‘I really want to talk to you.’

Josh stopped typing and looked at her ingenuously. Why shouldn’t he? After all, what had he said? What, if anything, had he done wrong? There was not a malicious cell in his body, only affection for Cat.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘In private,’ Cat said quietly, regarding his fingers resting, mid-sentence, over the keys.

‘Are you OK?’ Josh asked. Cat shrugged and tried to raise an eyebrow in a Ben-like way, unaware that the result was more startled fawn than nonplussed doctor. ‘Let me just finish up,’ Josh continued, ‘then we’ll go for a quiet drink, yes?’

Cat sat quietly, happily watching the replays on the TV screens. What a tremendous day’s racing. Luca Jones. Four hours, thirteen minutes and sixteen seconds. It should be written in full. He deserves glory for every fraction of each moment.

Here’s Luca heading home with just under 5 kilometres to go. This is when the cameras focused on his hands. Here they are. Gloveless. Pink. One silver ring. Slender fingers. Cat found that she was standing up and knew she had just said, ‘Oh my God!’ out loud a number of times. She looked from Alex to Josh, both of whom were regarding her somewhat puzzled. ‘Oh my God!’ she said. ‘I have to go.’ And she went.

En route to her hotel, Cat makes a detour to the water’s edge. In contrast to the fiery Atlantic Coast which provided the backdrop to her initial coupling with Ben, the Golfe du Lion is mellow and affable. The water is lapping lazily, as if it always does so, as if this is the preferred pace of the place, regardless of whether 175 men (two retired) hurtled into town at 60 kph that afternoon. She lays her hand lightly in the spume and feels the bubbles tingle and effervesce, senses them burst in a tickle when the water pulls back. It is dusk, the water is warm. If she was wearing a bra she’d undress and swim in her underwear. But she isn’t, so she doesn’t. She looks at her hand, all glistening, and dabs her tongue against her salty fingertips, sucking them at length and thoughtfully.

Hands. That was it. That’s when I knew. Hands.

Hands, Cat?

It was seeing Luca’s hands.

What did you see?

That’s when I suddenly realized.

Realized what?

I’m going to say this out loud.

‘I know Ben’s hands off by heart. It’s his hands that I can conjure. I can’t recall the hands of Him – and is that surprising? After all, Rachel pointed out that He No Longer Exists. I can’t remember what they look like. Not even if I scrunch my eyes tight shut and concentrate. And yet I can envisage Ben’s hands effortlessly. It doesn’t bother me at all that I no longer know what that other man’s hands looked like. It’s Ben’s that I know. It’s Ben that matters. I’m going to find him.’

How easy should this be for Cat? Should Ben be in his room, reading, relaxed, receptive? Might Cat come across him right now, strolling along the beach, nicely contemplative? Maybe he’ll be having a quiet beer alone in a harbourside bar with a spare chair conveniently close? Perhaps he’ll be coming to find Cat as she goes to locate him. And they’ll see each other a way off. And, as they near, their smiles will spread. And they’ll grasp hands, kiss and confide and feel elated and go straight to bed.

Actually, Cat doesn’t even know at which hotel Megapac are staying and her booklet with that information is in the boot of the car parked at the salle de pressé.

Should I just phone him? Or perhaps Rachel?

Cat dials Ben. His phone is switched off and she has to work hard at not attaching great significance to this. She dials Rachel who gives her details of the Megapac hotel but who is not given the chance to have a chat or suggest a drink. Cat goes as directly as she can to the Megapac hotel, though she makes two wrong turnings and almost collides with an irate woman on a scooter. The hotel foyer is thrumming with fans and press. She goes to the lifts, scans the information of the team rooms and goes to the fourth floor. It is eerily quiet and she can sense that the doors are closed on empty rooms. It’s the Repos, the Rest Day, tomorrow, after all. Megapac have the perfect opportunity to celebrate their Stage victory in their first Tour de France.

‘Where would they do that?’ Cat asks Ben’s shut door, at which she continues to knock gently. ‘Where are you all?’ Cat goes to the car park in the hope that a soigneur or mechanic might be finishing duties. Why would they be? It’s the Rest Day tomorrow, the one opportunity for things to be put on hold for a night.

‘Well, I’ll just have to lie in wait,’ Cat says to the silent, lumbering team buses. And she does. For over an hour. Thinking what to say. Planning how to say it. Becoming word perfect, perfecting intonation, facial expressions, gestures. Soon enough changing her mind and her soliloquy. Now fretting that she’ll fluff her new lines and ruin the depth and sincerity of it all.

She walks around to the front of the hotel and promenades to and fro, delivering her soliloquy quietly. There’s Ben. Over there. On the other side of the street. He’s with a group of people, Cat. Men and women.

He’s with Luca. Luca looks slightly pissed.

So does Ben. Who are the women?

No idea. They looked pissed too.

They’re with the American journalists.

Yes.

They also look somewhat drunk. They’ve bypassed the hotel and gone into that bar.

Yes.

Is that where you’re going?

Yes.

When Cat walked into the bar, which was smoky and packed, she was instantly relieved to see that in the far corner the women, whoever they were, were draped over the journalists. The swarm of people was as dense as at the finish-line media scrum but Cat squeezed and prodded and weaved her way forwards.

‘The Babe!’ Luca sang as she tripped and stumbled on her final approach to their party, steadying herself with a stranger and the edge of a table.

‘Luca!’ Cat beamed, trying to look composed, wondering why she couldn’t feel Ben’s gaze upon her, sensing icy stares from the women that the journalists were now wearing like football scarves.

‘You came to see me!’ Luca proclaimed.

‘Congratulations,’ Cat breathed, wondering if she was going to cry and whether it would be for Luca or herself, ‘I’m so proud of you.’

‘Ah!’ said Luca, nudging Ben. ‘The Cabe McBabe came to see me.’

‘Actually,’ Cat heard herself all but interrupt, ‘I came to see Ben.’

‘She came to see you!’ Luca laughed.

‘Can it wait till tomorrow?’ Ben asked. ‘We’re taking time out here to celebrate.’

‘No,’ said Cat, not blaming him for his reserve though it hurt, trying to remind herself that he was still under the illusion that she was a two-timing fraud.

‘Have a drink, McBabe,’ Luca said ingenuously with a small hiccup, ‘sit on my lap.’

‘Your legs are far too precious to have my bum on them,’ Cat said jovially, before regretting such an uncouth comment. ‘Ben?’ she implored. He glanced at his watch and asked the group to excuse him. The noise level was very high and Cat could barely stay her ground for all the jostling.

‘Outside?’ she asked, making her way with pencil-sharpenered elbows through the mass.

‘Cat,’ said Ben, once outside but before she had the chance to suggest they walk to the seafront, ‘I haven’t really got time – I told you, don’t worry about it.’

‘We could go to the beach,’ Cat blustered.

‘Huh? I’m midway through a party,’ Ben said.

‘I know, I know – I just.’ She looked at him and put her hands on her hips, mirroring his stance. ‘You don’t know,’ she said emphatically.

‘Yes,’ said Ben, scratching the back of his head and glancing over his shoulder to the direction of the bar, ‘I do.’

‘No,’ Cat remonstrated with a light stamp of her foot, ‘it’s your hands.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You see, it’s your hands that I know,’ she shrugged, sitting in a deflated hunch on a low wall, ‘I know your hands, Ben.’

‘That’s because they’re the most recent pair to have been all over you,’ said Ben. ‘Listen hon, I have to go.’

He walked away.

He’s walking away, Cat. Bloody go after him. Forget your speech and just talk honestly with him.

‘Ben!’

He raises a hand but does not turn around or even slow down, as if to say, ‘Please – another time, Cat.’

Cat jogs after him and uses him as a maypole again. He tries to walk on but she gives him a forceful shove and he stops and regards her, irritated.

‘Ben,’ she says, knowing neither what to say next nor where to look. Her eyes are drawn to his. He’s regarding her sternly, as if he’s allocated her a final two minutes before he’s bloody going back to the bar. ‘Ben,’ Cat says, feeling a smile spill across her lips in advance of the liberating truth, ‘there is nobody back home for me.’

Ben says nothing.

Say something, Ben – alleviate her ordeal.

No. I think I ought just to listen.

‘There was someone,’ Cat says quietly, ‘a very significant other – but that was some months ago.’

‘Really,’ says Ben but not as a question.

‘Honestly,’ Cat implores.

‘Why lie?’ Ben asks after a moment’s contemplation. Cat shrugs. ‘Don’t shrug, speak.’

‘Because it felt safe – at the start – before you,’ Cat elaborates. ‘I’m in a minority out here,’ she continues, ‘I’m surrounded by blokes – I had no idea and no intention of falling, I mean fancying anyone.’

Say something, Ben.

Like what?

‘I told Josh,’ Cat continues in earnest, ‘very early on, before I knew him, let alone you.’

‘Why haven’t you told him that it was a lie?’

‘Because we’re on the Tour de France and it’s a race. Every day is a fucking race. To pack and check out. To get to the village, to scrounge quotes, to glean gossip. To rush to the salle de presse. To write the report. File it. Eat at some point. Sneak time with you. Sleep.’

God, she’s almost as gorgeous all in a dither as she was when she was livid with me over Monique.

Well, tell her.

No. This is to savour.

You’re a bastard.

No. But a very quiet, private part of me has been, dare I say it, just a tiny bit – oh God, oh all right – hurt. No, no, not hurt, just disconcerted. Yes, that’s it. So I’ll let the balm of her honesty soothe me a while. I’m entitled.

‘So,’ says Cat with a shrug, ‘that’s kind of my story in brief. I’d be happy to elaborate. Suffice it to say, I am quite categorically single. I am desperately sorry for the misunderstanding. I rarely lie. And I’m hoping, very much, that we can pick up from where we left off. And run with it.’

She’s exhausted. Ben can see that.

‘And,’ Cat concludes, taking his right hand and scrutinizing it though she knows it off by heart, ‘I know your hands, you see. And I can’t remember those of this other bloke – it’s weird but liberating because it doesn’t bother me. I no longer care. I know yours and I do care.’

Ben is stalled. He finds himself taking her hand flat between both of his. Against what he presumes to be his better judgement, but helpless to do anything about it, he finds he has kissed her knuckles, turning her wrist to kiss the palm of her hand, licking it suddenly.

‘You’re salty.’

Stating the obvious.

Cat nods and says, ‘So is the sea,’ which is a daft thing to say but neither of them reflect upon it.

Ben shakes his head and savours the bewilderment criss-crossing Cat’s face before he alleviates it with his smile. He pulls her against him and finds her mouth.

I’ve never met anyone quite like you. You thrill me and unnerve me and I don’t know what I’m meant to do about any of it.

Tell her, Ben.

It’s probably not a good idea. None of this. But I can’t let common sense allow it to go.

‘I have to go,’ Ben says. ‘Come in with me. Come and join us.’

Cat shakes her head. Her job is done and she desperately needs to rest. And have a bath. And find Josh and confess.

‘Come with me,’ Ben repeats but again Cat shakes her head. Ben does not even bother to check who is around, who is staggering out of the bar or forcing their way in, or who is on the other side of the street, or in earshot, or who might see. He cups Cat’s face in his hand and kisses her, lightly at first and then deeply, his tongue dancing in delight at the taste of her which he has foregone for almost forty-eight hours. ‘Tomorrow’s the Repos,’ he says, eyes alight. ‘What are your plans?’

‘I need to transcribe Luca’s interview,’ Cat says, her eyes still closed, her head tilted upwards presenting lips eager to be kissed again. Ben licks her mouth with the tip of his tongue, swiftly, gently, from corner to corner. Cat is utterly light-headed between her legs.

‘And then?’ he asks.

‘And then, Ben,’ says Cat, looking at him and laying a hand against his chest, another against the bulge in his trousers, ‘I’m all yours.’

‘What was that about?’ Luca asked Ben. ‘Where’s the Babe?’

‘She’s gone,’ Ben shrugged, taking a hearty drink.

‘She OK?’ Luca asked.

‘Hands,’ said Ben with a slow nod, displaying his for emphasis.

Luca, pissed on two bottles of Seize and hyper after too many bottles of Coke, nodded earnestly. ‘All that typing,’ he justified, looking at his own hands, ‘quite a tough job, I would think.’

REPOS

Cat couldn’t believe she was singing ‘Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside’, but she was. She had started to hum it whilst cleaning her teeth and now, sweeping back the hotel curtains and looking out over the navy-blue water, she was singing it with gusto. She needed to call Taverner at the Guardian and Andy at Maillot, she had her Luca interview to transcribe and she planned to have everything wrapped up before lunch-time to warrant the rest of the day alone in Ben’s company.

‘First, I must find Josh. I’m not only going to tell him about He Who No Longer Exists but also about He Who Most Definitely Does. I owe it to Josh, he’s my pal and he cares about me.’

She went along to Josh’s room and knocked on the door. Josh grinned at her. ‘You like it, don’t you?’ he brandished.

‘Yes?’ she answered. ‘Do I? What?’

‘Cat McCabe,’ he smiled and then broke into song most operatically, ‘beside the seaside, beside the sea!’

‘Oh shit,’ Cat declared, hiding her face behind her hands.

‘The walls are paper thin,’ Josh said, casting a glance towards Alex’s room on the other side of his and shaking his head.

‘Was Alex singing too, then?’ Cat asked artlessly. Josh snorted but the explanation came soon enough in the form of a buxom woman opening Alex’s door, stepping out in to the corridor, rearranging her clothing, murmuring, ‘Ciao!’ back into the room and then nodding most courteously to Josh and Cat as she passed.

‘Fletcher!’ Josh cried once he’d closed his jaw, while Cat stood stock still and flabbergasted. ‘Bloody show yourself.’

Alex appeared, with a John Wayne swagger and a Benny Hill grin. ‘I’m shagged!’ he declared. Then he steadied his head with both hands and moaned, ‘I’m also still pissed, I think.’

‘What’s her name?’ Cat whispered.

‘Oh,’ Alex fumbled, waving the air dismissively, ‘Mary, Margaret, Molly – something like that,’ though he knew full well that her name was Maria Angelo because it had taken him most of the previous evening, his entire repertoire of chat-up lines, an exorbitant amount of Pernod and the false promise of Laurent Jalabert’s autograph to lure her back to his room. ‘Come on, I desperately need caffeine. And food. I need to replenish. I’m knackered. Shagged. Fucking hell.’

‘I’m going to the salle de pressé,’ said Cat, looking imploring at Josh who was looking reprovingly at Alex.

‘See you there,’ Josh said, glancing at Cat. ‘I’d better chaperone this jerk all the way.’

‘Oh,’ faltered Cat, ‘OK.’

‘Are you going to transcribe your Luca tape?’ Josh asked.

‘Yes,’ Cat said pensively. She tried to communicate via loaded glances but, whereas Rachel would have read her perfectly, Josh just thought he had shaving cream on his cheek or toothpaste on his lips or sleep dust in his eyes. ‘If you have a mo’,’ Cat said to Josh, realizing Alex was too distracted and hungover to eavesdrop, ‘I wanted to talk – remember?’

‘Oh sure, yes of course,’ said Josh. ‘Later? After breakfast?’

Cat nodded, hoping that a slightly worried twitch of her eyebrows would signify that she wanted to talk in private too.

‘But Luca won the bloody fucking Stage yesterday,’ Cat fulminated in fine salle de pressé style down the phone to Andy at Maillot, ‘and I’ve got an exclusive.’ Andy pointed out that she had interviewed Luca before he was a Tour de France Stage winner. ‘How about a fun little piece on how the riders spend the Repos?’ Cat suggested, undeterred.

‘Who’ve you got?’

‘Um – not a problem.’

‘Sure, but who?’

‘It’s no problem – honestly. Who do you want?’

‘Cat,’ Andy cautioned.

‘Any news on my job?’ she continued, thinking her idea for a Rest Day vignette very good and wondering to whom else she could pitch it.

‘Not as yet,’ said Andy.

Frustrated but not discouraged, Cat plugged an earpiece into her dictaphone and set Luca’s interview running. Alex and Josh arrived when she was half-way through it. Ben rang her at much the same time as the boys beeped their laptops into life.

‘Hurry up,’ was how he greeted her, ‘I’m horny.’

It gave her the impetus to decline a coffee break, to concentrate hard on Luca’s gems and hardly touch the pause or rewind buttons.

‘The only humping for me will be going up and down those fucking mountains.’

Darling Luca.

‘Are you nervous?’ Cat murmured out loud, in sync with her final question to the rider.

‘That is not a question for me to answer,’ she replied, alongside Luca in her ear. And then she remembered asking him if he was scared and he’d nodded and it wouldn’t have come out on tape and she’d never impart his answer anyway. Finished. Done. She set her dictaphone to rewind, saved her work, flexed her over-exerted fingers, raised her eyebrow at Alex who looked ghastly but self-satisfied and raised her eyebrow at Josh, hoping he’d read it as a request for a moment’s privacy.

‘Finished?’ he asked.

‘Yup,’ said Cat, her eyebrow still at work. Her phone rang. It was Ben.

‘Get your gorgeous ass over here, McCabe. I have wheels, wine and wanton wishes. Come on!’

My slate is clear – it’s Fate! thought Cat, gathering her things enthusiastically.

‘Did you want to nip out?’ Josh asked, seeing that Alex was staring gormlessly into the middle distance. ‘For a quick chat?’

‘Oh,’ said Cat, suddenly flummoxed, ‘later – would that be OK? I mean, I wouldn’t want to prolong your work – it is the Repos.’

‘Sure,’ said Josh, ‘can I borrow your Luca tape?’

‘Sure,’ said Cat, handing over her dictaphone, a swarm of butterflies making her all but float out of the salle de pressé with huge anticipation, much lust, a sizeable smile and a veritable gleam in her eyes.

If the salle de pressé was like the university library at the end of term, airy, fresh-smelling, laid back and less than half full; the town of Le Cap D’Arp was like a cycling holiday camp. Cat was passed by Tour de France riders in little posses twiddling through town on their way out for a few hours to keep their legs turning. On the beach, Cat noted those who’d trained early and who were now sunbathing in a futile bid to neutralize the demarcation of their bronzed legs, necks and arms from their lily-white T-shirt chests and pale feet and hands. Elsewhere, others were with their families, being treated like royalty by the local cafés and those not in view were obviously indulging in time and space with their wives and girlfriends. Or being massaged. Or playing computer games. Or sleeping. Vasily Jawlensky had become the Pied Piper of cycling; when he left his hotel with Fugallo to ride, scores of kids, teenagers, amateurs and fans pedalled alongside, behind, some even taking their chance in front; everyone smiling. A little way out of town, Vasily glanced at Gianni and the two of them streamed onwards, giving the impression that their followers had come to a complete standstill though they all continued to pedal their hearts out.

Directeurs sportifs sat in the bars, mobile phones at the ready. Journalists not at work took the opportunity to launder their backlog of smalls. Mechanics played volleyball on the beach; soigneurs shopped locally for bananas and Vaseline and honey and fabric conditioner for sensitive skin. Cat passed Jules Le Grand, two mobile phones on his brasserie table, a clutch of fans and journalists hovering near by. He tipped his head to one side and proffered his hand which she took and shook whilst he stood and kissed her on both cheeks before taking his seat, answering one phone, having to switch the other to his messaging service. Where was Rachel, Cat wondered? Was Vasily back? Would he and Rachel sneak any time together? She’d phone later. Anything and everything could wait till later. For now, her undivided attention was for Ben.

Initially, she felt a little shy when she saw him, half-wondering whether she should repeat and reaffirm all she told him the night before. Tenderly, he put his hand around the back of her neck and kissed her softly on the lips.

‘Allons?’ she smiled.

‘Not quite,’ he replied. ‘I have to have you – and now. I won’t be able to think straight let alone drive straight and my trousers won’t hang straight, otherwise.’ He led her to his room and made love to her urgently, panting her name as he came, his orgasm precipitated by hearing her call him God and Ben as she climaxed. She felt fantastic to him; tight and hot and extremely wet. It was flattering, immensely arousing, and he was rock hard for her in return. They lay, Ben on his back, Cat on her stomach, Ben grinning at the ceiling, Cat smiling into the pillows, before he gave her buttocks a rap of friendly slaps. ‘Come on, McCabe, we’re going for a little excursion.’

He drove down the coast towards Perpignan where they ate moules and frites, drank cold, innocuous lager and strolled amongst the boats licking ice-cream from cornets. He now knew all about Fen and Pip, the layout of Cat’s flat, Django’s dress sense and culinary proclivities and the quite overwhelming fact that Cat’s mother had run off with a cowboy from Denver when her daughters were very young.

‘I’m not a million miles from Denver,’ Ben said, as they sat on the harbour wall, swinging their legs, ‘you could try and locate her when you come to visit.’ Cat smiled a little bashfully and glanced at Ben. ‘You will come and visit me,’ he stated. She nodded confirmation and then grinned inanely whilst the boats bobbed and Ben stroked her bare knee.

Cat learnt about Ben’s background, about his somewhat burdonsome mother, about his father with whom he didn’t really connect, about Amelia of whom Ben said he rarely thought. Ben didn’t learn much about He Who No Longer Exists because Cat said there wasn’t much to say.

After all, he no longer exists, does he? Certainly he no longer warrants personal pronoun capitalization.

‘Ben,’ said Cat contemplatively as they drove back mid-afternoon. She looked at his cheek and placed the back of her hand softly against it.

‘Yep?’ he replied, his eyes leaving the road momentarily, alighting on Cat’s for a second yet scorching her to the core instantly.

‘Who did you think I was?’

He glanced at her again; she was gazing out of the window. ‘I mean, when you thought I had a bloke already. You must have thought me something of a slapper, right?’

Ben did not reply.

‘A sure shag,’ Cat pressed, ‘pussy that puts out – right?’

‘Wrong,’ said Ben thoughtfully, doing much mirror-checking. Cat looked at him but he did not take his eyes from the road. ‘I was disappointed,’ he said, a few kilometres later, ‘– not in you so much, but in the situation. However, believing you had a boyfriend actually didn’t make me want you any less. It didn’t make me want you any more either – because I was at my pinnacle of desire anyway.’ He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror, called himself a soft bastard but was unable to do anything about his grin.

‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ said Cat, firmly but quietly, seeing from the wing mirror that the blush she felt within had manifested itself in virulent scarlet across her cheeks.

‘No,’ Ben said, ‘you only have me. And I don’t have a girlfriend.’

‘No,’ said Cat, ‘just me. And this is the Tour de France.’

‘The Tour de France,’ said Ben, ‘and it’s over half-way through.’

Something quite ghastly is going to befall Cat on a day hitherto as close to perfection as she’s ever known. She feels simultaneously peaceful and utterly exhilarated, as only being on the brink of falling headlong in love with someone can instil. Perhaps she shouldn’t fall in love with Ben, not if she’s sensible and considers that the Tour is over half-way through and her beau lives in Boulder. But how can you decide not to fall in love with someone? Especially if you’ve already been treated to a glimpse of the potential that such a state could provide. It would be pointless. It would be impossible.

However, Cat’s euphoric state is going to be shattered, her world is going to go haywire and her confidence is going to collapse. Worst of all, she will soon doubt her standing as a respected member of the Tour de France family. I have no idea how she’ll cope or how she’ll recover or why this has to happen to her. She deserves an easy ride, after all, doesn’t she?

It’s a beautiful day. She wants to go for a swim in the sea later. With Ben. Have a long, boozy supper, with Ben, perhaps with Rachel and the others too. Sleep with Ben tonight and wake up in the same bed as him tomorrow. She could even stroll through the village départ hand in hand with him. First, though, she has to go to the salle de pressé. She is ready and eager to confess to Josh, to hug him and thank him and apologize for the fact that she spun him a yarn she should have unknotted days ago. So she’s going to the salle de pressé, a spring in her step, a head-turning smile on her lips and in her eyes, energy and well-being instilled in her every move. I’m sorry. Poor Cat.

Alex and Josh were at home and happy in the salle de pressé on the Repos. They had no pressing urge to swim or stroll. To pack up at tea-time, as they intended to do, was treat enough. They liked it that the pace was down a gear, that the salle was populated today only by the diehard cycling enthusiasts who masquerade as journalists.

‘Would you mind finishing the last part of the tape?’ Josh, who types at a fraction of Cat’s speed, asked Alex. ‘I hate transcribing. It means we need only do it the once between us.’

‘Sure,’ said Alex, yawning, ‘sounds about all I’m capable of today. Fuck, I’m shagged.’

‘I’ll go and get caffeine,’ Josh informed. Alex fiddled with the earpiece before deciding to dispense with it. He set the tape running, turned up the volume, and transcribed from where Josh had left off. When Josh returned with coffee, Alex paused the tape and drank the liquid as if it were nectar.

‘Good old Luca,’ Alex laughed, ‘he says the only humping he’ll be doing is going up and down the mountains – “the fucking mountains”!’

‘God,’ said Josh, rewinding the machine, ‘did Cat just ask him if he was nervous?’

They listened. ‘Yeah,’ Alex confirmed, ‘but he didn’t bloody reply. We’ll have to ask her if he gesticulated positively or negatively or whether he kept a poker face. Fuck, she just asked him if he’s scared.’

‘No reply. I think that’s probably about it,’ Josh surmised, flicking down the volume.

‘I’ll just check,’ said Alex, turning the sound up again.

How long do you have? a male voice but not Luca’s seeps out of the dictaphone, Because I have about seven inches.

I have to write my report, a female voice, too British and unmistakable to be anyone other than Catriona McCabe, journaliste, le Guardian, is heard to reply.

All heads in the salle de pressé turn to Alex and Josh and Cat’s dictaphone; delighted, flabbergasted, hungry for more. Thank God only a third of the press men are working.

I want you now, the man is murmuring amidst much rustling.

You can have me now, the English girl replies whilst bedsprings creak.

There is the sound of deep, desirous breathing and some laughter and some moaning and some bed bouncing. Penetration or not – and the recording doesn’t divulge – it is indisputable what has been recorded; it is obviously an aural sex show and the press men are transfixed.

‘Come on,’ Josh tells Alex, ‘switch the fucker off.’ But neither of them silence the machine because both of them know they are listening to Cat and Ben.

Don’t stop, the girl pleads.

‘Whoa whoa whoa,’ says Alex, grabbing the dictaphone but not touching the volume, let alone switching the thing off.

Now! the girl is remonstrating when the man tells her ‘Later’. She is panting and gasping and audibly on the verge of orgasm.

Cat came into the salle de pressé just as she was about to come on tape. And when she came in, all eyes were on her in the here and now whilst all ears were still trained to her in the then and there. There was silence amongst the press corps. But not from the dictaphone.

‘But I want you – I do – now!’

Cat was rooted to the spot.

‘Look on this as a taster – I’m going to whisk you away tonight, I know of a place. It’s private and beautiful and we’re going to have sex there.’

Cat remembered distinctly how, at that point, Ben had had his fingers inside her. And even if she’d forgotten, the sound of her rhythmic, lust-urgent breathing would have reminded her.

Isn’t technology marvellous! How sensitive dictaphones are! See, it can pick up and project the unmistakable rasps and clicks of two people kissing and it can preserve crystal clear and loud the sound of Cat imploring, ‘Don’t go – oh God, Ben!’ It is a shame that the salle de presse isn’t quite so sensitive to allow a private situation to remain so. But can you blame them? Have you ever heard anything like it? Luca Jones. Sex. Gossip. On the Tour de France. Compulsive listening. I dare anyone to switch it off.

What did Cat do? What could she do? What do you think she did? What would you do?

She gave a strangled yelp. She turned on her heels. She ran. Fast. Just to get the fuck away from there. And fast. It probably wasn’t the most logical thing to do, nor the most constructive because it would of course make her return – and she would have to return, it was her job – all the more difficult. But she acted on impulse, reacted to the sheer horror of it all, and all her senses barring common sense had told her to bolt.

Was the dictaphone then switched off? What? And miss Ben having his private wank? The tape must run to the end. After all, say Luca came back with a fantastic quote? Fast forward? No, no – wouldn’t want to run down the batteries.

I could fly home from Toulouse.

But you’d have to inform Taverner at the Guardian.

And he’d want to know why.

And then, of course, so will Maillot.

And yarn-spinning obviously lands me in more trouble than the truth.

Plus, if you left under a cloud, you’d have no control over the way this whole débâcle will be recounted.

Jesus. Before you can say maillot jaune, legend will have me live on video shagging the entire Megapac team.

How long have you been sitting there? It’s drawing to dusk. Isn’t the sand damp and your bottom wet?

I didn’t go to the hotel for fear of being followed. I found this secluded chink away from the main beach. There are rock pools. The sand is dry.

There is a funny side, Cat, you do know that? But you alone can orchestrate the way this afternoon is preserved for posterity.

I know. It would only take Rachel or my sisters to point it out, but I’m actually too humiliated to contact anyone. Even Ben.

Instead, Cat opted out of the present tense and sat a while longer, by herself. She analysed how the clouds simpered up to the moon and over it, having their edges singed brown like the circumference on a cup of espresso coffee. Then she made the clouds appear to stand still so that she imagined the stars to be making a reverential pilgrimage towards the moon. Then she saw the night clouds as a slow, silent procession; like a line of melancholy people moving quietly, secretly away. Finally, she scoured the sky for the constellations she knew and she mused a while on how, at different times and in different places, she’d seen Cassiopeia as a W, an M and a 3. Finally, she admitted that such meanderings were just pointless displacement activities and that facts had to be faced and that faces had to be braved.

So she switches on her mobile phone. There are six messages. Rachel wants to know if she’d like to have tea and a window shop. Ben says hasn’t she finished her work yet, he thought she was just going to the salle de pressé to retrieve her stuff. Josh says Cat, where are you, please call, he’s worried. Alex says you’re cool, McCabe, don’t worry about it, your street cred has just rocketed. Ben tells her he’s just spoken to Josh, asks her to call, call now. Josh implores her to call, please Cat, just call.

It is because Cat can feel their affection and detect no ridicule that she decides she won’t be flying home from Toulouse. She knows she will be able to enter the salle de pressé tomorrow, even if she won’t quite be able to hold her head high. Who to phone? Who else.

‘Josh?’

‘Cat,’ Josh sighs, relieved, delighted, ‘where the fuck are you?’

‘Oh,’ Cat says, a wavering voice coming through more clearly than her breezy tone, ‘just sitting. Having a think.’

‘Do you want company?’ Josh asks.

‘Can we just chat on the phone?’ Cat replies, dipping her fingertips into a rock pool.

‘Sure,’ Josh says.

‘Josh, I’m so sorry,’ Cat says, hugging her knees and wishing she was hugging him.

‘You don’t need to be,’ Josh assures her.

‘No, I do,’ Cat confirms, her voice breaking, ‘I lied to you and I don’t feel good about that and I should have set records straight ages ago.’

‘About the non-existent boyfriend?’

‘Yes,’ Cat gasps, ‘how do you know about him?’

Josh wasn’t about to tell her that he was in Rachel’s room, eating cereal, with the Zucca MV soigneur and the Megapac doctor trying to hear both sides of the conversation. ‘I didn’t know you then,’ Cat was continuing, ‘when I, um, fibbed.’

‘Fibbed!’ Josh laughs. ‘It was a fucking whopper!’

‘I know,’ Cat concedes, trying to lean back against a rock but finding it singularly uncomfortable, ‘I know. But I did it for many reasons, many of them daft but mainly for my own security.’

‘I understand,’ says Josh honestly because, after lengthy conversations with both Ben and Rachel, he does.

‘I adore you, Josh,’ Cat says from the heart, clutching hers for unseen emphasis, ‘I truly value our friendship and I hope I haven’t hurt you.’

Josh smiles. He’s glad Ben and Rachel didn’t hear that. He wants to keep it for himself. He’s touched.

‘So,’ Cat says, ‘I’m not an immoral slapper.’

‘Good God no!’ Josh replies with great affection. ‘You’re just a sex-crazed compulsive liar.’

To be teased in such a way but with such affection at such a time is a true tonic for Cat and she is further soothed by Josh imploring her to come to the Zucca MV hotel to raid Rachel’s veritable grocery store.

‘Have you been with Rachel, then,’ Cat asks, ‘this whole time?’

‘Yes,’ says Josh, ‘and Ben’s here too.’

Cat poked her head around Rachel’s door with her eyes trained firmly on the carpet. She noted Rachel was wearing pretty sandals, Ben was in his lovely Docksiders and Josh was in trainers. Very slowly, she let her gaze travel upwards over three pairs of legs of varying degrees of hirsuteness. Rachel was sitting in a chair, Ben and Josh were on the edge of her bed. Gradually, Cat lifted her head and finally her eyes alighted on the three faces. Rachel was shaking hers slowly, with a wry smile etched across her lips. Josh had tilted his, broadcasting a supportive smile as loudly as he could. Ben was simply looking at her.

God, you’re gorgeous, Cat.

‘Hullo,’ Cat said to all asunder, bashfully.

‘Do you want some food?’ Rachel asked, rising and slipping her hand around Cat’s waist, giving her a squeeze.

‘Yes, please,’ said Cat, shuffling further into the room.

‘Fuck it, Cat, you mad girl,’ Josh said, coming over and enveloping her in a bear hug. He kissed her cheek with a sonorous ‘mmwah!’ and then helped himself to a banana which he munched thoughtfully.

When Cat had consumed two bowls of cereal and a yoghurt, Ben yawned, stretched and rose. ‘Come on, you,’ he said, going to her and running his fingers through her hair. Cat knew she blushed at the sudden public display of his affection, but up she stood obediently, beamed gratitude at Rachel and said, ‘Come, Josh, let’s go.’

Josh, Ben and Cat strolled leisurely back to their hotel. Every now and then, Cat glanced gratefully at the moon, checked on Cassiopeia’s whereabouts and observed that the queue of clouds had dispersed. It was going to be a fine day tomorrow.

The journalists’ hotel was small and the foyer served as an impromptu bar. Alex was there with the buxom woman, ensconced in sagging seats and surrounded by several empty bottles of Seize.

‘Cat McCabe!’ he bellowed, unravelling his gangly limbs, extricating himself from the capacious chair and the drape of the woman. He loped over to her, picked her up off the floor, swung her around and then deposited her somewhat cack-handedly. ‘Cat McCabe,’ he said again, with a veritable twinkle in his eye, ‘you little vixen you.’ Then he turned to Ben. ‘You’re a wanker of a bastard,’ he praised the doctor, ‘you’re loathed and envied by the entire salle de pressé right now.’ Ben thanked him courteously for the compliment, Cat kissed Alex goodnight and raised her eyebrow quite saucily in reference to Mary or Margaret or Molly.

‘Maria,’ Alex whispered. Cat winked and they left Alex to his questionable yet obviously relatively effective seduction.

‘Sweet dreams,’ Cat said to Josh, laying her hand on his arm before hugging him tightly.

‘You too,’ Josh grinned. ‘Night, Ben.’

‘Goodnight,’ said Ben.

Cat had the most horrendous headache, slicing right across her brow and searing into the centre of her skull. Ben said that, ironically, the best cure for a headache was sex. Cat was happy to believe him and needed no spoonful of sugar to facilitate such medicine. He was a doctor. She trusted him.

STAGE 12
Frontignan La Peyrade-Daumier. 196 kilometres

Back in London, Pip, who’d hardly slept, phoned Django at 5.30 a.m.

‘Can you lend me some money?’ she said.

‘Jesus Christ – are you in trouble? Are you in jail?’ Django cried, throwing back the bedcovers, ready to dress in a second and pelt down to London at a moment’s notice even if his eyes were still firmly shut.

‘God, I’m fine,’ Pip laughed, ‘only I’m a bit broke this month. So can you?’

‘Can I what?’ Django asked, rubbing his eyes and his head and trying to massage his memory into recalling what his niece had phoned for.

‘Lend me some money,’ Pip repeated.

‘Money?’ said Django. ‘What for? Are you in trouble?’

‘God, no,’ said Pip, ‘I want to go to France to visit my sister.’

‘You want to go to France to visit your sister,’ Django repeated attempting, at this ungodly hour, to recall which niece was not in England and why.

‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘Cat.’

‘Well, why didn’t you say?’ Django exclaimed. ‘Of course you can have some money – if I have some.’

‘You have lots,’ Pip prompted, ‘somewhere.’

‘Of course I do,’ Django said, as if thanking his niece for reminding him, ‘I’ll send some down.’

Pip phoned Fen immediately. ‘I have some money,’ she said.

‘That’s nice,’ said Fen blearily. ‘Fuck, it’s twenty to six.’

‘I have some money,’ Pip repeated, ‘so let’s go to France this weekend.’

‘Can’t afford it,’ said Fen, pulling the duvet up to her chin and keeping her eyes closed.

‘Bollocks!’ remonstrated Pip. ‘One of your boyfriends is loaded.’

‘But the other one is broke,’ Fen said softly.

‘Yes, but which one have you chosen? Who is it to be?’

‘I still don’t know,’ Fen wailed.

‘Yes, yes. But will you come to France?’

‘Sure,’ said Fen.

Luca lay in bed with an inordinately large grin on his face, his eyes wide open and sparkling, fixated with a particularly uninspiring run of cornice.

‘Come on come on come on!’ he chanted. Didier awoke.

‘Fuck it, man,’ Didier remonstrated, ‘it’s 6.30!’

‘I want to start!’ Luca declared. ‘I want to get going.’

‘Go to sleep,’ Didier mumbled, pulling a pillow over his head.

‘I can’t!’ Luca declared. ‘I haven’t slept a wink.’

‘Not amphetamines again,’ Didier exclaimed, hurling the pillow away and fixing an accusing stare on his room-mate.

‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ Luca said, quite offended, ‘I’m as clean as they come. I want to win another Stage, goddamn it. Those feelings of euphoria, of adulation, of strength – they’re far more addictive, and much more effective too. I’m raring to go.’

‘Well,’ Didier reasoned, ‘you’re not going to win a Stage on no sleep, for fuck’s sake.’ He turned his back on Luca, mumbled, ‘Sweet dreams’ and then went off to have some of his own – mainly about glory in the mountains and winning a Stage himself.

Cat moaned when Ben woke her, not least because the awakening was rude in the extreme. She cupped her hands around Ben’s head and lifted his face from her pussy.

‘I don’t want to wake up,’ she lamented. Ben crawled up her body and she kissed him, tasting her own salty-sweetness on his mouth. ‘I’m dreading today,’ she confided. ‘How on earth am I going to manage the salle de pressé?’

Ben lay on his back and looked at her sideways. ‘Are you embarrassed?’

‘Embarrassed?’ Cat exclaimed, propping herself up on her side. ‘I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life.’

‘Yes, but are you embarrassed?’ Ben pressed. Cat frowned. ‘About whatever it is that’s going on here – between us.’ Ben was regarding her steadily.

‘God, no,’ Cat said quietly, gazing at him and punctuating her statement with an emphatic kiss to his shoulder.

‘Well then,’ said Ben, ‘you just lie back, close your eyes and figure out who is in the wrong, who has the dignity, who should be embarrassed, while I satiate myself on your gorgeous pussy.’

Rachel didn’t have any time with Vasily on the Rest Day. After his ride, he’d had deep massage from another soigneur, followed by a little ultrasound on an old knee injury. This morning, when she delivered clean gear to the team, she had a few minutes alone with him. She was hoping for quality time. When she gave him his lycra, she kissed his cheek; seductively close to the corner of his mouth, she hoped. She noted how, initially, he looked utterly startled until she saw the cogs of his memory start to turn. When he then kissed her back, on the lips with a tantalizing flick of his tongue, it was enough to put paid to the unease she had fleetingly experienced.

With the Tour over half-way through, Cat had long absolved many in the press corps for their diabolical taste in footwear, their deplorable typing skills and their excessive addiction to nicotine because, for the most part, they were a nice bunch with such passion for cycle sport that Cat could even turn a blind eye (if still-attuned nose) to their diminishing concerns for personal hygiene. There were individuals, however, who were simply not likeable; for smelling just too bad, for not loving cycling enough and for general antisocial behaviour that went far beyond footwear fancy and nicotine predilection.

A small man called Jan Airie was perhaps the most odious of all. He never went to the village, never ventured near the finish, let alone the scrum, never took his chance amongst the team vehicles or hotels; yet he always crept around scrounging quotes from the other journalists, wheedling his way up and down the banks of laptops, invariably clearing his chest or picking his ears. Sometimes, Cat sensed him scavenging from her screen over her shoulder; or rather scented him, for he was prone to belch with the force and regularity of a Tourette’s sufferer, his feet were spectacularly vile and oral hygiene was obviously of no concern. He made her jump. He made her skin crawl. She knew it would have been too much to hope that he hadn’t been in the salle the day before.

I’m too full of adrenalin to be able to digest even a spoonful of humble pie, Cat bemoaned to herself as Josh parked the car near the salle de pressé in Daumier.

‘I’m starving,’ yawned Alex, stretching expansively and clonking Josh on the ear as he did so. ‘You’re very quiet,’ he remarked to Cat who did not reply. Josh glanced at her from the rear-view mirror but she looked away before she could receive his supportive wink. Taking a few deep breaths, with eyes cast down though the serene and elegant town of Daumier well deserved her attention, Cat traipsed behind the boys to the salle de pressé.

‘Wait up,’ she said to Alex and Josh, ‘can you two flank me?’

‘Oughtn’t you be wearing sackcloth,’ Alex teased, ‘not that floaty little sundress – a bag over your head at the very least?’

‘But it’s hot,’ Cat remonstrated.

‘And the press gang’ll be even hotter,’ Alex remarked, eyeing her up and down.

‘I can’t go!’ Cat declared, coming to a standstill.

‘Come on,’ said Josh, linking arms with her. They escorted her in, which was a good job really as she was too busy scrutinizing the ground just millimetres in front of each foot fall to take notice of where she ought to be headed and obstacles to avoid.

Shit. Has everyone gone quiet? Or is my heartbeat just drowning out every other sound? I daren’t look up.

The boys sat her down between them and Cat started typing immediately; furiously and with her head close to the keyboard and masked by the screen.

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN DAUMIER

The memory of yesterday’s Repos faded fast (God, I wish it would – I’m going to have to relive it again when next I speak to my sisters) as the Tour de France headed for Provence. The deep massage and physiotherapy the riders would have had yesterday was in retrospect not so much to soothe their limbs from the exertion of 11 days of racing, as to prepare and cajole their bodies for a further 9 days. (Jesus – what’s that? Oh my God, people are clapping.)

Though a slow round of applause intruded on Cat’s concentration, she decided to give everyone the benefit of the doubt that maybe, just maybe, they were merely applauding a breakaway or hot-spot sprint. She was desperate to watch the race, the Repos had been very nice, thank you, but Cat had withdrawal symptoms for cycling. However, she didn’t dare raise her head though her neck was aching and her shoulders stiff. Josh sweetly whispered a running commentary and Alex supportively denounced the clap-happy posse as a bunch of tossers. Neither could do much about warning Cat that Jan Airie was leering behind her because he had slunk up unannounced, as was his wont.

‘Catriona!’ he breathed pungently and invasively close to her ear, forcing her to retreat even further into the questionable space offered by her laptop. ‘I do believe you interviewed young Luca Jones – I’d love to hear your tape – I’m sure it is very interesting.’ Then, though his humour stank and his laughter reeked, he wheezed himself silly at what he perceived to be his great wit. Cat wanted to throw up or hit him, but as the former would mess up her keyboard and the latter would entail face-to-face propinquity, she sat stock still. Airie, proud of himself, skulked off, taking a seat directly in front of Alex and taking a good look at the computer screens of his immediate neighbours. He helped himself to a cigarette from one and stole a swig of Coke from the other.

‘Vile!’ hissed Josh under his breath.

‘Loathsome,’ Cat agreed.

‘Total wanker,’ Alex contributed.

The three of them pulled themselves up primly and settled down to their work, sensibly ignoring Airie exclaiming, ‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop!’ in falsetto under the pretext of urging some Banesto rider’s bid for freedom.

With the high mountain Stages approaching, the main contenders for the yellow jersey will keep their energy expenditure to a minimum. With the Alps looming, the non-specialist riders can relish the chance to make a break and glean some glory before the Alps blow them away. Système Vipère, the team behind the yellow jersey of Fabian Ducasse, need to stay near the head of the bunch, to monitor the pace and control which riders they will tolerate in a breakaway. (Thank God for that, Jan Airie seems to have his imbecilic tendencies under check. Where was I? Oh yes, mountains and breakaways.)

But then Jan Airie started to sigh. And then he added a moan or two. Soon he was delivering a clangorous caricature of the female orgasm, soliciting the attention of the whole of the salle de pressé. Tittering developed into chortling which was soon full-blown laughter.

Cat is starting to feel angry. She feels something else too. Ben’s lips. They touch down first on the back of her neck and then along the stretch of her shoulder. The laughter subsides but Airie’s faked orgasm, which he is delivering with eyes shut, does not.

‘It sounds like you’re sick,’ Ben tells him very loudly.

‘He is sick,’ Alex confirms.

‘I think he needs help,’ Josh adds.

That shut him up! Cat marvels. Kiss me again, Ben.

Ben kisses her again and runs her hair through his hands, scooping it into a pony-tail, tugging it so her face tips back for him to kiss her forehead. Then he chats easily to Josh and Alex, massaging Cat’s shoulders all the while and fixing Jan Airie with a steely stare. And then, job done, he goes; telling Airie, very loudly, that if drugs don’t help a sanatorium might; telling Cat, very loudly, that he’ll see her later.

Darling boy, Cat thinks of Ben, as she gazes at the TV screens, noting that Hunter Dean is in a six-man break. Another darling boy.

The riders are racing in 36 degrees, with the sly winds of the region, the mistral and the tramontane, lurking in the wings as if deciding whether or not to have some sport and wreak havoc with the pack. (Ben York, Ben York – you’ve declared yourself my boyfriend; only how can you be if this is the Tour de France and in ten days’ time you’ll be in Colorado and I’ll be in Camden?)

‘That’s not my primary concern at this precise moment,’ Cat says to herself, eyes glued to the TVs, her concern and affection for the riders manifesting itself as a furrow to her brow and a swell in her heart. ‘Can my heart beat so hard in two places at once?’ she wonders quietly. Obviously it can.

‘It’s fucking hot,’ Luca says to Travis, ‘and the wind’s picked up – it’s north-westerly and it’s a bitch.’

‘I’d say it’s around 50 kph,’ Travis confirms. ‘It’s cool that Hunter’s in the break.’

‘Yeah,’ Luca agrees, ‘my legs feel great – I might go for a little gallop.’

‘Whatever,’ Travis says, ‘I’m happy hanging out with this lot.’

Just after the feed, Luca Jones jumped gear and tore away. Though he accomplished a minute’s lead on the bunch at one point, he made little headway on the 3-minute lead of the six-man break. 10 km later, aware of the TV helicopter hovering close behind him heralding the imminence of the bunch, Luca sat up and returned to the fold with dignity and his infamous grin.

‘Creeps!’ Travis hisses to Luca, referring to four young riders from four different teams taking turns to ride headfirst into the wind at the arrowhead front of the bunch.

‘I’d say they’re shrewd,’ Luca counters.

It was a day for young riders acting alone to take turns at the head of the peloton, hauling the Zucca and Viper boys along, to garner favour in the hope that it might be returned in the mountains. 22 km from the finish, the riders faced the second-category climb of the Col de Murs.

‘It’s a fucker of a descent,’ Travis warns Luca as they approach the mountain.

‘Too right,’ Luca agrees, ‘you can’t see where the hell you’re going.’

‘Careful!’ Travis calls to Luca who’s gone ahead again. ‘The publicity caravan leave slicks of rubber and diesel and crap – it can be pretty dangerous.’

With the mountains of the region being densely tree-clad, descents are fast and dangerous as it is difficult for the riders to judge the lay of the land, the severity of the hairpins, which way the mountain slips away around the corners. Travis Stanton was flung from his bike having hit a skid of diesel half-way down.

‘Nice road rash!’ Luca teases Travis once the road has levelled out into a wide lush valley of breathtaking beauty. Travis glances at his grazed, glistening forearm, his scraped, red raw knee. He pours water over his wounds and shrugs the sting off. ‘Where’s the break?’ he asks Luca who doesn’t know.

‘Where’s the break?’ Luca asks David Millar.

‘Still three minutes plus,’ the Cofidis rider replies. ‘You’ve got Hunter there, right?’

‘Yup,’ says Luca with pride, ‘he’s our main man and if I continue to send him my Stage-winning vibes, he’s gonna do it. Yo, Hunter!’

‘You’re a jerk, Luca,’ Millar laughs, riding ahead.

The breakaway streamed into the elegant town of Daumier where huge crowds had been chanting and singing all afternoon. The tight corners and barriers of a civic finish, plus the sudden change from unabated sunshine to tree-dappled light, enforcing the riders to steady their pace. With no true sprinter amongst them, psychology was going to decide the victor of the Stage. Though Hunter Dean hung back to judge when to go and who to take, all six riders stormed the last few metres abreast and fellow countryman Marty Jemison (US Postal) took the Stage by a rim, 2 minutes 32 seconds ahead of the main field. Fabian Ducasse takes his sixth yellow jersey but Vasily Jawlensky plays psychological warfare, still a mere 53 seconds off Ducasse’s lead. The peloton head for Grenoble tomorrow. Tonight they rest under the imposing presence of the Giant of Provence; the mighty, fearsome Mount Ventoux where Tom Simpson, English rider and yellow jersey wearer, lost his life in 1967.

<ENDS>

Pip and Fen watched the Tour coverage on Channel 4 television with their hearts in their mouths, their passports in their laps, their bags packed and a cab ordered. As soon as the programme finished, they charged to Waterloo, took the Eurostar to Paris, changed stations and boarded a train headed for Grenoble.

‘Should we have phoned Cat, do you think?’ Pip asked.

‘I wonder,’ mused Fen. ‘No, there’s nothing like a surprise.’

‘How will we find her?’ Pip asked.

Fen shrugged. ‘We’ll track her down,’ she said, wondering for the first time how on earth they would, ‘she said she’s one of only a dozen women there, after all. How difficult could it be?’

‘Where are we going to stay?’ Pip asked.

‘We’ll find somewhere,’ Fen assured her. ‘How difficult can that be in the land of gîtes?’

‘And pommes frites – I’m starving,’ said Pip.

‘Did you know,’ said Fen, looking up from her Channel 4 guide to the Tour de France, ‘the first ever yellow jersey was actually given in Grenoble?’

Pip shook her head and looked fascinated. ‘Oh yes,’ Fen continued earnestly, ‘in 1919. I don’t even know why it’s yellow.’

‘It is yellow,’ Pip discoursed, pulling her eyes away from her copy of Procycling, ‘because the race was sponsored by L’Auto, a newspaper whose pages were yellow.’

‘How interesting,’ said Fen, flipping through Cycle Sport, ‘and Eddy Merckx collected ninety-six yellow jerseys in his career.’

‘Listen to this,’ Pip said, consulting Maillot, ‘scandal and skulduggery! In the second ever Tour, the maillot jaune, Maurice Garin, was disqualified when it transpired he’d done one of the Stages by train!’

‘I think that was the Tour when the other top three riders were eliminated for having set up barricades and scattering nails on the roads!’ Fen contributed. She looked out of the window. Whilst hurtling through such peaceful countryside, it was hard to believe the huge, hermetic world of the Tour de France was just hours away. What was it going to be like? ‘I’m sure we’ll find Cat,’ Fen said, ‘and Fabian Ducasse.’

‘Of course we will, I hope we will,’ said Pip, referring first to her sister and second to the French rider. It was dawning on them that they hadn’t made the journey so much to spend time with their sister, but to see the boys on bikes in the flesh, to experience the Tour de France first hand.

STAGE 13
Valadon-Grenoble. 186.5 kilometres

COPY FOR P. TAVERNER @ GUARDIAN SPORTS DESK FROM CATRIONA McCABE IN DAUMIER

Against the shimmer of lavender fields and the stab of Cyprus trees, amidst the rustic stone buildings tiled in terracotta, under the gaze of the inky mountains of the Vaucluse, the Tour de France found itself in the midst of a Cézanne painting. However, in 40 degree heat, with only a simpering south-westerly hardly easing the humidity, the peloton’s interest in art history was negligible as they laboured towards the Alps and to the promise of cooler climes, if torturous climbs.

Today was a medium mountain Stage, hard but tolerable, with the race traversing the Vercors Alps south to north. The final climb, 50 km from the finish, was the second-category Col de Rousset; the pink flesh of the mountain from where the hairpin bends were gouged contrasting with the dense indigo shrubbery crowning it. Though the gradient is not severe, it is a long slog panning out at the summit to a taxing plateau continually undulating for almost 60 km. A seven-man breakaway stayed clear of the field by 10 minutes, but posed no threat to the leaders. As the ugly outskirts of Grenoble gave way to the elegant boulevards of the city centre, the small group played cat and mouse to the delight of the phenomenal crowds. No one wanted to start the sprint but nor would they tolerate a lone bid for glory. Ultimately, David Millar sneaked away at great speed to take the Stage in 4 hours 31 minutes and 40 seconds, leaving the other six to sprint to a photofinish for second place. Massimo Lipari, Zucca MV’s pin-up climber and last year’s King of the Mountains, scooped more points today to bring him within a hair’s breadth of the polka dot jersey currently with Système Vipère’s Carlos Jesu Velasquez, the diminutive but charismatic Spaniard. Similarly, though the green jersey is with fellow Viper Boy Jesper Lomers, Zucca MV’s Stefano ‘Thunder Thighs’ Sassetta could well claim it by Paris. Fabian, still in the maillot jaune, completes the jersey trilogy for Système Vipère but Vasily’s designs on the hallowed maillot are both realistic and imminent. This year, the three jerseys are not merely the ultimate accolades of the Tour de France, but the trophies of a duel being fought exclusively between Système Vipère and Zucca MV.

<ENDS>

‘And I really don’t know who I’d most like to win,’ Cat smiled, returning to her chair having transmitted her report to London.

‘It’s for you,’ Josh said, handing Cat his mobile phone, ‘it’s Taverner – he says he can’t get through on yours.’ Cat checked her phone and saw there was no signal. She took Josh’s and immediately pleaded, ‘I know you said 350 words but I’m only 26 over!’

‘I let you have “dark duke Sassetta” last week,’ Taverner said, ‘but I’m drawing the line at Stefano “Thunder Thighs” Sassetta.’

‘Why?’ Cat probed. ‘He’d bloody revel in it.’

‘And,’ Taverner continued, ‘will you stop calling the guys by their Christian names? Are you shagging them or something? Luca this, Fabian that, Vasily the other.’

‘But they’re individuals,’ Cat tried to justify, ‘not anonymous pedal turners.’

‘And finally,’ Taverner persisted, ‘enough of the arty-farty bullshit waffle. Cézanne’s one thing, but “pink flesh of a mountain”?’

‘I just get carried away,’ Cat tried to justify.

‘Change it, please,’ Taverner ordered, hanging up.

‘I like pink flesh,’ Cat said somewhat petulantly and inadvertently loudly. A number of press men glanced round at her and enjoyed a little snigger. Though Cat revised her article and spelt names out in full, she defiantly left the Thunder Thighs exactly where she felt they should be.

Fen and Pip sat in a daze at a café.

‘We have nowhere to stay, we can’t reach Cat and we caught just a glimpse, just a flash, of cycling.’

‘And only by standing on our tiptoes, standing on other people’s toes and elbowing complete strangers,’ Pip interjected.

Fen twitched her mouth, frowned and looked at her sister. ‘We get to see more on Channel 4,’ she said extremely quietly.

‘How are we going to get from Grenoble to L’Alpe D’Huez tomorrow?’ Pip asked. ‘I doubt whether we can hop on a bus or cadge a lift.’

Fen shrugged and contemplated her kir. ‘If we do make it there, where are we going to stay? Under the stars?’

‘Where are we going to stay tonight, more to the point,’ Pip pointed out.

‘Come on,’ said Fen, ‘let’s find Cat. Let’s go back to the salle de presse.’

‘But we hovered for ages,’ Pip bemoaned, ‘with no luck in any language.’

‘Come on,’ Fen said, boosted a little by the sight of a team car with its roof-load of bikes.

On their way, they passed Ben York but it meant nothing, of course, to any of them. Though Ben is head-turningly handsome, Pip was too engrossed in a map and Fen’s head was already cramped with two men jostling for attention. Ben glanced at the women but his priority was half an hour with Cat before he dispensed electrolytes and glucose.

The salle de pressé in Grenoble was housed in the Palais des Sports, built for the Winter Olympics. Every entrance was guarded by officials refusing to understand English or establish eye contact with anyone not wearing a pass. Which was a shame as both Fen and Pip were excellent in the art of doleful eyelash-batting. It was most unfortunate therefore, that the first journalist they accosted happened to be Jan Airie.

‘Ex you sum wah,’ Pip enunciated in plummy English, hoping that the journalist might be American and his heart might soften at her accent alone.

‘Huh?’ Jan said, puffing halitosis liberally.

‘Cat McCabe?’ Fen suggested, rather nasally.

‘Catriona?’ Pip added. ‘Journaliste, le Guardian?’

The man sniggered. ‘Whore!’ He waddled away, laughing to himself.

‘What a charming chap,’ Pip muttered. They took it in turns to approach other journalists leaving the salle but their English, their poor French and their pigeon Italian met with apologetic shrugs.

‘Everyone looks shattered,’ Fen remarked, ‘bags under the eyes, crumpled clothes.’

‘Some look like they need a good scrub,’ Pip added, ‘and a haircut, and a cutthroat shave. There – that bloke looks friendly – your go, Fen. Try him.’

‘Monsieur?’ Fen asked Josh.

‘Oui?’ Josh replied, thinking she looked familiar but, seeing no pass, not dwelling on it.

‘Cat McCabe?’ Fen asked.

‘Journaliste, le Guardian?’ Pip interjected.

‘What about her?’ Josh said.

‘Oh good, you’re English, we’re looking for her,’ Pip replied.

‘Who are you?’ Josh asked.

‘Who are you?’ Pip retorted, wondering why everyone was so accusatory.

Josh looked down at his pass and twisted it the right way round. ‘I’m Josh Piper, as it goes,’ he said, ‘and let me guess – you’re her bloody sisters, aren’t you?’

‘We are her bloody sisters!’ Fen exclaimed delighted.

‘I can’t believe you’re Josh,’ Pip cried, leaping into the air and having to exercise enormous restraint not to do a line of cartwheels, ‘I can’t believe it!’

‘Why?’ Josh exclaimed. ‘How did she describe me?’

‘No,’ Fen laughed, ‘she means that we found you – we asked one vile man who referred to Cat as a whore and then – bingo! – here you are.’

‘That’ll be Jan Airie,’ Josh said, ‘fuck him.’

‘My sister’s not a whore,’ Pip said defensively.

‘Of course she isn’t,’ said Josh.

‘Do you know Ben, then?’ Pip probed. ‘Ouch!’ she said as Fen dug her in the ribs.

‘Of course I know Ben, then,’ Josh said, contemplating Fen’s caution.

‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend, you know,’ Fen explained, just in case Josh still thought she did.

‘I know,’ said Josh, ‘though she has Ben – mind you, what you’d call him, given that she’s landed him whilst on the Tour de France, I don’t know.’

‘Where is Cat?’ Pip asked, as if suddenly remembering their mission to the salle de presse in Grenoble.

‘She’s finished for the day,’ Josh said, ‘so has Alex. I’m the last of the lot. Jesus! Where are you staying? Does Cat know? Bloody hell! When did you arrive? When are you leaving? What are you even doing here, for fuck’s sake?’

‘We’ve come to watch the Tour de France,’ Fen said as if Josh was dense.

‘We don’t have anywhere to stay,’ Pip said, as if it really wasn’t a problem.

So where is Cat?

She’s with Luca.

Where?

Round the back of his team hotel, sitting under a tree in the still-considerable heat of late afternoon.

What’s she doing? What’s the purpose? Does she have that dictaphone with her again?

They’re having a chat.

‘Luca,’ says Cat, who feels they’ve analysed the Stage for long enough, ‘I have something to tell you.’

‘Sure, Babe,’ he says. He regards her. Though she looks uncomfortable, this is strongly contradicted by the veritable glow enveloping her. Her mouth might twitch but her eyes sparkle. She shrugs and smiles simultaneously.

‘Ben,’ she says, ‘and me.’

Luca considers this and then he nudges her. ‘If I was a doctor instead of a cyclist – would you love me instead?’

‘Don’t you dare even muse upon being anything other than a cyclist,’ she chastizes him, nudging him back. ‘The world would be a poorer, duller place.’

‘I knew of course, I knew all along,’ says Luca, holding Cat’s hand in his and tapping at his thigh gently, ‘back in Delaunay Le Beau, all those years ago, before the Tour had even started.’

‘At the medical?’ Cat reminisced. ‘That’s when I first saw both of you. Sitting together on a bench.’

‘Yup,’ Luca says, now tapping his handful of hand on Cat’s thigh, ‘that’s when my main man Ben went skippy.’

‘What’s skippy?’ Cat laughs.

‘It’s a word, no?’ Luca says earnestly. ‘I say it to mean that’s when Ben – well – went.’ Cat’s eyebrows twitched. ‘OK, in sensible English, I tell you that’s when Ben got the horn.’ They both laugh heartily.

‘Did he tell you?’ Cat probes.

‘Ben York?’ Luca exclaims. ‘Bastard didn’t have to. You know why?’

Cat shakes her head.

‘Usually, if I joke about women – you know my style – yeah, she’s a fit chicky, or maybe I say yo! tasty honey-babe,’ Luca says, all excited, suddenly finding a hearty gossip most reviving, ‘well, that boy Ben would normally join in, pass comment – you know?’ Cat nods. ‘Whenever I talked about you,’ Luca says, raising a finger to emphasize significance, ‘if I talked about Gatto, or the Babe, you know what?’

Cat realizes she has to say, ‘No – what?’ for Luca to continue.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Luca says, ‘Ben doesn’t say a fucking thing. So then I knew. I had fun.’

Luca releases her hand from his, Cat stands and pulls Luca to his feet.

‘I have to go,’ Cat says.

‘Gatto!’ he calls after her. Cat turns. ‘I can still call you the Babe McCabe, right?’

‘I don’t think I could answer to anything else,’ Cat assures him.

Cat returned to her hotel which, though clean and bright, smelt of mothballs and the type of disinfectant used liberally in schools when someone’s thrown up. A note had been slipped under her door from Josh, informing her that they were in a bar around the corner. Her chat with Luca, talking in the open about Ben, had infused her with extreme happiness, the likes of which she had not felt for some too long time. She floated off to find the bar and, from a way off, saw that joining Alex and Josh were Ben and two women she thought she knew. From a distance, out of context, far from home, on the Tour de Bloody France, there was no way she was going to recognize them instantly as her sisters. As she neared, she squinted, then she grinned, then squinted again and tried to grin at the same time but it was not possible.

‘Fen?’ she shrieked. ‘Pip? Josh! Ben! Alex!’

‘Cat!’ Pip squeaked.

‘Pip!’ Cat declared. ‘Josh? Alex! Ben? Fen!’

‘Cat!’ Fen cried.

‘Fen!’ Cat responded. ‘Pip!’

The sisters stood and bounced and hugged and repeated each other’s names ad nauseam until Alex said for fuck’s sake, settle down and have a drink.

‘You look shattered,’ Pip told her sister, ‘you need a haircut and your clothes are all crumpled.’

‘If I’d known you were coming, I’d have asked you to bring knickers and hair conditioner,’ Cat assured her.

‘You look thin too,’ Fen said sternly.

‘I’ve put on about half a stone,’ Alex bemoaned.

‘Fuck that. Do you know what I’m thinking?’ Josh said, looking at Alex. ‘I am thinking that it’s been a long time since Bordeaux.’ Alex regarded him and then punched the air, hissing, ‘Yes!’ under his breath.

‘What would you kill for?’ Josh asked Cat, shaking his head when she said she’d kill for a ride in the Système Vipère team car.

‘Try closing your eyes,’ Alex said, noting how his command was obeyed by all three sisters, ‘now recall how much frigging baguette, stinky cheese and jambon you’ve had or spurned day after day.’ He was amused how Pip and Fen could nod and frown so sincerely alongside Cat. ‘Now tell me what you’d kill for.’

‘Big Mac,’ Cat whispered, eyes still closed, ‘large fries,’ she continued though an excess of saliva made her voice a little odd, ‘and a vanilla milk shake.’

‘Now and only now,’ said Josh, squeezing her shoulder, ‘are you a true press man of the Tour de France. Congratulations.’

And so, over supper at MacDonalds, while Alex, Josh, Cat and Ben indulged in their fantasy meals in appreciative silence, Fen and Pip told Cat all about their journey, their arrival, their day and what on earth and where on earth would their night take them.

‘They could have your room,’ Ben said, removing a glob of Special Sauce from Cat’s chin. Everyone nodded, especially Alex, who, resuscitated by the splendour of such a meal, suddenly had designs on both sisters and enormous self-belief that he could have the one, the other, or both, whenever he so chose.

‘Tomorrow,’ Alex said, ‘we’re staying in an apartment at the ski station – so you two can crash with us there.’

‘Please,’ Pip said, thinking Alex quite handsome actually, ‘where’s best to watch the race? We hardly saw a thing today.’

‘L’Alpe D’Huez,’ Cat said, ‘but there will be at least a quarter of a million people on the mountain – many of whom have been there for days, literally.’

‘Oh,’ said Fen, dejected.

‘Oh,’ said Pip, disappointed.

‘I could drive you there at the crack of dawn,’ Cat said, immensely touched that her sisters had come to find her, but moved to the extreme that they had come to see the Tour de France.

‘Ben?’ says Cat, as they lie on their backs, post orgasm, with their heart rates thundering, their bodies gratifyingly sweaty and their erogenous zones well satiated.

‘Yes, Cat?’ Ben says woozily.

‘I think I’d like to go back to my hotel, if that’s OK?’

Ben rolls over, takes Cat’s hands above her head and regards her in the half-light. Everything about her is glossy; her eyes, her hair, her skin. She smells fantastic, she had tasted wonderful. ‘Is that OK?’ Cat says again.

‘Of course it is,’ Ben whispers.

‘’Sme,’ says Cat, knocking at her hotel room door. The sisters snuggle against each other, as often they have, in a rather small double bed. They stroke faces and hold hands and natter well into the night, as often they have. They settle into a very short sleep before waking at an ungodly hour to make the pilgrimage to cycling’s mecca, L’Alpe D’Huez.

STAGE 14
Grenoble-L’Alpe D’Huez. 189 kilometres

‘Jesus, how are they going to get up this?’ Pip gasped as Cat turned off the flat road and L’Alpe D’Huez soared skywards immediately.

‘Twenty-one hairpin bends?’ Fen asked Cat, hoping there’d been some mistake and the peloton would actually have only half that number to contend with.

‘Yup,’ said Cat, driving around the third, ‘a 14 k climb.’

‘And they’ll have ridden three other big ‘uns first?’ Pip said, holding on tight as the car swept around another bend.

‘Yes,’ Fen answered, holding on to her stomach, ‘including the Galibier – is that right, Cat?’

‘Yup,’ said Cat, gripping the steering-wheel and swinging the car around another bend, then up, always up, interminably up, ‘the Galibier is over 18 k and at 2,646 metres, even higher than L’Alpe D’Huez.’

People were sleeping on the slopes of the mountains, their sleeping bags emerging from the shadows like huge slumbering slugs. Elsewhere, opulent campervans protected their inhabitants from view and dew. Already, people were milling about, ghostly grey in the pre-dawn light, some holding cups of steaming liquid, others draped in the flags of their nation, carrying tins of whitewash, some carrying tins of beer. Cat pulled over three-quarters of the way up the mountain. ‘It’ll be a slog for you to walk the rest after the Stage – but you can spare a thought for the boys who’ve biked it,’ she said.

‘Look!’ Pip marvelled at a posse painting riders’ names across the tarmac. ‘Whenever I see the graffitied roads on the TV coverage, I worry that some riders might have been overlooked. Let’s befriend someone with paint, Fen.’

‘Will you do one for me?’ Cat asked, suddenly wishing that, just then, she could have the freedom of a fan rather than the restrictions of a journaliste.

‘Sure,’ said Pip, ‘who?’

‘Luca, of course,’ said Cat.

‘Give us some names to paint,’ Fen implored.

‘Xavier Caillebotte,’ Cat said, ‘or Didier LeDucq.’

‘Ones we can spell,’ laughed Fen.

‘I’m going to do Ducasse,’ Pip proclaimed.

‘Are you now!’ Cat teased.

‘Who’s the yummy Yankee?’ Fen asked. ‘The dark one?’

‘The postman,’ Pip clarified.

‘George Hincapie,’ Cat said, ‘US Postal.’

‘Him,’ said Fen, ‘I’ll do him.’

‘Lucky George,’ said Pip.

‘Do Marty too,’ Cat said, ‘and Tyler.’

‘Better make a list,’ said Fen, anxious now to be on foot, on the great mountain, painting names and waiting for their holders to pedal past.

‘What time are they due?’ Pip asked Cat.

‘About five-ish,’ Cat said.

‘It’s six-ish now,’ Pip remarked, not at all concerned that eleven hours separated her and the cyclists.

‘He looks friendly,’ Fen nudges Pip, ‘ask him.’

‘Monsieur? Parlez-vous anglais?’ Pip asks the man.

‘Yes,’ the man says, ‘you speak Dutch?’

‘Um,’ says Pip, ‘not terribly well.’

‘OK,’ the man laughs, ‘we stick with English.’

‘Could we have some of your paint?’ Pip asks assertively.

‘Sure,’ says the Dutchman thinking that eleven hours in the company of these two would be most welcome.

Pip paints for Cat.

V A S S I L Y

Pip paints for herself.

‘One “s”, stupid!’ Fen says, midway through F A B I and trying to remember if it’s E N or A N.

‘Must remember Didier,’ Pip says, ‘let’s do his name really huge.’

D I D I E R

‘I haven’t had so much fun in ages,’ Fen says, flicking Pip surreptitiously when her back is turned. ‘Mind you, I’m a bit bloody cold.’

‘Maybe Mr Rembrandt will have something warm for us,’ Pip says prior to collapsing into giggles with her sister before they compose themselves and return to their whitewash duties.

‘Look,’ says Fen, ‘someone’s painted Lance Armstrong’s name!’

‘But he’s not riding this year,’ Pip remarks of the rider who had won the Tour spectacularly having beaten cancer.

‘Nope,’ Fen says, ‘his wife’s just had another baby.’

‘I’m going to do another Vasily,’ says Pip, ‘just with the one “s”.’

‘OK,’ Fen enthuses, ‘I’ll do Svorada – he’s a spunk.’

‘And then we’ll return the paint and ingratiate ourselves to Mr Van Gogh,’ Pip says very earnestly.

‘Absolutely,’ Fen says, finding room for an exclamation mark after A L L E Z   M I L L A R. ‘I’m cold, thirsty and hungry already.’

By 11.15 a.m., when the race rolled out of Grenoble, Pip and Fen had painted the names of most of the peloton and made many friends on L’Alpe D’Huez. Consequently, coffee, beer, junk food, transistor radios and expertise had been laid generously at the English girls’ disposal. Mr Van Gogh was called Marc and Pip whispered to Fen that, in daylight, he appeared to be looking more and more like Johnny Depp. Fen decided her sister probably should not have had a beer for breakfast so she told her to pee behind a boulder, which Pip dutifully did.

‘Remarkably like Johnny Depp,’ she said to Fen on her return. ‘I’m covered in whitewash.’

‘What makes a great climber?’ Fen asked Marc, while Pip gave him a fleeting flutter of her eyelashes.

‘Basically, a strong will and a high strength-to-weight ratio,’ Marc explained, ‘though, being light and nimble, they often lose time to the heavier riders when descending.’

‘Have you ever been to England?’ Pip asked Marc.

‘What makes a good descender then?’ Fen interrupted his reply.

‘Confidence,’ Marc said, ‘supreme nerve.’

‘Your English is so good,’ Pip flattered, beer for breakfast increasing her confidence, ‘you must visit London.’

A cheery Belgian called Fritz offered paprika-flavoured potato chips around. ‘Eye reflexes have to be really sharp and honed,’ he told Fen. ‘That’s OK for the first descents but later, when the riders are tired – ppffp!’ He motioned with his hand a rider careering off the road.

‘Also, the change in rhythm,’ a Danish girl called Jette interjected. ‘It’s very pronounced for the riders to go from the big gears and flat roads to small gears and long climbs – they have to spin rather than churn.’

Fen nodded earnestly.

Pip gazed at Marc.

‘Nerves,’ Marc said, gazing at the gradient of the mountain road unfurling in front of them, ‘the belief you can go a step beyond your limit.’

Pip whistled slowly.

‘Massimo Lipari could well take the Stage,’ said Jette, ‘and claim the King of the Mountains jersey.’

‘Today,’ said Marc, thoroughly enjoying the way that Pip hung on his every word and occasionally his arm too, ‘Jawlensky will challenge Ducasse for the maillot jaune.’

Cat did not see her sisters as she drove Alex and Josh to the salle de pressé but, from the look and sound of the clamouring crowd, she was convinced they’d be having a party and she needn’t worry about them. In fact, she did not have time to spare them much thought. Bad weather was forecast. Dramatic action was prophesied. Jersey-switching was predicted. Frantic rewriting of copy was a foregone conclusion. She had driven the route because, as with the Pyrenees, she needed to experience just a snatch of the haul of the mountains the peloton were going to confront. It had been an arduous drive, well over 100 kilometres longer than the itinéraire direct and L’Alpe D’Huez seemed even more severe than it had in the early hours.

The coverage on the salle de pressé TV screens, however, was not good. Driving rain spattered the camera lenses and, combined with the altitude, the transmission was distorted. It was raining in squalls. Wind sucked and blew as if the heavens were hyperventilating. It was cold. Worse, much worse, than the first day in the Pyrenees. But what the journalists were denied in terms of clear pictures, they gained in terms of drama via snatches of grainy footage of riders battling the elements on the Col du Telegraphe. They were drenched. The descent was going to take them straight to the gruesome north face of the Galibier.

The conditions were appalling. A miserable 12 degrees in the valleys dropped to a little above 3 degrees at the summits. Earlier, drizzle on the hors catégorie Col de La Croix de Fer had deepened to driving rain on the Col du Telegraphe. Massimo Lipari had been first over both peaks and if he could win the Stage, Velasquez’s polka dot jersey would be his. Ensconced as they were in the warmth and brightness of the Palais des Sports et Congrès near the finish line, the journalists shuddered for the bunch. But no amount of encouraging vibes and heartfelt hopes could reach the riders, out there, in the Alps, contending with the terrible conditions, the terrifying gradients, and their own personal demons taunting them with fatigue, cramp, cold, breakdown.

‘The Galibier towered above on the race, glowering down on the men who had the audacity to scale its heights by bike,’ wrote Cat. ‘For a mountain whose bleak wastes are inhospitable even in sunshine, in the rain today it was grim and desperately dangerous too.’

She was paragraphs into her article though the race was a long way from the finish. Though she was going to exceed her word limit, she needed to recount the awesome magnitude of the day, to do justice to the men who were out there; just let Taverner dare edit!

Luca and Didier were in a small group with the green jersey of Jesper Lomers, way ahead of the toiling gruppetto, but an insurmountable distance behind a breakaway containing Lipari, Velasquez, Ducasse and Jawlensky.

‘Welcome to hell,’ Didier said to Luca when the descent of the Telegraphe had at once become the climb of the Galibier.

‘This isn’t rain,’ Luca remarked, ‘it’s fucking sleet.’

‘We need our rain capes,’ Didier said.

‘Can’t we just keep going?’ Luca suggested, not wanting to slow down, let alone stop, wanting only to be done with the Galibier.

‘We’ll freeze, we’ll never make it,’ Didier insisted.

‘I can hardly see,’ said Luca, ‘and I’m bursting for a piss.’

‘Just piss yourself,’ said Didier, ‘it’ll keep you warm.’

‘God, this is horrible,’ said Luca, not at all comforted by the hot trickle that seeped its way around his shorts. His group tried to work together to combat the headwind, the flurries of sleet but ultimately it was each man for himself. Luca’s legs felt appallingly heavy, his eyes stung, his feet were numb and his fingers felt welded with ice to the handlebars. He was dropping back but knew that if Didier was to survive the Galibier, he must be allowed to do it at his preferred pace and rhythm. Luca was on his own and he was hurting badly across his forehead and the back of his neck. His arms ached supremely, the fronts of his thighs and inside his knees were scorched with pain and felt on the verge of malfunction. His breathing, laboured and painful, filled his ears.

‘Help me,’ he whimpered, ‘oh God!’

A fan ran beside, chanting encouragement and pushing Luca for a few yards. His team car drew alongside and his directeur yelled hard and heartlessly at Luca to fucking keep going. Somehow, Luca clambered and straggled his way to the Galibier’s summit; thirty-five minutes behind Carlos Jesu Velasquez and Massimo Lipari, thirty minutes behind the group with Fabian and Vasily, eighteen minutes behind Didier’s group and fifty-eight minutes in front of the gruppetto. Luca’s limbs froze on the descent and so did the blood in his veins. It was absolutely terrifying. He was dangerously stiff. Visibility was but a few metres. He felt he had little control over his bike or brakes, with fingers frozen, mind numbing and spirit dying.

I don’t want to be here. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t know how the fuck I am going to carry on. I want to be in Italy. I don’t want to be on a bike. Sunshine. Mama.

On L’Alpe D’Huez, Massimo Lipari stood on his pedals and danced away from Carlos Jesu Velasquez, commandeering the invisible motor that should be the advantage of the polka dot jersey wearer. The Spaniard could do nothing but ride his best and he could do nothing about the fact that, today, Massimo Lipari was simply riding better. It was going to be a legendary Stage finish. Système Vipère’s Velasquez had won at altitude in the Pyrenees, now Zucca MV’s Lipari was set to do the same in the Alps. The salle de presse and their editors back home were ecstatic about the copy such a day was generating.

On L’Alpe D’Huez, Fabian Ducasse bonked. In the salle de pressé, fingers went apoplectic over keyboards, but not Cat’s. Though she had been grinning transfixed by Massimo’s great bid for victory, her jaw dropped in awe as she watched Vasily Jawlensky pull away and power up the mountain, sitting calm in his saddle, his shoulders, his eyes, his resolve, rock steady. Incredibly, Vasily hugged the inside of each hairpin, riding the shorter but steeper route as if it were the easier option, the most direct route to the yellow jersey after all. Cat’s mouth remained agape in disbelief to see Fabian unable to counter Vasily’s attack.

On L’Alpe D’Huez both the polka dot and yellow jerseys changed backs, yet excitement amongst the press for the new victors was countered with compassion for the vanquished. It was gut-wrenching to watch Fabian flounder, to watch the yellow jersey himself slip away from his group, the jersey slip from him. No one helped him. Their pace had not changed. His had. Will power is one thing, grim determination is another, but limbs shot away with pain and muscles ravaged by lactic acid is something else entirely. Fabian simply could not turn the pedals with the force and effect that the other riders could. His eyes were swollen, his mouth was agape, his upper body could not pull and his lower body could not propel. Whatever was going through his mind, no matter how deep he dug within his soul, his body was emphatically on strike and he was utterly at its mercy.

On L’Alpe D’Huez Luca Jones dismounted. Now Cat gasped alarmed, having watched in silent horror her rider weaving and wavering before quitting his bike.

‘Get back,’ she murmured, ‘don’t stop. Don’t stop, Luca. Please.’ She closed her eyes, willing him to continue. Opening them, she saw the Megapac team car alongside Luca.

‘Make him get back,’ she implored, stirring the journalists around her but having no effect on Luca, ‘don’t let him stop. Tell him he can do it. Please.’

‘Let me stop,’ Luca sobs.

‘No! I will not have you fail. Get back and move. You are paid to do a job,’ the directeur, merely doing his, barks.

‘I can’t,’ Luca pleads.

‘You ride for Megapac,’ the directeur shouts, ‘you are not sick, you are lazy – ride on.’

‘Please,’ Luca pleads.

‘Last week you were the personification of success, today you are the epitome of failure.’

Luca remounts and slowly, painfully, painfully slowly, pedals onwards. He makes it up and around two further hairpin bends before dismounting again, this time sitting down on the tarmac, his fingers fixed as if still gripping the handlebars. His team car draws alongside. He looks at his directeur through his bloodshot eyes sunken deep into his skull. He is too cold, too desolate, to speak.

‘Luca, you will finish this Stage, you will not let L’Alpe D’Huez do this to you. How dare you even think of doing this to the team!’

‘My hands,’ Luca wails, ‘so cold.’

‘Piss on them,’ his directeur commands. ‘I forbid you to give up. You will not leave the Tour today.’

On L’Alpe D’Huez, Fen and Pip, drenched but warmed by Fritz’s schnapps, watched aghast as Luca Jones all but collapsed off his bike and sat shivering and hunched on the tarmac. They watched dumbfounded as he stood, stooped, rolled down his shorts a little and pissed. They watched stunned as he attempted to direct the flow over his hands. They watched in awe as he remounted. He was pushed along, from fan to fan, until his legs could take him forwards and his bike crept upwards and away. Pip chastized herself. She had been on the verge of moaning to Fen that she was wet, that it wasn’t much fun, that Channel 4 and a cup of tea were far preferable. But, having watched Luca, her triteness and selfishness appalled her. She needed to make amends. She summoned her spirit, found her voice and, with Marc and Fen and all her other new friends, cheered and urged each and every rider who passed her on their passage.

On L’Alpe D’Huez, four riders abandoned the Tour de France, bringing the number of riders retiring on Stage 14 to twelve. Luca Jones was not one of them. It took Massimo Lipari a phenomenal 36 minutes 51 seconds to climb the mountain, win the Stage and claim the polka dot jersey, a true King of the Mountains. It took Luca just under an hour to limp to the line. Ben was waiting in the team bus. When Luca crawled up the steps, Ben thought how his face was like that of a wizened old man, but how his fragility, his comportment, was that of a child. Luca looked to Ben and, just then, all the doctor felt he could do for the rider was to open his arms, into which the young rider collapsed. He sobbed, his body shaking in spasms of cold and fatigue.

On L’Alpe D’Huez, in the salle de pressé, wearing Josh’s fleece and with Alex’s sweatshirt over her knees. Cat wondered how on earth to finish her article. She was thrilled for Massimo to be wearing the polka dot jersey after an epic Stage won in 5 hours 43 minutes and 45 seconds, she was ecstatic that Vasily was now the maillot jaune of the Tour de France, having come home with a hissing, livid Carlos Jesu Velasquez two minutes later. However, her heart bled for Carlos and of course for Fabian, now lying second and nearly four minutes behind Vasily; she felt for the whole of Système Vipère who had relinquished their two prized jerseys on this horrible day. But it was Luca Jones, though, who captured her sympathy and haunted her. With no defining jersey on his back apart from his sodden Megapac strip, he was, in general, just another rider from the peloton who had suffered beyond comprehension today. To Cat, though, he was a champion. Luca had given every ounce of his physical and emotional capacity to finish the Stage for his team, for his directeur, for cycle sport, for the fans and lastly, for himself. For Cat, even those ten riders who abandoned, even the two riders coming home well over the time limit only to be sent home, were victors commanding her respect, her compassion and commensurate columns in her report.

Today, I am not writing sport reportage, my piece is not a commentary on the day’s Stage. It is my deeply personal response, as honest and emotional as a private diary entry.

‘Hey, Cat,’ Rachel’s voice crackled through bad reception on the mobile phone.

‘Rachel,’ Cat said, ‘what a godforsaken day.’

‘I know,’ Rachel agreed.

‘I mean, well done Zucca – but the conditions, Jesus! How are the boys?’

‘Too exhausted,’ Rachel said, ‘absolutely shattered and shot through to the marrow.’

‘You sound low, Rachel,’ Cat detected, ‘it must really take it out of you, too.’

‘It does,’ the soigneur confided. ‘Today Zucca have the yellow and polka dot jerseys – but the team are supremely exhausted, their bodies brutally battered. I have to pick up the pieces and it’s knackering.’

‘Would you like some company?’ Cat asked, seeing it was eight o’clock and wondering when Taverner was going to lambast her for exceeding her word limit by 100 per cent.

‘Please,’ said Rachel, ‘come by the hotel.’

‘Shit,’ said Cat, once she’d hung up, ‘my sisters.’

Cat’s sisters had trudged up L’Alpe D’Huez, very wet and a little drunk. They’d walked the finishing straight, thinking how, amidst the debris and lingering vibe, it was as if a circus had come to town and then gone again. The rain had settled into an eye-squinting mist and it justified more schnapps and a good sit-down somewhere warm.

‘I can’t believe Cat’s pissing off to see some physio friend,’ Pip said petulantly, a hearty glug of liqueur dissolving a mouthful of cake. She was also piqued that Marc had not invited them to thaw out in his campervan, that Fritz had not enquired where they were staying, that Jette had merely said ciao, see you on the Col de la Madeleine tomorrow.

‘Soigneur,’ Fen corrected, ‘Rachel. Zucca MV. Cat’s at work, remember.’

Pip nodded reluctantly, concentrated on her cake and then brightened up. ‘When are we meeting Josh and Alex?’

‘In half an hour,’ Fen said, ‘at the apartment. Another drink?’

‘Let’s raise a glass to Vasily and Massimo – le maillot jaune and le maillot à pois,’ Pip declared, knocking her drink back in one.

‘And here’s to Fabian and Carlos,’ said Fen, doing the same.

‘We’d better have another,’ said Pip sincerely, ‘we must toast those who bowed out.’

‘And Luca,’ said Fen.

‘I wonder if he’s had a shower,’ said Pip, the sorry sight of the rider urinating over his hands indelibly printed on her memory.

‘Can we talk about anything but cycling?’ Rachel asks Cat, welcoming her in to her room.

‘Of course,’ says Cat. ‘You look ghastly.’ The soigneur has dark circles around her eyes, her hair hangs lank and there is a visible slump to her characteristic energy and poise.

‘I should toast the team,’ Rachel remarks, as if it were a requirement of her job, ‘taking two jerseys from Système Vipère in such fine style.’ She stifles a yawn and lies back on her bed. ‘Well done, Vasily and Massimo. Well done team for just making it today.’

‘I’ll nip down to the bar and bring a couple of drinks up,’ Cat offers sweetly. ‘Beer?’

‘Make it whisky,’ says Rachel, ‘and if it isn’t Scotch, bugger it, I’ll have vodka instead.’

To Rachel’s delight. Cat brings her a large tot of Glenfiddich.

‘When were you last home?’ Cat enquires.

Rachel scrunches her eyes. ‘Far too long ago – I miss it and yet when I return it doesn’t really feel like home. I soon miss the camaraderie, the familiarity of life with the peloton. Anyway,’ she says, taking a hearty glug, her eyes watering at the severity of the liquor, ‘enough about work. Let’s talk about boys.’ Though her eyes are slightly bloodshot, a sly twinkle courses its way through. ‘Let’s get He Who No Longer Exists out of the way first.’

Am I ready for this? Cat wonders.

Yes, you are.

Rachel was so proud of Cat’s level-headed analysis of her failed love that she delved into a bedside cabinet and retrieved an immense block of Cadbury’s chocolate as a reward.

‘Bliss,’ said Cat, filling her mouth and closing her eyes.

‘The One Who Is No More,’ Rachel toasted, ‘well done.’

‘Any developments with Vasily?’ Cat asked.

‘The maillot jaune is the development,’ Rachel defined quietly. ‘Until the race is over, I would think the only thing he’ll desire next to his skin is yellow lycra.’

‘Are you frustrated?’ Cat asked. ‘Hurt?’

Rachel considered this. ‘Frustrated?’ she mused. ‘No. Hurt? No. Confused – very.’

‘Why?’

‘I adore Vasily,’ Rachel defined, ‘but you know something? I don’t think I feel any true chemistry – I think I’ve been searching for it because when a man like Vasily wants to kiss you, you sit up and take notice.’

‘Because he’s such an enigma?’ Cat clarified.

‘Exactly,’ Rachel nodded, ‘no one knows of any woman Vasily has had. And yet it seemed he wanted me. That fact in itself was enough to turn me on. It was so flattering – I kept thinking, wow! What is it that I have that’s seeped through his armour?’ Rachel paused, cleared her throat and continued in a whisper, ‘I don’t actually fancy Vasily Jawlensky.’

‘That’s tantamount to blasphemy!’ Cat cajoled.

Rachel shrugged. ‘It’s a fact.’ She munched on some chocolate. ‘I adore him, he’s a bloody good kisser, but I don’t burn for him. You won’t believe this – it’s taken me a couple of days myself – actually I quite fancy someone else.’

‘Who?’ Cat exclaimed, intrigued. ‘You slapper!’

Rachel poked Cat. ‘André.’ She bit her lip.

‘André?’ Cat contemplated, not knowing anyone of that name in the peloton, let alone Zucca MV.

‘André Ferrette,’ Rachel said, beckoning Cat close for disclosure, ‘is the Système Vipère mechanic.’

‘Fucking hell!’ Cat declared, about to take a lump of chocolate. ‘A Viper boy? For a Zucca girl? We’re talking Montagues and Capulets here.’

Rachel winced. ‘Don’t I know it – our respective directeurs are not going to be best pleased. I bet you we’ll have accusations of sabotage and espionage thrown our way before long.’

‘So what’s happened?’ Cat implored, curling up on the bed as Rachel had. ‘I can’t think when you’ve had time to form a new union, let alone theorize so lucidly on Vasily.’

‘Aye, that’s what’s weird,’ Rachel stated. ‘I haven’t even come close to kissing André, yet my lust for him is, um, fairly pronounced and something of a distraction!’

‘I rather think you hadn’t been kissed for way too long,’ Cat mused, ‘and perhaps you believed you fancied Vasily on account of all the oscular activity.’

‘In English, do you mean I was desperate for a snog?’

‘Something like that,’ Cat laughed.

Gianni Fugallo knocked and entered, eyed the chocolate longingly, eyed the two women supine on the bed hopefully, but made do with a banana and a copy of Marie Claire.

‘Now let’s talk about Ben,’ Rachel said, her revelation having quite exhausted her. ‘I’ve heard quite enough about your Other One and anyway He Is No More.’

‘Yup,’ Cat smiled, ‘he’s firmly in the past.’

See, no capital ‘h’.

While Cat continued to gorge on chocolate and girlie gossip, her sisters, her colleagues and Ben ate liver, tongue and various indefinable parts of cow and pig at a hearty, rustic mountain-top restaurant. It was joyous and noisy, with yelling coming from the kitchen and animated chatter from the diners who were mainly presse apart from a hirsute group of men Pip decided were goat-herders, a comment which Alex reacted to with excessive chortling. Red wine flowed, as did the conversation. Especially, Josh noted, between Pip and Alex. Fen also noticed, but her attention was given to Ben.

‘Where do you live, Ben?’ Fen asked.

‘Boulder,’ said Ben.

‘In the New Forest?’ Fen exclaimed, heartened. ‘Near Lymington?’

‘Er, Colorado,’ said Ben, almost apologetically.

What’ll happen to my sister when the Tour de France finishes? What is she to you, Ben? A French fling? Might you have another lined up for the Vuelta? Was there someone during the Giro?

‘I’ve invited Cat to visit,’ Ben was saying. ‘She told me about your mother running off with a cowboy from Denver – we thought we might track her down.’

‘What, on Cat’s paltry freelance pay?’ Fen derided, unnerved that Ben was so au fait with her family history.

When has Cat ever wanted to track our mother down?

Fen wondered why she wanted to dislike Ben; especially as, having now spent time with him, she could not dispute that his seemly exterior complemented a strong, likeable character.

Nourished and rejuvenated by the wholesome food, lubricated by the wine, Ben regarded Fen quizzically.

I know I don’t have her seal of approval and the bizarre thing is, it matters to me and I rather want it.

‘I don’t mind saying I was gutted when I thought Cat was involved with someone back home,’ he said frankly. continuing while Fen was still wondering what sort of reply a statement like that necessitated. ‘But I felt,’ Ben paused, ‘I felt not just relieved but pretty damn delighted when she told me he was just an ex from months ago.’

Just An Ex? Fen thought to herself. Why hasn’t she told Ben much? Why has she played down the impact it all had on her? Her past is defining her present and will shape her future. Why, and what, does she not want Ben to know? She’s either protecting herself – or she is not being herself at all.

‘More wine, Fen?’ Ben asked, raising an eyebrow at Josh with a glance in the direction of Alex and Pip who were sporting matching flushed cheeks and looking particularly cosy.

‘Thanks,’ said Fen, who sipped and smiled politely and tried unsuccessfully to catch her sister’s eye. ‘Ben,’ she started, her conscience warning her to bite her tongue but the wine letting it loose, ‘I love my sister. She’s extremely precious,’ Fen persisted, with more than a hint of warning to her voice.

‘Fen,’ said Ben, tilting his head and regarding her.

‘I love Cat very very much,’ Fen interrupted again.

‘I know you do,’ he said, nodding again.

And I do too. But I’m not going to say it out loud. Not because I know I’m drunk, but because I’m certainly not going to tell you unless I’ve told Cat herself.

‘To Cat,’ he said instead, raising glasses that he’d refilled once more.

‘To Pip and Alex,’ Josh murmured, suddenly missing his wife desperately.

As Cat walks down from the Zucca MV hotel, she contemplates how she hasn’t seen Ben at all today. They haven’t even spoken. Not since yesterday.

And I’ve missed him. Shit.

The notion simultaneously warms Cat and worries her.

She approaches the apartment block at the same time but from the opposite direction to her sisters, her colleagues and Ben, whose status she has great difficulty in defining.

‘They’re pissed!’ she observes, wondering whether Pip is linking arms with Alex purely for stability and, indeed, whether it is for her own stability or his. Cat’s eyes are locked on to Ben’s. She’s delighted to see him.

I have missed him, I really have.

Fen observes how Cat sparkles at the doctor. She regards how her sister practically sings, ‘Hullo!’ to the rest of them before she beams at Ben, focuses on him exclusively and they kiss. The affection between the two of them is pronounced. It simultaneously warms Fen and worries her.

STAGE 15
Vizille-Gilbertville. 204 kilometres

Most courteously, Alex and Josh had taken the room with bunk beds so that the sisters could have the room with the small double and tiny single bed. Pip told her sisters she ought to take the single bed as she feared she was developing a cold. Josh was well aware that Alex presumed him to be asleep when his colleague crept from the room and when he returned in the early hours. Fen and Cat did not hear Pip leave their room but they heard her return. Facing each other in the double bed, they opened their eyes, raised eyebrows, bit back grins and pretended to be fast asleep.

Cat’s mobile phone woke them for real an hour later, at seven in the morning.

‘Cat?’

‘Rachel?’

‘Are you busy?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Are you asleep?’

‘Er, no.’

‘I need some help – can you come? Bring your sisters. It’s women’s work and I need all hands on deck.’

Rachel welcomed them into the Zucca MV team bus. Cat observed her sisters’ open mouths and wide eyes and realized with a certain warmth how initially she too had been staggered at glimpsing such a different, special, self-contained world; but how now all of this had become the norm to her, a plausible, preferable way of life.

It’s my world too, now. Part of my life. I’m happy here. I feel I belong.

‘Now,’ said Rachel, most officiously, ‘down to business.’ From a carrier bag, she laid out a selection of porn magazines.

‘Shit,’ Pip gasped, ‘where did you find those?’

‘Are they banned?’ Fen whispered ingenuously. ‘Did you have to confiscate them? Have you to surrender them to Jean Marie LeBlanc?’

Rachel and Cat laughed, though Cat, aware that porn mags were not a banned substance, was not yet sure of their purpose.

‘The boys had a really tough day yesterday,’ Rachel said, flipping through a magazine leisurely, ‘and today the forecast is very hot.’

‘And today they have five mountains to climb,’ Cat added, peering over Rachel’s shoulder at female limbs in a quite startling configuration.

‘So,’ said Rachel, ‘I thought, to hell with tin foil – I’ll wrap their race food in something far more appetizing. We need a production line. Fen, would you mind going through this pile, Pip you have that.’

‘What do you want?’ Fen asked, deadly serious. ‘Big tits?’

‘Split beavers?’ asked Pip soberly.

‘Perfect,’ said Rachel, ‘only try to find bodies where, if there is a face, it’s a pretty one. Bugger the readers’ wives and fuck the ones with so much silicone that their nipples spread out like a rash. Just go for the bimbos – I really want to treat the boys.’

In the front seat of the Système Vipère team car, Fabian Ducasse is pugnaciously silent and aggressively focused. Jules Le Grand is driving him down L’Alpe D’Huez, down the very mountain which the day before Fabian had ascended in his own funeral cortège. He stares straight ahead, not looking at the road, the gradient, the debris from yesterday. His eyes, today the colour of graphite and as seemingly insensate as the rock of the fearsome Alp itself, give nothing away. Fabian’s aquiline features are as sharp as the boulders. A scar scores through his soul in much the same way as the road slices into the mountain. Behind closed lips, his teeth are clenched. However, the external manifestation of his inner turmoil is one of brooding steady focus; he resolutely refuses to allow any hint of emotional turbulence to be visible. It’s strategy. The media must not know. Nor must any rider in the peloton. Nor, he thinks somewhat deludedly, must his directeur.

But it is Jules’s job to be in tune with his riders; though he has read Fabian’s condition in a glance, he knows that diplomacy is crucial if the great rider is to race well today. Personally, Jules detests seeing his team leader back in regular Système Vipère colours; Fabian looks wrong somehow, like he’s in mufti after eight days wearing the yellow jersey. Though his primary concern is for Fabian’s physical and mental recovery, Jules is also thinking of the Système Vipère sponsors, intending to phone them, reassure them, flatter them, once the Stage is under way. Jules has hardly spoken to Fabian because he knows there is little the rider wants to hear. When Fabian finished the Stage yesterday, Jules had grasped his shoulders, shaken him until eye contact was established and said, ‘Bien, Fabian, bien.’ Jules curses the fact that the only way to today’s start is down the very route that decimated his rider the day before, stripping him of his maillot jaune. Jules is painfully aware of the irony that L’Alpe D’Huez, in glorious sunshine, looks positively Sound of Music this morning.

‘Can he reclaim the maillot jaune?’ was a question posed to Jules by fans, by TV, by phone and in the press conference yesterday.

‘Tomorrow is another high mountain Stage,’ Jules had replied nonchalantly, ‘and there is of course another Time Trial to go.’

He had not said this to Fabian. There was nothing that could be said to Fabian that Fabian wouldn’t have told himself already, time and again.

Fen and Pip caught a ride to the Col de la Madeleine with another Zucca MV soigneur, a quietly spoken man with whom they conversed sparingly in pidgin Anglo-Franco-Italian. He felt it his greater duty to consolidate his passengers’ burgeoning passion for the sport by driving them along the race route than to go direct to the hotel to unpack for the riders. From Vizille, the summer seat of many a French president, through the Chatreuse Massif, they journeyed on a road laid down by Napoleon, unaware that the day was to bring a French revolution in the form of Fabian Ducasse’s comeback. Pip and Fen were seduced by pretty chalets in sleepy mountain villages where, in July, the Christmas lights were still up because the ski season alone defined such places’ existence.

Sunflowers, lavender and cow parsley provided a gentle aesthetic antidote to the rock faces on which firs clung precariously. Local women, laying claim to their favourite spectating spots, sat under parasols, compounding Fen and Pip’s feeling that they were driving through an Impressionist painting. Until, that is, the tifosi began to gather in force and en masse, their sodden clothes from yesterday drying on mountain safety barriers, shrubs, even the tarmac itself. The sisters grinned proudly while the fans cheered, waved and rang huge cow bells as the Zucca MV car passed by.

‘Madeleine,’ said the soigneur with hushed reverence, stopping the car near the summit of the great mountain. ‘Please,’ he said, hand on heart, as if it were his grave responsibility, ‘I wish you to have a very good day.’

‘Mille grazie,’ said Fen.

‘Trille zille grazie,’ said Pip.

‘Prego,’ said the soigneur with a humble but flattered shrug and smile, ‘prego.’

‘Everyone is so lovely,’ Fen remarked to Pip as a vast Spanish family made room at the roadside for them, and an elderly German woman whose face was painted like her national flag offered them cold sausages.

‘It’s like a huge family,’ Pip agreed, thanking three young Spanish boys for sharing their orange juice. ‘I can’t believe you’re making me go home tonight.’

‘I have to go to work tomorrow,’ Fen bemoaned, wanting to stay in the Alps, stay on for the Time Trial, for Paris, rather than head home to trying times and impossible choices.

‘And Ben is going to drive us to the station in Grenoble,’ said Pip. ‘He’s lovely, isn’t he?’

‘It’s only about 70 k from Gilbertville,’ Fen retorted, wondering how on earth she had the space in her mind to be confused about Ben when she was dithering over two men of her own. ‘Wouldn’t you rather Alex drove us?’ Fen crossed her arms and raised her eyebrow at her sister who almost choked on her orange juice before brandishing a very wicked smile.

‘Naughty Philippa,’ Pip chastized herself with great pride.

‘And?’ Fen pressed.

‘Who would have thought the Tour de France was sex and drugs and rock and roll?’ Pip marvelled as a nearby Danish contingent danced terribly to terrible Europop and a Dutch posse enjoyed cake whose main ingredient was obviously far more mood-enhancing than just flour, butter, eggs and sugar.

In the Gilbertville salle de pressé, a large marquee by the Arly river, Cat sat on a rickety plastic chair as if it were a veritable throne.

Taverner didn’t cut a bloody word! she marvelled to herself and anyone else who chanced upon the Guardian, spread before her. If this doesn’t swing the favour of the Maillot office, what the fuck will?

‘Andy? This is Cat McCabe in Gilbertville.’

‘Hullo, Cat McCabe in Gilbertville,’ said Andy from offices in Pentonville.

‘Have you seen the Guardian?’ Cat said, trying hard not to squeak with excitement, nor sound deflated when Andy said he hadn’t. ‘Well, I gave Taverner twice as much as he’d asked for and he hasn’t cut a word.’

‘And Maillot would want to employ a girl who doesn’t do as she’s told?’ came the response, the tongue in cheek not being audible via mobile phone. Cat hung up and speed-read yesterday’s article to keep despondency at bay. ‘I need a break,’ she said quietly, ‘I deserve the chance.’

Fabian Ducasse wanted a break too, but the peloton were still bruised from the previous Stage, their bodies bewildered by the sudden heat, so they rode together in an unspoken ceasefire. Fabian’s team-mate Carlos Jesu Velasquez, the dethroned King of the Mountains, had conquered the first three narrow twisting mountain passes to bring him within spitting distance of the polka dot jersey Massimo Lipari had taken from him yesterday. No one went for broke on the penultimate climb, the Grand Cucheron, so there were no great time gaps as the riders raced in the still, dry, high heat along 40 kilometres of flat roads towards the Col de la Madeleine.

There, Fen was tanning nicely and Pip’s nose was starting to burn a little until she caught a souvenir baseball cap flung from the publicity caravan. The vibe of the approaching race could be felt from way off and the McCabe sisters were soon standing in anticipation with the excited hordes, ten people to every metre along the climb of the Madeleine. A whisper surged through the crowds that Fabian had launched a surprise attack in the lower reaches. Those further up could not witness it but ears were glued to radios and, in the salle de presse, eyes were stuck to the TV screens. What Cat saw she deemed to be nothing short of genius and she intended to tell her Guardian readers just that.

Fabian Ducasse read astutely not only the requirements of the 19.5 km climb of the Madeleine, but also the state of his rivals’ minds and bodies. As the 7.6 per cent ascent commenced, he appeared tired – continually dropping off the back of his small lead group and then labouring hard to claw his way back. Ultimately, he was calling their bluff. Suddenly he steamed from the back and headed off at speed, plucking Velasquez with him. Sitting deep and resolute in the saddle, his shoulders steady, his gear arrogantly huge, his body appeared to snub the gradient of the climb. His Spanish team-mate and grimpeur extraordinaire, stood on his pedals and danced alongside the Système Vipère leader. Zucca MV’s Jawlensky launched a counter-attack immediately, assisted by the heroic Gianni Fugallo – arguably the super domestique of the Tour. However, having offered Vasily his slipstream in the Pyrenees and the Alps, having worked tirelessly to bring Stefano Sassetta to the sprint finishes of the first week, today Fugallo only managed to haul his team leader two thirds of the way up the Madeleine before dropping back. It was enough, however, to keep the Russian strategically close to his Système Vipère adversaries and Fugallo’s efforts were instrumental in ensuring that the maillot jaune stays with Zucca MV tonight.

While Fen and Pip were too high up to see the super domestique at work, they would later see what Cat could not: how ravaged a state Fugallo was in. The pictures beamed in to the salle de pressé focused on the race lead, not the domestique struggling with the mountain in a body struggling to cope. Fen and Pip yelled and leapt as Fabian and Carlos, and soon enough Vasily, passed by.

‘I can’t believe I’ve been so self-centred with my Evian,’ Pip said in horror, watching the fans pour water over the riders as they passed. ‘You can have one last sip, Fen,’ she said.

‘Look at all these people,’ Fen marvelled, taking two sips less than she actually required, ‘they’re like an ever-converging corridor, stepping aside but a wheel away from the approaching riders.’

‘If you were a dog,’ Pip reasoned, scanning downhill for the cyclists, ‘you’d have to wag your tail up and down, it’s so narrow. Here they come!’

‘Two and a half minutes off the lead,’ said Fen, checking her watch and focusing on four specks of lycra approaching. ‘Look! Someone’s bolted off.’

‘Lipari! Lipari!’ sang neighbouring Italians who’d been most generous with their Amaretti biscuits and their Amaretto, and they burst into the Zucca MV climber’s Giro pop tune.

‘Will he catch them?’ Fen wondered. ‘Fabian and Carlos and Vasily?’

‘He’s Massimo,’ one Italian said to her, raising his hands as if her question bordered on blasphemy, ‘of course he catch them – he eat them!’

‘Indians,’ says Hunter to Luca in a group of twelve, 24 minutes behind the leaders.

‘What?’ says Luca, who feels surprisingly strong but is riding carefully.

‘Indians,’ Hunter repeats, nodding ahead. Luca follows his gaze and his heart drops.

‘Oh fuck,’ he gasps, ‘no way, man, no fuckin’ way.’

He’d thought the summit couldn’t possibly be much further off. But, as he looks ahead, he spies lines of fans in the distance, snaking up and around the mountain, a zig-zag of spectators demarcating horribly clearly the severity and length of the route to the summit.

‘You can do it,’ Hunter says, ‘we can both make it.’

‘We can,’ says Luca, ‘but I’m not sure about poor Fugallo. Shit, did you see the state he was in?’

Still none of the McCabes knew how Gianni Fugallo was suffering. When Luca’s bunch neared Pip and Fen, Pip glanced at her sister, beamed a smile of inordinate proportions, grabbed the bottle of Evian and ran along the tarmac splashing the water over as many riders as she could. Cat saw her sister on the press TV, thought that’s my girl and wondered if any of the riders were as drenched as Pip appeared to be. But, with the three leaders beginning the descent, the cameras focused on the head of the race and Cat did not see Gianni Fugallo limp his way up the Madeleine, almost thirty minutes behind.

Fen and Pip, of course, did, It was the most repulsive yet poignant, heart-rending yet stomach-churning sight.

‘What’s that?’ Fen gasped in horror though she knew the answer, eyes hopelessly transfixed by the cyclist’s legs.

‘It’s shit,’ Pip whispered, staring in horror at what appeared to be trickles of slurry coursing their way down.

‘It’s fucking dysentery,’ Fen exclaimed, with revulsion but more with sublime respect that someone suffering so much, so publicly, was doggedly climbing a mountain by bike and obviously had every intention of finishing the Stage.

It was fucking dysentery. When Fugallo made it to the finish, 1 hour 20 minutes behind the leaders but defiantly just ahead of the gruppetto, Rachel had been radioed by the team car on the route. She ushered the exhausted rider into the team bus, all blinds drawn, and peeled away his stenching shorts. Tenderly, she washed the rider down by hand, going through three flannels and bottles of water. Then she helped him into a tracksuit and escorted him to a team car where the other soigneur whisked him away.

The only time anyone heard Gianni Fugallo protest, let alone complain, not only on this specific Tour de France but in his professional cycling career as a whole, was later that night when the Zucca MV directeur sportif instructed Gianni Fugallo, on doctor’s orders, to retire from the race.

The demands of team laundry saw Rachel cancelling her drink with André, the Système Vipère mechanic. It was not just Gianni’s shit-sodden shorts she had to contend with. When Massimo handed in his washing, she could detect a smell familiar yet undefinable. As she sorted through the clothing, she recoiled and all but retched when she came across his shorts. They were covered in a thick, greyish brown, viscid mess. She ran to his room, seriously concerned for his health.

‘Massimo, Jesus!’ she said, bewildered that he should look so well and indeed relaxed; a vision in Prada with sunglasses atop his head and goatee immaculately trimmed.

‘What is it, Rachel?’ the King of the Mountains, but only just, asked her.

‘Are you ill?’ Rachel asked. ‘Your shorts!’

‘I am very well, I am King!’ Massimo laughed, putting on his sunglasses and approaching her. ‘And my shorts – it is banana.’

‘Banana?’ Rachel exclaimed.

‘It is big ladies’ story, yes?’ said Massimo.

‘Old wives’ tale,’ Rachel corrected. ‘What is?’

‘That banana is good for bumps,’ Massimo said ingenuously.

‘There is no medical proof that bananas have any function in the treatment of piles, Massimo,’ she said, her relief manifesting itself in fury, ‘not by ingestion and certainly not by slipping a peeled, ripe one between your arse.’

‘So tomorrow maybe I try raw liver?’ Massimo asked ingenuously. ‘Steak, perhaps?’

‘No, you fucking won’t,’ said Rachel, leaving only to return moments later with conventional ointment for haemorrhoids.

Cat decided she had to write a profile on Gianni Fugallo. Whether Maillot or Procycling or Cycle Sport would want it was beside the point, she felt compelled to do it as her tribute to the rider himself. If it meant she was unable to accompany her sisters and Ben to Grenoble, then so be it.

I’m working, remember. This is not a holiday but my livelihood. My presence here is as an accredited journaliste. If my work is to gain credit, it must be done. I have to think laterally. I have to think ahead. I am a woman in a man’s world and must work twice as hard for half the recognition.

She nipped outside the salle de pressé to hug her sisters farewell and treat herself to a snatched moment’s intimacy with Ben.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said whilst embracing Pip. ‘Are you pissed, Pip?’

‘Amaretto,’ Pip hiccupped apologetically.

‘At least you’ll sleep well,’ said Cat.

‘Gianni pooped his pants,’ said Pip, on the verge of tears.

‘Rumour has it he’ll abandon,’ said Fen.

‘Rumour confirmed,’ said Cat.

‘Poor Gianni,’ said the McCabe sisters.

‘He’ll be fine,’ the doctor soothed.

‘Couldn’t you stay?’ Cat said, suddenly sad.

‘Some of us have conventional jobs in the real world,’ Fen said, drawing her sister close and whispering, ‘Take care, Cat, take care.’

‘I will,’ Cat said firmly, ‘I’m fine.’ She glanced at Ben and smiled at Fen. ‘I’m more than fine.’

Yet Fen regarded her with an expression that would haunt Cat during the evening.

Was it concern? Fear? Doubt? Does she not believe that I’m fine? Does she think I’m not?

Fen was ultimately pleased that Cat chose to stay and work conscientiously and she was relieved that Pip was drowsy from drink and fell asleep in the back of the Megapac car. She had Ben to herself for 70 kilometres, which was what she’d wanted and yet suddenly she could think of nothing to say.

‘Back to the real world,’ said Ben, providing Fen with a perfect opening.

‘Exactly,’ Fen said. She looked out of the window and felt enormously tired; she thought of the cyclists and another mountain Stage to come.

‘Ben,’ she said, glancing at herself in the wing mirror.

‘Fen,’ he said, detecting the portent in her voice and glancing in the rear-view mirror to assess how deeply asleep Pip was.

‘You said it,’ said Fen.

‘Said what?’ said Ben.

‘About the real world,’ Fen said, ‘being far from the Tour de France, Planet Tour – the bubble.’

‘For you,’ said Ben, ‘but for me, it is my world and,’ he said, taking his eyes from the road to regard her because he’d just grasped her point, ‘it welcomes your sister in to its fold.’

‘If she can get a job,’ Fen countered.

‘She’s bloody talented,’ Ben retaliated.

‘She’s not having much luck,’ Fen remarked. She could feel Ben observing her but she cast her gaze away. ‘I find nothing in you to dislike or disapprove,’ she said tartly, ‘but I don’t want my sister to be hurt.’

They drove on in silence.

‘I wouldn’t want to hurt your sister,’ said Ben.

They drove on in silence.

‘Someone did,’ said Fen.

‘I gather,’ said Ben.

Fen shook her head at the pain of remembering the intensity of her sister’s pain. ‘I’ll never let that happen to her again.’

‘Nor, I would have thought, would she,’ said Ben.

‘But next week she’ll be in England,’ said Fen, wishing that they weren’t approaching Grenoble, wishing she could stay and keep Cat close, ‘and all this will be some distant Gallic dream.’

‘And I’ll be in Colorado,’ said Ben, amazed that Grenoble had crept up on them so quickly.

‘Exactly,’ said Fen.

‘Exactly, indeed,’ said Ben.

‘I wish you weren’t nice,’ Fen rued, ‘I wish you and my sister had never met.’

‘Charming,’ said Ben with equanimity.

‘Ben,’ Fen sighed, ‘I am warning you – I really am.’

‘Fen,’ said Ben gravely, regarding her, ‘thank you. You don’t have to.’

‘I won’t have her hurt,’ Fen whispered, not wanting to look at Ben, taking her wrist away from his proffered hand, ‘but that’s inescapable.’

Ben was driving very slowly.

And me. I will too. Hurt. Miss her. Like I’ve never experienced.

Tell Fen. Just say it out loud.

No. Not until I’ve told Cat.

Ben is back at his hotel by eleven o’clock. Cat is asleep in his bed. He slips between the sheets quietly and spends a few minutes observing her; moonlight sifting into the room through ill-fitting curtains and whispering silver highlights over her body. Gently, he hovers his hand over her bare shoulder and then lets it rest lightly on her skin. She makes a small noise in her throat and it makes him smile. He strokes her arm with his fingertips and brings his body close to hers. He breathes deeply into the top of her head.

I know that smell. It’s not shampoo. It’s Cat McCabe. She says she knows my hands. Well, I know her scent off by heart.

STAGE 16
Gilbertville-Aix-les-Bains. 149 kilometres

The Tour de France lasts for six more days. In that time, loose ends need to be tied and those currently knotted need to be unravelled. The race is now about loss and gain. Both on the bike. And off. The riders of the peloton have each now lost an average four pounds in muscle which their bodies have resorted to pillaging for energy. Luca lost his nerve but found it again. Fabian has lost his yellow jersey but has designs on gaining it back. Vasily wears the yellow jersey and has no intention of losing it. Jesper Lomers wonders whether his marriage is lost. He leads Stefano Sassetta by just a few points. However, though Jesper defended his jersey ruthlessly in the mountains, Stefano rode strategically. Consequently, the Rotterdam Rocket Viper Boy is tastily clad in green lycra, but Dark Duke Thunder Thighs has ridden without the pressure of defending a jersey and has thus conserved crucial energy. Vasily Jawlensky leads the race with a 2 minute 33 second lead over Fabian Ducasse. Of the 161 riders remaining, the Lantern Rouge of the Tour de France is the twenty-year-old Portuguese rider, José Ribero. He is 3 hours 5 minutes and 18 seconds behind the maillot jaune.

When Jules Le Grand dressed this morning, he dressed for business. He chose a lightweight navy suit, a silk shirt in sky blue and fine leather loafers which he wore sockless. Though he would be driving the team car along the route and his clothing would become creased and crumpled, he has enough suits in pristine condition to last until Paris. During the first two weeks of the Tour, Jules’s presence in the village each morning had a public relations function for Système Vipère; he had made himself readily available and consistently charming to journalists, officials and VIPs alike. This final week, Jules will go to the village as directeur sportif to the world’s number-one professional road racing team. He has no interest in journalists, officials and VIPs; in fact, he is all but blind to their presence, even contemptuous of their overtures. His sole mission, the raison d’être for his presence, is to seduce riders, to lure them into his fold. Other directeur sportifs will see him at work, stalking, talking, schmoozing, perusing. Short of keeping their entire teams tethered, they will be unable to prevent Le Grand’s inveiglement. They might avert their riders defecting providing they outdo Jules in the wage packets and flattery stakes. Jules is well aware that other directeurs will approach his Viper Boys, but he is confident that his team will remain loyal; apart from one domestique whose contract he has not renewed, and Jesper Lomers whose contract still needs signing.

Luca Jones visited the barber’s stall in the village for a haircut. Pleased with the result and buoyed by the glances from many a bella signorina (and signora too), he went to the Maison du Café stand for a cup of sweet coffee.

‘Allow me,’ said Jules Le Grand, suddenly at Luca’s side, fanning three sachets of sugar, adding the contents to the rider’s plastic cup without relinquishing eye contact or saying anything else. ‘I know what you like,’ Jules continued once he was stirring the cup which Luca held, ‘coffee with three sugars – right?’

‘Yes,’ said Luca, off his guard and self-kickingly dumbstruck.

‘Come,’ said Jules, walking well ahead, knowing, without turning, that the young rider would follow. They walked past the giant omelette stand, past the Coeur de Lion cheese extravaganza, to a small, open marquee to one side where there was a table with two chairs free towards the back, the others having been taken by local dignitaries and VIPs. Jules held back a chair for Luca and sat down himself once the rider was seated.

‘Yesterday,’ Jules started, ‘I witnessed something extraordinary. Something which once again filled my heart with passion for this great sport of cycling.’

Luca nodded earnestly. ‘Fabian,’ the rider interjected, ‘is an awesome rider. To suffer so much, to lose the maillot jaune and then to come back the very next day and win the Stage – incredible.’

‘I am not talking of Fabian Ducasse,’ Jules said surprisingly derisively, ‘I am talking of a young rider on his first Tour de France who suffered to the depths of his being on the heights of L’Alpe D’Huez.’

‘Oh,’ said Luca, thinking he should sip his coffee and make use of the caffeine, but wondering when he might need to speak again.

‘I am referring,’ Jules continued, ‘to a rider who shows more than promise. Indeed, this rider has the promise of sheer brilliance. He recovered supremely yesterday – his morale was high and his legs were strong. He rode sensibly and scaled the General Classification by eight positions.’ Luca nodded and thought he really ought to drink the coffee if he was to manage to pee and then absorb two more doses of caffeine.

‘Please,’ said Jules, ‘drink – I know what you need, what you like. Coffee with three sugars.’

Luca drank; a little faster than he’d like, but with Jules now silent and staring intently at him, relaxing over coffee was not a possibility.

‘This rider of whom I speak,’ said Jules rather theatrically, looking to the middle distance as if seeing a vision of his subject there, ‘has enormous talent. But it must be nurtured, it must be nourished, loved. It must be developed and honed. True potential must never be wasted.’ He paused till he knew he had Luca’s gaze. ‘Sometimes true talent can remain untapped.’ He paused again. ‘Travesty!’ he spat. Luca nodded earnestly, now needing to pee rather urgently. ‘This rider I speak of,’ said Jules, ‘is you, Luca Jones. You are a good rouleur but you could well be fantastic. You have the makings of a true champion. Système Vipère would be honoured to have you as a team member.’

Luca Jones almost pissed his shorts and his coffee very nearly fountained out of his mouth. But he crossed his legs and swallowed hard so he could murmur, ‘Fucking hell!’ instead. Jules was standing. ‘Think about it, Luca,’ he said. ‘I would of course say “name your price” but once I tell you of what I have in mind – the salary, the apartment, the bikes, the Système Vipère super micro hi-fi – I don’t think you will need to negotiate.’ He laid his hand on Luca’s shoulder, bent to his ear and spoke a figure that was roughly double Luca’s Megapac wage. And then Jules was gone. And Luca sat immobile, murmuring, ‘Fucking hell!’ desperate to phone Mama, to find Ben, to piss, to absorb caffeine, to run around the village yelling. ‘I have the makings of a true champion! I have enormous talent as long as it’s nourished and nurtured!’ Of course he did none of these. He sat alone, utterly speechless apart from ‘Fucking hell!’ whispered to himself at regular intervals.

There’s a Viper Boy, Luca remarked to himself as he was leaving the village. I could be riding with Jesper Fucking Lomers.

‘Ciao, Jesper!’ he greeted, making a detour, presuming, for some reason, that the whole team must have colluded on the potential acquisition of Luca Jones.

‘Luca,’ Jesper acknowledged, a little baffled at the magnitude of the young rider’s smile but pleased to respond to this likeable newcomer to the peloton. Briefly, Jesper watched Luca go on his way, before making his own way to Maison du Café. He took his coffee and went to sit with a posse of Dutch riders from various teams who liked to gather at one of the marquees each morning to sit in affable silence or chat quietly and usually, for some reason, in English. Today, Jesper chose silence but his was more reflective than sociable and the others sensed this and steered tactfully away from intrusion. Jesper looked around the village.

This is my world. It is all I have ever dreamed of, wanted, worked to have.

Metres away, he watched as a young woman was approached and embraced by a man.

Or is my world with my wife? Where is that world? Who am I within it? Where is Anya?

Suddenly, Jesper longed for a woman, for feminine tenderness and attention.

Just what is it that defines me? What is it that makes me feel whole? My bike? My woman?

He reflected on the irony that, as second in command in Système Vipère, he had privileges not afforded to the lesser riders. His own room. The company of his woman if he really required it.

And yet the domestiques sneak in pussy to their shared rooms and my wife has not made one appearance.

En route to the village for a quick cup of coffee, Ben was concerned to spy Didier LeDucq engrossed in furtive conversation behind a generator. Didier was in bad company. Jan van Loth wa a Flemish rider with a flagrant lack of respect for clean riding and a notorious ability to keep a step ahead of the dope controls.

Van Loth saw Ben before Didier and stealthed away in an instant. When Didier saw his doctor, he smiled and raised his hand in an atypical display of affection and hastily employed innocence. As Didier approached, Ben racked his conscience for how best to handle the situation. His job was to oversee the riders’ health and well being, his duty was to maintain their confidence and trust.

It is an exceptionally delicate balance and I’m holding fragile scales in hands which are unsteady.

But the only way for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

‘Bonjour, Ben,’ said Didier, all smiles, standing tall, the picture of innocence and a curse upon anyone who would dare think anything else of him.

‘Hullo, Didier,’ said Ben breezily instead, ‘lovely morning for it.’

Ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. What is he thinking of taking. And when.

‘A lovely morning,’ said Didier, still smiling easily, ‘indeed. I saw Luca being talked to by Jules Le Grand.’ He raised an eyebrow, a gesture which Ben returned.

And I saw you talking to Jan van Loth.

‘Didier,’ Ben said, ‘there are just five days of racing left now.’

The rider shrugged and nodded and retied his pony-tail.

‘My elbow’s sore,’ he told his doctor.

‘I can fix most things, Didier,’ Ben said, manipulating the rider’s elbow, ‘it is my job. Your health is in my hands.’

‘Merci,’ said Didier.

He watched the rider lope away and kicked himself for feeling so impotent. And then he caught sight of Rachel and knew at once how he could help Didier. She was leaning against a tree and, visible from some distance, was the sparkle she was bestowing on a man. Ben was amazed. Zucca MV and Système Vipère were all but entwined. It was so public. So scandalous. Key figures in the support staff of two rival teams flirting in full view. Should he leave them to it? She was his friend after all. He stopped and looked around him. No sign of Cat. Nor of Luca – what was it that Didier had said? Where is Didier? It was scandal overload on the morning of Stage 16 of the Tour de France and Ben felt enormously tired.

Oh, for the life of a regular doctor. With a surgery in a suburb. And a receptionist. And a legion of elderly people with gout and hypochondria. Perhaps a Well Woman clinic every Tuesday. Prostate awareness once a fortnight. Flu jabs. And a desk. With a photo of my wife and two kids. And my spaniel. I could have a Saab parked outside in a reserved space.

‘Hey, Ben,’ said Rachel, bringing him back to the balmy present of picturesque Gilbertville, to the sounds, the scents, the sense of excitement of the Tour de France. Ben closed his eyes and took a deep breath, acknowledging how, though fleeting, his daydream was not just deluded but utterly suffocating and essentially undesirable. There was only one place he wanted to be, and only one way he could possibly practise medicine.

‘Have you met André Ferrette?’ Rachel continued, eager that Ben should. The men shook hands.

‘I need your help,’ Ben said, prophesying that Rachel might well need his when the respective directeurs discovered that their staff were mingling.

‘Sure,’ said Rachel, sensing instantly that he required her capacity as friend.

‘I’ll see you later,’ André said, taking her hand. Rachel beamed and Ben noticed how she now radiated femininity and allure, having kept such qualities invisible until she saw fit to unleash them on the man of her choice. So very Rachel. Strong. Sussed. Independent. Nobody’s fool. Her own boss.

‘What’s up, Yorkie?’ she said, reverting to the demeanour and look of Ben’s friend, the Zucca MV soigneur.

‘It’s Didier,’ said Ben gravely, ‘and Jan van Loth.’

‘You need Vasily,’ Rachel said astutely, ‘he rates Didier. I’ll see what I can do.’

Ben felt easier but was still apprehensive. Though Rachel understood the urgency and gravity, he longed for Cat. His job was highly stressful. He wanted to talk through, to unwind, to offload, to be soothed. But it was 11 a.m. and, dependent on developments in the Stage, Cat would not be off duty until the evening.

‘What’s the time?’ Cat asks Josh.

‘Almost nine,’ he replies. ‘Are you through?’

‘Yup.’

What happened in the Tour today, Cat?

It was utterly bizarre. Vasily lost a whole bloody minute. He didn’t so much lose it but threw it away. No one knows why – there was no press conference. It must be strategy – but certainly not as we know it. Fabian and Carlos streamed off at the foot of the middle climb and Vasily just sat in a chasing group not actively pursuing at all.

So he is only 1 minute 33 ahead of Fabian?

Yes. And Carlos Jesu Velasquez took the polka dot jersey today with a truly ruthless ride. Poor darling Massimo suffered a double puncture on the first Col and fell off pretty badly on the descent. Though it violated race etiquette, Carlos took full advantage and zipped away. Massimo really floundered after that – he was incapable of mind over matter and there were no domestiques to raise morale and physically lead him back. Zucca were catastrophically lax today.

So his dream of a King of the Mountains hat trick has vanished?

I know. And I can’t get hold of Rachel to find out how he is. Her phone’s switched off. And I know her well enough to know there must be a reason for that. And I’m hoping the reason is that, for once, she’s prioritizing herself. If Rachel’s phone is not on, it’s a blatant Do Not Disturb sign. And I’m happy to respect that. As long as she gives me a full report in glorious Technicolor tomorrow.

‘What’s the time?’ Rachel asks André whilst she folds and refolds the batch of laundry just retrieved from the dryer in the Zucca MV team truck.

‘Nearly nine,’ he replies, checking his watch fastidiously. ‘Your team had a very bad day.’

‘My job is not to judge, not even to comment,’ Rachel responds, ‘but you’re right. Your boys must be pleased – Fabian taking a minute from Vasily and Carlos taking the polka dot jersey from our Massimo. Poor Mass, he’ll probably shave his goatee off. Or dye it.’ She leans out of the truck and pulls the door shut, locking it from the inside. ‘I really should be tucked up in bed,’ she muses, taking an empty bidon to her lips and sucking thoughtfully.

‘Early massage for the boys, early night for Rachel?’ André laughs, hoping she won’t take him literally.

‘That’s what I told them,’ Rachel says a little guiltily, wondering whether a white lie warrants comeuppance. André glances around the truck. It’s pretty much identical to the Viper’s. He turns the taps on and off at the sink and Rachel fiddles with a scrunched-up piece of cling film.

Just bloody kiss me, you bastard!

André, however, is expressing polite but excessive interest in the quality of the melamine fittings.

‘Your English is very good,’ Rachel says as huskily as she can. André responds to the flattery not with a lunge for her breasts, as she rather hopes, but with a chronological account of his schooling.

Oh fuck it, Rachel thinks to herself, I’ll bloody kiss you then.

André is saying something about something or other when Rachel flicks off the light in the truck and, knowing the layout of her second home off by heart, finds the mechanic, holds his face and presents her lips to his.

There’s something about the situation, the furtiveness of it all; the scent of the almonds from the frangipane, the hum of the washing machine, the smell of chain grease, the confinements of the truck interior, the build up of a few days of glances, of emboldened flirting, that touchdown between these two pairs of lips inflames. Suddenly, clothing is being torn away, André’s textbook English is replaced by throaty Gallic exclamations and Rachel’s tough talking transmutes into soft gasps and moans.

Massimo Lipari couldn’t sleep – what was the point when his dreams had already been dashed? Whenever he closed his eyes, the nightmare of reality accosted him. His body was sore, he had bad road rash down his entire left side. His head hurt, scorched by the incessant what ifs, if onlys, why didn’ts and I should haves tormenting him. He had a room to himself and though he had craved the solitude in which he could weep unchecked, now he did not trust or particularly like his own company. He was more appalled that he had bonked than he was outraged that Carlos attacked when he was down.

Humming his Giro pop song brought no solace, a funeral dirge seemed more appropriate, but he opted for the sad song of love and loss his grandmother had crooned to him under the olive trees when he was a child. He had so wanted to be King of the Mountains; the title suited him as much as the jersey. He made a solemn procession to the bathroom, took a razor and shaved off his goatee beard. He almost wept. And then he saw how the skin around his chin was ever so slightly, but certainly recognizably paler. He yelled in frustration. He needed fresh air. He eased up a window and gulped deeply. He gazed at the team truck, envisaging the bike that failed him hanging from its hook. Let it hang!

Fifteen minutes later, Rachel answered her door in her towel, so insistent was the rapping and banging and hollering outside her room.

‘What you think you do?’ Massimo spat, pushing past her, his eyes searching every nook of the room.

‘I’m about to have a bath!’ Rachel remonstrated, noting that she ought to change the dressing on his knee first.

‘You bad bitch,’ Massimo growled, ‘what you do? You poison me?’

‘Mass!’ Rachel exclaimed, flummoxed and truly taken aback.

‘Or you are stupid and maybe he put something in my drink, no?’ he shouted. ‘He make me bonk.’

‘Who?’ Rachel pleaded, thinking she ought to work also on Massimo’s shoulder to prevent it stiffening.

‘Maybe he turn you away from me,’ Massimo declared, ‘make you not look after me so well?’

‘Who?’ Rachel implored, prophesying that Massimo would either hit her or burst into tears.

Massimo did the latter. Rachel secured her towel and sat on her bed beside him, laying an arm across the rider’s quivering shoulders.

‘Poor Mass,’ she said, ‘what a terrible day for you.’

‘Bad bitch,’ he sobbed.

‘What have I done?’ Rachel asked, trying not to be offended.

‘I see you in the truck – with the Viper mechanic. You are stupid! He is dangerous!’

Rachel, who was utterly at ease with her level of intelligence and with the authenticity of André’s virtues, was nonetheless agitated by Massimo bombarding into her personal life.

‘I go tell our directeur!’ Massimo cautioned. ‘Then I go tell L’Equipe.’

Though Rachel would have quite liked a profile in France’s famous sports paper, she knew that it would not be her sex life which warranted any such exposure. She accepted that Massimo’s concerns were legitimate, for the good of the team, but still Rachel was exasperated.

‘I’m entitled to some privacy, Massimo,’ she said.

‘Why you do it?’ Massimo demanded. ‘You spy? Who you poison next? Vasily? He ride like shit today.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Rachel said emphatically, ‘I was just having a shag.’

Massimo regarded her blankly. ‘You?’ he gasped, utterly staggered, as if considering for the first time that Rachel McEwen had a libido, let alone an active sex life. ‘You? Rachel?’

‘Me, Rachel,’ she said with steel in her voice.

‘You had a fuck in the truck?’ Massimo exclaimed, wide-eyed and gobsmacked.

‘Not that it’s any of your business,’ Rachel replied. It irritated her to see that Massimo’s primary concern and immediate relief was more that she was not a spy or drink spiker, than he was pleased for her to have found someone she liked.

‘Good,’ he said, ‘I apologize. You great soigneur and lovely lady. Why you not choose a guy from some other team?’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Rachel, now thinking it all so tedious, ‘as if I chose the team before the man. Give me a break.’

‘You are very hard biscuit,’ Massimo said earnestly.

‘A tough cookie,’ Rachel deduced.

Massimo rubbed his newly shaved chin. ‘I fail, Rachel, I am no good,’ he rued, his voice cracking.

Rachel was relieved to have the focus taken away from herself. ‘You didn’t fail,’ she told the rider.

‘I lose my jersey. I lose my dream,’ he sobbed. ‘I lose my beard. Now I live a nightmare.’ Rachel put a supportive arm around his shoulder because there was no way she could massage his ego just then.

‘Oh,’ he wept, ‘I cannot return home. I must exile myself. How could I do this! To the team? To the sport? To my family? To the people of Italy!’

Rachel let the rider sob and rant, accepting it to be a fundamental requirement of her job. She listened attentively and said soothing things that he was incapable of hearing and which would have had little effect anyway. She would have liked to let her mind wander back to André, to how he made her body feel, to relish the excitement and anticipation she felt. But all that panoply would have to wait. She had a job to do. She changed Massimo’s dressings, did a little work on his shoulder, and made him hot milky malty cocoa to take to bed.

STAGE 17
Aix-les-Bains-Neuchâtel. 218.5 kilometres

What on earth are you doing, Ben? It’s just gone two in the morning and you’re creeping along the hotel corridor, listening hard at the doors of your riders. You’re opening the door to Luca and Didier’s room – why are you doing that? See, they’re both sleeping soundly. You can hear them breathing. So go. But you’re hovering and listening attentively – why?

I had to check something.

What?

That if Didier wasn’t dangling himself from a door frame, he was sleeping soundly.

You’re talking about EPO, aren’t you?

Yup, erythropoietin.

The recent drug of choice for cyclists?

Er, the tennis and athletics associations might do well to ferret around their sports too.

Doesn’t EPO simulate the advantages of altitude training on the body?

It’s a hormone produced naturally by the kidneys. Administered, it boosts the red blood cell count and increases the amount of oxygen that can be carried in the blood; as the bloodstream can transport more oxygen around the system, endurance is enhanced and aerobic capacity is increased.

It sounds wonderful.

Undoubtedly – when used by the medical profession to treat people with kidney failure, anaemia and alleviate the side-effects of some AIDS treatments.

How fantastic.

It can also turn the blood to jam. A few years ago, there was a spate of riders dying mysteriously in their sleep. Cyclists’ superfit hearts can pump at around 190 bpm and then rest as low as 30 bpm. That’s when EPO can become lethal. The slower the heartbeat, the thicker the blood, the quicker it begins to clot and the heart begins to stall. That’s why I wanted to check if Didier was hanging off a door, stretching out to thin his blood. That’s why I needed to listen to his breathing pattern in his sleep.

And he was OK, so why not go back to bed?

True, Didier is sleeping soundly but maybe he’s taken a good dose of aspirin. The danger of taking anticoagulants to thin the blood is the risk of haemorrhaging should Didier crash.

Do you think Didier is on something?

I don’t know. I really don’t. The thing with EPO is that it must be taken up to a week in advance and then every couple of days. He wasn’t well, if you remember, towards the end of the first week of the Tour.

But where would he get it?

Shady characters and clandestine deals aren’t restricted to grim alleyways and crack cocaine.

We’re talking about a banned substance, not a class A illegal drug. Doesn’t pro cycling have one of the longest lists of banned substances in professional sport?

Yes. However, riders can spout the disclaimer ‘I’ve never tested positive’ – that’s different from saying they’ve never used dope.

But isn’t this the sport with the most dope controls and the lowest number of positive tests?

Some riders will always seek ways to stay a step ahead of detection. Ever heard of Michel Pollentier? In the 1978 Tour, after he had taken the yellow jersey on L’Alpe D’Huez, he failed the dope test by attempting to pass off someone else’s urine concealed in a rubber tube hidden in his shorts.

That’s actually quite funny.

Yeah, right – did you hear the one about the cyclist who went to dope control and was told, ‘You’ve tested negative and congratulations, you’re also pregnant’?

Oh, very droll.

EPO, however, is for the most part undetectable – it is virtually impossible to tell the difference between a rider who has a naturally high haematocrit level because he trains at altitude and a rider whose levels are high because he’s pumped with EPO.

Can’t a limit be set?

The UCI, cycling’s governing body, have set one. But somewhat arbitrarily. If a rider’s red blood cell count is over 50 per cent, he is forced to take two weeks rest until his level is lower.

That’s a start.

Hardly. Say Didier’s natural haematocrit level is 42, and say Luca’s is naturally 48 – Didier can legally dope himself to Luca’s level, to within a hair’s breadth of the limit, suffer no penalties and reap the benefits of an artificially stimulated performance from a prohibited substance.

That’s cheating.

Correct.

So when does doping begin exactly?

Precisely.

And where does medical care end?

Exactly. Just before the infamous 1998 Tour – where brilliant riding was utterly overshadowed by the drugs scandal cum witch-hunt despite not one rider testing positive – well, another team approached me. The directeur made it very clear that I was to maximize the riders’ performances under stringent medical control.

What did that mean between the lines?

It meant that doping was part of team policy expressly to prevent the riders obtaining drugs for themselves and threatening their health in doing so.

You didn’t take the job, then.

God, no. I’m a conventional gentleman doctor and I’m also a romantic when it comes to sport – I like to admire supreme muscle tone without suspicion as to its provenance, to marvel at consummate athletic triumph without wondering if it’s synthetically enhanced.

Haven’t drugs always been synonymous with cycling?

In the 1930s, it was tiny doses of strychnine, soon enough and for a long time, amphetamines. Now EPO, human growth hormone. There’s PFC – a chemical relative of fucking Teflon. Oh, and the charming Belgian Pot.

Belgian Pot – surely a laid-back stoned cyclist is a contradiction in terms?

I’m not talking marijuana but a delightful combination of up to ten drugs – amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, analgesics, nasal or bronchial dilators, corticoids, morphine. Very pleasant.

Tell me that Belgian Pot isn’t rife?

It isn’t. But it’s there. Think of the pressures on a rider – not just the physical duress of three weeks, two mountain ranges and 4,000 k sandwiched between the equally taxing Giro D’Italia and the Vuelta Español. Consider the pressures of riding for a team sponsor on a short contract. Ride better, ride faster, reap glory. The pursuit of success can be just as addictive as substances.

But their health – are the riders stupid?

Not stupid. But consider, on the one hand, how many come from small, rural, simple backgrounds. They join a team. They ride for all they’re worth, their bodies are ravaged, their spirits are exhausted. The directeur, the doctor, the soigneur say, ‘Take this, it’s recuperative, it will help, it will do you good.’ Why wouldn’t they? These are the rider’s mentors, their father figures. They trust them and they depend on them.

And on the other hand?

Some riders proclaim themselves victims duped into dope but these are the same shrewd guys who ruthlessly negotiate huge contracts.

And you, Ben?

‘Trust me, I’m a doctor’ can be the most dangerous words in pro cycling and that frustrates and depresses me. Personally, I believe my duty as a doctor is ethical as much as medical. My obligation to my vocation, my employer and my riders is to ensure that my charges suffer as little and recover as quickly as possible. I study each man intensively and I administer a range of substances – nutritional, hormonal, anabolic – to maintain optimal balance. My scientific background enables me to do this – what the fuck and why the fuck would a rider know anything about how much beta-hydroxy beta-methyl butyrate and how often?

And Didier?

I can’t sleep, that’s why I’m in the corridor. Feeling impotent. Feeling pretty enraged. I can’t have drugs on my team. I will not tolerate such a flagrant abuse of the team ethos, of all the work I do to maintain my riders’ health. I fear Didier’s stupidity and selfishness – if he dares, if he even dares, he could put all our jobs, our credibility, the very future of the team, on the line – to say nothing of his health.

And Vasily?

Vasily has a checkered past. He is now a crusader. I’m hoping his experience and the respect he now has universally, will enlighten Didier.

Why comes temptation but for man to meet

And master and make crouch beneath his foot

And so be pedestalled in triumph?

But I don’t know how Robert Browning translates into Russian or French.

Through breathtaking scenery, incredible overhangs of rock, tunnels burrowing through the mountains, stunning bridges old and new, the peloton of the Tour de France headed for its brief sojourn in Switzerland. Luca and Didier had woken in contemplative self-engrossed moods, having gone to sleep much the same the night before. Neither were aware that their doctor had eavesdropped on their slumber. Now they were cycling quietly side by side in a throng of yakking Spanish riders; through the beautiful town of Seyssel, elegantly atop a picturesque river, through the lovely flower-festooned old village of Billiat where Sassetta took the hot-spot sprint while aged men waved slowly and widely. The Tour de France – every year, since these septuagenarians were boys; defining their calendar, compounding their patriotism, affirming their past and confirming the futures of their grandsons. There would always be the Tour de France. A birthright. A heritage. An heirloom. Wave and smile and then a leisurely reminisce over Pernod about Louison Bobet, Jacques Anquetil, Thèvenet, Hinault, Fignon. Look forward to next year. Vive le Tour.

After 126 kilometres, a sprint, a fourth-, a third- and a second-category climb, Didier and Luca snatched their musettes as they flew past the feed station.

‘I’m so tired,’ Luca said, ‘I’m not even hungry.’

‘Me too,’ Didier agreed. ‘Mind you, I’ve been fantasizing about a day-long MacDonalds binge when the Tour is over.’

‘I’m going to have oysters and champagne,’ said Luca, brightening up. It was the first thing either had said all day.

‘On Jules Le Grand’s expense account, no doubt,’ Didier tested.

Luca regarded him and shrugged. ‘What would you do?’

‘What you mean is, what do I think you should do,’ Didier responded astutely.

‘What should I do?’ Luca asked quietly.

‘Are you tempted?’

‘Fuck, man! Système Vipère!’ Luca exclaimed, as if resting his case.

‘Loads of money, cool hi-fi, great bikes, cool team strip, the greatest team in the world,’ Didier defined nonchalantly while Luca cycled a few metres ahead. ‘So why,’ Didier asked, catching up, ‘are you asking me what to do? Why aren’t you telling me that you’re already signed up, that the cap fits, that you’re a Viper Boy in the making? Why do you even need to ask?’

Luca sighed but decided instead to wonder why the spectators were waving ski poles. Didier let him sigh again before fixing him with a searching stare.

‘It’s blown my mind,’ Luca said honestly. ‘There has to be a catch.’

‘Did you see Le Grand this morning at the village?’ asked Didier, having waited for Jesper Lomers to overtake and be out of earshot.

‘Yeah,’ Luca replied, ‘talking to Magnus Backstedt.’

‘I saw him in a corner with Bo Hamburger,’ Didier remarked.

Luca pedalled on ahead to reflect and, instinctively, Didier held back. Luca wondered whether those riders had also been told that it would be a travesty not to nurture talent, that they too had the makings of true champions and that Système Vipère would be honoured to have them? Two women bouncing ebulliently in bikini tops provided timely distraction and Luca cycled on, living for the moment, riding the day’s Stage, his body knackered, his soul exhausted. Eventually, he sat up and looked back to see Didier, his team-mate, room-mate and friend, riding alongside the yellow jersey. Neither Vasily nor Didier spoke but Luca could sense some deep communication between the two. Like yesterday. Intrigued, he dropped his pace and returned to the bunch at the same time as Vasily, Fabian and a clutch of final-week glory-seekers sped off the front.

‘Fuck! You’re going to Zucca MV, aren’t you?’ Luca asked Didier accusatorially. Didier looked confused. ‘You and your new best friend Vasily,’ Luca probed. ‘He’s been sent to lure you, hasn’t he?’ Didier looked resolutely ahead, picking up the pace to pursue the breakaway. Luca matched his speed. ‘We can’t be on rival teams,’ he bemoaned, ‘and anyway, I can’t believe he’s picked you and not me after I rode with him that day I won the Stage.’

Didier glanced at Luca. ‘I’m not going to Zucca, I’m staying with Megapac.’

‘But Vasily asked – right? He’s been wooing you,’ Luca probed, ‘all that shoulder-rubbing yesterday. When I came by, he flicked me – stopped talking and his stare said it all, said for me to fuck off.’

‘It was a sensitive subject,’ Didier said.

‘He was trying to poach you,’ Luca said sulkily, ‘and I really thought he rated me.’

‘Listen to you!’ Didier snapped. ‘You’ve got transfer fever bad – it’s affecting your ride. It’s affecting me. I’m completely knackered but I’m away. Adieu.’

Cat contemplated Didier’s ride. For a quiet rider, a bulwark for Megapac, a stalwart of the peloton, LeDucq was suddenly making a huge splash, pelting after the breakaway, dropping anyone attempting to take his wheel.

‘Blimey,’ Josh marvelled out loud, ‘what’s he on?’

‘Nothing, I hope,’ said Cat.

Vasily is pleased to see Didier coming up to his group but instead of slowing the pace to welcome him, he accelerates forward causing Fabian to motor after him and the hangers-on to grip hard to hang on. It doesn’t offend Didier. He understands the Russian’s motive and Didier is motivated to reach them and ride on. There are 50 kilometres to go, Didier’s head is down and he is cycling strongly, attaining great rhythm and maintaining utter focus. Conversation is sparse amongst the group but it is clangorous in Didier’s head. Over and again, he hears Vasily’s confrontation of yesterday.

‘You cannot make a thoroughbred from a donkey,’ had been the yellow jersey’s opening line. Didier remembers how he had not known how to respond, that he could not fathom what Vasily meant, nor why the Russian had let a break containing his main adversary go so he could hang back and talk equestrianism. ‘You are no donkey,’ Vasily had continued, ‘nor are you a thoroughbred. But you are a fantastic workhorse. I have respected you for many seasons.’ Didier had nodded his gratitude, still baffled and even more so when Vasily had played his next card. ‘I don’t want to lose respect for you – it would pain me.’

Didier LeDucq checks the computers on his bike and his pulse monitor. He’s racing well, strong enough to take a turn at the front, well enough to allow his mind to wander back and reflect on what had been said the day before.

‘When I used to do amphetamines, my eyes were like piss holes in the snow,’ Vasily had launched, ‘my skin was terrible – I was covered in spots. I was more aggressive off the bike than on and I could rarely sleep. Unless I had valium.’

‘Speed is shit,’ Didier had said, hoping it was what Vasily wanted to hear.

‘EPO is worse,’ Vasily said. ‘When I first took it, my kidneys felt like balloons full of water bashing the base of my back. My vision went queer, my joints hurt, I’d get nose bleeds. The migraines – terrible.’ Vasily had stared hard at Didier who felt that to nod energetically was the best reply. ‘But,’ Vasily continued, ‘soon enough it was like waking in a new land. I wanted to train hard, I could ride with reduced suffering and I recovered quickly. What a drug!’ Again he had confronted Didier with his hypnotic stare.

‘Yeah!’ Didier had responded; simultaneously utterly crushed that his greatest hero was giving the notorious drug an apparent seal of approval, and yet knowing he wanted this drug badly himself.

‘Yeah, what a drug,’ Vasily had all but spat at him. ‘I beat dope control – what a sportsman.’ He fixed a penetrating stare on Didier who believed he ought to nod his head in an impressed way. ‘What a clever, lucky guy I am – I beat dope control, won through cheating and the only price I’ll pay is probably to die prematurely.’ Didier’s face dropped and Vasily continued in a more genial tone. ‘The iron level in my blood was so high – and for such an extended period. If I’m lucky I might avoid kidney failure. If I’m truly blessed, I might not suffer liver failure either. If God is on my side, I just might not contract cancer.’ Vasily looked at Didier. He had taken a hand from the handlebars to lay it on the Frenchman’s wrist. ‘But you never know,’ he had said in conclusion, ‘and will it have been worth it? You decide.’

Gutted and speechless, Didier had ridden on in silence. Vasily had ridden alongside, also silent. At the end of the Stage he cycled alongside Didier towards the team vehicles. ‘You know, LeDucq,’ he said, ‘I often wonder about the guy who won the Giro three years ago – and all his other victories that season.’

‘But it was you,’ Didier responded, ‘three years ago – it was you who took the Giro, the Tour and all those other triumphs.’

‘No,’ Vasily said stonily, ‘it was not me. There was no victory. The triumph was not true. There was no sense of achievement. It was all bullshit. I cheated – I cheated everyone.’ Though the Megapac vehicles were close by, Didier automatically stopped, unclipped a foot and rested his bike and stared at Vasily transfixed, imploring him to continue. ‘More than being ashamed for cheating my fellow riders and the race commissaires is the disgust I feel for having cheated myself. How pathetic!’ Vasily had spat, shaking his head at himself in abhorrence. ‘I regret it deeply. What did I achieve? Where’s the pleasure? I recall that period with shame and no pride. I will not recount it to my grandchildren.’

Didier was looking hard at the ground. ‘LeDucq,’ Vasily said, taking his hand to the back of Didier’s neck to embrace the rider, ‘Didier.’ Didier had raised his eyes to meet Vasily’s. ‘Now I can sleep at night – without valium – knowing that my victories are genuine, my losses fair. I ride à l’eau. I am clean. My dignity is intact, as is my responsibility as a professional sportsman. However, my liver,’ he said with no hint of self-pity, ‘is not so good. The price I will pay will be far more expensive than the winnings I earned when I was charged on crap.’

He had then given Didier a friendly slap between the shoulder blades before riding off slowly towards the Zucca vehicles.

So here is Didier today, riding alongside his hero, mentor and saviour. Didier had asked Ben for glucose and vitamins and anything else the doctor suggested. He had asked his soigneur to work on his knees, had asked the mechanic to check the measurements on his bike. Today, he knows he is tired but the strength of his spirit and resolve is manifesting itself in a fantastic ride. Vasily is making everyone ride hard. However, the Russian’s pressure is not intended as a gauntlet to Fabian but as a challenge to Didier. Didier has accepted the challenge; he is riding on the rivet, he is suffering, but the pain is steeped in reality and he is glad of the self-knowledge it is establishing.

‘What a great Stage,’ Cat said to Alex, ‘true classic racing.’

‘Hurry and finish your piece,’ Alex remarked. ‘I want to have a shower and then go somewhere for raclette.’

‘I want Toblerone,’ Cat countered, her fingers skittering over the keyboard.

‘I’m happy to settle for the Swiss bank account,’ Josh piped up from the row in front.

‘I want Heidi,’ said Alex.

Cat recalled the concluding action of the day’s racing and grinned at the vivid memory of it and preserved it for posterity in the concluding paragraph of her report.

In the final kilometres, with the other four riders lagging behind, Jawlensky surged ahead with Ducasse and LeDucq sticking resolutely to his wheel. The pace was fast, the bike handling consummate and the road dancing breathtaking. The three riders exercised enormous skill and focus to match, counteract and produce strategic manoeuvres. The Stage was won in 4 hours 52 minutes and 26 seconds. Fabian crossed the line just ahead of Didier. The yellow jersey placed third. No change to the overall classification. Sassetta came four points closer to claiming the green jersey. Pick of the peloton today was undoubtedly Didier LeDucq, a normally quiet, unassuming rider who today displayed a beautiful and complementary mix of superb riding and utter passion for his sport.

<ENDS>

‘Well done,’ Vasily says casually to Didier though it is obvious he has had to make quite a detour to come by the Megapac vehicles, ‘you rode better than me and the result is fair.’

‘I am happy,’ Didier replies, ‘because I am exhausted.’

‘It’s a good feeling,’ says Vasily, ‘something you can recall to your grandsons.’

‘Indeed,’ says Didier, not too tired to smile.

Ben and Rachel have seen their riders in close proximity but have not heard the exchange. Rachel catches Ben’s eye. Ben nods.

That’s Didier saved, for the time being. But though I’m relieved, I must be constantly vigilant. Drugs are just too damn tempting. When you’re a Tour de France rider, pain alleviation is seductive in any form; legal, banned or even life-threatening.

Ben glances back at Rachel. André is slipping a hand around her waist, planting a fleeting kiss on her neck. It makes Ben yearn for Cat. Ben catches Rachel’s eye but she looks right through him. She feels high, on fire, too preoccupied to acknowledge Ben, to observe that Jules Le Grand has thunder etched across his brow.

STAGE 18
La Chaux de Fonds-Lautrec. 242 kilometres

‘Where is Rachel?’ Stefano Sassetta bellowed in the corridor at an ungodly hour, having found no reply and no entry to his soigneur’s room. His outburst woke many of his Zucca team-mates, but as it was an occurrence with which they were familiar, pillows were placed over heads and dreams for the most part were uninterrupted. Stefano stormed back to his room, looked out of the window to the car park and noted that the team trucks were dark and obviously unoccupied. He phoned Rachel’s mobile phone. To his fury, it was switched off. He left a livid, gabbled message about her round-the-clock duty to him and the importance of his thighs, before rubbing them himself sulkily and then falling asleep.

There you are, Rachel, scurrying back to your hotel under cover of darkness. It’s almost five in the morning, need we ask where you’ve been?

To heaven and back. I can’t wait to tell Cat. Mind you, only Cat – I think I’d die if anyone else found out.

Found out what exactly?

That I’ve been indulging with André to such an extent I fear I must be walking like John Wayne.

Would that swagger be caused by your spirit, then?

That and the fact that my legs have been akimbo for the best part of, well, all night.

Why do you dread others finding out?

Because it took me long enough to land this job and then twice as long, working twice as hard, to earn respect within my field, within this world. I’ve always been exceptionally discreet and steered well away from any attention whatsoever, adverse or otherwise.

If you’re respected and liked, with a squeaky-clean record, might people not be thrilled for you to have found romance?

Romance? Who said anything about slush? I’m talking unadulterated passion here. Like Cat. Mind you, everyone can see that she and Ben are a fine pair, in love and all.

Maybe everyone would think of you and André as a fine pair and, in time, perhaps, in love and all.

And the hatchet between Système Vipère and Zucca MV would be buried? Hardly. One or both of us would get the sack, more like. I’m going to leave a message for Cat right now. Oh, I have message waiting. Stefano. Whoa! Abuse! Bloody men. Stefano and his bloody thighs. I’ll have an hour’s kip and then I’ll wake him with a rub so vigorous he’ll weep for mercy.

‘I have a surprise for you,’ Ben murmured, tickling Cat to awaken her. Cat regarded him with mock supplication and spread her legs obediently, a winsome expression on her slumber-soft face. Ben smiled at her, shook his head, was about to tell her instead that he loved her but, glancing at the clock, decided against it for the time being. ‘No,’ he said, whispering his fingers up her inner thigh, ‘not that kind of surprise – but I like the way you’re thinking.’

‘What, then?’ Cat asked sleepily, a little disappointed.

You could tell her you love her now, Ben.

Not enough time. Not the right moment.

‘You’ll see,’ was all Ben would say, leaving the bed though Cat tried valiantly to grapple him to stay.

Jesper Lomers woke alone and lonely. Jules Le Grand had talked to him at length the previous evening about contracts and the future. Jesper knew that, in terms of his career, staying with Système Vipère was the only option. But he couldn’t fathom whether his career should be his life or whether his marriage should be his career and if, therefore, Anya were to be his partner, whether they could build a strong enough business of their marriage.

How could he be most happy, he wondered, as he went to the bathroom. Surely one’s happiness is ultimately one’s own responsibility, he pondered as he smothered his legs in shaving foam and began to shave. He remembered how Anya used to love shaving his legs for him, taking her task most seriously, turning him on intensely. Shaving foam fights. Sex on the bathroom floor. Laughter. Togetherness. When was the last time? The last time that she had shaved his legs? The last time he had felt her, fondled her thighs? When did they last laugh together? When were they last together and actually experiencing togetherness? He nicked himself with the razor but did not curse, merely put his finger against the blood and then licked it pensively.

Could he be happy not riding for Système Vipère, he wondered, using a new disposable razor for his other leg. Could he be happy not cycling at all? He knew the answers to these questions. But oughtn’t life to be about sacrifice? Wouldn’t that make him a better person? Would he thus experience more of a sense of achievement there, than in keeping the green jersey for a second year running? He patted his legs dry and phoned Anya at his home, then on her mobile. No reply. He did not leave a message.

The village at La Chaux de Fonds was extremely crowded. The caged area in the centre of town delineating those with passes from those without was anathema to the memory of architect Le Corbusier whose birthplace this was. Accredited people mooched about within the confines, avoiding eye contact or establishing it quite brazenly with the clamouring members of the public who circumnavigated the enclosure and craved the rectangle of laminated plastic that would permit entry. Children outside clutching autograph books whose pages were bare, stared imploringly at the children of guests who milled about, bedecked with freebies and collecting autographs from any rider they saw. Cat contemplated how many of those outside would probably be far more appreciative of a pass than those who had them. She herself felt humbled, privileged; but also proud and just a little smug.

Look at me. I’m part of this club, this family. And I know you wish you were too. But I appreciate my very good fortune. I will nod at riders for you. Aren’t I lucky?

‘Cat,’ said Ben, presenting two men to her, ‘this is Mitch Mulready, General Manager of Team US Megapac.’ Cat beamed at Mitch, a portly man in his fifties, with mirrored sunglasses and a toothsome smile.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr Mulready,’ she gushed, her hand swallowed between both of his in a lengthy handshake.

‘And this,’ said Ben, touching her elbow, knowing instinctively when to curtail what would otherwise be a stream of sycophantic cyclespeak from Cat, ‘this is Jeremy Whittle.’

‘Hullo,’ said the man, extending his hand for the shaking.

‘Hullo,’ Cat responded, though her hand was practically numb from Mitch’s grasp, ‘weren’t you English?’

‘I still am!’ Jeremy laughed.

‘I mean – you were big in cycling correspondence in the UK?’

‘That’s right,’ Jeremy confirmed.

‘He’s now big in cycling correspondence in the US,’ Mitch interjected, slapping Jeremy firmly between the shoulder blades.

‘Jez now heads up the cycling division of Sportsworld,’ Ben furthered, referring to America’s premier sports publishing house.

‘Cycle, Pedal Power, Road Race, Mountain Bike, Jersey,’ Jeremy listed affectionately, as if naming his pets.

‘How fantastic,’ breathed Cat, excited to learn of two new titles and hoping they’d be available in England.

‘I’ve enjoyed your reports for the Guardian, I used to work with Taverner,’ Jeremy said. ‘I might well have some work for you – Ben said Luca gave you an exclusive?’

‘Yes,’ said Cat forlornly, remembering Maillot’s lack of enthusiasm, ‘but that was before he won his Stage, you see.’

‘He’s a rider to be reckoned with,’ Jeremy said soberly. ‘Perhaps you could let me have a read?’

Cat grinned from ear to ear, humbly accepted Jeremy’s business card and gave him one of hers.

‘Fancy a ride in the team car?’ Mitch asked her, as if it was an invitation no more enticing than a cup of coffee from Maison du Café. It was as if the ground beneath her feet began to undulate, as if a shaft of sunlight shot through her from a break in the clouds to radiate out from every pore.

‘An answer would be good,’ Ben suggested, adoring her gobsmacked face and wanting to cup her cheeks in his hands and kiss her right there, in front of his employer. Cat nodded eagerly, eyes asparkle, and shook Mitch’s hand anew in vigorous gratitude before skipping off to find Alex or Josh, or anyone for that matter, to inform them that she had her own transport today, thank you very much.

The team cars moved off in a hierarchy according to the general classification of riders and Cat had to sit on her hands to stop herself from waving at all the people waving and cheering. Short of riding on a tandem within the peloton, this was as close as she could be to the inner sanctum of the Tour de France.

‘So Cat,’ boomed Mitch, from the back seat, ‘what kind of job is this for a girl?’

‘A dream job. Megapac are my favourite team,’ Cat gushed, wincing at her clumsy effusiveness which Mitch luckily deemed artless and rather touching.

‘Sure is pretty round here,’ Mitch remarked, and Cat momentarily changed her focus from the profile of the route to feast her eyes upon stunning verdant scenery as they journeyed through Switzerland and back into France.

‘You think we’ll have a bunch sprint finish?’ Mitch asked her.

‘Perhaps, unless a break goes clear,’ Cat said, ‘but once we’re into vineyard territory, the lie of the land is pretty rolling and the bunch will be able to move over the little hills much faster than a small break who’d have to be pretty strong to hold them off.’

‘I fancy a good glass of Burgundy tonight,’ mused Mitch, giving his stomach a veritable drum roll of patting, ‘it’s why I chose this part of the race to come over for.’

Cat was too engrossed in Radio Tour to ask which Burgundy – Côte de Beaune or Côte de Nuits – Mitch was intending to enjoy with his boeuf bourgignon. ‘Thirteen riders have gone clear,’ she said, ‘at the 17 k mark – including Hunter and Luca.’

‘Yee hah!’ Mitch sang, making Cat jump. ‘Way to go, boys!’

‘Jesper and Stefano are there too,’ Cat said.

‘Lomers and Sassetta?’ Mitch clarified. ‘I just love this battle of the bands – Viper boys versus Zucca guys.’

‘Luca, 58 seconds,’ the Megapac directeur sportif, driving, spoke to Luca through the two-way radio. ‘Thirteen riders, 58 second lead. No counter-attack as yet.’

The channel crackled and Luca’s response filled the car. ‘’Kay,’ was all he said.

Cat was moved. Somewhere out there, 58 seconds ahead of the bunch, out of sight for the moment, Luca and the breakaway were working hard.

‘We have to follow the break,’ the directeur announced, nipping his car out of the convoy, tooting and revving past the others, heckling and joking with the other directeurs. Cat held her breath as they sped through towards the break.

‘This is great!’ Mitch exclaimed, as if it were a display put on for his benefit. ‘Fucking awesome.’

Momentarily, the car was deeply ensconced within the peloton itself and Cat felt a rush of excitement and emotion. There was too much to see and absorb. It was a blur of colour within a capsule of pure energy. She wanted the directeur to slow down, the riders as well, so she could take stock thoroughly, preserve it all and commit it to memory. Every detail, every rider, every expression of effort, pain, exhaustion, focus. Then they were behind her and she was being driven onwards towards the breakaway. For a few seconds, she gazed backwards until the peloton had become a single bolt of colour before disappearing from sight. Her eyes were scouring ahead for the thirteen breakaway riders.

There they are!

Here they are! Tiny amidst the cars, the motorbikes, yet seemingly unaware of our presence. Move over, Viper and Zucca team cars, can’t we come through?

‘Seven minutes, Luca,’ the directeur said into the walkie-talkie. ‘6 k distance.’

‘’Kay,’ the breathless answer crackled back.

‘You OK?’ the directeur asked him.

‘Yeah,’ came the reply after a fuzzy delay.

‘Hunter too?’

‘Yeah,’ Luca said.

‘Will they do it, Cat?’ Mitch asked, not testing her but actively seeking her opinion as the directeur was obviously utterly absorbed with the driving.

Before she could reply, ‘Megapac, please’ came through over the radio, ‘US Megapac.’

The carload fell silent. The directeur, swerving the car in between the others, headed towards the thirteen riders themselves. Cat was speechless with anticipation and delight.

See the boys, tiny on their bikes from afar? Look, now we’re here; so strong and powerful. Their effort is so tangible. See the focus on their faces.

She gazed too at the neat bottoms clad in aesthetically panelled black lycra, the beautiful legs ever working; bronzed and glistening, the musculature long, lithe and delineated, calf muscles tapering like inverted teardrops, tendons taut, sculpted thighs exuding power, shoulders broad, tanned arms with wonderful definition. Breathtaking. Cat was holding hers.

‘Open your window, Cat,’ the directeur commanded her, ‘Luca needs something.’

Wow, just listen! We’re absolutely in the pack now. It’s incredible. The noise – men breathing, wheels whishing, someone spitting, another shouting. Tension is a taste, a smell, I can reach out and touch it. My senses are utterly seduced. What does he want me to do? I can hardly think straight. I want to touch.

‘Luca wants to hand his jacket in,’ the directeur told her, ‘take it from him. Pass him a power bar. Pass him two – one for Hunter as well.’

Luca! Luca? It’s me, it’s Cat. Gatto. The Babe McCabe. Hey!

See? He doesn’t clock me at all. I take his jacket. I pass him the food. I have touched his hand but I am invisible. And I am not offended. This is Luca Jones, doing his job. The focus, the commitment, the mastery. Jesus.

The break was not caught though the peloton were hot on their heels, swallowing up the intervening minutes and kilometres. Cat, in the Megapac team car, followed the boys to within 500 metres of the finish where the vehicles were directed off.

Ultimately she was glad not to have seen the finish live. She would not have been accountable for her behaviour in the salle de pressé had she done so.

‘Fen! It’s on, come on!’ Pip yelled, opening two packets of crisps in preparation. ‘Salt and Vinegar or Beef and Mustard?’

‘S.A.V.,’ whispered Fen, taking a seat on her settee next to her sister and passing her a bottle of Seize – a daily tradition since their return from France. They watched in informed silence and phoned Django during the adverts.

‘That’s Cat boyfriend’s young rider,’ Pip informed her uncle of Luca.

‘So is Hunter,’ Fen added.

‘Hunter is her boyfriend too?’ Django asked, a little disconcerted, wondering whether yet another of his nieces was hopelessly bigamous.

‘No!’ Pip laughed.

‘Same team,’ Fen explained.

‘Well,’ said Django, clearing his voice and taking a glug of gin and tonic, ‘you can’t blame me for asking – she may have taken a leaf out of your book, Fenella.’

Fenella bit her lip.

‘Fen still can’t make her mind up, Django,’ Pip informed him.

‘Can’t she palm one off on to you?’ Django reasoned very earnestly. ‘Am I going to meet this boyfriend doctor of Cat’s?’

‘Not unless you jet out to Colorado,’ Fen said glumly.

‘Quick! It’s on again!’ Pip exclaimed, ordering her uncle to phone them when the programme finished.

The Stage was fast and furious and in the 350 metre finishing straight, the unthinkable, the terrible, the desperately unfair happened.

‘Oh, fuck,’ Fen gasped.

‘Luca’s down.’

‘So’s Jesper.’

‘Sassetta’s won the Stage.’

‘That means he’s taken the green jersey.’

‘Jesper’s up.’

‘Luca isn’t.’

‘Oh, Jesus.’

Luca regained consciousness in the ambulance and was in absolute agony.

‘You’ve broken your collar bone. You have concussion,’ someone was telling him.

‘I’m fine,’ said Luca valiantly, ‘I need to get back on my bike.’

‘You need to get X-ray,’ the paramedic told him.

‘But my bike!’ Luca cried. He tried to sit up but searing pain prevented him. This could not be happening. He had to finish the Stage. There were less than 100 metres to go. He knew just how he was going to ride them. ‘Let me out!’ he yelled, the paramedic’s shrug of pity serving only to aggravate Luca’s emotional pain and physical frustration. ‘I have to finish the Stage – you don’t understand.’

‘Sure I understand,’ said the paramedic with typical Gallic defensiveness that his judgement should be so questioned, ‘you need to finish the Stage or you are out of the Tour de France.’

‘Exactly,’ Luca said croakily, ‘so fucking let me out – please.’

‘You are out of the Tour de France,’ the paramedic said excruciatingly slowly, a matter of fact, a subject closed, a dream denied, before giving Luca a shot of sedative.

The information filtered through on Radio Tour before Cat had left the team car which then turned on a sixpence and roared off, under police escort, to the hospital. Ben was already there. He walked briskly to converse with the directeur, hardly acknowledging Cat’s presence, indeed turning his back on her as the Megapac personnel discussed the situation.

‘The press are starting to turn up,’ Mitch said and hospital staff ushered them through corridors to a small ante room. The doctor came in, took Ben to one side and spoke in medical terms that transcended language barriers.

‘His collar bone will need pinning,’ Ben explained, ‘they want to do it tonight. I say we give them the go ahead – he’ll be ready for Spain and the Vuelta next month.’

‘Can we see him?’ Cat pleaded.

‘They need to operate now,’ Ben said, tension tangible in his voice, signing forms with the directeur.

‘But he’s all on his own,’ Cat said, her voice trailing off when the directeur regarded her with a certain exasperation.

‘You may see him for a moment,’ the hospital doctor decreed, putting out a hand to prevent Cat from advancing with Ben and Mitch.

‘No presse,’ the doctor said.

‘But I’m Gatto,’ Cat protested. Her distress was of no interest to the Megapac doctor, directeur and chairman who were led through to see Luca.

Ben appeared a few minutes later and put his hand to the back of Cat’s neck. ‘Luca’s devastated, he needs to rest. You can see him tomorrow.’

Ben rubbed the back of his own neck hard. There was a greyness to his skin. He looked exhausted. Cat did not protest though she felt excluded, a little hurt and still desperate to see Luca, to comfort and commiserate. It was a little disconcerting to have Ben as a doctor foremost, rather than her beau. To see him work, suffer, his attention directed elsewhere than on her. Her status was vague.

I feel both flimsy and in the way. I’m not part of the Megapac team. I’m not here to represent the press. My thoughts are for Luca Jones – yet on the face of it, I’m not entitled to feel the same concern as Megapac – and my distress is disproportionate for a member of the press corps.

‘Pardon me, Cat,’ Mitch said, still wearing his mirror sunglasses but not the wide smile. ‘Ben, we need you to give us his condition in normal folk’s language, we have a press conference to prepare.’

‘Sure,’ said Ben.

‘You OK to make your own way back to the salle de pressé?’ the directeur asked Cat. She nodded. Ben and Mitch were too deep in conversation to notice her go.

Feeling a little forsaken for herself, and devastated for Luca, Cat returned to the salle de pressé, today a voluminous tarpaulin on the edge of a serene lake with a McDonalds obviously sent from heaven to be in such close proximity. Not that she was hungry. Neither Josh nor Alex were around. Not that she wanted company. Zucca MV, Système Vipère and US Megapac press conferences were happening one after the other. Not that she was interested.

Cat contemplated her workload.

I have to write 700 words on today’s Stage but I want to devote them entirely to one Luca Jones, noble soldier, brave boy, who fought valiantly for almost three weeks and is currently under the surgeon’s knife.

Cat, write like that and Taverner will come out to France to sack you in public.

Fuck off. Luca deserves an epitaph.

He’s not dead, he’s just broken a collar bone – he’ll be fine. He’ll be racing again. He’ll probably hoover up a Stage or two in the Vuelta.

His heart will be broken. He should have finished. He deserved Paris. It’s what he wanted. I’m going to phone Taverner.

And?

He said I have to write about Sassetta taking the green jersey after a stray and empty can of Coke interfered with the wheels of the sprinting riders, bringing down Luca and Jesper and two others. He says I have to write about the race being in Charolais country; he wants a little vignette about the great fluffy creamy bovines. And the local Burgundy. He wants me to wax lyrical about the colourful tiled tessellations on the roofs in Beaune. He can piss off.

So?

I’m going to phone Andy at Maillot.

And?

He said he’s already asked Josh to pen a piece because I wasn’t answering my mobile phone. That’s because I was at the hospital, I said. As pressé, he asked. I wasn’t there as presse, I was there as Luca’s friend. But did I get to speak to him, he asked. He was about to have a fucking operation, I retorted. No go, said Andy. Fuck him.

So?

I’m going to phone Jeremy Whittle, who I met this morning.

And?

He said to call him Jez. He wants a profile of Luca Jones’s Tour de France for next month’s Pedal Power magazine. Two thousand words. I’m going to rattle off my race report for Taverner and then get cracking for Whittle. It’s odd. I should be thrilled, I should be brimming with ambition. I don’t even know how much he’ll pay me. However, my main drive, my only motivation, is to honour the valorous Luca Jones. I’m going to write my heart out for that boy, just as he rode his heart out for all of us.

REPOS
Transfer by road and rail. Lautrec-Disneyland-Paris

Pain woke Luca, but more than that which affected his shoulder was the deep wrenching hurt in his heart coupled with a searing headache. He wanted his Mama. He wanted his bike. He would gladly die young, gruesomely even, if he could only be given the gift of reliving the day before, of doing yesterday again. The pain in his heart was caused by his desperate desire for Paris, to finish the Tour de France. In the top fifty. With a Stage win under his belt.

His headache was caused by fear that perhaps he’d blown his career; that Jules Le Grand would no longer want him for Système Vipère. He was a broken machine, one in need of repair, one that might perform somewhat crankily until all the moving parts were well oiled and functioning well once more. What perplexed him most was that, riding along with Hunter yesterday, he’d all but decided to stay with Megapac. This morning, the possibility that he had blown his chance to be a Viper Boy was devastating. Lying now in his hospital bed, he craved Le Grand’s advances, he needed the affirmation that, no matter how battered and broken his body, he was still a rider with great potential to be nurtured, a champion in the making.

But could he do it without those who had brought him this far? Could he ride without Hunter? Could he cope with a multi-day Stage Race without Didier as a room-mate? Could he function physically and mentally without his friend, his mentor, his physician Ben? Sleep soothed him for an hour but when the knock on the door awoke him, the pain in his head and in his heart had not abated, and that around his collar bone had intensified.

‘Hey soldier,’ said Ben, taking a seat next to Luca’s bedside, ‘did you sleep?’

Having mostly seen Luca in colourful lycra, out in the fresh air, riding in the sun, it was bizarre to see him now in a hospital gown, stationary in bed in a small little room. His golden curls were in disarray, his cherub-soft cheeks were invaded by bristles, the sparkle from his eyes had gone. His lips looked dry, but most worryingly, his voice was silent. Without the bike, his health, his vitality, this might not have been Luca at all, just someone who looked vaguely like him.

‘Are you hurting?’ Ben asked. Luca gazed at him, experienced enormous pain on trying to shrug and let a fat, solitary tear seep out of his eye to slither forlornly down his nose and evanesce over his lips in reply. Just as at L’Alpe D’Huez, Ben knew instinctively what medical attention he needed to dispense. He knew there was nothing he could administer to take away Luca’s pain, nothing he could say to make him feel remotely better, nothing he could do to expedite healing, the only option (and flimsy tonic though it was) was to sit beside his charge and just be there. He looked at Luca attentively when Luca regarded him. He puckered his brow in unison with Luca. He gazed out of the window when his rider decided to do so, and he sighed the same sigh. And felt the same pain.

When Cat turned up at the hospital an hour later just after breakfast, she found Luca’s door closed with the blind pulled down and entry barred. Cat of course respected this and perched herself on the window-sill, sniffing thoughtfully into the clutch of cornflowers she’d bought for him and wondering whether she’d written too much or said not enough in her card. Nurses bustled about in staunchly starched aprons and extraordinary wimples. Cat felt utterly flimsy, not merely in her insubstantial and rather creased sundress, but in her lack of ability to do anything constructive for Luca. Of course she’d tell him of her profile of him for Pedal Power but, just then, it seemed that the purpose of the piece was more for her own greater glory than it was a testimonial for Luca.

I’ve never been in hospital, she mused, remembering the numerous occasions she’d visited Pip when some acrobatic endeavour had ended in tears and a plaster cast.

Perhaps I have never needed looking after.

That people care about you is you being looked after.

I’m fine. Right as rain.

But you weren’t.

Well, I am now. Don’t dwell.

And here’s Ben, walking up the corridor, handsomely dishevelled in the face having not shaved, attractively crumpled in attire, wearing yesterday’s khakis and soft polo shirt.

‘Hey you,’ he says to Cat, going to the window-sill and kissing her bare knees.

‘Hullo,’ Cat says to him, placing her hand on his cheek and letting herself become lost in his eyes.

‘Seen the patient?’ Ben asks, glancing at his watch and noting that it’s half an hour since he left Luca in search of breakfast in lieu of last night’s supper.

‘No,’ says Cat, nodding towards the door, ‘there’s someone in with him.’

‘A nurse?’ Ben asks.

‘A male voice,’ Cat defines, ‘been in there for ages.’

‘Probably the surgeon,’ Ben reasons, looking out of the window and feeling enormously tired and still hungry.

Luca’s door opened. No surgeon came out. No doctor either, nor a male nurse. The man who emerged from Luca’s bedside, who nodded most courteously at Ben and brandished a suave smile at Cat, was Jules Le Grand. In a cream silk suit, he swished away along the corridor not registering the dropped jaws and bulging eyes of the journaliste and doctor.

‘How nice that Jules Le Grand came to see how Luca’s doing,’ Cat said feebly, persuading neither herself nor Ben in the process. They entered Luca’s room and Ben swiped away his gobsmacked, brooding silence.

‘Honestly, fuckwit,’ he laughed jovially, ‘I leave your bedside for a piss-awful cup of coffee and I return to find you in cahoots with slithery King Viper!’

Luca said nothing but stared at Ben very measuredly. Cat couldn’t bear the loaded silence so she broke it.

‘Hullo, Luca,’ she said, all but tiptoeing to his bedside, ‘how are you? I brought you flowers and a silly card. I couldn’t sleep on your behalf and now I have a stiff neck in sympathy.’

‘The Babe,’ said Luca, a smile briefly lighting otherwise pain-dulled eyes, ‘you’re the Babe.’

Cat proffered the flowers for Luca to sniff and then she tore open the envelope and presented the front of the card for his perusal before unfolding it and holding it for him to read. It was the only card in the room.

‘And Le Grand brought you his best wishes too?’ Ben all but demanded.

‘No,’ said Luca soberly, ‘he made me an offer I’d be a madman to refuse.’

Ben went over to the window and hated himself for hating Luca for loving Jules Le Grand and his ostentatious offer to join his fucking brilliant pro cycling team. Cat took a seat by Luca and fixed him with an expression of enthusiasm and support.

‘Will you take it?’ she asked. ‘The offer, the opportunity?’

‘Gatto,’ Luca wailed, ‘I love Megapac, my heart is there because my friends are there and my friends there are as close as family.’

‘It must be a desperately difficult decision,’ Cat deduced, glancing at Ben’s resolutely turned back, trying to implore him to offer advice, support, to join the conversation at the very least.

‘It’s terrible, Catriona McCabe, believe me,’ Luca implored, ‘terrible.’

Ben turned and looked down on his rider and his girl but he said nothing.

Luca regarded him. ‘I should go,’ he told his doctor, ‘I really should. But I am afraid. Can I ever be as happy for another team as I have been with Megapac?’

Still Ben didn’t speak.

‘Will I regret it more if I leave or if I stay?’

Ben’s facial expression remained unchanged.

‘Can I trust Jules Le Grand? Does he truly rate me highly enough to ride alongside Fabian Ducasse, Jesper Lomers and Carlos Jesu Velasquez?’

Ben had not moved a muscle.

‘Fuck, it gives me a headache,’ Luca moaned, finding temporary relief in Cat stroking his brow tenderly. ‘What would you do?’ he asked her.

‘I want you to be happy and to be the best rider it is possible for you ever to be,’ she said honestly.

‘But what would you do?’ he pleaded. ‘If you were me?’

Cat bit her lip and glared at Ben to help her, to help Luca.

‘What would you do, Ben,’ Luca asked, ‘if you were me?’

Still Ben stood defiantly silent, as still and stony as a statue.

‘What would you have me do, Ben?’ Luca rephrased.

Cat saw Ben swallow and then she detected a just perceptible softening of his brow.

‘I want you to be happy,’ Ben said, finding his voice and discovering it to be rather weak, ‘I want you to realize your true, possibly remarkable, potential as a professional road race cyclist.’

‘So what should I do?’ Luca whispered.

‘I think you should grasp the opportunity and join Système Vipère, ride and train with the best in the business,’ Ben whispered back.

The entourage of the Tour de France had their second Repos to transfer up to Paris, to Euro Disney, in preparation for the next day’s penultimate Stage of this year’s Tour de France, the final Time Trial. A TGV train was laid on for all the teams and any accredited personnel to use. Though Cat would have loved the experience, though she would have loved to have heard the announcement that the maillot jaune was currently driving the train, though she would have loved to listen to Vasily Jawlensky’s incomparably husky, guttural voice announcing over the PA, ‘Hullo, ladies and gentlemen, this is Vasily Jawlensky; I am driving you to Paris at 200 kph and I think I shall turn the corner – now!’; though all of this would have added greatly to Cat’s experience of the Tour de France, provided her with yet another glorious memory, she forsook the event to journey alone with Ben.

Alex and Josh were travelling in their car, squabbling about the best route to take, who would drive which section and when and where they would stop for refreshments. They were both astutely aware that, had Cat been in the car, she’d have chided, ‘Boys! Shut up and behave or you’ll be sent to your rooms without supper.’ As they drove along, they could both practically hear her wax poetic about some feature in the landscape or other. As their journey continued, they acknowledged privately that everything was more fun when Cat was there enlivening the proceedings quite unwittingly. This year’s Tour had been the richer for her presence; consequently, it had passed far more quickly and had also been much more memorable. They’d miss her when they returned home. They hoped she’d be travelling with them next year.

‘Twat!’ Josh hissed. ‘You missed the sodding junction.’

‘Bollocks!’ Alex retorted. ‘I know this area – it’s a short cut.’

‘Short cut, my arse,’ said Josh, with no malice.

‘Oh, fuck off,’ said Alex affectionately.

Rachel and André are not travelling together but they are communicating the whole route long. Rachel behind the wheel of the vast Zucca MV truck and André driving the enormous Système Vipère lorry. They are chatting most affably via indicators and hazard lights. They are taking it in turns to overtake so that they can draw alongside and grin idiotically and stare longingly and voice their desires by looks alone, saying things with their eyes that they’ll fulfil in person later. Rachel couldn’t even speak to Cat on the mobile phone. Not because to do so would be dangerous if not illegal, but because she claimed she was talking to André. Which she was. Not dangerous. Not illegal. Lovely.

And Ben York and Cat McCabe are travelling north together. They haven’t said much. Ben is somewhat shellshocked by Luca’s news and Cat is just plain exhausted. And if they were to speak, and the conversation was not focused on what it is that exists between the two of them, it would be instead only idle chatter. And a glaring effort not to broach sensitive issues that really ought to be confronted. I could suggest to them that they throw caution to the wind, bite the bullet and launch right in, but they wouldn’t listen. I could yell at them to confide how they feel, but they wouldn’t hear me. All I can do is eavesdrop. And wince that Cat has said ‘glorious landscape’ for the third time in an hour.

They fill the car with fuel, sit a while and have coffee that is absurdly good for a motorway service station. Ben mentions the weather. Cat hopes it will stay dry for tomorrow’s Time Trial. Every time she looks at him, she has to glance away, for she surges with desire and finds herself wanting to grin inanely. To her, he is most handsome and his seemly exterior speaks volumes of the personality she has grown to know and adore. Love, Cat?

Ssh. Don’t spoil the moment.

Why on earth would love spoil a thing?

Stop it. I just want to absorb everything of the present.

Ben buys a packet of Petite Beurre biscuits for the journey and suggests to Cat that they motor on. Cat, who has let the straps of her sundress hang down and who is turning her face to the sun, nods. She appears merely to be soaking up warmth, developing a nice colour to her cheeks and shoulders. Actually, her mind is in overdrive with thoughts bombarding her and sentences, some complete, some unstructured, all unspoken, racketing around. She wants to stay firmly in the here and now. If she opens her eyes, she will have to follow Ben to the car and they will restart their journey and the minutes and the kilometres will be swallowed up, taking her closer and closer to going home.

Why can’t the Tour de France last for ever?

What a daft thing to say, Catriona McCabe. You’re the journaliste, you know the pressures on body and mind of a Stage Race three weeks long as it is.

‘Um,’ says Ben, displaying a vulnerability in voice and choosing vocabulary that surprises Cat. He is fidgeting; tapping the steering-wheel, checking his blind spot an inordinate number of times though he has not yet switched on the engine. Cat, bizarrely, feels suddenly empowered and calm. She takes her hand to his wrist and strokes him.

‘What?’ she asks quietly. Her voice, so soothing, so familiar, relaxes Ben and he turns to her.

‘I have something for you,’ he says, twisting and leaning to the back seat, the sight of his torso delineated beneath fabric making Cat swoon and reach for him. He is rummaging in his jacket pocket and presents her with something concealed in a wad of crumpled tissue paper. As soon as she has it in her hands, he starts the engine and drives off somewhat aggressively.

Cat unwraps. It is a watch. An extremely plain, second-hand watch with bold roman numerals and hands telling the wrong time. The strap is pale tan and very supple, very worn. Cat, who has only ever had plastic Swatches, thinks it quite the most gorgeous timepiece she has ever seen and she stares at him, staggered.

‘Beautiful,’ she whispers and it is audible to Ben above the din of the engine. He glances in the rear-view mirror, in the side mirror, cranes his sight well ahead, looks to one side. Just not at Cat. And nods nonchalantly.

‘It’s from La Chaux de Fonds – the centre of the watch-making industry. Sorry it’s not a Rolex,’ he muttered, the whole business of pampering a loved one being rather strange to him. ‘I saw it and thought it very you.’

‘It’s so me,’ Cat declares in a whisper, the business of being pampered by a loved one being rather new to her too. She snatches off her blue plastic watch and sets the new one on her wrist. ‘I love it.’

‘You need to wind it up and set it to the right time,’ Ben states the obvious ingenuously whilst doing lots of mirror-checking again. Cat does just that. The symbolism begins to dawn on her just as soon as Ben finds his mouth opening and words spilling out unchecked, uncensored.

‘I’ll be counting the hours, Cat,’ he says, ‘counting them. Wishing them away. Till I can have you again. Promise me you’ll have work for the Vuelta?’

Cat can’t answer because she’s staring hard out of the window, at the landscape fleeing backwards, at the knowledge of the Alps, the Golfe du Lion, at everywhere she’s been over the past three weeks, now so far behind but still on this very lump of land. She glances at her watch and has the crazy notion of turning the hands themselves backwards. Nobody before has spoken so beautifully, so emotively to her. He Who No Longer Exists would chastize her for being late, holler, ‘Can’t you tell the bloody time?’ or else curse her for being petty should she ever dare to be upset that he hadn’t come home at all.

Now here is a man who wishes away the hours that will keep us apart. And has given me a watch so I can count down the minutes till we’re together. Oh fuck, am I going to be able not to cry?

‘I wish I’d bloody never met you,’ Cat says in an extremely strangled voice.

‘I wish I’d never met you too,’ Ben agrees quietly.

‘Cat McCabe,’ Ben says, pulling over to the hard shoulder and switching off the engine, ‘I am in love with you.’

Blimey, Ben!

It was easy to say. Now I’m exhausted. If my adrenal glands weren’t in overdrive, I’d gladly fall asleep.

‘I really do,’ Ben emphasizes, most wide awake.

Cat can’t speak, she can only nod. But the depth of her gaze and the sincerity of a tear which trickles cautiously down her face, speaks volumes to Ben.

They don’t say much, just talk in clichés that don’t seem hackneyed in the least. They agree that where there’s a will there’s a way, they reason that absence can only make their hearts beat stronger, they define that everything happens for a reason, they say that what will be will be, they theorize that one isn’t given a dream without also being given the power to realize it. They grin and kiss and Cat sobs and Ben tastes her tears and reveals a few of his own, for the first time ever, to another person. This Cat McCabe, journaliste, whom he met less than a month ago, whom surely he has known all his life, whom he cannot condone spending time without, whom he craves and desires and loves and feels all his emotions reciprocated.

And then the police move them on. And they continue their journey towards Paris and two days concluding the Tour de France.

STAGE 19
Disneyland Paris, Individual Time Trial: 63 kilometres

‘Alex, we can’t,’ Josh whispered, giggling behind his hand like a schoolboy.

‘We bloody can,’ said Alex, quite the playground bully.

‘Poor Cat,’ Josh laughed, ‘she’ll die.’

‘She’ll die if she doesn’t,’ Alex chortled at his Catch 22.

‘It isn’t fair,’ Josh repeated with a certain glee, ‘we really can’t!’

‘Can’t what?’ said Ben, suddenly appearing from Cat’s room outside which Alex and Josh had been hovering furtively, sniggering, for the best part of ten minutes.

‘We can’t expect Cat to wear this,’ said Josh, holding up a Minnie Mouse outfit, ‘she’ll die.’

Ben regarded the outfit and the two costumiers with an expression of horror which lasted but five seconds before transforming itself into one of wicked delight.

‘You absolutely can,’ Ben said, holding open the door to Cat’s room and ushering in her two colleagues.

Cat was dressed extremely nicely in navy shorts and a navy and cream top. She was packing her bags and checking that her phone had recharged when she turned to see her two colleagues and Ben standing silently abreast. Alex was in the middle, holding a polka dot frilly dress by the shoulders; to either side of him, Ben and Josh each held an edge of the skirt. All were regarding her most gravely.

‘Oh no,’ she said, shaking her head vehemently, ‘no no. Not in a million. No way. Absolutely not.’

The three men nodded very solemnly.

‘Oh, but yes,’ Ben said.

‘Yes way,’ said Josh.

‘Abso-fucking-lutely,’ said Alex.

When Cat attempted to back herself into a corner, the three men and the dress advanced on her.

‘You’re wearing it, Catriona McCabe,’ Ben ordered.

‘I am not, Benjamin York,’ Cat wailed.

‘You are,’ said Josh.

‘Full stop,’ said Alex.

‘I think it’s ridiculous,’ Cat fumed, ‘this pathetic Americanization of the Tour de France. This is a serious sporting event and I think it profane that it should be held at a fun factory.’

‘Oh, get off your high horse and in to your Minnie Mouse costume,’ Ben retorted.

‘It’s all way too commercialized,’ Cat bemoaned, ‘it’s all about profit at the expense of national character. All this Coca-Cola and Disney and Nike swooshes all over the place.’

‘Cat,’ said Josh in a gentle voice so patronizing that Cat gaped at him in horror, ‘lest we forget that the very reason for the birth of the Tour de France in 1903 was for purely commercial ends.’

‘To promote the newspaper L’Auto,’ Alex reminded her sternly.

‘The colour of whose pages became the colour of the leader’s jersey,’ Ben added for good measure.

‘Why me?’ Cat wailed, wondering quietly if the dress would fit and what on earth it would look like and when exactly was the last time she had dressed up. ‘How come you lot get off scot-free?’

In solemn response, the dress was laid carefully on the bed and all three men suddenly stood before her brandishing new ears. Alex became Dumbo, Josh became the Lion King and Ben, predictably, became Mickey Mouse.

‘Change,’ Ben, looking at his watch, commanded Cat.

‘Quickly,’ said Alex, proffering her the dress.

‘We’re running late,’ said Josh, checking his reflection in the mirror.

Suffice it to say, Cat looked ravishing in her polka dot dress with its frou-frou skirt. She felt rather good too and it infused her step with a jaunty spring. She even wore mouse ears. And a smile. And used a length of red cord from her rucksack as laces in her white plimsolls. She gave the boys a twirl. Right there in the foyer of the motel, and was awarded a round of applause and many a wolf whistle.

Every rider in Système Vipère, the only team left in the Tour de France with all nine riders, wore some gimmicky accoutrement or other. Even Fabian Ducasse, ever brooding and aloof, went to sign on wearing a Pinocchio nose, though its comic potential, whilst delighting the crowds, left his sultry demeanour unaltered. The diminutive Carlos Jesu Velasquez, though resplendent in his polka dot jersey, was somewhat swamped by his Goofy baseball cap and whilst the domestiques came as six of the seven dwarves, Jesper Lomers opted merely for Mickey Mouse ears, quite sober in comparison. There was absolutely no way that Jules Le Grand was going to spoil the line or the cloth of his Armani suit with even a badge and his hair was far too perfectly coiffed to permit the presence of plastic ears or a baseball cap. He had made one huge concession to the atmosphere of the day, though nobody would realize. He was wearing socks with his suit. Emblazoned with Pocahontas. Not that anyone knew. It did, however, enliven his comportment and lighten his mien. And when he saw Anya Lomers, walking around the village looking thoroughly out of place so late on in the race, he greeted her warmly and gave her a pair of Mickey Mouse ears.

We have not met Anya yet; all we know is that she has caused Jules a headache and Jesper a heartache. She’s handsome; tall and milk-blonde and we’d like to dislike her. But she looks lost, displaced; dressed so tidily in shirt and skirt and shoes all cream. Moreover, she feels lost. She has always felt out of place, here on Planet Tour, but she has never craved anything different. Her marriage has been as tough for her as it has for Jesper. The man she loves undoubtedly loves her but their requirements and commitments differ fundamentally. She wants children and a return to Holland. She is lonely and feels barren in her current situation, in France, with a husband she sees so sporadically. Jesper knows that he defines himself primarily by his ability to race a bike. He has to live in France. He races for the greatest team in the world. Anya is a woman turning thirty in a no-win situation. And she’s wearing stupid Mickey Mouse ears when she’s feeling deeply emotional on a morning she knows is to be hugely significant.

Stefano Sassetta had no need for fancy dress. Colourful enough in his regular Zucca MV gear, he was positively dazzling strutting around in his maillot vert with a self-satisfied smirk on his lips, thighs glistening with embrocation. The carry of his head, the brace of his shoulders, the draw of his chest, the meticulous arrangement of the bulges in his shorts, all proclaimed overflowing pride in his triumph. The ensemble delighted the crowds, amused the journalists and was an absolute treat for the photographers. The pictures taken of Stefano that day would soon adorn the walls of most Italian homes; from teenage cycling fans, to rampant women of all ages, to the entire gay population.

Sassetta wanted to be a living legend, and had carefully and successfully honed his image for posterity. The very look of him both excused and justified his sometimes questionable behaviour. In the village that morning, he ensured that he swaggered past Jesper Lomers at opportune times when the sun broke through the clouds and caught his jersey at its most resplendently verdant. Such a highly visible and antagonistic gesture brought him fame and notoriety and it was irrelevant that in fact he looked far more ridiculous than Jesper did in Mickey Mouse ears.

Jesper, however, hardly clocked Stefano’s presence; the unexpected sight of his wife had him transfixed. The Dutch riders with whom he had been sitting and chatting quite affably forgave him his sudden silence and abrupt departure.

‘Hullo, Jesper,’ said Anya after they had stood very close and stared silently for a few moments.

‘Great ears,’ said Jesper, giving her Mickey Mouse headpiece a gentle flick.

‘Yours too,’ Anya said politely before scrutinizing some fascinating aspect of her footwear.

‘I’m sorry that you don’t see me in the maillot vert,’ said Jesper, gravely apologetic.

‘I am sorry for you that you have it no longer,’ Anya said honestly.

‘Ach,’ Jesper shrugged with equanimity, ‘I had it last year – but I believe I will win it for the Vipers next year.’

How the words hung, loaded and huge, as if physically there, on vast placards suspended from the clouds, emphatically and unavoidably legible. Jesus, the relief. Suddenly Jesper knew unequivocally where he would be on this day next year, even what he’d be wearing. It was as if he’d been granted some divine flash of the future and to abuse it, to do anything other than travel towards it, would be a sacrilegious travesty. And suddenly Anya knew exactly where her husband of today would be this time next year. And there was nothing she was going to do about it because there was nothing she actually wanted to do about it. She had no idea where she’d be in 365 days hence, but she knew that she would not be here, in a village of the Tour de France.

And so Jesper Lomers stands silent and still and solitary in the centre of the village while around him, journalists and guests and officials and a host of Disney characters mill about in high spirits. He watches Anya, his soon-to-be-ex-wife, walk away, her Mickey Mouse ears still in place, as are his. It is the penultimate day of this year’s Tour de France. He has lost the maillot vert and he has lost his marriage. And yet, he has his health, his sanity and the priceless aptitude of knowing exactly what he wants to do with his life. What he lacks in happiness at this stage, he gains in a sense of peace.

Fabian Ducasse feels calm in that his thoughts are collected. He is not at peace though. His body is surging with anticipatory determination, adrenalin is pumping through his system. He is 1 minute 33 seconds from Vasily Jawlensky’s yellow jersey. Both he and his rival are very strong Time Trialists; Fabian will ride with the extra spurt that ruthless desire and extreme ambition can instil, Vasily has the extra strength exuded by his golden fleece. Fabian Ducasse is capable of wiping minutes off other riders on today’s Time Trial course. Vasily Jawlensky is capable of not losing a second.

Cat, Josh and Alex drove the course in a convoy of four press cars following the team car, hollering, ‘Allez! Allez! Allez!’ at the Cofidis rider David Millar. The young Brit stormed the course and took the lead which he was still holding with only two men left to ride. Unfortunately, the men in question were Fabian Ducasse and Vasily Jawlensky; dressed for action in their skinsuits, equipped for battle on their aerodynamic machines, prepared to plunder every ounce of their physical and emotional reserves.

Minnie Mouse McCabe was an exception to the rule amongst the press corps, today slogging out the words in an overheated room in a Disneyland hotel. With her hair washed regularly and skin bathed daily over the past three weeks, she looked nearly as fresh today as when the Tour started. The majority of hacks, however, had now resigned themselves to items of clothing which, whilst far from clean, at least were not amongst those fermenting at the bottoms of suitcases. The accumulation of three weeks of strong salami and Seize virtually on tap could be seen in expanded girths and heard in copious belching. Nicotine had stained fingers and teeth. Chins looked grimy – most razor blades having been well blunted since around Stage 16. Though noticeably weary over the past few Stages, today the salle de pressé sat riveted by the action of the Time Trial relayed to them on the screens.

They watched Ducasse fly through the first checkpoint, swiping 34 seconds off David Millar’s time there. At the second checkpoint Fabian’s time was 42 seconds faster than Millar. He swept past Massimo Lipari who had started three minutes before him before storming through the final time-check now 1 minute and 11 seconds clear of David Millar. Hunter Dean, who started two men before Fabian, was staggered to find himself being overtaken by Ducasse. Système Vipère’s great rider sprinted for the line. He’d completed the course in a phenomenal 1 hour, 15 minutes and 54 seconds and looked fresh and strong enough to ride the entire 63 kilometres again.

Vasily Jawlensky zipped through the first time-check a second faster than Ducasse. His fluid rhythm, comfortable position, his potent and fresh legs could have seen him swallow seconds with every kilometre. Only he punctured just before the second time-check. It was horrendous bad luck and, though the wheel change had been executed with military efficiency, he forfeited twenty-one seconds to Fabian. Nothing could have foretold nor prevented the unbelievable misfortune of a second puncture 6 kilometres later. This time, the wheel change, though fast, was not smooth and though Vasily willed the bike to perform, something jammed and he skidded to the ground. He flung thousands of dollars’ worth of hi-tech machine on to the grass verge and had no option but to resort to a regular road bike for the last 28 kilometres. By the final time-check and with 15 kilometres still to go, he was 59 seconds slower than Ducasse. Though he rode for all he was worth, forcing his body to fold to the ultimate aerodynamic pose, to rebuff the drag of the headwind, to slight the technical demands of the small towns en route, Vasily crossed the line 1 minute and 2 seconds behind Fabian Ducasse.

The salle de pressé roared, some in triumph for Fabian, others in sympathy for Vasily, all in reaction to superb bike riding. Cat looked contemplatively at her screen before answering an expected call from her sisters.

‘If tomorrow goes smoothly,’ she told them, ‘Vasily Jawlensky will win this year’s Tour de France. If a mishap befalls him – punctures, a crash – Fabian might just take the maillot jaune. You can never discount the danger of the unexpected.’

‘Who do you think will win?’ Fen asked.

‘Who do you want to win?’ Pip rushed before Cat had answered.

‘The thing is,’ Cat mused thoughtfully, ‘I’d be happy for either rider to win and will mourn for the man who comes second. I’m going to cry tomorrow regardless. Probably throughout the day.’

Pip and Fen had already made a note to have a box of tissues at the ready, alongside the bottle of champagne already chilling in Fen’s fridge.

‘I can’t believe tomorrow is tomorrow,’ Cat wailed out loud in the salle de pressé, ‘that it will conclude my Tour de France. That the day after tomorrow, I’ll be back in England.’

‘You didn’t say ‘home’.

I can’t really.

Are you deluding yourself?

I’ve never felt so at home as I have here, within this moving world, over these past three weeks. I’m exhausted. But look what’s happened to me, see how I’ve changed, grown.

Good for you, Cat. Well done.

‘Fabian is thirty-one seconds behind you,’ said Rachel, peeling the skinsuit off Vasily Jawlensky, ‘he will not be able to make up thirty-two seconds tomorrow. You are the maillot jaune and I’m so proud of you.’ Vasily looked at his soigneur, and saw straight to the softness she liked to believe her wiry exterior hid from view. Rachel McEwen was one of the most important people in his life. He could not conceive of riding the Tour de France, any race in fact, without her.

Rachel handed her naked rider a pair of tracksuit bottoms and fresh socks. As he took them, their hands brushed and instantaneously their eyes were locked. Vasily made to kiss her and for a suspended moment, Rachel felt her lips yield. But she turned her head consciously and Vasily’s mouth touched down on her cheek. His lips parted and confusion swept across his face. Rachel tried to smile kindly. A swift soft sadness clouded his eyes momentarily. He tipped his head to one side. Rachel shook her head, making the gesture meek and small. Vasily physically pulled his body taller by an inch or two.

‘Thank you, Rachel,’ he said huskily, ‘for all that you do for me.’

‘Hey,’ said Rachel softly but lightly, ‘I’m only doing my job.’

She watched her rider leave. It was the closest she had come to seeing true emotion in the man. Not that she knew it, it was the closest anyone had come.

Strong. Solitary. Enigmatic.

‘Makes me sad,’ Rachel said quietly to herself, ‘for him and for the women he will never allow himself.’

Fabian’s efforts pleased him on an objective level – it was the best Time Trial he had ever ridden – but frustrated him supremely on an emotional level.

It is still not enough to win the Tour de France.

He couldn’t believe it. Reality dawned and he awoke to it as if trapped in a terrible dream.

Last year I said next year. This year I must now say next year. Next year. Le Tour de France. Le maillot jaune. Fabian Ducasse.

‘André!’ he called down to the mechanic in the hotel car park. André looked up and smiled. Fabian saw that Jules Le Grand was walking towards a team car. ‘When you go to fuck the Zucca soigneur, sabotage their bikes, hey?’

Jules Le Grand jerked his head. He knew the sabotage part was a joke. But to confirm his suspicions that his mechanic was indeed involved with the soigneur of his rival team he found to be no laughing matter.

When André made love tenderly with Rachel later and for a leisurely, mutually gratifying hour and a half, he murmured her name as he came. At much the same time but for a fraction of the duration, Fabian was fucking some fan he had found loitering in the foyer when he went there expressly to prowl. He said nothing when he came. There wasn’t anything to say. He hadn’t asked her name. Actually, he had. But he hadn’t listened to what she had said.

STAGE 20
Disneyland-Paris. 149.5 kilometres

We’re getting there, all of us who’ve experienced this Tour de France on whichever level. We’re almost in Paris, the finish line is 149.5 kilometres away. We just have to leave Euro Disney, travel up to Barcy, turn left, drop down, turn right and keep going due west until the outskirts of the exquisite city are upon us. Then we’ll head for the hallowed cobbles of the Champs-Elysées, the most beautiful avenue in the world, where the Tour de France has had its grande finale since 1975.

Enter the circuit at the Avenue du Général Lemonnier, race alongside the Tuileries gardens, dash over the Place de la Concorde, whoosh up the Champs-Elysées to the Place Charles de Gaulle, curve round, pelt down the Champs-Elysées, back through the Place de la Concorde, along the Quai des Tuileries before turning to race the 6.5 kilometre lap another nine times. Having already covered 86.5 kilometres. Having previously raced 3,696.8 kilometres.

Cat almost couldn’t bear to go to the last village, having had a lump in her throat since breakfasting with Josh and Alex that morning. A huge Mickey Mouse hot air balloon smiled inanely over the proceedings and Cat wandered about the village trying to absorb absolutely everything for posterity, to concentrate on the infuriating jingles in a bid to lighten the profound emotion enveloping her. She saw the pretty girls at the Coca-Cola marquee crying and hugging all the lithe bronzed Italian domestiques who had visited each morning over the past three weeks. She noted how the population of the village had swelled with the arrival of wives, girlfriends and families and she regarded them enviously but also with a certain satisfaction.

I’ve had the boys for three whole weeks. I’ve experienced it with them. From Vuillard to Le Cap D’Arp, from Valadon to Aix-les-Bains. I’ve shared their Tour in real time and at first hand.

Having said, ‘Enjoy’, as she had done recently to riders whom she now knew, and happy for them that finally today they could indeed do so, Cat drove the 30 kilometre itinéraire direct with a quiet Josh and a subdued Alex. Paris. L’arrivée. A staggering and rather unnerving contrast suddenly completing her three weeks with the peloton. She was used to the Tour de France being the largest entity, the centre of attention, in the places it had visited, enveloping the towns, the landscape and being welcomed and treated like some mammoth VIP. In Paris, it was swallowed up. Even the parking for the presse cars was today a far cry from the leafy enclosures near to the finishes, or spacious lots near the salles de presse. Today, in Paris, it was a free-for-all in the grim underground car park at the gargantuan Hôtel Concorde Lafayette. In the vast hotel where most of the entourage of the Tour de France, the teams, the officials, the presse, would be staying, the salle de pressé was in a claustrophobic conference room.

There weren’t enough cables. There was no complimentary buffet. No welcome. No pampering. Even the signs for the salle itself were comparably small against those for the boutiques and restaurants and those directing important businessmen to some convention or other.

Checking in to her room just to dump her bags, Cat noted the minibar, the satellite TV, the toiletries in the bathroom but she craved her beautiful little bedroom at the Auberge Claudette in Bordeaux. She even found herself reminiscing wistfully about featureless motels and insalubrious two-star establishments.

‘I’m going to the Champs-Elysées,’ Cat told Alex and Josh in the salle, bringing them Orangina and chocolate at enormous cost from her minibar.

‘You won’t see a bloody thing,’ Josh warned her, but wondering where she’d set up her laptop anyway.

‘You’d be better off staying here,’ Alex advised, ‘finish the work quick and then party.’

‘I’m in Paris,’ Cat explained, somewhat aghast, ‘on the last day of the Tour de France. I can’t possibly not walk the streets.’ She ignored Alex’s predictably raised eyebrow. ‘I just want to experience the atmosphere,’ she justified. ‘If a socket comes free, can you plug me in?’

The atmosphere out on the streets bewildered her and she felt as lost and as small as when she’d first arrived in France. Though it was bringing her full circle, it depressed her. The fact that it was cloudy made yesterday, with all the sunshine, seem very distant. Remember the torrential rain from Pau to Luchon? The sleet on the Galibier? The phenomenal heat from Nantes to Pradier? Remember skinny-dipping in the Atlantic? Sitting and star-gazing at Le Cap D’Arp? When was all of that? This year? Surely not. A dream away. Was it real? Did it actually happen? Was I really there? Can I take it home? Can I come again?

Who are all these people milling about? Where have they been these past three weeks? Where were they when the boys were struggling up lonely Pyrenean passes? Or on monotonous stretches of landscape without even farmers on tractors to wave them on? How many here know what it’s like at the Plateau de Boudin? How many stood for hours cheering for the Time Trial at Computaparc?

Why so harsh, Cat?

There are an estimated one million spectators in Paris today.

You should be pleased, they’re all here in support of your precious sport.

Look at the throngs! See, the Arc de Triomphe is positively swamped by what look like, to all intents and purposes, football fans. They’re rowdy. Urban. Unfamiliar.

How wonderful for the riders to return valiant and battle-sore to such clangorous support.

But most of this lot will only have seen the riders hitherto on television, mostly aerially.

Rather like you, hitherto. So, how lucky they are, then, to be treated to an afternoon with the lycra swarm in the flesh, close enough to smell and touch even.

I’m just feeling out of sorts. I don’t want to go home tomorrow.

We know.

I don’t see anyone I recognize. It’s almost impossible for me to move around. My pass seems redundant. There’s no family to belong to here. Just a huge city to contend with. I phoned Ben but we conceded we’d never find each other. I can’t wait for tonight, to see him. And yet I’m dreading tonight because it’s our last and will bring me within hours of having to say goodbye.

‘It’s not that I’m not good at goodbyes,’ Cat said aloud, tripping over cables as she tried to avoid the crowds by choosing a taxing short cut through the battalion of radio and TV vans, ‘it’s just I’m not sure what I am saying goodbye to.’

‘Cat.’

Cat McCabe stands rooted to the spot.

‘Hullo, Cat.’

Her jaw drops and in her mind’s eye, the past three weeks shrink rapidly into a tiny ball which is bouncing away, out of sight. Away. And fast. Catch it!

‘How’s things?’

A man stands before her. Tall. Broad. Relatively good-looking. Objectively speaking. If he’s your type. Or Cat’s type. It is He Who No Longer Exists. But he obviously does exist as he is here, in the flesh, standing in front of Cat, in Paris.

‘Hullo,’ he says again.

Still Cat is speechless. And there is no Josh, no Alex, no Rachel, no Ben, no one remotely near to sense her distress and come to her rescue.

‘What are you doing here?’ she gasps at last, hating her voice, hating the moment, wishing she’d stayed in the salle de pressé, wishing she’d never come to the Tour de France, wishing He Who Is Standing In Front Of Her, wasn’t.

‘I was the one who kindled your interest in cycling, remember,’ he says lightly. ‘I came to watch the race. The grand finale. I came to find you.’

‘Me?’ Cat says, wondering if he’s really here or whether this is some bizarre apparition, and if he really is here, does that mean perhaps the last three weeks never really existed? Was she really a part of the Tour de France?

‘Can we talk?’ he is saying.

‘About?’ Cat asks, her eyes flitting around, still seeing no point of reference, no known saviour (and, at a time like this, even Jan Airie would do) anywhere in the vicinity. She is cursing herself that, without her entourage, she suddenly feels so small and timid. Exactly as she was just under a month ago.

‘Well,’ he says, his voice known so well but making her chill as so often it did, ‘I’m glad I came across you.’

Cat’s eyes are trained on a large screen relaying pictures of the peloton live.

There’s Stefano and Carlos and Vasily, the maillot vert, the maillot à pois, the maillot jaune, riding amicably side by side just ahead of the bunch, chatting to the Tour’s director Jean Marie LeBlanc who’s handing them a glass of champagne from the window of his red Fiat. See them each have a celebratory if abstemious sip. In the 1960s, when the Tour passed through towns, the riders would leap from their bikes and rampage through bars, grabbing people’s drinks regardless of what they were, food from plates, anything that could be eaten or imbibed. It was an honour to have a Tour cyclist snatch your refreshments. The bar owners would then send the bills to the Tour organizers. Shit, but I’m going off on dreamy tangents to escape from the situation in hand. That He is here. Fuck, I’ve capitalized him. I’d rather watch the big screen though.

‘Cat?’

‘Um?’

‘I was on for a Hollywood-style reunion. I’m out here after all – hoping my gesture speaks a thousand words.’

‘What?’

No! Don’t step towards me. Don’t look at me longingly, lovingly. Don’t let me go back. Don’t make me. Don’t be the person who says ‘See! It was all a dream’.

‘Let’s give it another go.’

‘No!’

The vehemence of Cat’s response staggers both of them.

‘Are you shagging someone else, then?’ he asks, pulling himself upright and fixing her with the familiar look that can instantly make her shudder and shrink and her blood chill.

‘I have to work,’ she pleads.

I have to run! Go forwards to what I now know and believe in. Not tiptoe backwards.

‘Where are you staying?’

I can’t believe I’ve just told him. Walk away.

‘And you’re working there too?’

I can’t believe I’ve just nodded. Run.

‘I’ll come by later. We’ll talk. Try to sort things out. OK?’

And he’s going. And Cat is swaying on the spot, unable to keep tears at bay. She lets them fall but fixes her gaze on the large screen as if watching the beautiful sport of cycling is the sole provenance of her emotion.

‘Jesus!’ Alex exclaimed when Cat returned to the salle de pressé. ‘You told us you’d be emotional but you didn’t warn us what it would do to your face.’

Josh tipped his head and regarded her. ‘There aren’t even any cyclists on the Champs-Elysées yet,’ he reasoned, instinctively sensing that Cat was in some kind of torment. ‘See, they’re arriving just now. Cool! Chris Boardman is off the front.’ Cat stared at the screen, lips aquiver, whilst her two colleagues observed her and winced at their impotence to do absolutely anything about her tangible distress. Josh knew that if he put out the supportive hand he so wanted to, Cat would possibly fall to pieces.

‘Have you seen that thing down the corridor?’ he asked instead, manipulatively ambiguous, voice easy. She shook her head a little more slowly than her body was shaking.

‘You must see it, come on, I’ll take you there.’

Obediently, Cat followed Josh. Tactfully, Alex stayed put and stared witheringly at any of the press men daring to stare.

Josh walked ahead of her before stopping just after the corridor turned a corner. He gave thanks for the fact that no one was around. He faced her, his head tipped gently to one side. His eyes implored her to trust him. And how she did. Josh Piper. Her colleague. Her friend. This time tomorrow he’d be on the opposite side of London to her.

‘Josh,’ she croaked.

‘There there,’ Josh soothed, having chosen those precise words with utmost care, ‘what’s up?’

‘What am I going to do,’ she whispered, ‘without you, without all of this?’

‘You’ll have it again in Spain,’ Josh encouraged, ‘at the Vuelta.’

‘But I haven’t heard from Maillot,’ Cat said, knowing that she was straying away from confiding the true reason for her distress. She sniffed and snorted, gave a little cough and dabbed her tongue against the mix of tears and snot forming a viscous moustache. Josh tucked her hair behind her ear, a touching gesture which made her feel safe. ‘It’s not Maillot,’ she said very slowly, ‘it’s Him.’

‘Who?’ Josh asked, because why ever would he consider that Cat’s ex-boyfriend, from whom she’d come to the Tour hoping to recuperate, from whom she truly thought she had moved on, was currently in Paris and intruding into the depths of her being, jeopardizing the confidence and security she had recently found.

‘Who No Longer Exists,’ Cat said quietly, ‘Him.’

Josh faltered, this was not what he was expecting and he felt rather ill-equipped to help. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘what does he want?’

‘Me,’ Cat shrugged.

All Josh really knew about the man was that he had hurt Cat very deeply. ‘How do you feel?’ he asked measuredly.

‘Bewildered,’ Cat defined.

Josh regarded her. Much as he liked Ben, he knew what he had to ask next. ‘Do you want him?’

After a loaded pause, Cat shoot her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but he’s here and he’s an obstruction.’

Josh frowned.

‘He’s a horrible symbol of very unhappy times, and a harbinger of back home,’ she continued. ‘Though the last few months were terrible – communication was impossible – and the final throes were quite vicious, I had five years with him and did love him very much.’ She looked out of the window. Paris. A little overcast. They’ll be on the Champs-Elysées now.

‘Still?’ Josh asked.

‘Once,’ Cat replied. She was speaking clearly if softly. ‘Eventually, the reason for us to be together, all the elements that once were so loved, were simply no longer known. I was wrong for him. He was increasingly mean to me. I was clinging to all that had been and, in an ideal world, all that we’d hoped for. He wanted out. I was so low I was convinced an unhappy life with him was preferable to all the uncertainties I’d face in a life on my own.’

‘Your self-esteem was decimated,’ Josh said.

Cat snorted. Then she was still. Finally she nodded. ‘When someone scolds you enough, you end up believing it.’

‘And yet you’re confused now you’ve seen him again?’

Cat shrugged. ‘He’s come to find me. There were good times.’

‘Do you love him still?’

‘I love still the idea of it all.’

‘Ben?’ Josh asked, a tiny thought zipping into his mind that poor Ben might have been but rebound fodder.

‘I am in love with Ben,’ Cat declared. ‘For me, he symbolizes everything that my future should be about. Through him, I got my bounce back.’ She sighed. ‘It’s just my past isn’t merely haunting me today, it has thrust itself across the path of my journey forward.’

Her eyes darted and she reached for Josh’s shirt, giving it an absent-minded tug. ‘My strength feels sapped,’ she said, ‘my mind is in a knot.’

‘Don’t let him do this to you,’ Josh said fairly sternly, pressing for a lift which he didn’t want, ‘you owe it to yourself. And us.’

Cat nodded for Josh while her brow twitched for herself. ‘Ben?’ she whispered. ‘Ought I to pull back now?’

‘Pull back?’ Josh said, amazed. ‘From Ben? Why would you want to do that?’

‘I have to meet him tonight,’ Cat said, oily tears smudging her eyes.

‘Ben?’

‘No. Him.’

A lift arrived, its doors sweeping open, and Josh and Cat automatically entered.

‘Not pulling back carries great risks,’ Cat explained whilst Josh selected the fifteenth floor for some unknown but uncontested reason. ‘If I don’t pull out,’ Cat said softly but lucidly, ‘I lay myself bare to even the possibility of future hurt. That, for me, is reason enough.’

‘Cat McCabe,’ said Josh, leaning against the wall of the lift, ‘you are way too strong to be so appallingly feeble. Don’t pull out. I don’t want you to. It would be very, very wrong. Ben is a lovely guy and he adores you. You would jeopardize so much if you don’t go for it.’ He watched her concentrating on the buttons of the floors, could sense that she was fighting tears. ‘What exactly would you achieve?’ Josh posed. Cat gave him no answer so he gave her the only one possible. ‘Big bloody deal,’ he said, ‘that on your deathbed, aged ninety-seven or whatever, you could concede that you made it through the rest of your life never having been hurt again.’ He gave her a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘You have too much to give – and with your generosity, your great propensity for friendship and love, it’s inevitable that you draw people to you and that you’ll receive back what you provide.’

The lift arrived at the requested floor. Josh and Cat stood stationary, regarding the corridor on view. The doors closed by themselves, as if misuse was an occupational hazard. Cat sucked her bottom lip thoughtfully and then pressed for the floor from which they’d come. She looked at Josh a little bashfully.

‘I know,’ she whispered, ‘I wouldn’t feel vulnerable if I wasn’t involved. The fact that I’m involved, unequivocally, is alternately exhilarating and absolutely terrifying. Ben will be so far away. Missing him is going to hurt.’

‘Well,’ Josh said measuredly, ‘I can’t see your dilemma. Someone in love with you but far away. Someone who was mean to you but is near by.’

‘Near by?’ Cat whispered. ‘He’s in fucking Paris.’ Alarm criss-crossed her face. ‘Today. He wants me this evening.’

‘Fuck him,’ said Josh, ushering her out of the lift lest they should find themselves next stop in the bowels of the hotel via the lift with a mind of its own. ‘You’re coming out with us,’ Josh ordered, ‘it’s our last night too. Do you think we’re happy about having to let you go? About the end of a phenomenal three weeks? Another memorable Tour de France?’

‘I have to feel good about my past if I’m to greet the future,’ Cat said, ‘maybe I need closure.’

‘You sound like Oprah fucking Winfrey,’ Josh said.

‘Of course I’d rather he wasn’t here,’ Cat said, just before they arrived at the salle de pressé, ‘but he is and I’m having to deal with it. There must be a reason. I don’t know what. I’m terrified about seeing him tonight. But I have to. Will I be OK?’

‘If you’re not, there’s a posse of us who will gladly deck the bastard,’ Josh said. His triteness, blended with affection, making Cat smile at last. ‘Now, journaliste McCabe, you have your final report to write. Here – blow.’ Josh held out a handkerchief and dutifully, Cat blew her nose sonorously into it. Unflinchingly, Josh tucked it, sodden, back into his pocket. He had loads of washing to take home tomorrow as it was. And anyway, it’s one friend’s duty to wipe away the tears of another.

Rachel McEwen was at the team vehicles in the Place de la Concorde, using half her brain to double-check she had plenty of everything whilst using the other half to make lists of items to audit, order and pack in the coming weeks of racing. She was aware that someone stood near by, watching her, but she was used to this and presumed it to be a fan hopeful of a free baseball cap or bidon. When her name was breathed huskily, with the ‘R’ rolled around leisurely at the back of the throat, the ‘1’ licked from tongue to teeth, she knew instinctively to whom the voice belonged.

‘Monsieur Le Grand,’ she said courteously, ‘ça va?’

‘Bien. Jules – please,’ he replied, swiping away the sides of his jacket as he slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘I have something for you, Rachel,’ he said with great mystery, savouring her name on his tongue as if it was an oyster. From one pocket, he brought out a small package and gave it to Rachel, coming close within her personal space and changing the air around her from heavy with embrocation to scented with an inordinate amount of Gucci aftershave.

‘For me?’ Rachel asked, wondering what and why.

‘Open,’ he commanded, his eyes fixed on the package, ‘please.’

His gift, rather predictably, was Chanel Eau de Parfum. An ostentatiously large bottle. ‘Call it a bribe,’ he shrugged, ‘but I want you to come and work for me, for Système Vipère. I make you this offer because I respect you as a soigneur. I give you this gift because I respect you as a woman.’

Och, what a load of tosh, Rachel thought to herself whilst smiling sweetly out loud, wait till I tell Cat.

‘Jules,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Shh,’ he said on the verge of seductively placing his index finger against Rachel’s lips, which parted flabbergasted whilst her eyes danced in disbelief. ‘Just consider it.’

With that he was gone. But he’d been gone from the Système Vipère vehicles long enough for the Zucca directeur and chief mechanic to have paid a visit to André Ferrette. They did not flatter him with expensive scent or guttural overtones. They merely reasoned that, as he and their soigneur were now an item, wouldn’t it be great for everyone concerned if he came over to work for Zucca MV?

The last laps of the Champs-Elysées. The last minutes of the race. The closing metres of the Tour de France. The peloton stream around the circuit wowing the crowds. The pace is fast and during the laps opportunists regularly pelt off the front, driving the crowds wild in the process. Though the likelihood of a Stage win by such riders, from so far out, is minuscule, the attention they attract curries great favour with their sponsors too, most of them ensconced in VIP enclosures.

With three laps to go, Hunter Dean from US Megapac pumps away from the bunch not just to taste glory and do his sponsor proud, but to savour precisely where he is and where he has been and just what he has achieved to be here, on heaven’s cobbled paving of the Champs-Elysées, ahead of the peloton of the Tour de France. Three weeks ago, the crowds at Delaunay Le Beau had sent him on his way; a superfit rider with a golden tan, hope in his legs and a goal in his soul. The crowds in Paris welcome him home; a rider unfathomably fit, his face thinner, his limbs more sinewy, lighter by a fair few kilos, intensely bronzed if slightly grimy from the city streets. The hope in his legs and the goal in his soul have been tested to the limit but the self-belief that continues to pump through his system with every beat of his heart is what ultimately has brought him here. As he cycles in front of the bunch, he wants to cry. He can’t wait to be on his knees, kissing the cobbles; an image he has called upon frequently over the past three weeks when his body threatened to give up and his mind said no way, no more, I can’t. You can, Hunter, you did.

If L’Alpe D’Huez is mecca for the grimpeurs, the climbers, then the Champs-Elysées is the equivalent for the sprinters. Consequently, Carlos Jesu Velasquez rides along safe in the centre of the bunch, hissing and clicking in the polka dot jersey. Massimo Lipari rides nearby, bolstered by the fact that he is as much a hero for being vanquished as he would be were he wearing polka dots. There will be many people waiting for him at home, there will be a party in the local bar where the world will be put to rights and the Tour de France rerun to the outcome they would have preferred. And there will be plenty of signorine to soothe him, who will be desperate to stroke his ego and caress his brave body. A woman at the start this morning had touched his shaved chin and made wonderful innuendos about bare cheeks.

Into the penultimate lap, the sprinters’ teams start to organize themselves. Stefano Sassetta seeks out Jesper Lomers and cycles silently alongside him. The riders regard each other. Jesper nods. Stefano nods too. Then Jesper’s congenial smile is countered by Stefano’s huge and affable grin. The Dutchman congratulates the Italian maillot vert.

‘Next year I have to fight hard, hey? To keep it?’ Stefano says reverentially, whistling and shaking his head at the prophesied effort of it all again.

‘He wins it who deserves it,’ Jesper replies with equanimity.

Stefano nods and places his hand between Jesper’s shoulder blades. ‘I may have the green jersey,’ he says, ‘but if you are crowned the most beautiful thighs of the peloton again, I will fucking kill you!’

Jesper laughs. He loves all this. The camaraderie. This family. This burgeoning sense of euphoria and relief that has been earned tenfold from the effort of the last three weeks. ‘Let’s race,’ he says, allowing his lead-out men to guide him through the bunch.

Vasily Jawlensky and Fabian Ducasse ride side by side in truce and mutual respect. Vasily is about to win the Tour de France by a paltry 31 seconds. He ensures Fabian rides a wheel ahead, that he rides a pedal turn behind. Fabian accepts the gesture with good grace. They don’t fight for the final line, they cross it together, a photofinish of the two greatest professional road-race cyclists in the world. Their soigneurs are soon upon them, skipping wet flannels up and down their bodies, but the two men just want to hug each other silently right there in the centre of the media scrum; regardless of how this impedes their soigneurs’ jobs, blind to the barrage of photographers, deaf to the presse firing questions in various languages. Vasily Jawlensky has won the Tour de France, having cycled 3,761.8 kilometres in twenty days, in 91 hours 27 minutes and 44 seconds. Fabian Ducasse took a second over half a minute longer. The Lantern Rouge of the Tour cycled for an extra 3 hours 2 minutes and 39 seconds.

Did Cat cry when Stuart O’Grady took the final Stage win just ahead of Stefano Sassetta and Robbie McEwen? Did she cry when Vasily and Stefano and Carlos Jesu took to the podium? Did she cry when the riders cycled in their teams a final lap of honour? Did she cry when the TV monitors in the salle de pressé were dismantled for the last time? Did she cry when she was handed the final sheets of race results? Did she cry when she placed the last full stop at the end of her final report for the Guardian? What do you think?

She’s dried her eyes, washed her face and donned sunglasses for the sake of anyone who might catch a fright when catching sight of her. She goes to the foyer to check on Ben’s room number. She doesn’t need to. He’s there and, joy of joy, so is Luca.

‘The Babe!’ Luca proclaims, looking far odder for his jeans, trainers and denim shirt than he does for having his arm in a sling.

‘Come to the Megapac dinner,’ Ben suggests, ‘Mitch would love you to be there.’

‘I can’t,’ Cat white lies, ‘I ought to convene with my own team, the press gang.’

‘Later, then,’ says Ben.

‘Of course,’ Cat replies, feeling how Ben makes her bubble, remembering how the other man made her flat. It seemed extraordinary, therefore, that she was to forsake the one in favour of the other tonight.

‘You dance with me later, Gatto?’ Luca asks.

‘Of course,’ Cat assures him.

It’s 10 p.m. Josh and Alex can’t find her. She isn’t in her room and her mobile phone is switched off. Ben says, I thought she was with you. The boys say, we thought she’d be with you. No, haven’t seen her. No, don’t know where she is. Leave a note under her door. She’s probably gone for a stroll. Gone to be self-indulgently metaphysical amidst the debris on the Champs-Elysées which is all that remains of the Tour de France. Yes, that sounds like Cat McCabe.

Only she isn’t on the Champs-Elysées. She’s nowhere near anywhere the cyclists’ wheels have been. I don’t know where she is. I can guess. But she’s permitting no access. No laminated pass can provide entry. No eavesdropping allowed. She wants no interference. She doesn’t need me. She needs privacy. We can give her that. She’s entitled. We trust her. We know she’s strong enough.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Alex, pretty pissed, demands jovially when Cat turns up an hour later, at the infamous James Joyce pub just a stone’s throw from the Concorde Lafayette hotel. She gives Alex a friendly whack. She stands still. Takes stock of where she is. Takes a deep breath.

‘I need a drink,’ she says.

Alex goes to the bar and Cat turns to Josh. ‘It was tough,’ she says, ‘I left before pudding. It’s good to be back.’ Josh nods, Alex returns and while he rambles on, Cat looks around her. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen are supping pints. She sees Rachel and André sitting on bar stools, heads close, his hand on her knee, her hand over his, Rachel talking animatedly, André listening attentively. They suit each other. In some ways, they hold a mirror to Cat; being thrilled for her friend is being happy for herself too.

My God, it’s Greg LeMond. Alex has great pleasure in introducing Cat to the legendary American three-times Tour winner, still the same fresh-faced bright blue-eyed boy whom she has revered for years. The decibel level is as high as people’s spirits, the Guinness is as rich as the experiences being recounted. Laughter flows with the conversation, warmth envelops the proceedings. Luca and Ben turn up soon after and Cat whiles away the night until the early hours; the morning of the day when she will leave France, leave all of this, all of them, to return home.

She and Ben go to bed at 4 a.m., rather drunk and absolutely exhausted. They don’t have sex. They can’t keep their eyes open. They’re too tired. Like everyone else who, in whatever capacity, has done this year’s Tour de France.

DAY 27. MONDAY

Cat McCabe

Here she is. On the ferry. Was it only three and a half weeks ago that she clung to the railings, dreading the white cliffs of Dover disappearing from view and the great unknown unfolding before her? She is scorning the direction of travel to gaze wistfully at France, longing the land mass to remain in view. Oh, to time-travel backwards. That it all could be starting again.

Alex and Josh, where are they?

They’re down in the bar, of course.

And Rachel?

She’ll be on the road, driving the truck, everything shipshape and in order.

And Ben?

He’s just phoned.

But where is he?

At the airport, accompanying Luca to the specialist in Colorado.

And the other riders?

Some will take a few days’ respite from competition to train, of course. Others go headlong in to a round of Criterium races where, as heroes of the Tour de France, they’re paid a sizeable start fee. August is a month full of Classics, of World Cup rounds. And then, of course, the grand tour of Spain, the Vuelta, in just under five weeks’ time.

Will you be covering it?

I hope so.

For whom?

Well, Andy at Maillot has suggested a strategy meeting. Tomorrow, in fact, though I really can’t afford to hold my breath for the Features Editorship. My credit card bill is enormous. However, Jeremy Whittle has come up trumps and wants me to report the Vuelta for Sportsworld’s website. That’ll just about cover my expenses. Hopefully by then I might have a couple of freelance commissions. But you know, to be affiliated to the world of the peloton is riches enough for me.

Who’s meeting you at Victoria station?

I haven’t told anyone what time I’ll be home. I think it’s important I make my return journey by myself.

I think it’s important that you walk to the bow of the ferry, to bravely await the sight of the white cliffs of Dover.

Ben York

Ben sits in the departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport. Luca is milling about, delighted when anyone approaches him for an autograph or to commiserate on his bad fortune.

I had to say goodbye to Cat this morning.

You did?

It wasn’t easy. It’s been a phenomenally all-encompassing month.

Did you tell her how you love her?

Hearing it out loud, and hearing it back – I found it intensely emotional.

‘Ben, look at this – fucking fabulous, hey?’

Luca has bought a lighter in the shape of the Eiffel Tower which plays the ‘Marseillaise’ when activated.

‘But you don’t smoke,’ Ben laughs.

‘But look,’ he stresses, brandishing his acquisition, ‘listen!’ Luca sits alongside his doctor, frustrated that, though he is no longer in pain, he is still trussed up and out of action. He regards Ben. ‘So,’ he says. Ben looks at him. Shrugs and nods.

‘It was some Tour, Jonesy,’ says Ben, ‘huge.’

‘The Babe McCabe,’ Luca muses, striking his lighter on and off, never for long enough to move beyond the opening bars of the French National Anthem. Ben nods. ‘You’re good together,’ Luca says whilst nodding and humming thoughtfully. Ben looks away. ‘You see her some more?’ Luca asks. ‘I hope so. You two should – you know? It would be a waste not being together.’

‘Yup,’ Ben says, looking around the departure hall, looking intently at the seam of his trousers, at Luca’s hands fiddling with the lighter. ‘She’s quite something and she lives the other side of the Atlantic Ocean to me. But she’s what I want.’

‘And I always gets what I wants,’ says Luca in distorted American. He regards Ben. ‘Can it work? With your schedules? Your time zones?’

Ben falls silent. ‘I hope so,’ he says earnestly, ‘I really do.’

‘This month will shoot by,’ Luca says encouragingly, ‘before you know it – bam! The Vuelta. Give her a call,’ he suggests, offering his mobile phone for the purpose.

‘I just have,’ says Ben, longing to hear her voice again, torturing himself with the vivid memory of the now unattainable reality of what going to sleep and then waking up alongside Cat is like.

Josh Piper, Catriona McCabe and Alex Fletcher

Josh spies Cat standing by the railings at the bow of the ferry. He can just about make out a glimpse of Britain.

‘Hullo,’ he says, drawing alongside, eyes tight shut against the buffeting wind.

‘Hullo,’ Cat says, turning her back on the sea to open her eyes and face the deck.

‘Shall we drive avant or arrière today?’ Josh asks.

‘Well, I need to hang around the village,’ Cat muses, ‘I want to speak to Stuart O’Grady and Jay Sweet.’

‘We’ll go arrière then,’ Josh decrees.

‘OK,’ Cat says brightly. ‘I wonder what the presse buffet will provide us with today.’

‘If it’s crap,’ Josh reasons, ‘we can abuse my expense account and go for a blow-out dinner when we’ve finished our reports. A few bottles of Seize beforehand.’

‘OK,’ says Cat.

‘What are you doing on the 7th?’ Josh asks.

‘Isn’t that the San Sebastian Classic?’ Cat responds.

‘Well, I was thinking more along the lines of dinner at mine – meet my wife.’

‘And reminisce?’ Cat asks.

‘Absolutely,’ Josh confirms.

‘It’s a date,’ Cat says.

They share the affable silence that is true testimony of good friendship. After a while, Cat turns to Josh. ‘Yesterday,’ she says quietly, ‘was bizarre.’

‘You’d never have known from the quality of your report,’ says Josh, a rolled-up copy of the Guardian in his back pocket, ‘your piece was great.’

‘My final paragraph,’ Cat elucidates, ‘my last full stop – rather than bringing matters to a close, it flung the doors of my life hereafter wide open.’

‘You have so much ahead of you,’ Josh stresses.

‘I know that now – unequivocally. But the realization would not have transpired so soon had he not turned up. I was finally able to conclude that chapter of my life, put the last full stop in place. Now I have a clean, fresh page. It’s a little daunting but quite exciting too.’

‘Did he want you back?’ Josh probes.

‘What if he did?’ Cat replies. ‘I don’t know where my future will take me but I now know very clearly what I don’t want. As I packed my rucksack one final time last night, I actually did some unpacking too. Things I don’t need for my journey, things that were weighing me down.’

‘That was then and this is now,’ Josh defines. ‘You know, Cat,’ he continues, thinking himself very Oprah fucking Winfrey, ‘we’re often at our strongest when we decide to take risks – because we’re ready and confident to tackle whatever the outcome will be.’

‘You know something, Josh?’ Cat responds. ‘I feel blessed with that strength now.’

‘I feel seasick,’ moans Alex, joining them. ‘Great hairstyle, Cat. Fuck me! We’re almost home.’

‘About ten minutes from docking,’ Josh estimates, scouring the horizon and the land mass like an old sea dog. ‘What are you doing on the 7th, Alex?’

‘It’s the San Sebastian Classic, isn’t it?’ Alex says.

‘Or dinner round mine,’ says Josh.

‘Cool,’ says Alex. ‘Are you going to be there, Cat?’

‘Most certainly,’ says Cat.

‘Cool,’ says Alex.

Cat links arms with her colleagues and they prepare to disembark back on to English soil.

OCTOBER
Paris. The launch of next year’s Tour de France

Cat took the Eurostar from Waterloo to Paris the day before the launch and was booked to come back the day after it. Josh and Alex were travelling the next morning, making it a day trip. Though a train journey with them would have been fun and would have passed swiftly, Cat was thankful that she was alone even if the minutes seemed insufferably long. Ben was to meet her at Gard du Nord. She hadn’t seen him since the Vuelta finished twenty-two days ago, a period of time the same length as a Tour de France and the trial of it just as arduous. And now she was on a train rumbling under the Channel towards three days and two nights with her beau. Paris couldn’t come quick enough.

Though Cat and Ben, to each other, their friends and family, constantly rue the fact that they live thousands of miles apart, their relationship has blossomed and, with it, the fortunes of their respective telecommunications companies and postal services. Ben managed a stopover at Heathrow airport a week after the Tour de France ended and then they had twenty-five days together in Spain. With the salle de pressé of the Vuelta being a quarter of the size of the Tour de France, the pressures were much less too and Cat and Ben were able to indulge in each other’s company. Luca had loved his profile written by Cat for Pedal Power. More to the point, so had Jeremy Whittle who had praised her, paid her handsomely and commissioned a daily website from her during the Vuelta. She still doesn’t know if she will be Features Editor at Maillot but she should find out at the launch tomorrow.

During the Vuelta, Luca won two consecutive Stages and ensured he rubbed his collar bone theatrically, accidentally on purpose, when giving interviews at the finishes and for the benefit of his fans watching coverage on TV. He had become a hugely popular and well-known figure in the peloton. Press and fans and riders alike were interested that, next season, he was to be a Viper Boy. Fabian Ducasse won the Vuelta and, the week before last, the World Championship Time Trial too. Vasily Jawlensky came second. Last week, Lance Armstrong won the World Championship Road Race. Vasily Jawlensky came second. But the season will end with the great Russian’s name still foremost on everybody’s lips and it is his image which remains imprinted on everyone’s memory of the season: the reigning maillot jaune of the Tour de France.

So how are you, Cat?

I’m fine. I’m happy. I’m broke. My train ticket is an early birthday present from Fen and Pip. Django has just paid off my phone bill. I’m twenty minutes from the Gard du Nord and the arms of Ben York. I feel like an excited, lovestruck teenager. It’s a wonderful sensation and it doesn’t dissipate in the slightest the deeper I get to know him.

So we’re talking love, then?

Good God, yes.

The train trundles in to Gard du Nord and, with her stomach aflutter, her adrenal gland in overdrive and her heart evidently beating twenty to the dozen at the base of her throat, Cat disembarks and weaves her way up the platform. And there he is. She’s never seen him in a thick jumper and she’s struck by how very lovely he looks. All he can see is the girl he loves beaming at him. She’s had a haircut, he notices, and she looks gorgeous. She looks robustly feminine with her healthy glow and assertive stride. He can’t wait to kiss her, to whisk her away to the bohemian but rather luxurious hotel he has found for her on the rue de Buci in the heart of the Latin Quarter. He’s about to say hullo, to take her bag, to tell her that they’ll take a taxi but he can’t squeeze out even a word because she has plugged his mouth with kisses. Never let you go. Missed you very, very much. Want you so badly.

In the Parisian rush hour, they gaze out of the cab windows at the city, whilst entwining their fingers together. Polite conversation is a necessity to curb their overwhelming desire to strip each other naked and ravish each other immediately.

‘How’s Luca?’ Cat enquires. ‘Did he send me his love?’

‘Shit,’ Ben gasps, ‘I almost forgot, these are for you.’ He cups her head in his hand and kisses each cheek in turn, twice over. ‘They’re from Luca for Gatto McCabe. Did I tell you he now sports a goatee beard and a pony-tail?’

‘Does it suit him?’

‘Judging by the amount of fan mail he receives, yes it does. How’s Rachel?’ Ben asks. ‘What’s her news?’

‘She and André kipped at mine for a night last week,’ Cat tells him. ‘I phoned Jeremy Whittle last week, pitching an idea for a feature on Rachel – it’s an excuse really, to have an expenses-paid weekend with her!’

‘And?’

‘Jez likes the idea.’

‘She’s still with André, then?’

‘Oh, very much so. They went to their directeurs and told them that unless they accepted their relationship and allowed them to keep their respective jobs at Zucca MV and Système Vipère, they’d both leave and work for the Deutsche Telekom team instead.’

‘That’s some ultimatum,’ Ben laughs, ‘good for them. I’m glad they’re going strong, I like them both individually and they make a great couple.’ Automatically, he squeezes Cat’s hand and she knots her fingers frenetically to his. ‘How about Fen,’ Ben asks, ‘has she made a decision? Is she now a one-man woman, so to speak?’

‘She’s fine,’ Cat smiles, ‘and yes, she made the decision – kept everyone guessing right till the very end.’

‘And Pip?’ Ben enquires.

‘Pip’s life is suddenly rather glamorous,’ Cat tells him. ‘In fact, she’s been flown out to some tiny, luxury Caribbean island. But it’s a long story and see – we’ve just crossed the river.’

‘And Django, whom I’ve yet to meet?’

‘Django, who’s desperate to meet you, is fine. You’ll meet at New Year. We all had a fabulous weekend up in Derbyshire. You’re going to love it. Are we there yet? Soon?’

‘Here’s rue de Buci. And Josh and Alex?’ Ben asks. ‘What’s their news?’

‘Can we talk about them later?’ Cat requests, already heading towards reception.

Both Cat and Ben had survived the previous few days on a frequent, semi-sustaining diet of envisaging lengthy foreplay and meaningful looks and long, leisurely lovemaking. However, because both had subsisted the last three weeks on memories of their past couplings and prophecies of those future; because they had frequently gone to bed alone craving each other and masturbating in honour of each other, now in Paris, in their hotel room, they all but tore their clothing off and fell to the bed, kissing wildly, their eyes closed with the exquisite pleasure of it all. Running hands just the once up and over one another’s bodies was enough to have Ben as hard as he’d ever be and Cat as juiced and expectant likewise.

‘Stop, stop, stop,’ Ben gasped trying to still Cat’s hips from gyrating him to premature orgasm. He flipped her over, pulling her on top and she sat astride him; only he had to close his eyes because the very sight of her could make him come against his wishes. They didn’t stay in one position for very long because they were desperate to re-explore each other from every angle imagined and imaginable.

Lying on their sides with Ben taking her from behind, it was suddenly Cat imploring Ben to stop, stop, stop. They lay motionless, Ben feeling the vivid pulsations of Cat’s sex sucking his cock deep into her, immensely turned on by hearing her gasp, her voice breaking through. He rolled her on to her stomach and lay himself on top of her, bucking up inside her deep and strong. He took his hands underneath her, burrowing his fingers between the lips of her sex to rub and twitch her clitoris. Cat was climaxing again and soon enough Ben was coming with her. He’d been on the point of orgasm since first entering her and it welled from the pit of his stomach before shifting down to the centre of his balls, zooming up his cock and firing out into the musky, hot welcoming darkness of deep inside Cat. It was a taste in his mouth, a scent in his nose. It was explosive. He could have passed out. Instead, they went out for a light supper and light conversation, drank much red wine and returned to their room to make love leisurely as they’d long envisaged.

‘I do so love you,’ Ben murmured to her, having locked eyes with her the whole session through.

‘And I do you,’ Cat responded.

‘I love it that sex between us can be either romantic lovemaking, all sensitive and sensual, or else we fuck each other’s brains out,’ Ben defines. ‘It’s good to feel so comfortable with someone.’

‘I love it that, whether making love or shagging each other senseless, post orgasm we frequently talk about some fine point of cycle sport,’ Cat muses.

Paris dawned bright, cloudless and absolutely freezing cold. Ben and Cat strolled through the courtyards of the Louvre, through the Tuileries gardens to the Place de la Concorde before catching a cab up to Porte Maillot, to the Palais des Congres de Paris for the launch of next year’s Tour de France. The foyer was packed. For Cat, it was like a family reunion and she wove her way through the throng, hugging and kissing and beaming at everyone; greeting people whom she had known previously by face alone but as if they were established close friends. The expansive grin that she wore, her face full of light and colour, contrasted with her sober black poloneck, black skirt of demure length, opaque black tights and black pumps. ‘I’m working!’ she had protested to a lengthy wolf whistle and a theatrical salute from Ben when she had dressed that morning. ‘I’m a journaliste, remember.’

Is it seemly that a member of the press corps, one who hopes for recognition and respect, should then scurry around collecting posters and goodie bags and swiping the branded anti-macassars from the seats?

But everyone does. See! Look at Josh, he’s asking Vasily Jawlensky for his autograph. And Alex has taken three copies of one poster. Those who follow this fabulous sport do so because they are passionate about pro cycling. We are fans foremost, the luckiest, most blessed of all supporters of the sport, for we are paid to indulge our love for it.

‘Ms McCabe, hullo.’

It was Jeremy Whittle from Sportsworld.

‘Hullo,’ she replied, shaking his hand warmly, ‘you know Ben, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ Jeremy replied, giving the doctor a congenial slap.

‘How are you, Jez?’ Ben said.

‘I’m fine – but I want to talk business with Cat before the presentation starts.’

‘I’ve spoken to Rachel McEwen about a profile,’ Cat enthuses, ‘and can I do one on Biarritz – many young riders are choosing it as their base? And I thought, how about a physiological cross comparison of Vasily and Fabian – their resting heartbeats, height, weight, V02 max?’

‘They sound great,’ Jez said, ‘and as Assistant Editor of Pedal Power, you can write whatever you like, really.’

‘Please could I do Paris-Nice for you?’ Cat continued, Jez’s statement way too enormous to even hear, let alone contemplate.

‘As Assistant Editor of Pedal Power, you would be expected to attend,’ Jez tried again. It is a squeeze around her waist from Ben that jolts Cat into listening, absorbing and at once trying to fathom just what Mr Whittle means.

‘Pardon?’ Cat tries. ‘Assistant Editor? Of Pedal Power? Who?’

‘You,’ Jez laughs, ‘you’d be brilliant. It would mean moving to the States, of course.’

‘Me?’ Cat mouthed.

Jez nodded. ‘We’ll talk about salaries and the job spec after the presentation.’ He placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘Close your mouth, Cat,’ he said affectionately before walking away.

‘Morning, Cat,’ said Andy Sutcliffe from Maillot. All Cat could do was nod and try to command her brain to close her mouth. ‘Thanks for your e-mail,’ Andy was continuing, ‘I’d love to have you and I can provide you with a few perks too. The Features Editorship is yours, Cat. Shall we discuss it after the presentation?’ Away he went.

Bloody hell, Cat. Two job offers within five minutes. The opportunity to move to the same country as Ben. By the chasm of your dropped jaw, I’d say you are positively gobsmacked. What are your immediate instincts? What do you think you’ll do? We know what Ben would say. But what about Fen and Pip and Django? So much food for thought you’ll get indigestion. But you have this time in Paris to muse. And whatever decision you make, the army of people who love you so, will furnish you with their support and best wishes.

I can’t think about any of this now. I must go – the presentation is about to start.

Guess who has a large lump in her throat when footage of the recent Tour de France is beamed on huge screens?

The unveiling of the route for next year’s Tour de France reveals a clockwise grande boucle with a sortie into Italy. Alps first, then Pyrenees. A whopping 3,850 kilometres. Twenty-one teams of nine riders will be invited to compete for the maillot à pois, the maillot vert and of course the golden fleece itself, the maillot jaune. Of the peloton, there will only be three or four serious contenders for overall victory and yet 189 riders will race their hearts out. Mont Ventoux. A Time Trial at Futuroscope. A Stage finish in Bordeaux. Cat has whispered to Josh that they simply must stay at Auberge Claudette, that she will book ahead next week.

Jules Le Grand, top to toe in Armani, sockless even in October, still tanned even in October, is in the audience with some of his riders and dignitaries from Système Vipère’s sponsors. He glances across to the Zucca MV directeur. His gaze is returned. Steadily. The gauntlet is thrown down. Fabian Ducasse is already planning how and when he will launch his offensive to claim the yellow jersey for himself, for the glory of Système Vipère, for the pride of his country whose great race this is.

Having now seen the route, Ben York is devising and revising training schedules with the Megapac directeur. Megapac won’t be a wildcard team next year. They have had a fabulous season and will be one of the sixteen teams automatically entitled to race. Rachel McEwen has requested that the route be faxed to her at the Zucca MV headquarters as soon as possible. Ever keen and conscientious, she wants to start making lists already.

It might just as well be July right now for Cat McCabe. She is already there, in her mind’s eye, travelling through some of the most stunning parts of France following a bunch of brave boys on bikes. She is under no illusions that it won’t be at times exhausting, stressful; often physically uncomfortable what with the heat, freak cold and an infernal selection of two-star motels. Her diet will be lousy. But if she stays off the brie and baguette from now till next July, she might just tolerate it on a daily basis for three weeks.

Cat McCabe can hardly wait. So many of her good friends will be there. Rachel to gossip with, Alex to be teased by, Josh always looking out for her. Maybe Fen and Pip will visit again, they might even bring Django this time. And of course Ben will be there, snatching time with her whenever possible, sharing beds that are often rickety, or too small or, once in a while, as at Auberge Claudette, near perfect. There is even the chance to retrace their trip to the dunes at Arcachon. Where it all began between the two of them. When Cat changed her life for the better. Vive le Tour.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Back in 1991, whilst zapping through TV channels, I came across a bunch of boys on bikes. I had no idea what they were doing exactly, nor why they would want to scale a mountain in blistering heat by bicycle. However, it was the most hypnotic, compelling sight to me and soon enough I was obsessed. To be allowed to indulge my passion by basing a novel around the greatest sporting event in the world, I owe deep gratitude to my wonderful editor and friend, Lynne Drew, and my incredible agent and friend Jonathan Lloyd.

To the Société du Tour de France, for welcoming me into the fold and affording me so many privileges, I am truly honoured and immensely grateful. Personnel at the time included Agnes Pierret, Pascal Thomas, John Lelangue, Sonia Barjou-Rousseau and a special mention for Sophie del Rizzo. Teun van Vliet, thanks for the ride – I think I left my stomach somewhere on the descent of the Madeleine.

I’m indebted to the riders who were so helpful and generous with their advice, memoirs and anecdotes. Enormous thanks to Chris Boardman, to David Millar, to Graham Jones. Also, to Stuart O’Grady, Magnus Backstedt, Jay Sweet and all the riders who let me witter on at the villages. At the US Postal team in general, many thanks to riders past and present: Viatcheslav Ekimov, JC Robin, George Hincapie, Tyler Hamilton and to Jonathan Vaughters for letting me sit in on his massage. I’m grateful to Johnny Weltz for memorable and informative rides in the team car, to mechanic Geoff Brown and PR Louise Donald. Also, to Jill Jemison for dispelling myths and for that restorative ice cream at the water’s edge in Aix-les-Bains. Much gratitude and love to Emma O’Reilly for incredible generosity with her frangipane and her time, both on and off duty – always a great craic.

In the salle de pressé, my thanks to all the journalists who were so friendly and helpful; in particular Sam Abt, Andy Hood, Leon Bignell, Michael Enggaard, Susanne Horsdal, Stephen Farrand, Alasdair Fotheringham, Graham Watson and Rob Lampard. Also Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen at Channel 4 and Simon Brotherton, Joanne Corrigan and Graham Jones (again) at Radio 5 Live. Also Christi and Phil Anderson, Shelley Verses and Greg LeMond.

Huge thanks to Sally Boardman, Peter Woodworth and all at Beyond Level 4. Much gratitude to all at Sports for Television and everyone involved with the Prutour, especially Alan Rushton, Rita Bellanca, John Herety, Tim Harris, Joscelin Ryan, Gerry Dawson and Clare Salmon. Thanks to numerous McQuaids, specifically Pat at the UCI, Kieren for driving me Stage 1 of the 1998 Tour and Ann for back issues and enthusiasm. Thanks, too, to Harry Gibbings and Simon Lillistone.

At Cycle Sport and Cycling Weekly, many thanks to Luke Evans, Keith Bingham, Phil O’Connor et al.

At Procycling, and Tour Live to William Fotheringham for increasing my understanding of the sport and keeping me constantly entertained; to Jeremy Whittle for his support and enthusiasm, for checking my facts and figures and for being such a good friend both in the salle de pressé and out; to Andy Sutcliffe, for sending me that clutch of magazines back in 1996, for letting me ferret through his address book when I was ready to start my research and for the permanent loan (!) of books, back issues, videos and other stuff – my deepest thanks to you all.

This book is dedicated to the memories of Tom Simpson (1937–1967) and Fabio Casartelli (1970–1995), both of whom lost their lives during the Tour de France. Having battled cancer, Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France in 1999 and, for me, he personifies the essence of this great sport, this spectacular race. Triumph over adversity. Man against mountain. Whatever that mountain might be.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation, PO Box 27483 Austin, Texas 75755, USA

AFTERWORD

In January 1996, after four years happily writing in a little vacuum of my own making, developing a tough skin to fend off rejection slips from publishers and ignoring friends and family pleading with me to ‘get a proper job’, the unbelievable happened. Lynne Drew (then editor at William Heinemann and my editor to this day) offered me a three book deal. I’d completed Sally, I was halfway through Chloë and Polly was all planned. Jonathan Lloyd (my agent then and now) and I went to meet Lynne and her team. They wanted to know all about the books. Well, I said, my first novel is about sex and shenanigans in North London, my second is about love and lust in the UK at large, the third is a rampant romp through England and New England. And Cat, I said, well my fourth novel is set on the Tour de France. They looked at me a little blankly. Lashings of lycra? I offered. Thighs to make you sigh? I ventured. They were sold.

I’m often asked about when it first sunk in that the unbelievable had happened and that I was being paid to write and was a Real Author. It wasn’t when I struck my deal – I felt compelled to continue working as a temp, fearful to tempt fate. It wasn’t when Sally was first published in November 1996, nor Chloë the following year. It wasn’t even when I returned to New England for Polly on my first, official, tax-deductible research trip. The thunderbolt struck me in the Spring of 1998, in Manchester. I was there to meet world champion and Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman – and it was possible not because I was a fan, but because I was a published author embarking on a novel set around his sport. Chris is an affable, down-to-earth chap – but when I spied him waiting in the hotel foyer, I had to nip into the Ladies to pinch myself and hyperventilate. The world had started to see me as a bone fide author – and, bizarrely, many people seemed as interested to meet me as I was to meet them.

For the next two summers, doors opened for me and access-all-areas passes were mine on the Tour de France itself. In fact, I set up quite a lucrative barter, trading cameo appearances in my novel for rides in team cars, being able to sit in on physio and massage, chats on team buses and a boogie at the end of Tour parties. Cat was the first of my novels which warranted an acknowledgments section at the back. Rereading it sparks vivid memories for me.

It was a very peculiar instance of life imitating art. I felt as if I was following in Cat’s footsteps rather than paving the way for her. I managed to secure commissions and felt just like Cat, sending copy back to the Sunday Times, the Guardian, Woman’s Hour and a couple of cycling mags too. I’ll never forget interviewing Magnus Backstedt for BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour – he generously sat with me in the village départ before the day’s stage began and we chatted for 15 minutes. Cheers, I said. You’d better get on your bike, I said. Have a good ride, I said. I didn’t, however, tell him I’d forgotten to switch on my Dictaphone.

Back then, prior to the Lance Armstrong years, the Salle de Presse was 1000 journalists, with very few English speakers and only 8 women. I was travelling with British journalist and writer Jeremy Whittle. We shared the driving and saved each other places in the press tent, we replenished coffees, grabbed the best on offer at the press buffets and gatecrashed Mario Cipollini’s toga party. I’m vegetarian – a concept the French resolutely refuse to embrace – so I ate a lot of baguette and a lot of omelette and a lot of Coeur de Lion cheese (one of the Tour sponsors). We stayed in some pretty grim motels – including one on the Belgian border where the rooms hadn’t been changed since the last guests checked out (some weeks previously, apparently). Planet Tour can be claustrophobic and surreal so I kept sane by running (many of the press take bikes with them and ride in the early mornings and evenings). I have an appalling sense of direction so I’d simply run in one direction for half an hour, stop, turn and run back.

It was boiling in Bordeaux and freezing in the Alps, it was raining in Pau and sun-drenched in Paris. Marco Pantani won that notorious 1998 Tour when the sport was blown apart by drugs scandals. Although he never tested positive, he was expelled from the Giro in 1999 because of irregular blood values. He became depressed and died from drug abuse in 2004.

Did I fall out of love with my sport while the doping scandals raged? Yes, I did a little. But I also know of the silent sighs of relief from other professional sportspeople that cycling had become the scapegoat. Cycling has the toughest doping controls of all sports – even an extra cup of coffee or spoonful of cough mixture can have a rider disqualified. But the more sophisticated the doping, the more frightening and depressing the consequences – not just for fair sport but for the health and lives of the riders too. I still watch the Tour avidly every year. I keep in touch with many of the people I met over a decade ago. But alongside marvelling at the peleton as it hoovers up the miles, scales extraordinary mountains and hurtles along trailing a blaze of colour and energy through France and school kids’ dreams, I do worry about those boys on bikes too. Vive le Tour.

Freya North
Spring 2012

Acclaim for Freya

‘Darkly funny and sexy – literary escapism at its very finest’

Sunday Independent

‘Secrets will make you smile, sigh and cheer as this story proves love can be found in the most unexpected places’

Sunday Express

‘… another sure-fire hit for Freya’

Heat

‘A breath of fresh air … fresh and witty’

Daily Express

‘A fab read’ Closer

‘Fast paced, page-turning and full of endearing, interesting characters. I defy anyone who doesn’t fall in love with it’

Glamour

‘Settle down and indulge’

Cosmopolitan

‘The novel’s likeable central characters are so well painted that you feel not only that you know them, but that you know how right they are for each other … the beauty of the North Yorkshire countryside contrasts convincingly with the bustle of London’

Daily Telegraph

‘North charts the emotional turmoil with a sexy exactitude’

Marie Claire

‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals with the darker side of love – these are real women, with real feelings’

She

‘A delicious creation … sparkling in every sense’

Daily Express

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship’

Glamour

‘Plenty that’s fresh to say about the age-old differences between men and women’

Marie Claire

‘An eye-poppingly sexy start leads into a family reunion laced with secrets. Tangled mother/daughter relationships unravel and tantalising family riddles keep you glued to the end’

Cosmopolitan

‘You’ll laugh, cry, then laugh some more’

Company

‘Freya North manages to strike a good balance between drama, comedy and romance, and has penned another winner … touching, enjoyable’

Heat

‘An addictive read with a realistic view of home life, sisterhood and identity crisis’

Prima

FREYA NORTH

Fen

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by
William Heinemann 2001

Copyright © Freya North 2001

Afterword © Freya North 2012

Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Sigmund Freud @ Copyrights, The Institute of Psycho-Analysis and The Hogarth Press or permission to quote from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud translated and edited by James Strachey. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

Source ISBN: 9780007462216

EPub Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462223

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For Felix
The only boy for me

Contents

Cover

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Epilogue

Afterword

Acclaim for Freya

PROLOGUE

Always keep in touch with nature, always try to get close to your model.

Auguste Rodin

Paris 1889

Julius Fetherstone had absolutely no need to sketch Cosima Antoine. Having met her, just the once, six days previously, and having fallen in love with her immediately, he knew her features off by heart instantly. Julius could have created a portrait bust of Cosima with his eyes closed. Literally. For, whenever he closed his eyes, there she was soliciting his every thought, setting his senses on fire, firing his artistic desire.

So it was a deplorable double con. Professionally, he had no need to see Cosima again. Ever. Whether commissioned or not, he would have been sculpting her. Again and again. Now he was charging his patron, her fiancé Jacques, more than he’d ever dared ask for a portrait bust. The fee would clear the debt to his landlady that a placating fuck every Thursday had done so far. More than just pay the rent and preclude further unsavoury carnal commerce; it would also keep him in clay and casting for a good long while. But far more valuable than the financial gains, Cosima’s image, imprinted in his soul, was now destined to provide source material for all future works.

He need never see her again. As he flipped through his sketch-book of the last week, her features stared back at him from every page apart from one with his copy of the new Manet he’d seen on display in the Salon des Indépendants and another with a charcoal of a maquette by his master, Rodin. But Cosima dominated all other pages. No further analysis today could make any portrait more complete than these done from memory, from knowing someone for less than twenty minutes. Yet in half an hour, she’d be at his studio and he’d be given carte blanche, plus a sizeable purse, just to stare at her.

Cosima Antoine was herself about to deceive her fiancé and con the sculptor. Julius Fetherstone had dominated her thoughts, asleep and awake, for the last six days. She told herself she was not in love with him because love was a state that should be avoided at all costs. She had decided this from an early age when witnessing how her mother’s love for her father was rebuffed by his compulsive infidelities with a succession of maids, friends and young cousins. No, Cosima told herself she was not in love with the brooding British sculptor, but feelings for him she certainly had. For her fiancé, she had no feelings, rather she had reasons. He would be a good man to marry. He would make a good husband. He would make a good father to her children. Sometimes, she found all that inherent goodness just a little unsavoury, but Cosima could cope because still the dark places in her heart and mind were free to take her wherever she pleased. And now her fiancé was taking her to the sculptor, walking her to a place where her fantasies of the past week might just take solid form.

Never had Paris looked so beautiful. It was autumn, leaves on trees were burnished bronze and breathtaking, those underfoot crunched and disintegrated most satisfyingly. The October sun, rosy and mellow, infiltrated her body and brought a rare warmth to her soul which saw her nodding politely at the inane witterings of her fiancé, though she chose not to hear a word.

‘I think we should ask Monsieur Fetherstone what he feels about a hat,’ Jacques was saying. ‘I think it would be most avant-garde for a portrait sculpture to be crowned by a hat. Otherwise, it might be like any old bust. We need to define you. To have a sculpture that says “1889; Cosima Antoine at twenty years old”.’

Cosima nodded thoughtfully; glad she had decided to leave the house hatless despite her fiancé’s concern and her maid’s horror.

There is absolutely no need for Cosima to undress. Julius has not asked her to, nor has she offered. They have simply exchanged cordial salutations and she has calmly walked over to the carved wooden screen in the corner of his studio. She has slipped behind it, unhooking her clothing as she goes.

‘I won’t be a moment,’ she says.

‘That’s fine,’ he replies, loosening his cravat with one hand, unbuttoning his trousers with the other.

Naked but for his loose, damask shirt, he folds the window shutters almost closed, affording his studio privacy as well as investing it with sultry shadows. October sun seeps through, licking all it touches with melancholy gold; a visual swansong of summer edged with the faintest prelude of forthcoming winter. He pads, barefoot, across the rug, closing his eyes to feel the transition between fabric ending and the well-worn, warm run of smooth old floorboards. He recalls how floorboards in Derbyshire, at the height of summer, were never as warm and welcoming as these in Paris in autumn. One more reason never to return. The other, just then, appears from behind the screen and time is suspended for Julius.

Ten twenty-two, the first Wednesday in October, 1889.

He, Julius Fetherstone, is wide awake in dream-time.

The briefest glimpse of Cosima’s nudity would have sufficed. Instead, she is walking over to him, fantastically naked. His senses are ablaze; his past, his twenty-three years until this moment, have lasted but a blink. His future will be governed by his ability to savour the present.

They stand, a foot apart, staring at each other. They have not touched but the heat emanating from their bodies seems to meet and merge. They have not kissed, but their lips are as wet as if they have. He stares at her. This body before him, the flesh and muscle, the curves and hair, is the composite of all his fantasies to date and will constitute the standard for all future fantasies. She can be everything. Angel–virgin–whore–wife.

Cosima takes her fingertips to his face and hovers them over his lips. His mouth parts and she can feel his breath on her fingers. He licks his lips and her fingertips are caught, like bees to honey paper. His tongue flicks over them. His hands encircle her waist and pull her against him. She brushes her now damp fingers over his cheek and down, so that she cups the back of his neck, dragging his hair between her fingers. Her other hand she takes to his chest, slipping behind the cotton of his shirt to meet his skin. He makes to kiss her but she turns her face at the last moment.

‘How long do we have?’ he breathes.

‘How long does a portrait take a sculptor these days?’ she asks, quite loudly, with a sly smile.

‘I need a day,’ he says, ‘that’s what I told your – him.’

‘Jacques,’ she states.

‘Jacques,’ he confirms.

‘My fiancé,’ she elaborates.

‘Your fiancé,’ he verifies.

‘Who,’ she says, licking her top teeth, ‘is commissioning my portrait in bronze.’

‘As a celebration of your impending union,’ he states.

‘So,’ she says coyly, ‘I suppose there was no need for me to undress?’ She eases Julius’s shirt over his shoulders and away.

‘No need at all,’ he confirms, skimming his hands up from her waist to her breasts. He places a thumb over each of her nipples and rubs small circles. The sound of her gasp causes his eyes to close and he sinks his mouth against hers, their tongues talking passion while their bodies begin to taste each other.

Since arriving in Paris three years ago, Julius Fetherstone has had sex with four prostitutes, two wealthy clients his senior by extremes, one of the studio models, and his landlady – coupling with whom is a necessity in lieu of rent, but necessitates closed eyes throughout. This afternoon, though, with Cosima, sex is different. New. They are both virgins together. Exploring and experiencing pleasures that are a taste, a smell, a sensation. At times tender, at others lewd, they fuck and make love, alternating seamlessly between the two, all afternoon.

At four thirty, he comes inside her one final time and they sleep for half an hour on the rug. When they awake, she walks calmly over to the screen and dresses. Barefoot, but in his shirt again, he folds the shutters back. The sun has gone. It surprises him. The studio had radiated such heat, appeared to be bathed in brilliance, time standing still. Cosima appears from the screen, neatly dressed. She sits demurely on the high stool and obediently turns her face this way and that at Julius’s command. He does not lift a pencil. He spends an hour just looking at her.

‘That’s fine,’ he declares, folding down the cover on the blank sheets.

‘I shall marry Jacques,’ Cosima proclaims, still holding her pose and looking out of the window. ‘He is rich and kind and he treasures me.’

‘I wish you happiness and health,’ Julius says, but he says it quietly. It doesn’t seem fair. Timing is lousy. He meets a mesmerizing woman, but she is betrothed to another to whom, ultimately, Julius is beholden.

‘Now that I have had you,’ Cosima adds, a breath of softness to her voice, ‘I can say that I truly want to marry Jacques. For whatever may be, however my life will unfurl, I will always have the memory of today.’

‘And now that I have had you,’ Julius clears his throat, ‘every time I sculpt a nude, your body will be at its core. Every time I model a pair of breasts, or carve the lips of a cunt, I will be feeling you again.’

‘Jacques arrives,’ Cosima whispers, taking her gaze from the window to the sculptor.

‘Goodbye, Cosima,’ says Julius.

‘Goodbye, Monsieur Fetherstone,’ says Cosima.

ONE

Art has the objective of leading us to the knowledge of ourselves.

Gustave Courbet

The lurcher, who appeared to be wearing a 1970s Astrakhan coat dug from the bottom of a jumble-sale pile, strolled nonchalantly up to the McCabes. The dog regarded Pip McCabe cursorily, expressed mild interest in Cat McCabe’s plate of food and then thrust its snout emphatically, and wholly uninvited, into Fen McCabe’s crotch. When Django McCabe, the girls’ uncle, roared with laughter, the dog took one look at him, at his genuine 1970s Astrakhan waistcoat, and lay down at his feet with a sigh of humble deference. The dog’s tail, like a length of rope that had been in water too long, made a movement more akin to a dying snake than a wag.

‘Barry!’

The dog’s owner, whose exasperation suggested this was a regular occurrence over which he had no control, gave a whistle. The dog leapt up, seemed as startled by the McCabes as they were by him, and swayed on four spindly legs as if trying to remember whence his owner’s voice had come. The solution – to escape, to feign deafness – seemed to lie in Fen’s crotch. This time, he attempted to bury his entire head there, as if hoping that if he couldn’t see a thing, no one else could see him.

‘Barry! Good God!’

Reluctantly, Barry could not deny that his owner’s voice was now very near and very cross. He extracted his face from his hiding place, gave Fen a reproachful look, dipped his spine submissively and slunk to his master’s heels, out of the pub and, no doubt, into disgrace in the back of a Land Rover.

‘He comes from a broken home,’ the owner said on his way out, by way of explanation, or apology. ‘Derbyshire via Battersea.’

Django McCabe, who’d brought up his three, Batterseaborn nieces single-handedly in Derbyshire, nodded sympathetically. Pip and Cat McCabe thought they ought to close their mouths (especially as Pip still had some steak-and-kidney pie to swallow). Man and dog left, Pip swallowed. Cat gulped.

‘I thought dogs were meant to look like their owners,’ Cat said incredulously. ‘There’s justice in the world that he looks nothing like his dog!’

‘Be still, my beating heart!’ said Pip theatrically.

‘Country squire?’ Cat mused.

‘Farmer needs a wife?’ Pip responded.

Fen hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. She’d had her back to the man throughout. ‘I’d love a dog,’ she said, ‘but I’d settle for one sculpted by Sophie Ryder or Nicola Hicks in the meantime.’

‘Jesus, Fen,’ Pip sighed, pressing the back of her hand against her forehead, ‘can you not retrain your eye to appreciate the finer points of real life?’

‘Pardon?’ Fen looked at her sister, and then assessed the level of liquid in Pip’s pint of cider, as well as that in her own. ‘Django?’ Fen turned to her uncle for support. Django, however, puffing away on his old meerschaum pipe, regarded her quizzically.

‘Fenella McCabe is a lost cause,’ Cat asserted, arranging peanuts into complex configurations on the table. ‘She’s studied as an Art Historian for far too long—’

‘—and had one too many disasters in love—’ Pip continued her sister’s sentence, picking peanuts from Cat’s pattern.

‘—to allow her eye to appreciate the merits of any man now not hewn from marble,’ Cat went on.

‘—or cast in bronze,’ Pip added for good measure, forming the remaining peanuts into a ‘P’.

‘Django!’ Fen implored her uncle, with theatrical supplication, to come to her rescue and defend her from her goading sisters.

Django merely tapped his pipe on the heel of his shoe and gave Fen a smile. ‘I think another pint,’ he remarked, ‘is the order of the day.’

‘You’ll have us sloshed,’ Pip enthused, looking at her watch. To be sipping very good cider in their uncle’s local, in Derbyshire, at half three on a Saturday afternoon in March, seemed a very good idea.

‘Nonsense!’ Django said, as if offended by the remark. ‘I’ve brought you girls up not to fear alcohol – the fact that you’ve known the taste of drink since you were tiny means, I do believe, that it has no mystique.’ He popped his pipe into the breast pocket of his waistcoat and went to the bar.

Fen McCabe watched her uncle wend his way, his passage hampered by the number of people whom he met and talked to en route.

Funny old Django, his attire so out of kilter amongst the flat caps, waxed jackets and sensible footwear. I mean, it’s not just the waistcoat – he’s teamed it with a Pucci neckerchief today, and truly ghastly shirt that wouldn’t look amiss on some country-and-western crooner. Jeans so battered and war-torn they’d have done Clint Eastwood proud, plus a pair of quite ghastly cowboy boots that shouldn’t see the light of day in Texas, let alone Derbyshire. And yet; Django McCabe, who came to Derbyshire via Surrey and Paris and had three small nieces from Battersea foisted upon him, is now as indigenous as the drystone walls. He fits in, in Farleymoor. Like he suited Soho when he was a jazz musician. But he fitted his life around us when we came to live with him. He’s barking mad and he’s the most important man in my life.

‘If our mother hadn’t run off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Fen said, ‘but if our dad had still had the heart attack, do you think we might have been brought up by Django anyway?’

This was a conundrum upon which each girl had mused frequently, though never in earshot of Django.

‘I would guess,’ Cat said measuredly, though she was merely giving back to Fen a theory her older sister had once given to her, ‘that the whole “cowboy-Denver-I’m-off” thing was probably a key ingredient in his heart attack.’

‘Sometimes,’ Pip reflected, ‘I feel a bit guilty for not caring in the slightest about my mother and not really remembering my father.’

‘I’ve never envied anyone with a conventional family,’ Fen remarked, ‘in fact, I felt slightly sorry for them.’

‘I used to wonder what on earth their lives were like for want of a Django,’ Pip said.

‘Me too,’ Cat agreed.

‘Do you remember when Susie Bailey hid in the old stable, made herself a kind of hide-out from Django’s old canvases?’ Fen laughed.

‘And her mum had to promise her that she’d make Django’s midnight-feast recipe of spaghetti with chocolate sauce, marshmallows and a slosh of brandy!’ Pip reminisced.

‘Do you remember friends’ houses?’ Cat said. ‘All that boring normal food? Structured stilted supper-time conversation? Designated programmes to watch on TV? Bedtime, lights out, no chatter?’

‘Django McCabe,’ Fen marvelled. ‘Do you think we’re a credit to him? Do you think we do him proud? That we are who we are, that we’re not boring old accountants?’

‘Or housewives,’ Cat interjected.

‘Or couch potatoes,’ Pip added.

‘Or socially inept,’ Cat said.

‘I’m sure he’s delighted that my career entails me being a clown called Martha rather than an executive in some horrid advertising agency,’ Pip said hopefully.

Django returned, his huge hands encircling four pint glasses. ‘Philippa McCabe,’ he boomed, ‘every night I pray to gods of all known creeds and a fair few I make up, that you will be phoning to tell me of your new position as a junior account manager on the Domestos Bleach account.’

Pip raised her glass to him.

‘And you, Catriona McCabe,’ Django continued, his eyes rolling to the ceiling, while he produced, from pockets in his waistcoat that the girls never knew existed, packets of peanuts and pork scratchings, ‘speed the day when you trade your job as a sports columnist for a career in the personnel department of a lovely company making air filters or cardboard tubing.’

Cat took a hearty sip of cider and grinned.

‘Fenella McCabe,’ Django regarded her, ‘how long must I wait before you exchange a dusty archive in the bowels of the Tate Gallery for the accounts department of a financial services company? And the three of you! The three of you! Why oh why have I been unable, as yet, to marry any of you off?’ He clutched his head in his hands, sighed and downed over half his pint.

Fen laughed. ‘Hey! I’ve only just landed this job. I’m going to spend my days with Julius!’

‘Oh Jesus,’ Cat wailed, finding solace in cider, ‘Julius.’

‘Bloody Julius,’ Pip remonstrated, chinking glasses with Cat.

‘Oh Lord, not that Fetherstone chap,’ Django exclaimed, rubbing his eyebrows, letting his head drop; a strand of his silver hair which had escaped his pony-tail dipping into his pint, ‘please, dear girl, please fall in love with a man who is at least alive.’

‘Who’s to say,’ Cat mused, ‘that while you’re waiting for the right bloke to come along, you can’t have lots of fun with all the wrong ones!’

‘Please,’ Fen remonstrated but with good humour, ‘my new job starts tomorrow.’ She regarded her two sisters and her uncle. ‘One for which I was head-hunted,’ she emphasized. She ate a peanut thoughtfully, took a sip of cider and looked out of the pub window to the moors. ‘So, my life wants for nothing at the moment.’

TWO

Julius Fetherstone (1866–1954) arrived in Paris in 1886 at the age of 20. There, he begged, bargained and all but bribed his way into the studio of Auguste Rodin, for whom he worked as a technician in return for materials and tutelage. However, though the great Master esteemed his foreign pupil, Julius was never truly accepted by the French who firmly believed, at the exclusion of all visual evidence to the contrary, that the English could no more sculpt than they could cook. When Julius returned to England for a one-man-show in 1935, the British art world looked the other way. ‘Vulgar in theme and execution’ was the The Times review in its entirety. Only 3 works were bought, all of them by Henry Holden. Holden became something of a patron to Julius until the sculptor’s death in 1954.

F.A.McCabe
Unpublished MA thesis

Fen McCabe first came across Abandon by Julius Fetherstone four days after losing her virginity at the age of eighteen. She was in Munich, on her A level Art History study trip when she found herself transfixed by a mass of bronze depicting two figures embroiled in the very moment of orgasm. To her humiliation and regret, it made her realize that the fumbling poke she had recently endured was utterly at odds with what the experience obviously should have been.

From that point on, Fen has been obsessed with the sculptor and his work. On her return from Munich, she unceremoniously dumped the virginity-taker and spent eighteen months apparently celibate. In body at least. However, the more she studied Fetherstone’s work, the more she analysed his drawing and physically handled his sculptures, the more worldly she became. She studied the fall of light on mass, the relationship between form and space. She also learnt about the tension that intertwining figures could create. She came to understand how bodies could stretch to accommodate both their own desire and that of another. She discovered how the sensation of orgasm could manifest itself in facial expression, the throw of a neck, the twist of the stomach, the flail of arms, the jut of a breast, the buck of buttocks.

She devoted both her Bachelor and Master degree theses to Fetherstone, resolutely ignoring her tutors’ advice that she stand back from the material and certainly refrain from referring to the sculptor by his Christian name.

She fantasized about being the woman in Abandon. She forsook film stars as masturbatory stimulus in favour of the image of the male in Abandon. She looked forward to the day or night when she too could enjoy a coupling commensurate with that of the bronze figures; when she would be seduced to a state of abandon by the desire for, and of, such a man. Consequently, she spurned the advances of a relatively long queue of students who all fell short of her ideal. Too puny. Or too gym-induced beefy. Too uncouth. Too affected.

In her mid-twenties, two men came close; but the reluctance of the first to commit and then Fen’s reluctance to commit to the second, rang the death knell on both. Now, at twenty-eight, Fen is single. She isn’t spending much time looking for a partner, nor is she losing sleep over the situation. After all, would a man enhance her life that much? It’s rather good as it is, in Chalk Farm, North London, where she rents a terraced house with damp and with two friends, bohemian neighbours and her two sisters nearby. Life’s busy with her new job and her bi-monthly lectures at the Courtauld and Tate galleries, which she gives voluntarily. No time for romance and all its panoply. Yes, she recently bought a pine double bed from Camden Lock market, with a king-size duvet for added luxury. However, the wink wink nudge nudging from her housemates met with her rebuttal.

‘Hasn’t it come to your attention,’ she told them, ‘that our landlord sees fit to provide us with mattresses apparently filled with sand and gravel which, in places, congeal into concrete?’

Monday morning, the first of April. After sleeping undisturbed through the last night of March, Fen awakes and finds herself sprawled at a luxurious diagonal across her bed. With Radio 4 making her reverie all the more civilized, she cocoons herself in her duvet and stares at the window, whose frame is clearly visible through flimsy curtains. Pinch and a punch for the first of the month. What kind of idiot starts a new job on April Fool’s Day, Fen wonders as she gazes across her room?

After Thought for the Day, which Fen doesn’t think much of today, she leaves her bed and checks her reflection in the mirror.

My hair needs a wash. What do I feel like wearing? What ought I to wear? Do I dress for the weather? Or for the job?

She peers out through the curtains but soon enough she forsakes meteorological reasoning (it’s sunny and bright) for sky gazing instead. But that gets her nowhere so she goes to her cupboard and looks inside. Then she looks from the palm of her left hand to the palm of her right, as if reading one theory and then another, pros and cons; an idiosyncrasy that she knows causes friends and family much mirth and sometimes irritation, but which provides Fen with the answers she seeks. She regards her left hand.

It’s April, it’s positively spring-like. Time for my Agnès B skirt – bought in the sale and worn only once so far.

She looks at her right hand.

I’m an archivist. My office is to be a small room of dusty papers, acid-free boxes, brass paper-clips and shelving with sharp edges. There’ll be no one to see me in Agnès B.

She dons jeans.

‘I’ve hardly slept,’ Abi moans, sitting at the table-cum-storage-surface in the sitting-room-cum-dining-room, rubbing the small of her back and rolling her head cautiously from side to side, ‘bloody bloody bed.’

‘Ditto,’ Gemma says drowsily from the settee, holding a mug of hot tea, her eyes, though partially hidden by her mass of dark curls, drawn to breakfast TV with the volume off. ‘God, my head. Why do I invariably start the week as I end it – with a hangover? Why don’t I learn?’

‘I slept like a babe,’ says Fen, who has appeared at the foot of the stairs, ‘and awoke to a room spic, span and fragrant with Shake ’n’ Vac.’

Abi and Gemma regard their housemate, who looks annoyingly fresh herself both in countenance and clothing.

‘Take your halo—’ Abi starts.

‘—and shove it!’ Gemma concludes.

Fen grins and makes much of sashaying past both of them en route to the kitchen. ‘Toast?’

‘Can’t eat a thing,’ Gemma groans, ‘bloody hungover.’

‘Can’t eat a thing,’ Abi bemoans, ‘bloody on a diet.’

Fen returns with heavily buttered toast and takes a seat at the table next to Abi, balancing the plate on a pile of CDs which are themselves atop a heap of Sunday papers.

‘It’s one of life’s great injustices,’ Abi decrees, glowering at Fen’s plate, ‘that you basically have toast with your butter and you’re still slim and spot free. Bitch. I hate you.’

‘Hate you too,’ Fen says with her mouth full. The two of them sit affably and procrastinate over 14 Across in Saturday’s Guardian crossword.

‘And me,’ Gemma chips in, having been momentarily distracted by the weather girl’s quite staggering choice of lipstick, ‘I hate you.’

‘Hate you,’ Abi stresses non-specifically.

‘Hate you,’ Fen says with no malice and to no one in particular.

‘Hate hate you,’ Gemma recapitulates. And then they all laugh and sigh and say oh God, what are we like? Sigh some more and moan about Monday mornings.

‘Are we going to Snips this evening?’ Fen asks.

‘Yup. Every sixth week at six o’clock,’ Abi confirms.

‘Do you think it a bit odd,’ Gemma wonders, though her eyes are caught by TV presenters doing extraordinary things with sarongs, ‘our obsession with little rituals?’

‘It makes sense to have a communal outing to the hairdressers,’ Abi shrugs, analysing her housemates’ hair: Gemma’s ebony ringlets, Fen’s dark blonde long-top-crop. She twists pinches of her own hair, bleached and razor-cut short into pixie-like perfection. ‘It’s all about synchronization. What’s the point of spending time apart on the mundanities, when we can actually make them something of an institution?’

‘What, even the dentist?’ Gemma asks, turning away from the television, the sight of cooking in a bright studio kitchen making her decidedly queasy. ‘And leg waxing?’

‘Which reminds me,’ Abi says, stroking her calves.

‘Not yet!’ protests Gemma, for whom the pain of a leg wax is on a par with her fear of the dentist.

‘How did we manage to coincide our periods?’ Fen wonders, dabbing at toast crumbs and thinking she could do with another slice, were there another slice left to toast.

‘That’ll be the Moon Goddess,’ Abi says, very earnestly. ‘We’ll dance in her honour next time we’re on Primrose Hill.’

‘Abi,’ says Gemma, ‘you need help.’

‘I’m not going to bother to wash mine this morning then,’ says Fen.

‘Wash what?’ the other two shriek.

‘My hair – if we’re going to Snips.’ Fen fingers her locks gingerly. ‘Anyway,’ she reasons, ‘who’s going to see me in my little archive? Just a bunch of dead artists and benefactors.’

‘Are you excited?’ Abi asks, excited for her friend.

‘Nervous?’ Gemma asks, nervous for her friend.

Fen upends her right palm. ‘Nervous? Yes,’ she says. Then she upends her left palm. ‘Excited? Yes,’ she says. Then she clicks her fingers and punches the air: ‘But I get to have Julius all to myself!’

‘Bloody Julius,’ mutters Abi, when Fen has shut the front door behind her.

‘Bloody Julius,’ murmurs Gemma. ‘Fancy fancying a dead sculptor.’

Abi sighs. ‘It’s not the dead sculptor she’s obsessed with but some lump of marble he made in the shape of two people having a shag.’

‘Our Fen is way overdue a bonk,’ Gemma reasons.

‘So am I,’ Abi rues.

Gemma counts the months off on her fingers. ‘Er, and me.’

‘Maybe we should set aside some time and synchronize,’ says Abi.

THREE

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart, ’Tis woman’s whole existence.

Byron

Oh God. Oh Gawd. Oh Jesus. Matthew Holden has just woken up. The start to the day, to the week, could not be much worse. He has a hangover. He has a bad taste in his mouth. He’s late for work. And his ex-girlfriend is lying in bed next to him. With a contented smile on her sleeping face. He has a very bad taste in his mouth indeed. He tries closing his eyes but realizes that to stare at the ceiling, at the blooms of new paint on top of old, is far preferable to confronting all the current hassles of his life which parade around his mind’s eye as soon as his eyelids touch. Wake up. But he’s so damn tired. Wake up. Stay awake. Force eyes open. Monday. Monday. April Fool’s Day. Only this is no joke. No prank. He’s been a fool, full stop. It would be easier to just go back to sleep, slip into nothingness, to will it all to be a bad dream. However, while sleep might be a good antidote to his raging hangover, it won’t actually remedy the situation in hand or make it any less real. In fact, he’d have to wake again and do the whole oh God oh Gawd oh Jesus thing once more.

He daren’t move. Memory tells him that if he does, she’ll reach for him, claim him with encircling arms and clamping legs. Never let him go.

I wanted to get away.

The severity of his sigh is pronounced enough for her to turn to him, wrapping her limbs around him. She sighs herself. Triumphant.

Oh God. Oh Gawd. Oh Jesus no.

And then the phone starts to ring and Matt has an escape route though he knows in an instant that it is Jake’s mobile phone. He slithers from his bed and hurries through the flat, very naked.

Jake had, of course, answered his mobile phone. Jake was also late for work. But at least he was dressed. Jake just had a hangover, no ex-girlfriend in his bed. Not today. He had, in fact, bedded Matt’s ex-girlfriend. Quite recently. But never again. And not that Matt was to know. Certainly not today. Matt slumped into the armchair, placed a cushion over his dick and stuck two fingers up at Jake’s superciliously raised eyebrow. He couldn’t remember whether the clock on the mantelpiece was five minutes slow or five minutes fast. Whichever, he was categorically late. Jake had finished on the phone. He let his eyebrows soften though he refused to erase the vestiges of a smirk from his face. He sat down on the sofa. Though dressed, he placed a cushion across his crotch in a gesture of camaraderie.

‘Julia’s in my bed,’ Matt groaned, head in hands.

‘April Fool?’ Jake asked, in a vaguely hopeful way. Matt shook his head and cast his eyes to the ceiling. Only, unlike that in his bedroom, it had been replastered and repainted fairly recently and there were no hairline cracks or nuances of old against new paint to provide any welcome distraction.

Neutral nothingness.

It was realizing that I felt neutral nothingness that saw me finish a five-year relationship two months ago.

‘I could say,’ Jake mused, looking out of the window and deciding that it appeared to be spring-like enough to roll up shirtsleeves, ‘you’ve made your bed, now you must sleep in it.’

‘And my only reply would be, “I can’t, my ex-girlfriend is sprawled all over it”,’ Matt groaned.

‘How on earth did it happen?’ asked Jake.

Matt looked at him and couldn’t resist giving an elaborate, if quite medical, description of the sex act.

‘Really?’ Jake marvelled, playing along. ‘You put your weenie where?’

‘In a lady’s front bottom,’ Matt joshed.

‘How the hell did it happen?’ Jake asked again, seriously, stroking his goatee contemplatively.

Matt shook his head, shrugged and made a knocking-back-of-glasses motion before scratching his tufty cropped hair. ‘Oh God,’ he groaned, ‘oh Gawd. I’m late for work. Jesus.’

Clean, dry, if crumpled clothing in the washer-dryer provided Matt with no reason to go back to his bedroom. He dressed in the kitchen, hopping around trying to wriggle crumb-soled feet into odd socks. Shoes. Shoes? Matt had a rather sizeable shoe collection. But they were all under his bed. Jake had an enviable selection himself. Distributed quite evenly around the various rooms in their flat. Matt honed in on a pair of smart loafers behind the hi-fi.

‘Can I?’

‘What! My Patrick Cox? With those trousers?’

‘Excuse me – they’re Paul Smith, thank you.’

‘Well, that’s fine then.’

‘Cheers, mate.’

Though Jake could barely function without being fuelled by a hefty injection of caffeine, he left the cafetière full and smelling gorgeous so he could leave the flat with Matt. He didn’t want to be alone with a sobbing girl, nustling up to his neck, pleading for comfort and affection, advice and inside information. If he answered her direct questions with direct answers, she’d cry and nustle and need comfort and affection all the more. If he didn’t, she’d believe there was still a chance to rekindle the relationship with Matt. And he couldn’t do that to Matt. Plus, quietly, he found weeping women craving affection and comfort rather difficult to resist. And how she had sobbed that day a month or so ago. And they’d ended up in bed. And all the while, deludedly, he’d told himself he was performing not just a selfless act, but a charitable one which was useful too. He was doing it for Julia. He was doing it for Matt. A good distraction. Get her off his case. Help her get over him. Proof for her that she’s attractive to other men. Bla bla. Etcetera. When he had come, however, he had come to the more fitting conclusion.

Big mistake. Bad idea.

The two men stopped for bagels and coffee en route to Angel tube. Nourished by the former and woken up by the latter, they chatted.

‘Oh God,’ said Matt, ‘why, why, why?’

‘I’d’ve done the same, mate,’ said Jake.

‘But what now?’

‘Dunno? Give up drinking?’

‘You what?’

‘Celibacy?’

‘You what?’

‘Find a distraction,’ Jake concluded. ‘You can’t go on the rebound with your ex-girlfriend. It defeats the object of the exercise. You need a good old zipless fuck.’ Jake was rather proud of such logic despite his hangover and juggling a bagel, a coffee and a ringing mobile phone.

‘Who was that?’ Matt asked, when Jake had finished the call.

‘Your ex-girlfriend,’ Jake said, ‘asking me if she could stay at ours. That she’d clean the flat and have dinner awaiting our return from work. Asked whether she thought you’d like her to iron all your shirts. And change your sheets.’

‘Oh Jesus,’ Matt moaned, losing his appetite and throwing the bagel away, the coffee too – knowing nothing could help a headache whose provenance was now not alcohol driven.

‘Hey, Matt,’ Jake called, as they headed for their separate platforms.

Matt turned.

‘April Fool!’ Jake laughed, winking and making to pull an imaginary pistol. ‘It was just Jim on the phone. About five-a-side on Thursday.’

‘Wanker!’ Matt mouthed very clearly.

I did love her. Really love her. I was madly in love with her, for a while, way back when. But it faded. I didn’t really love her at all towards the end. I guess I kept hanging on in there because I was in love with the idea of it all. That it seemed easier to stay together than to split up. On a practical and emotional level. We went through months of arguing. And then months of indifference. Which was worse?

Matt! Pimlico station. You’re about to miss your tube stop.

Splitting up hurt. Though it was something that, amongst the acrimony and indifference, had seemed like a good idea, it still hurt. I was afraid that the decision was wrong. It took some getting used to, but I never actually missed her. Not Julia herself. Her position in my life, yes. The familiarity of having her, yes. But her? In person? No.

Matt! It’s a red pedestrian light and there’s a double-decker haring along Vauxhall Bridge Road towards you.

Oh God. Last night. It happened but it can’t happen again. Shit. It happened and it can’t happen again. Jake is right. I should take a leaf out of his book. Dip in here and there. Just like he does. Dips his dick here and there. No relationship-incumbent panoply. Have a laugh. Be light-hearted. I’m twenty-nine. Thirty soon. Rebound? Sure, whatever.

You’ve arrived at the Trust Art offices, Matt. And you’re following Fen McCabe along the corridor. You have no idea who she is. You’re too preoccupied to really notice anyway. You’re late. Not very seemly for the editor of the Trust’s bimonthly magazine, Art Matters. Don’t make a habit of it.

FOUR

Fen McCabe firmly believes one should trust art because art matters. Henry Holden, who died sixteen years ago aged eighty-three, founded Trust Art in 1938 specifically to enable national art institutions to acquire works of modern art by grant, bequest or gift. Since his death, the Trust has published a bi-monthly magazine, Art Matters. Fen is unsure whether this is Happy Coincidence or Fate though she has consulted her left palm and right for an answer. She thinks it has to be more than coincidence and fate that the man who founded the organization for which she now works also championed Julius Fetherstone, befriending the artist in the 1930s, buying his works and bequeathing them to British galleries. Fen feels that Henry Holden is somehow passing the baton on to her. Lucky Julius. Safe hands.

Along with the Arts Council and the National Art Collections Fund, Trust Art ensures that works of art which may otherwise be sold overseas, are given homes in galleries and museums in Great Britain and the Commonwealth. It has stayed true to its original aim of saving modern art for the nation.

Originally, Henry Holden was the only salaried member of staff. The other six workers were volunteers and all but one were the eyelash-fluttering sisters of his Oxford rowing fraternity; the odd one out being the mother of the cox. They were all utterly in love with Henry. All had double-barrel led surnames, flats in SW Somewhere and places ‘in the country’. Trust Art now employs fourteen people, of whom three are part-time and three are volunteers. Continuing the tradition, these three are minor aristocracy.

Trust Art has long been housed in a clutch of rooms which are part of the labyrinthine network in Tate Britain’s back buildings. Not for them the prestigious Millbank address or approach. You cannot see the Thames from Trust Art’s offices; the view from the John Islip Street windows is of the nicely maintained mansion blocks. There’s little more than a sandwich bar and a newsagent nearby and the shops at Victoria necessitate a veritable march; consequently little more than brief window-shopping during a lunch-hour is possible. Fen is quite relieved that most her earnings will see their way into her bank account, and not be squandered on some impulsive lunch-time purchase, as Gemma’s and Abi’s invariably are.

Fen had arrived at her new job a full quarter of an hour before her contractual start time. And that was with a delay in a tunnel just after Camden Town. There was a veritable welcome brigade awaiting her. If she analysed the palm of her left hand, she was really rather embarrassed by the fuss. Her right hand, however, said that she was quietly rather flattered. Amongst the croissants and coffee set out in the boardroom-cum-library, Fen soon realized that it was all at the whim of Rodney Beaumont, the director of Trust Art; not so much to welcome her as to indulge himself. Consequently, watching him tuck into pastries and talk animatedly about anything but shop with his staff, made Fen feel much less conspicuous. And it was nice to meet the fourteen staff who, it soon occurred to Fen, were as diverse as the art the Trust was saving for the nation.

From Fundraising, three girls with pearls, hearts of gold and hyphenated surnames provided a nice contrast with the two dowdy accountants, sweet but dull, with little interest in art but a near-obsessive passion for stretching the Trust’s funds in all directions. The sober Acquisitions team, essentially art historians rather than administrators, dressed demurely and talked art earnestly with Fen, in hushed tones and with much eye contact. The two women in Membership could double for headmistress and hockey captain and Fen found herself promising them that she’d deliver Trust Art leaflets to all the streets within walking distance of her own.

Fen particularly liked Bobbie, the receptionist, who was clad in an extraordinary polka-dot ensemble as daring for a woman in her fifties as for an institution as seemingly staid as Trust Art. Bobbie was as categorically Cockney as Rodney Beaumont (who looked like an extra in a Merchant Ivory production of any Evelyn Waugh novel) was wholly Home Counties. He lolloped around the room like a young labrador, or an overgrown schoolboy (though he must be nearing fifty), tucking into the croissants. Fen mused that there were probably conkers and catapults and dusty pieces of chocolate in his pockets. He was affable and ingenuous and kept grinning at Fen, sticking his thumbs up or saying crikey! what goodies you are going to unearth! terrifically exciting, terrifically!

And then a tall man, much her own age and appearing to be constructed from pipe-cleaners and drinking straws, such was his thinness, introduced himself. Sidling up to her, he ate his croissant in a silent and contemplative fashion whilst visibly assessing Fen from top to toe. After much teeth sucking and de-crumbing of fingers, he smacked his lips, held out his hand and made her acquaintance.

‘Otter. I’m Otter. Charmed to meet you,’ he said in a voice so camp that Fen initially thought he was putting it on.

‘What do you do here?’ Fen asked, wanting to stroke his hand for fear of breaking it on shaking it. ‘And why are you called Otter?’

‘I work in Publications,’ he said, running bony fingers through a surprisingly dense flop of sand-blond hair, ‘and I am called Otter because Gregory John Randall-Otley is a mouthful.’ He paused, licked his lips and leant in close. ‘A fucking mouthful,’ he bemoaned. ‘Anyway, what sort of a name is Fen, then?’

Fen whispered, ‘It’s short for Fenella.’

Suddenly, she felt utterly buoyant; as if she’d just been afforded a glimpse, via coffee and croissants and people coming to say hullo, of future fun to be had at work. Fen had been excited enough about the job itself and now she discovered, almost as an added bonus, colleagues so affable. On the face of it, backgrounds were distinctly contrary and yet (hopefully not just on the face of it) the staff of Trust Art seemed non-judgemental, genuine and unconditionally friendly. Apart from Judith St John, deputy director, whose steely exterior and somewhat cursory handshake Fen had told herself must just be an unfortunate manner, surely.

‘And when are you Fenella?’ asked the man called Otter. ‘Only on very special occasions?’

‘I am only ever Fen,’ she declared, pausing for effect, ‘unless I’m being told off.’

Otter narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his skinny hips. ‘And are you told off often?’

Fen feigned offence and clasped her hand to her heart. ‘The dread of being called Fenella ensures that I behave perfectly all the time.’ She kept her eyes wide whilst Otter narrowed his all the more.

‘It will become,’ he said, with great conviction, ‘my aim in life to make you misbehave. I shall then call you Fenella at the top of my voice and with much satisfaction,’ Otter proclaimed triumphantly. ‘Now Ed,’ he said, looking around the room, ‘Ed would have you misbehaving in no time, Fen McCabe. Where is he, the bugger? Late. Must have been misbehaving himself.’

Fen laughed. ‘Does that mean we’re going to call him Edward or Edwyn, or whatever his full name is, very sternly all day today?’

Otter regarded her quizzically but before he could answer, Rodney whistled piercingly through his fingers, compounding Fen’s overgrown-schoolboy theory. ‘The meet and greet is over!’ the director exclaimed with gusto good enough for a town crier, or a master of ceremonies, or a soapbox at Speaker’s Corner. ‘There is art to save for the nation – and, more to the point, no bloody croissants left!’

The Archive room was smaller than Fen remembered from her interview, and the boxes seemed to have increased twofold. She sat down in the typist’s chair and swivelled hard, discovering that however hard she propelled herself, the chair conscientiously returned her dead in front of the computer. She ran her fingers lightly over the keyboard, as if eliciting soft notes from a piano, then rotated herself once clockwise, once anti-clockwise. She stared out of the window to the courtyard below which separated Trust Art from the Tate. The incongruous floral roller blind was half down and she gave it a tug to zap it up and let in more light. However, it unfurled with a clacketting whoosh, like a roll of wallpaper from on high, and subsequently refused to be rolled up by hand, let alone spring back by a pull at its cord. Let it hang. Switch on the light instead. A travesty on a fine April morning but better than wrestling with the blind or being held in the dark.

Fen regarded the floor-to-ceiling metal shelving standing up valiantly under the tonnage of brown archive boxes. She felt simultaneously unnerved and excited.

Julius is in there, somewhere. I can’t believe I’m being paid to do a job I’d gladly pay to do. Where on earth do I start? Only half the boxes are labelled and most of those are ‘Misc.’ or have question marks. Six miscs. See here: ‘1954?’, and there: ‘Symposium?’. I’ll start here: ‘Members’ gala dinner (1963) + Trip to Blenheim + Poster for Post Impressionism show + Misc. correspondence’.

Cross-legged on the floor, having hauled the box off the shelf and been sent staggering under its weight, Fen eased the lid off and grinned at the contents as if she’d just prised open a treasure chest. She was engrossed. When the phone rang, she leapt.

‘Hullo?’ she said, as if the call had come through to the wrong extension.

‘Miss McCabe?’

Fen was silent before she clicked that she was Miss McCabe and the call was most certainly for her.

‘This is Barnard Castle Museum.’

‘Hullo! Barnard Castle Museum!’ she greeted them with excessive delight.

‘Just wondering whether you’ve received our package?’

No, she hadn’t but she assured them she’d go down to Reception to check and would call them as soon as it arrived. By the way, what is it? Oh, only photos and documents. Only? Only? Fantastic!

‘I’m expecting a package from Barnard Castle Museum!’ Fen announced triumphantly in Reception, where Rodney was peering with intent into the biscuit barrel.

‘Marvellous,’ he said, though whether this was about the Bourbon biscuit or Barnard Castle was unclear.

‘Not arrived yet, ducks,’ said Bobbie. Seeing Fen look a little crestfallen, Bobbie suggested a biscuit. Seeking some solace in a Jammy Dodger, Fen climbed the stairs and walked briskly back along the corridor to the Archive.

And that was when Matt Holden was a few steps behind her. But as he had arrived so late for work, and she was eager to return to the treasure, neither noticed the other.

‘Have you met the new archivist?’ Otter asks Matt, an hour later.

‘Nope,’ Matt replies, ‘not yet. But I think it’s time for a biscuit break so I’ll go and make my acquaintance. How old is this one? The last one was older than any of the documents.’

‘Nah,’ says Otter nonchalantly, rather amused and starting to scheme, ‘she’s a little bit younger, this one.’

Matt knocked and entered. Fen was sitting amidst dunes of papers and appeared too engrossed to have heard him. He was quite surprised that she was not old enough to be his grandmother.

She looks too young to be an archivist! Who am I to judge on what an archivist should or shouldn’t look like? And who am I to complain!

‘Hullo, archivist.’

‘Fantastic!’ Fen said, spying a large brown envelope tucked under the arm of a man she presumed to be a courier. After all, she didn’t know what the editor of Art Matters looked like. ‘Are you from Barnard Castle?’

‘Er,’ said the courier, looking a little perplexed, ‘no, Gloucestershire originally.’

‘Oh,’ said Fen, nodding at the envelope, ‘isn’t that for me?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘just thought I’d say hullo.’

‘Oh,’ said Fen, slightly taken aback by his forthrightness and wondering whether it was harassment and whether she should have Bobbie phone or fax or e-mail a complaint to his delivery company. ‘Nothing for Fen McCabe?’ she asked, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

‘Er, no,’ said the courier.

‘Bugger,’ said Fen, disappointed and now disinterested; turning from him to regard the boxes instead. ‘You probably want Fund-raising next door,’ she said with her back to him.

‘Do I?’ the courier asked.

‘Or Acquisitions,’ she continued breezily, as if she was a long-term member of staff, ‘down the corridor, before Publications.’ Then she stood on tiptoes to retrieve the box marked 1956. ‘Bugger Barnard Castle,’ she said under her breath and obviously to herself.

The courier raised his eyebrows. At her language, at her turned back, at her neat bottom; at the fact that she was working in a room with the lights on and the blind down on a particularly fine April day. At the fact that she worked here now. But Fen didn’t notice. Not just because she had her back to him. She had lifted the lid off the box and was already enthralled by its contents.

‘Blimey,’ she murmured. The box had revealed an original catalogue to the Picasso–Matisse exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Matt left her to it, hearing her mutter, ‘But that was 1945, what’s it doing in 1956? Matisse was already dead,’ as he shut the Archive door.

Fen was blazing through 1956 when the phone in the Archive rang. She scrambled up from 1942, 1958 and 1979 (all found in the 1956 box – despite it being the only box without a question mark on the label, for goodness’ sake), and grabbed the receiver.

‘Barnard Castle?’ she asked hopefully.

‘It’s Otter. Ed and I are ready for our lunch. Come to our room in five minutes. Next to Acquisitions.’

My God, lunchtime already.

Only Otter isn’t in the room. Just the overfamiliar courier.

‘Oh,’ says Fen, ‘still lost?’

‘Hullo,’ says the courier, ‘again.’

She makes to leave. ‘Are you looking for someone?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ she says, ‘Otter and Ed.’

‘I’m Matt,’ he says.

Fen nods somewhat cursorily at him.

As she made to leave a second time, Otter came in.

‘Fen!’ he greeted her. ‘Meet Ed.’

Fen was starting to feel a little exasperated and she glanced from Otter to the Man With Two Names. ‘Who?’ she shrugged. ‘Which? What?’ Otter looked worryingly nonplussed at Fen’s confusion. But the courier came to her rescue.

‘I’m Matt,’ the courier persists, ‘I edit Art Matters. Hence “Ed”. Although I hasten to add that it is only Otter who calls me Ed.’

‘You’re not a courier?’ Fen asks, frowning first and then blushing, much to Otter’s delight and Matt’s surprise.

‘No,’ confirms Matt generously, ‘just an editor. Sorry to disappoint you. Hullo.’ He held out his hand which Fen took. They shook hands just a little gingerly.

‘Hullo, Matt, then.’

‘Thyu.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Matthew. I edit Art Matters and anything else you want to know you can ask over lunch. I’m starving.’

‘Hangover?’ Otter said not so much presumptuously as from experience.

‘Worse than,’ Matt groaned and hoped that Otter wouldn’t pry or comment.

Otter, however, was now near-obsessed with his self-crowned role as matchmaker. ‘Matthew Holden is a modest sod,’ he said as the three of them walked along John Islip Street to the sandwich shop, ‘he’s twenty-nine, he is a brilliant editor – if a quite dastardly cad. He’s relatively solvent and comes with car and mortgage.’

Fen backtracked and ground to a halt as she did so: ‘As in Henry?’

‘Henry Moore-gage?’ Otter quipped.

‘Holden,’ Fen stressed, staring at Matt.

Please please please! Please let it be so! I’ll cook and clean and perform base acts for him. I’ll marry him and bear him an heir. But please please please!

‘Any relation?’ she said, with hastily employed nonchalance.

‘Father,’ Matt confirmed without fanfare, ‘late.’

‘How fantastic!’ Fen said, wincing as she did so. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m sorry for your loss. But I’m a huge Julius Fetherstone fan, you see, and your father was such a wonderful patron.’

‘I applied under a pseudonym,’ Matt said almost defensively, ‘and anyway, most of his Fetherstones were already bequeathed to national art institutions.’

Fen touched Matt’s arm. He felt firm. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean …’

Matt reassured her by laying his hand fleetingly between her shoulder-blades.

Otter noticed the physical contact with satisfaction.

‘Did you say “most”?’ Fen asks, as they take their sandwiches into the little gardens opposite the Trust. ‘Did you say most the Fetherstones were bequeathed?’

Matt nods because he has a mouthful of pastrami and ciabatta.

‘Can I marry you?’ Fen asks, all wide-eyed and winsome.

‘OK,’ he confirms through a muffle of bread and sausage.

Otter is delighted with their exchange.

‘It’s not an April Fool,’ Fen stresses, glancing at Matt’s profile and liking it so much she has to cast her eyes away, alighting on his legs instead; feeling suddenly a little light between hers.

Oh God. Not on my first day at work. Not a colleague. Not after so long without. Not after landing my dream job after so long doing mind-numbingly boring placements. So he has great cheekbones, milk-chocolate-coloured eyes and funky this-way-and-that sandy hair. So what. OK, so he’s not too tall, not too beefy but fit. Big deal. And he has good teeth and a gorgeous smile. Well la-di-bloody-da.

So, he’s charming and handsome and he’s Henry Holden’s son.

I am not going to have a flirtation, let alone a fling, with a colleague.

So says your right palm, Fen. What can you read on your left?

Egg-mayonnaise sandwiches never tasted so good. For Fen McCabe, Christmas has come early.

Pastrami on ciabatta is a taste sensation today. Matthew Holden has just appointed the role of rebound to the archivist. No one else need apply.

FIVE

‘A good day at the office, darling?’ Abi jested when Fen took a seat at Snips, the hairdressers, between her and Gemma.

‘Save any art for the nation?’ Gemma asked her.

Even with her hair sopping wet and the stylist’s clips parting it into strange configurations whilst he snipped, Fen looked quite elated.

‘I met a man called Matt,’ she said with a blush that neither Abi nor Gemma had seen for many many months.

‘Please not a frigging statue,’ Abi groaned, wanting to lean forward to clasp her head in her hands but finding her hair tugged back by her irritated stylist.

‘No no,’ Fen breezed, ‘but he is Henry Holden’s son.’

‘So he’s as good as a bloody statue,’ Gemma concurred, ‘God, you’re mercenary!’

‘Probably just your average office flirtation,’ said Fen.

‘Yeah right,’ Abi snorted, from experience, ‘you just try and stop it there!’

Matt hardly gave Fen a moment’s thought when he returned home. His ex-girlfriend was still there. Looking very comfortable. She’d cooked him supper. Some for Jake too, but Jake didn’t show. Matt didn’t have the heart to send her home. Or was it that he didn’t have the nerve? He let her sleep in his bed. Again. He felt somewhat defeated by it all. Exhausted. She entwined her limbs around his and gave his ear lobes sweet little kisses, his chest too; she tried her best to arouse his flaccid cock.

‘I have a headache,’ Matt said, turning away from her but staying awake for hours.

SIX

James Caulfield was woken by his lurcher, Barry, and, in turn, woke the labrador, Beryl, over whom he tripped on his way to the bathroom. He had a leisurely pee and then yawned at length, hanging on to the basin and staring vaguely at the mirror until the fog of reverie lifted and his reflection gawped back.

‘Christ,’ he groaned, stretching his chin to analyse bristle length, ‘reckon I can go another day?’ His dogs did not answer, merely observed him before glancing away in the approximate direction of the kitchen and their breakfast.

‘What’s today?’ James asked, this time not expecting an answer from his canine companions. ‘Thursday, I do believe. That means Mrs Brakespeare and as she’s rather short-sighted, the razor can wait until tomorrow.’ He stroked his chin thoughtfully, sprayed a long blast of deodorant under each armpit and went downstairs in his T-shirt and boxer shorts to feed the dogs. He stood over them, hands on hips, as he always did, while they slurped down their food before staring at him imploringly as if they could eat the same again. ‘Come on, out you go.’ He opened the arched oak door and the dogs bounded out into the morning.

Standing barefoot on the stone steps of his home, he watched the dogs race each other over the lawn. ‘In-digestion!’ he called after them in warning, stopping them momentarily in their tracks, before they resumed their intricate chase in and out of the cedars. James looked over to the great house, the gables of which he could see through the shrubs and trees. ‘Morning all,’ he said quietly, ‘apologies, as ever, should my dogs shit in your shrubs.’ He shut the front door and went to change. It was ten in the morning and he was running late.

James Caulfield is forty-nine years old. He lives at the Keeper’s Dwelling of Delvaux Hall, near Bakewell, Derbyshire. The Hall itself is no longer lived in by Lord Delvaux, or anyone of remotely aristocratic lineage, however tenuous. Fifteen years ago the Hall was converted into ten luxury apartments, the stables, the keeper’s dwelling and the forester’s lodge into self-contained residences. James is a landscape gardener for whom an address as seemly as Keeper’s Dwelling, Delvaux Hall, Near Bakewell, Derbyshire, is essential to his trade. His clientele would be strictly limited if his van and cards gave some cul-de-sac in Chesterfield as his abode. James bought the building as a forsaken shell fourteen years ago, taking on most of the interior renovations himself. Consequently, though his mortgage is relatively small, the upkeep of the place requires a monthly input of funds that his landscape gardening only just about provides for. It certainly does not stretch to fixing the temperamental heating system, or the extensive roof repairs.

While most men his age dress in suits for the office or casuals for tele-working, James’s work attire consists of old khakis, a black cotton polo-neck (the polo part becoming unstitched at the neck), a quilted checked lumberjack shirt, thick socks and hiking boots, an old battered wax jacket slung over his shoulder but worn only in utterly antisocial weather. The whole ensemble, clothing as it does a strong six-foot frame, makes James look much more Ralph Lauren than he does Percy Thrower and that’s why most of his clients are female. His Italian mother bequeathed him a head of tenacious, dark curls that he keeps cut close to his scalp. Though his hairline has receded a little, it has not drawn back further since he was twenty-six, nor have the silver flecks which pepper the sides increased. Because he scrutinized it daily until he was thirty, and it didn’t creep back even a millimetre, James rarely looks at it now – he is more concerned with his torso. When he looks in the mirror, he is always unnerved to see that it is not the body of a man in his mid-twenties that he still fully expects to see. But there again, when he goes for his thrice-weekly run, he is always unsettled that three miles feel much more of an effort than seven ever used to. He fears that age is playing havoc with his memory and powers of logic. Saying that, he is blessed by good looks; working out of doors affords his skin a year-round healthy bloom and his olive complexion accentuates the glint of his nut-brown eyes. His teeth are good. His humour is excellent. His hands are anomalously fine and clean for his job. His self-sufficiency, however, is wholly exasperating.

James is a prime topic of analysis amongst the women he works for. Word of mouth passed him from client to client, and much conversation is devoted to hypothesizing on why such an eligible man is unattached. In their pursuit of the tiniest clue (they’ve given up on full-blown answers), they rarely allow James to garden uninterrupted. He is paid by the hour and if they choose to force him to spend lengthy periods at the kitchen table drinking tea, or juice, or sometimes, according to the season, Pimm’s or spiced cider, then that’s their prerogative. Most would love to object to the presence of his dogs, especially the lurcher with the lascivious glare and probing snout, especially the labrador who invariably digs up much of James’s work before he leaves; but none voice their concern. Whatever makes James happy. What is it that would make him happy? But is he unhappy? He can’t be happy all alone, surely. Do you know? No, do you? Any ideas? Any clues?

He’s an enigma. In Derbyshire, he is day-dream material, fodder for fantasy. He is Mellors. And Angel. He is Gossip. He’s the highlight of many a Matlock Mrs’s week. He knows it and he chuckles to himself amongst the hydrangeas. He plays up to it. He likes the attention. The company. And the control.

Once James had arrived at Mrs Brakespeare’s near Hassop, had been given a cup of tea, a bun and a run-down on her week, there was just time for him to do an hour’s work before lunch-time; a hearty affair of ham and eggs, orange barley water and the recounted ways, wiles and woes of Mrs Brakespeare’s daughters and granddaughters.

‘And you, James, what are we to do with you?’ Mrs Brakespeare declared quite brazenly, folding her arms in a motherly way, for emphasis and persuasion, while she observed him.

‘What do you mean, Mrs B?’ James asked, quietly enough to disguise his teasing tone.

‘Please, after all this time, and all my assurances, please call me Ruth.’

James nodded, though both knew he never would. All his clients begged him to be familiar but the closest he came was to abbreviate their surnames to the first letter. Mrs Woodgate, in Hathersage, one of his newest clients, longs for the day when she will finally be Mrs W.

‘James, James,’ Mrs B chided amicably, ‘we don’t like to think of you all on your own in Keeper’s Dwelling – it’s a grand place, perfect for a family. Well?’

‘Mrs B,’ James replied, clearing his throat and helping himself to an apple which he bit into and chewed for a tantalizing period before answering, ‘as far as I can see, the only way a family will live at Keeper’s is if I sell it on to one.’

‘But you can’t be happy, truly so, just you on your own?’

‘Oh, but I am,’ munched James. ‘Best to be with nowt, than with the wrong’un,’ he said in an accent that was a whole county north and not at all the Cheltenham-born, Cambridge-educated, Derbyshire-living gardener.

‘But you’re not getting any younger,’ Mrs B all but pleaded, ‘you don’t want to become too set in your ways. I mean, you really should shave regularly, too.’

‘Mrs B,’ James said in a voice that blended warning and flattery, ‘Lunch, as ever, was delicious.’ He kissed his fingers and threw them theatrically to the air, fluttering Ruth Brakespeare’s heart quite intentionally as he did so. Still she knew no more about him than she had six months ago. There’d be little to recount to Babs Chorlton, whom she’d promised to phone at tea-time.

‘James,’ Mrs B called from the back door. James looked up from the roses and cupped his hand to his ear. ‘James,’ said Mrs B, ‘promise me one thing – keep the door ajar, never let it close completely.’

James, who had understood her very well, nevertheless sauntered over to the garden shed, opened the door a little and gave Mrs B the thumbs up. Exasperated, she blinked skywards and then went in to phone Babs because it just couldn’t wait.

James had no more jobs that day and, after an arduous trawl through Safeways, and a demoralizing visit to the petrol pump (he was constantly bemused by the fuel gauge in his Land Rover always hovering at empty), he told the dogs he had spent over half the cash he had earned that day, that it was therefore Safeways’ own brand rather than Winalot Supreme for the next few days. After a run which hurt his legs, his lungs and his pride, he sat down to a bowl of Heinz tomato soup followed by a bowl of cereal: Cornflakes, Alpen and Coco Pops, all mixed together and saturated with full cream milk. The combination was delicious and satisfying – and eaten, as often it was, in gleeful defiance of Dawn.

Dawn, with whom James had spent most of his mid-twenties in a gracious apartment in Bath when he was working as a highly paid surveyor, had insisted on providing three courses at seven thirty sharp. With her predilection for well-cooked meat, overcooked veg and stodgy puddings, along with her need to have everything washed and dried just as soon as it was finished with, she made the evening repast about as enjoyable as the taking of cod liver oil as a child. James rebounded into a relationship with an American model so faddish about food that often supper was little more than herbal tea gulped down with air, egg whites blended in the Magimix or, as a rare luxury, liquidized frozen bananas. It was then, in his early thirties, that James decided all potential bed-mates must be dined on the very first date; their choice from the menu and the amount left on their plates determining the level of involvement he was willing to invest.

Ultimately, it cost him a fortune in restaurant bills and redundancy between the sheets. Aged thirty-five, James turned to dogs, Derbyshire and delphiniums for respite. He liked dogs. Dogs ate anything at any time and licked the bowls clean themselves. And Derbyshire was down to earth, with folk whose humour was as dry as their stone walls. And delphiniums? Ah! Delphiniums. The season would arrive soon enough.

And are the Derbyshire dames gems to rival those of the Blue John Caverns? Or are they Bakewell Tarts? Come on, James, don’t tell us you’ve been celibate for fourteen years.

Lord above, no! But you know what they say about discretion …

Do we?

Exercise it and you’re rewarded – lay after lay.

No one has scratched a little deeper?

No. If I’d been an idiot, I’d have married my childhood sweetheart at twenty-one. Anyway, my father had two wives, several mistresses and innumerable dalliances. I look on him as an example – albeit, one not to follow. Women are complicated. And they are expensive too. And noisy.

And you’re forty-nine now.

Yup. Stuck in my ways with my heart shared equally between two dogs and a draughty house. Not much more room in there. Anyway, I’m not that inviting a proposition. I had a couple of women last year, one in Glossop, one in Crookes, for whom I was the height of glamour on account of my age (I was at least twice theirs) and accent. Folk round here would love to see me set up in the Dwelling with a wife and the proverbial 2.4 – but they’ll be keeping their ripe daughters well away.

Why?

Because I think they feel if I’m unmarried and with sperm awaiting at forty-nine, there must be some reason for it, something wrong.

OK, what about their older daughters?

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an unmarried man, at forty-nine, is far more attractive a proposition than an unmarried woman of that age.

But are you happy like this?

I’m used to it. Familiarity breeds content.

With a huge mug of tea and a clutch of digestive biscuits, James goes to the room he calls the study to divide his attention between three days of unopened mail and today’s Guardian. Bill. Bill. Bill. Bill Clinton. James does some hasty mental arithmetic and reckons that the amounts owing will swallow nicely both the amount earned last month and to be earned this.

Swallow nicely – hey, Mr Clinton?

Barry and Beryl look at him with expressions bordering on pity. James studiously ignores them and the pile of red bills, and tries to ignore the fact that he is verging on broke. He turns the page of the newspaper and reads that an anonymous bidder at Calthrop’s paid £3 million for a Matisse.

‘Shame we don’t have a Matisse or two knocking about,’ James says, regarding a pair of oil sketches above the fireplace. ‘My bank manager hates me.’ He looked at the numbers under the Matisse painting. He thought about his bank manager. He looked at the pile of red bills. He thought about the Fetherstones. ‘Compared to a Matisse, we’d probably need to subtract most of the noughts if we put the Fetherstones up for auction.’ He ventures over and unhooks one of the paintings from the wall. It is about the size of a coffee-table book.

How awful that something as prosaic as a leaking roof and irate bank manager would make me think of selling my Fetherstones. There again, pruning rhodos does not a rich man make.

‘Anyway, my lot are probably not even worth half of a pencil smudge by Monsieur Matisse.’ He looks at the back of the board he has just taken down. ‘Adam, 1895. Eve,’ he murmurs, taking down the other, ‘1894. Biblically impossible – but artists are gods of a type – creating and destroying and having tomes of nonsense written about them.’ He looks at the wall and cringes at the two light rectangles edged by dusty outlines. He places the two paintings side by side. He feels ashamed that he’s trying to read price tags on them. He feels irritated that, at forty-nine years of age, his finances are in disarray and his bank manager is rude to him. He looks at the oil sketches, butting up against each other. Without the width of the extravagant stone mantelpiece separating them, he suddenly appreciates how they were conceived as much more than a pair. He feels ashamed for having kept them apart.

‘Dirty bugger!’ he chortles under his breath with deference to the artist. He sees how, if he was to cut the figures from the board, they would entwine together in copulatory ecstasy. ‘Hang on,’ James says, leaving the room and disappearing out into the garden followed by his dogs. He returns without them, but with a small sculpture of two figures. ‘I forgot about you two, pumping away privately under the boughs of the weeping willow. I’ll bet you anything – yes! You see!’ He brandished the statue as if it was an Oscar, glancing only cursorily at the woodlice clinging haplessly to its base. ‘Put the two figures in the paintings together, cast the lot in bronze and this is what you get.’ He read the base. Eden, 1892.

‘That can’t be right. Surely he’d have done the sketches first? More to the point, if this is not a culmination piece, is it worth less?’

What am I doing? Am I really thinking of selling them? Just because I’m broke?

He scrutinized the dates on the boards and the bronze and knew he read them correctly. ‘I might ring Calthrop’s tomorrow. Just out of interest. Or for insurance purposes.’

Clipped tones in the Nineteenth Century department at Calthrop’s assured James that they’d be frightfully interested in any works by Fetherstone and, whilst they could estimate nowhere near the number of noughts of the Matisse league, they said they were confident of a sum far more princely than James had ever imagined.

‘I say, you wouldn’t like to bring them down to Bond Street, would you? Let us have a good old snoop? Valuations are free.’

‘I may,’ said James cautiously.

‘And you say the sculpture is just over a foot high?’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s a bugger.’

‘Sorry?’

‘We live in hope of the marble Abandon being brought in unannounced one day. Now that would earn you a bob or two and a place in the history books.’

‘Really. Well, sorry to disappoint. But perhaps I will bring the others – I don’t know if I want to sell them, though my bank manager would. Do I need to make an appointment? Ask for who?’

‘A triple-barrelled surname,’ James exclaimed to his dogs, before filling a bowl with cornflakes and two crushed Weetabix. Eden, now free of woodlice and soil, stood at the foot of the stove; Adam and Eve were propped against the knife block and the washing-powder box. It was nearly eleven in the morning. Mrs G’s at noon, just for a prune, then Mrs M all afternoon, hopefully till tea-time and a good feed. So, no rush then. James perused the Guardian. He started the crossword, but without a pen it soon became a little trying. Then the name Julius Fetherstone leapt out at him from the small print of the galleries listings.

‘“Julius Fetherstone: Art and Erotica”. F. McCabe. Tate Britain. Thursday Lunch-time Lecture. Millbank, SW1,’ he murmured. ‘Flavour of the month, Fethers old boy?’ He put down his spoon and looked hard at the paintings. ‘Doesn’t fashion dictate an inflated value?’ He rummaged around in a kitchen drawer, found a rail timetable that was surprisingly not out of date, and consulted it for a train for the day after next that would bring him into London in good time.

‘Looks like we have a date.’

SEVEN

Wherever you are, it is your own friends who make your world.

William James

I’ll just nod, Jake decides over a mouthful of Chicken Madras. I’ll just nod and not comment.

Matt was remarking on the physical similarities between a girl on a TV advert for dandruff shampoo and Fen McCabe.

I won’t comment, Jake thought, I won’t say, ‘Yes, but you said that one of the girls we chatted to in the pub last night looked like her’. I’ll just nod.

‘Fen’s face doesn’t have that hardness, though.’

I won’t ask you how Fen can look like that girl on the adverts and the girl in the pub and Gwyneth Paltrow and your very first girlfriend.

‘Not that willowy, though. Just normal height, I suppose.’

I mean, if she looks like all the above, she probably doesn’t look remotely like any of them. A crazy mixed-up kid – which is what you’re sounding like, Matthew Holden. You can’t possibly go for a healthy rebound brand of zipless fuck with someone occupying your thoughts as much as this Vanilla girl.

‘Don’t fuck the payroll,’ Jake says.

‘I’ve no intention of doing so,’ says Matt, who feels suddenly just a little vulnerable, as if he’s been caught out. ‘I’m just saying that it’s refreshing to have a nice view at work. She seems like a laugh. Like we could be mates.’

‘Like you want to mate her,’ Jake counters, offering to swap the foil container with his Madras for the remains of Matt’s Rogan Josh.

Matt shrugs. ‘Nah,’ he says, feigning indifference by appearing incredibly interested in Newsnight.

‘Anyway,’ says Jake, ‘if she looks like a hybrid of that model crossed with Gwynnie and the girl in the pub, if she’s intelligent and a laugh and all that – well, she’s probably happily ensconced with some lucky bloke whom she blows to heaven and back every other night.’

‘Probably,’ Matt agrees, after a moment’s thought. It made sense that Fen would already be taken. ‘Bugger Newsnight,’ Matt says, ‘let’s go for last orders.’

‘How’s Matthew Hard-on?’ Abi asks Fen whilst wrestling to uncork a second bottle of Sauvignon.

‘I had lunch with Otter today,’ Fen replies, taking the bottle and deftly wielding the corkscrew. ‘He’s recently broken up with a long-term girlfriend.’

‘I thought Otter was gay?’ Abi says.

‘Huh?’ says Fen, ‘Oh. No. I mean Matt.’

‘Ah!’ says Abi, messing Fen’s dark blonde long-crop.

‘Aha,’ says Gemma, twiddling her dark curls herself.

‘I mustn’t get involved,’ Fen says.

‘Nope,’ cautions Abi, ‘he’ll be on the rebound.’

‘And the impression you ought to be making at your new job is of archivist extraordinaire,’ says Gemma.

‘Not slapper,’ says Abi.

‘You’re right,’ says Fen. ‘Anyway, I don’t really know him at all, do I? I just find him attractive because he seems like a nice bloke and he’s really sexy looking.’

‘When really he might be a total prat,’ muses Gemma, having had one too many of those.

‘Or a complete sod,’ Abi warns, having had one too many of those.

‘Exactly,’ Fen says decisively. But she goes to bed planning on what to wear the next day. Perhaps she’ll be loitering with intent, accidentally on purpose, outside Publications near enough to lunch-time.

Bugger! I can’t. I’m lecturing at the Tate at lunch-time. Just as well. Just as well.

EIGHT

Defy the influential master!

Cézanne

‘Don’t moisten too much,’ Auguste Rodin told Julius Fetherstone, a little surprised at his student’s uncharacteristic ineptitude, ‘use your finger to check.’ The great master had been slightly perturbed that today, his English protégé seemed fractious, distracted. He had therefore given Julius the simple task of moistening the clay maquettes so they did not dry out and crack. But he observed that the young artist sponged and sloshed the slip as if he was bathing a horse. Rodin suggested Julius stop. That he sketch.

‘Don’t want to sketch,’ Julius said defensively.

‘Take over from Pierre and continue the carving of The Kiss,’ Rodin instructed. Such an exacting task was also an honour – to allow the young Englishman time with the master’s current work. The marble was in another studio. By itself. Away from Rodin. An ante-room away from the other students. Away from the six models, of both sexes, moving naked around the studio so that whenever a sculptor turned and wherever his gaze fell he was confronted by the human form and the play of light upon it.

‘“Love led us to a single death”,’ Rodin quoted as he walked his young student around The Kiss.

‘Paolo and Francesca,’ Julius elaborated, wanting to impress his master that he had read Dante’s Inferno and knew the story. ‘Paolo’s brother goes to war entrusting the welfare of his wife to him. Paolo and Francesca fall in love and have an affair. Hell is their reward.’ Rodin nodded sagely. ‘Tell me that it is only in the arts that love could lead to eternal damnation,’ Julius pleaded privately under his breath. Rodin, who at once now understood the provenance of his student’s malady, decided it wise not to comment. He left the room, encouraging Julius to imagine he was stroking the skin of the figures to define their form, rather than carving into marble to reveal it.

Which is precisely what Julius did – and did very well – for an hour.

Then he left the ante-room and returned to the main studio as if in a trance, not seeming to notice that his master was regarding him quizzically and soon with irritation. In fact, Julius was not aware of any other person being in that studio. He scooped up an armful of terracotta clay, cradling it like a baby as he walked to the end of the room. There he sat down on the ground and laid the clay between his legs. He was sweating profusely. Panting. Little under an hour later, Julius suddenly growled, shouted, wailed, as if something was being wrenched from him. His body was twisted into spasm before collapsing and becoming as flimsy as rags. Rodin, quietly, ventured over. His young student looked up at him, tears silently streaming down his clay-smeared face. The great sculptor looked at what the young Englishman had created, had created in a frenzy, that tortured him so.

Two figures. About a foot high. Their bodies simultaneously flowing into each other like liquid but also bucked solid at the moment of sexual ecstasy. The redness of the clay accentuating the sense of flesh, blood and arousal.

‘Paolo and Francesca?’ Rodin asked carefully, not wishing to intrude on the intensity of personal experience that had so obviously consumed his student.

‘Yes,’ Julius replied. His voice was hoarse, not from the lie but from the exertion of wresting the form away from his soul and out into clay. Rodin told him to go, to rest for two days, not to visit the studio but to indulge himself with time, to work and create alone, slave only to what this inner inspiration was dictating.

‘I will keep your clay moist,’ Rodin assured him. And he would. For to see brilliance in one’s students is affirming for the teacher. A legacy. A testament. A lineage in the making. The future in safe hands. ‘I am the bridge between the past and the present,’ Rodin muttered at a naked young woman who smiled politely and wondered if she should tell the sculptor that pellets of terracotta clay clung to his great beard like berries to holly.

Oh, how I hunger for her. Never more. Never more. lam full. And yet I starve.

Julius bought a baguette and a hunk of ham. With his teeth, he ripped the bread as he walked to his apartment but his mouth was dry and the bread stuck in his throat.

She has sucked me dry. And yet creative juices overflow and threaten to consume me.

His master had told him not to work and yet Julius broke into a jog. Home, home, he had to be there now! As soon as he entered his apartment, he dropped his provisions on the floor, fell to his knees and, with white chalk, drew Cosima across the floorboards. Where she had been. This time yesterday. Stretched out. Enfolding him. Him in her. Where did he end and where did she begin? That was the point. There was no beginning; there could be no end. And yet it had ended between them. He had to abandon himself to this fact. He would do so willingly. To be enslaved by the memory of Cosima was a captivity he could only welcome, however torturous it might be. Pain is good. Salvation from despair. Growth and creation.

There was a knock at the door.

Cosima!

No. Of course not.

Oh shit!

Thursday.

Rent day.

It would be Madame Virenque who knocked.

This week, as last, Julius was penniless. Jacques Antoine would pay for the portrait bust of his fiancée only on delivery. A small advance had been given for materials. And spent. Oh God, still she knocks.

Julius opened the door. Madame Virenque raised an eyebrow. She saw the chalk drawing on the floorboards and her other eyebrow was raised.

‘You have money?’

‘Non, pardon, Madame.’

One eyebrow down, the other now cocked lasciviously.

Close your eyes, Julius. Imagine Cosima. Forget that your landlady’s breasts are pendulous, spongy; the skin akin to used crêpe paper. Remember instead the pertness of Cosima’s, the translucence of her skin, the blush of her nipples. Do not allow the more pungent smell of this woman to override your memory of Cosima’s sweet muskiness. If where you are dipping your cock now is slack, undefined, hold the base of your shaft and conjure the heat, the tightness of Cosima’s sex. Come quickly. If you come, she will go.

Cosima, Cosima. Oh God.

Madame Virenque was disappointed. Her eyebrows told him so. But still, she could not now argue for the rent. An orgasm for her was not a condition of the barter.

The orgasm for Julius emptied his mind as much as it emptied his testicles. The pall had lifted and he was thinking clearly.

‘I need money,’ he said to himself after she had gone, knowing too that he must eat, so he sat down to his ham and bread. ‘I will never fuck for lodgings again.’ He wanted to move. He needed money to do so. There was a substantial amount for the taking, merci beaucoup, Monsieur Antoine. ‘I must commence the portrait bust of his fiancée.’

That evening, Julius started his portrait of Cosima. Only it wasn’t Cosima – not that Jacques or their friends would know. Julius idealized her natural beauty, enhancing her features to create an exquisite face atop an elegant neck and a stunning décolletage. Of course, the result would so flatter Jacques Antoine that he would pay the sculptor gladly. And yet Julius could keep Cosima to himself.

‘A true sculptor works from the inside out,’ Julius said out loud when his wire armature was complete and his fingers throbbed, ‘even when you carve away at rock – when you work from the outside in, rather than when you model with clay and build up mass – it must be the essence of the subject which dictates the surface details.’ He turned the banding wheel slowly, staring hard through the wire mesh as it rotated before him. It was like a network of atoms, the most rudimentary step towards breathing life into sculpture. ‘And yet most people who look at sculpture see only the exterior. Just the periphery. The superficiality of the surface.’

By creating a portrait that was idealized, Julius knew he would be flattering Jacques Antoine’s vanity.

Julius took to his bed in the early hours, unwashed even though his hands were bloodied from torn fingernails and cuts from the wire. ‘My piece will have pride of place in their drawing room. And Jacques will present it to all those who enter. “See how beautiful is the woman who is my wife!” he will boast. “Did you ever see beauty more complete? How skilled is this young Fetherstone! Of course I will introduce you – I am sure he will sculpt your wife too.”’

Julius slept deeply, dreaming of his work in progress: the portrait bust, also his clay maquette. Wherever he was in dream-time, that writhing twist of terracotta was in sight. When he woke, he knew somehow how significant it was. How the work itself would dictate his future as much as his passion for Cosima.

As soon as it was light, Julius began to build muscle and tendon and bone and gristle aboard the armature with nuggets of clay. He worked all hours for two weeks; borrowing money from a rich student of Rodin’s to pay rent to Madame Virenque. The bust progressed. It was a virtuoso piece; emotion poured from the tilt of the face or the sweep of the forehead and even now the sculptor knew just how light would catch and suffuse the work once it was cast in bronze. When he carved the eyes and parted the lips and swirled the hair idealistically, then he knew he had hidden Cosima deep within the piece. He had her to himself. She would reappear, he knew she would, whenever he sculpted an anonymous female form again. And no one would know it but him. And ah! how he would know.

He felt a certain smugness knowing how he could con Jacques and his circle into believing that this idealized beauty in bronze was the spitting image of the woman herself. But they would be incapable of recognizing her in Abandon, or Eden, or Hunger, and all the related works that were already in embryo, propagating as rampantly as cells, in the mind of the sculptor.

They would not recognize her. But Julius would see her, possess her again, from this day forth whenever he carved a breast, modelled a pair of lips, shaped a waist, defined a buttock, the run of a stomach, the intimacy of an ear lobe. It would be her. Unmistakably. No one else would know, though. For they would be too caught up in surface details. They did not know her inside out.

This distortion, though slight, was enough to condition all those who saw the sculpture to reappraise the way they regarded and recalled Cosima. Her own face swiftly became that of the sculpted version to all who knew her. Thus, when Julius created his masterpiece, Abandon, no one recognized the female figure as Cosima though he had commanded all his power and dexterity as a sculptor to best describe the woman who had both liberated and destroyed him.

For the rest of his life, alongside pot-boiling portrait busts and garden sculpture, Julius Fetherstone devoted maquette after maquette and volumes of sketch-pads to the theme of Cosima and Abandon. He cast four versions in bronze. There is one in New York, at the Museum of Modern Art, another in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay. A late version was bought by Getty and is on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago. The remaining bronze is at the Neue Pinakotek in Munich.

Julius Fetherstone’s masterpiece, his magnum opus, the marble version of Abandon, exists now only in photographs. It has disappeared. Presumed stolen. It was at the artist’s studio around the time of his death in 1954 because it can be seen in the background of photographs chronicling the artist’s last weeks, bedridden in his studio surrounded by his work. There is scant documentation about Abandon, only Julius declaring to the great art historian Herbert Read that ‘within the rock, all my desires as a man and a sculptor were contained and released’.

Of what value are grainy, monochrome, two-dimensional records of something that was conceived and created to be experienced in the round?

A tease. Torture. A tragedy.

NINE

Love is essentially copulation, the rest is only detail, doubtless charming, but detail nevertheless.

Auguste Rodin

‘Blimey mate,’ said the cloakroom attendant at the Tate gallery when James handed him the rucksack containing the Fetherstones, ‘what you got in there? Bleeding crown jewels?’

‘You never know,’ said James who then wished he hadn’t because the attendant promptly opened his bag for a suspicious look inside.

The attendant smirked and raised his eyebrows at Adam and Eve enclasped in ecstasy. ‘Is that art, then?’ he asked James.

‘God no,’ said James, ‘pornography.’

Matt and Otter both knew why Fen had refused sandwiches with them. They knew exactly what her prior arrangement was. And, though they knew that she obviously wanted to keep her lunch-time lecture secret, they couldn’t resist going.

‘We’ll keep out of sight,’ Otter reasoned.

‘We’ll be silently supporting her,’ Matt justified.

‘We’ll be fleshing out the audience,’ Otter continued.

‘We’ll sit at the back and sneak out before the lights come up,’ Matt concluded.

Only Fen’s lecture was of course conducted not in an auditorium but in the sculpture hall, so Matt and Otter found pillars to hide behind.

‘My God!’ Otter exclaimed. Matt, though, was speechless.

There was Fen, sitting on the lap of a large stone man whilst a stone woman pressed her back against his, her head thrown back, one arm extended down with her hand firm over her pubis, the other arm stretching above, her fingers enmeshed in the male’s hair. Fen sat very still, having positioned herself so that the male form seemed to be nuzzling her neck, his right hand masked from view by her body but apparently cupping his cock. Or wielding it. Or touching Fen’s bottom. Or delving right in. The sight was quite something. Quite the saucy threesome. Matt’s jaw dropped. Otter giggled involuntarily. James felt his trip to London was already proving well worthwhile though he had yet to visit Calthrop’s. Judith St John arrived late. She coughed when Fen was about to speak. Fen swiftly told herself that perhaps Judith simply had the beginnings of a cold. Judith St John had no interest in Julius Fetherstone, whom she considered a second-rate Rodin. But she was interested to hear just what this Fen McCabe had to say. Bloody double distinction from the Courtauld Institute. She herself might only have one distinction but she’d graduated five years prior to Fen McCabe. Hardly second-rate. Standards had been much higher then. And the true distinction was that she was deputy director of Trust Art. And look at Matt Holden, all mesmerized. Oh for God’s sake.

‘Julius Fetherstone,’ Fen started, assessing that Judith’s cough had subsided and that the audience of around twenty was all above the age of consent, before stretching her arm above her, stroking the male’s cheek before placing her hand over that of the female, ‘was obsessed with sex.’

Fen slid from the lap of the sculpture and, with her hand on the male’s hand which, it transpired, was indeed lolling over his cock, she ran her fingertips up his arm while she continued. ‘Fetherstone seemed to delight in the paradox of capturing in stone, or bronze, and in a frozen moment, all the heat, the moisture, the movement and, most of all, the internal sensation of the sex act.’ She brushed the cheek of the man with the back of her hand and then rested her head gently on his shoulder, draping her arm down over his chest. The women in the audience wanted to be where Fen was, wanting to touch and clasp and grapple with the awesome sculpture. Many of the men in the audience, however, just wanted to touch Fen. Apart from Otter who was transfixed by the male sculpture. And by a rather athletic-looking tourist a few yards away.

‘This work is called Hunger,’ Fen said, standing back from it though it meant her all but pressing herself against two young women listening. She gazed at the stone and then faced her audience. She made eye contact with all of them, with Otter and Matt and James and Judith. But she did not glance away, or give a blink of discomfort or recognition. Fen McCabe, art historian, was rather different from Fen McCabe, archivist. Or was this merely the spell of Fetherstone’s works? ‘It’s called Hunger,’ she repeated, standing much closer to her audience than to the sculpture, ‘but the couple themselves seem quite sated, don’t you think?’ The audience bar James was staring at the sculpture. ‘Don’t you think?’ It was a question. James wanted to answer but could not establish eye contact and didn’t really want to raise his hand. Anyway, the lecturer was staring directly, almost at point-blank range, at the two young women near to her. ‘Don’t you think?’

‘Definitely,’ one whispered. The other could only nod. They were both flushed. Not from humiliation or embarrassment. But from the effect the mass of copulatory stone had on them.

‘Fetherstone worked on the theme of sexual abandon from 1889. His great treatise – titled Abandon – now exists in four supreme bronzes. Though the whereabouts of the marble Abandon – staggering even in the few photos we have of it – remains a mystery. Just look at them,’ Fen implored, turning back to the sculpture, ‘just look at them.’ She gave her audience a tantalizing few seconds of silence. ‘Now, this portrait bust of Jacques Lemond,’ she said, moving to a plinth nearby, ‘is not just conventional in conception, it was staid and boring even for the time in which it was executed.’ Fen McCabe had cast the spell and then broken it. The audience had to follow her dutifully to another work, a rather uninspiring, if well executed, head and shoulders. But Fen was manipulating her audience. Her talk ended ten minutes later, having utilized a cross-reference with Maillol and a look at the two oil sketches by Fetherstone (which James was most pleased to deduce were inferior to his in execution and subject matter). She’d answered the obligatory questions (having anticipated, by the look of her audience, what they were to be) and then she’d left the gallery. Briskly. Perhaps to have a sandwich or something. Buy an Evening Standard. Cosmo, maybe. She knew well what would be going on in the sculpture hall. Most of the audience would remain. She’d observed their reaction to her lecture, to Hunger, to sculpture, on several occasions. They’d potter about half glancing at other works. Some would linger at Rodin’s The Kiss. But all would gravitate back to Hunger, however long it took. To circumnavigate. For a deeper look. To feed their hunger.

Judith had left noisily midway through the Q&A. Matt left the gallery unseen, leaving Otter to chat up the athletic young tourist. Matt’s semi hard-on disconcerted him.

It’s not just the look of her. Not the sculptures, for Christ’s sake. I think it’s that she’s so damned passionate. I don’t know!

James took a taxi to New Bond Street. There was a stirring in his trousers too. But he rationalized that he was turned on by the thought of the money his own Fetherstones might generate. Or by art, of course. Not by F. McCabe. No no no. He peered into his rucksack. Adam and Eve were still at it. Again. Leave them to it. Recall the content of the lecture so he was well armed to rebuff any bluff from the auctioneers. What did she say? That F. McCabe? She called him Julius. What does F stand for? Fiona? Frederika? Frederika probably. Freddie to her friends. Something like that. What had she spoken of? James couldn’t remember. He chastised his age as the culprit. But how come he could remember everything about her? Down to her having just the one dimple when she smiled which increased to two when she laughed.

Whilst James sat on a rather hard but aesthetically fine mahogany bench outside the Nineteenth Century European department, he wondered if the higher up you were at Calthrop’s was directly proportionate to the number of hyphens in your surname. And whether the number of hyphens to the surname might equate with the number of noughts such an expert might achieve on the sale of works. And how long they were entitled to keep a visitor waiting. Ten minutes and counting. He concentrated hard on two seascapes and thought how he’d really much rather have the Fetherstone oil sketches on his wall than those. Why was he selling them then? Money? Yes. But not because he was greedy. Because he needed to.

‘Mr Caulfield? Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine – good afternoon,’ an immaculate woman with a warm smile and affably outstretched hand, who looked too ordinary to have hyphens in her name and too young to hold a job of such stature, greeted James and ushered him through to her office, her eyes wide and expectant at the sight of his rucksack. ‘I think it most honest that my colleagues in Nineteenth Century British passed you to me,’ she said. ‘I mean, Fetherstone was British by birth – but he is so quintessentially European.’ She looked at James earnestly. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘Quintessentially,’ James responded, stressing a different part of the word to imply it was a conclusion he had himself made already, whilst racking his brains to recall anything F. McCabe had said along those lines in her lecture. He couldn’t remember if she had. She’d talked about moisture. And sex. And carnal delirium. And this Nineteenth Century European woman was very attractive and she was talking money and was thus all the more attractive because of it. And because she could enunciate words like ‘quintessentially’ in a most sonorous way.

‘So,’ she was saying with an eyebrow raised almost coquettishly, ‘what do you have for me?’

‘Adam and Eve having a fuck,’ said James without thinking, because he was thinking how much he’d like to have a fuck. With F. McCabe. Or Margot F-M-L. Whoever. It had been a while. He wondered whether to apologize. Or to bite his lip. Or make light of it. Or just ignore it. But seeing her eyes light up, he decided that to show her Adam and Eve having a fuck was a good start.

‘1892,’ he said, by way of introduction to the sculpture. He gave her a few moments to feast her gaze upon it and then brought out the sketch of Eve. ‘1894,’ he said, watching Ms F-M-L hone in on the painting. Then he brought out Adam. ‘1895,’ he said, titillated by seeing how excited Miss Margot was. He didn’t really care whether this was over their monetary or aesthetic value, or a mixture of both. She looked hungry. And it turned him on. ‘What am I bid?’ he jested. She stared at him.

‘We offer the paintings as a pair,’ she suggested in a most conspiratorial voice, as if hatching an illicit plan, leaning close to him with an almost clichéd amount of cleavage on view. ‘It would be a travesty to split them. We put the reserve at around thirty thousand.’ James worked hard not to gulp because he felt she was scrutinizing him to see if he would. Or to see whether he’d noticed her bust. He had. He didn’t gulp. He nodded sagely. ‘The bronze,’ she said, musing, ‘forty thousand is realistic.’ James was sure to tip his head to one side and look out of the window as if considering whether this was the most financially viable route for him to take. ‘I propose we offer them in the July sale. It’s a biggie. Lots of Americans. Fetherstone is growing in popularity over the pond.’

‘Would you care to have lunch with me?’ James asked.

‘I’m hungry,’ Ms M. F-M-L said, licking her lips.

She chose two starters. Asparagus. Predictably. And oysters. Ditto. James tried to tuck into a Caesar salad but anticipated it would all be gone in two mouthfuls. Actually, it was five. He was still hungry. Watching Margot do what she was doing to the asparagus, he didn’t know what he longed for more – her or one of Mrs Brakespeare’s substantial platters of ham and eggs.

‘Will you let me have them?’ she asked, leaning across the table and exhibiting her cleavage again to great effect.

‘No,’ said James.

‘Or, let me just keep them in the department for a while?’ she compromised, her pupils as dark as the espresso in front of her.

‘No,’ said James.

‘Oh go on,’ she purred, ‘just come back to my office – I’m sure I can persuade you somehow.’

‘Roger!’ she calls across the vestibule to a man who comes over. ‘This is James Caulfield. He’s brought in three delightful Fetherstones. They’re in my office. Do come and have a look.’ This offer she extends to two other men they encounter on the way back to her office. James watches her bottom, clad in a tight skirt, swaying seductively as she takes the stairs. He has to thrust his hand deep into his trouser pocket in a bid to conceal his erection. She opens the door to her office and a shaft of light streams in, soaking Adam and Eve who are still having sex. Right there, on her desk.

‘Let me see now,’ she says, ‘how am I going to persuade you to part with them?’ Closing the door with her back, all of a sudden she pulls James towards her and gorges herself on his mouth. She doesn’t sip him down as she did the oysters. She doesn’t tongue him tantalizingly like she did the asparagus. She doesn’t linger over him and take her time. She gobbles him, sucks him, chews and gulps at him. Her hands grab and squeeze and pull at him. Her body is bucking and writhing against his. His face is wet from her mouth. His lips are being bitten both accidentally and on purpose. His hair is being pulled, his shirt tugged, his belt yanked. He isn’t kissing her back – her mouth is in the way. And it’s all so sudden, he hasn’t had the chance to think about it, to object, to stop himself, to participate.

Oh my God! She’s going to give me a blow-job! Oh my God! There’s someone knocking at the door.

It is Roger from downstairs wanting to see the Fetherstones. Anyone there? James’s thudding heart is in his mouth. And Margot has her mouth full. Roger has gone away, thank God.

Oh God, what is she doing?

James raises his eyes to the heavens but they hit the ceiling where fat cherubs are cavorting with whimsical unicorns and baby centaurs. He closes his eyes.

It’s been a while. Not since that girl in Hathersage.

Margot has stopped sucking. Her knees crack as she stands up to face him. James doesn’t know what to say or where to look. He’s desperate not to take leave of his senses but his brain has now taken residence in his balls. Coming is such a priority that it overwhelms any thoughts of intruders or condoms or impropriety or ramifications or repercussions. She hoicks up her skirt and guides him inside her. A few quick thrusts is all it takes.

The relief.

God. Now what? Where to look? What to say?

‘Definitely July,’ Margot is saying, rearranging her clothing, ‘the Americans will be here on a shopping spree.’

‘They’ll be sold to a private collector?’ James asks, zipping himself up, turning away from her and giving Adam and Eve an apologetic look.

‘Undoubtedly,’ she confirms, walking over to her desk.

‘And they’ll leave the country?’ James asks, staring at his Fetherstones as if they’re children about to be committed to boarding-school overseas.

‘I would say so,’ she says, regarding him levelly.

‘Don’t you think that would be a shame?’

‘With the money they could generate?’ she retorts, astutely. ‘It’s not my job to make sure that works of art go to the right home, wherever that may be, just that they achieve the highest amount possible.’

‘Say it’s a bank vault in Los Angeles?’

‘Then it’s a bank vault in Los Angeles that forked out around £70,000 to make space for them.’

James obviously doesn’t like the sound of this.

‘Look,’ she says, too sweetly so that it verges on patronizing, as if she’s lost interest with him, as if his soft side or conscience was not the reason for her having fucked him, ‘if you’re worried about where they’ll go, why not offer them to a national institution via the NACF or Trust Art? We can still be your advisors. You will forfeit the whole premise of an auction, of prices rising alongside salesroom hysteria.’

‘Phone the Tate?’ James asks.

‘Wherever,’ she says, ‘then the gallery will try to raise funds via a grant from, as I said, the NACF or Trust Art. You know who you should contact? Fen McCabe. She works at Trust Art now. She’s a Fetherstone fanatic. We offered her a job which she declined because she said she’d protest every time one was sold to a home of which she might not approve.’

‘Fen,’ James mused.

‘McCabe, short for Fenella, bit of a mouthful,’ said Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine, ‘we were in the same year at the Courtauld. She was the class swot. Mind you, it gained her the sole double distinction that year.’

James didn’t feel like telling her that he knew exactly who Fen was, that he had just been enthralled by her lecture, by her passion. But he was surprised just how pleased he was to learn her first name. How fortuitous it was that he could contact her. And he was surprised that, suddenly, he felt very hungry again.

‘Think about it,’ Margot said whilst ignoring James, and Adam and Eve, to flip through the documents on her desk, ‘call me.’

TEN

Otter observed Matt trying to settle. He watched him stroke his chin, scrunch his already short scrunched ochre-coloured hair, rummage through sheaves of paper, tap a number on the phone with a pencil but not make the call, take the pencil to his mouth and drum his teeth lightly. With his spectacles now replacing the pencil and hanging off his lips, Matt had his eyes fixed at absolutely nothing going on outside the window. His mind, Otter mused, was not fixed on the job in hand.

He should be thinking about editing that article on Kandinsky and Schönberg? But I rather think he’s thinking about sculpture. But there again, I should be writing the side bars for the Antony Gormley article. And I’m thinking about Jorgen who is twenty-five, Scandinavian and just happened to be listening to the same sculpture lecture at the Tate as I was.

‘How’s the Kandinsky piece shaping up?’ Otter asked Matt, to distract himself from the distraction of the shapely Jorgen. Almost begrudgingly, Matt turned his head, dragging his eyes around, looking slightly baffled. ‘And Schoenberg,’ Otter prompted helpfully. Matt gave him a slow, thoughtful nod backed up by a noncommittal noise from his throat that told Otter that Matt had given the article little attention.

Matt stretched and yawned in a way that was far too considered to be natural. ‘We should ask Fen to write a piece on Fetherstone,’ he said in a tone he was employing to be nonchalant but which was far from it. It was four o’clock and Otter felt ready and entitled to a jolly little gossip about Fen, Jorgen, whomever, but Matt was already walking from the room.

‘To talk articles with Fen,’ Otter said to his computer screen. ‘Go on, lad, ask her out for a drink.’

Matt chastises himself as a soft sod for hovering, even for but a second, outside the door of the Archive. That he can hear her rustling makes him want to ease the door open and observe her unseen. See her on tiptoes wrestling with boxes; see her sitting on the floor, making piles; perhaps standing with her back to one of the shelves, engrossed in some catalogue, or comfortable in her chair, mesmerized by a fan of black-and-white photographs. He doesn’t knock.

She’s sitting on three of the toughened boxes. With her toes turned in. Matt can see down her top.

‘How timely,’ Fen says, who’s had a most productive afternoon and has given little thought to anything but the contents of 1952. ‘Have you ever seen these?’ She offers him a clutch of old photographs. He looks at them and, from his vantage point, he glances down Fen’s top again.

‘It’s my father,’ he says, locking on to her eyes and realizing for the first time that they are blue. ‘Who’s the old chap with the beard?’

‘Matisse!’ Fen all but whispers in deference and excitement.

Matt scrutinizes the photos, sneaks another look at Fen’s breasts. ‘I really enjoyed your lecture,’ he tells her.

She’s blushing! The girl who practically masturbated herself on a stone man – and woman – is blushing.

‘Thanks,’ Fen mumbles, feeling the need to study a Post-it on a box that says ‘Misc’.

Go on, Matt – ask her for a drink after work. Make it casual – a Trust thing; no ulterior motive, a trust thing. Have a little flirt!

‘Maybe you could write a piece on Fetherstone for Art Matters?’ Matt asks.

‘Sure,’ Fen replies briskly, tucking hair neatly behind her ears, back ramrod straight. Archivist. Art historian. Colleague. Art is what matters.

Fen pouted and rested her head on Abi’s shoulder. Abi stroked Fen’s hair, stroked her shoulders, and thought that now was not the time to ask Fen what on earth she was doing wearing her Paul Smith top. Gemma came back from the bar with vodka and Red Bull for each of them.

‘Fen’s sulking,’ Abi said to her, ‘don’t quite know why – here lovey, have a little sippy to help lubricate your vocal chords.’

Fen had more than Abi’s suggested sippy, she practically downed her drink in one. Gemma and Abi regarded her expectantly. ‘First, I go and bloody blush,’ she said.

‘Well,’ Abi started, wondering why the facts should amount to a pout of such proportions. She wasn’t quite sure how to continue so she took a long slug at her drink and filched a fag from Gemma.

‘Then,’ Fen pouts, ‘then I go and get all disappointed that all he wanted was an article from Fen Fen the Fetherstone Fan.’

Gemma and Abi smoke their cigarettes contemplatively.

‘I was primed, ready and willing to say, “Why, I’d love to have a drink with you”,’ Fen said, ‘instead the only sane answer was, “But of course, how many words and when’s the deadline?”.’

‘Yes, but …’ Gemma started. If that had been me, she thought, I’d have suggested discussing word limit over a drink. But it was Fen. And she’s as predictable as I am.

Fen, having finished her drink and having no need for a cigarette (she’d smoked without inhaling as a teenager and inhaled when she was at university, just the once, before throwing up quite spectacularly), was suddenly lucid. ‘No!’ she exclaimed, ‘the point is that I quite wanted him to make a pass.’

‘Cool!’ Abi said. ‘You fancy him.’

‘About time too,’ said Gemma.

‘Could be dangerous,’ Fen muttered.

‘Or the start of something very beautiful,’ Abi jested.

‘A good old flirt is quite good fun,’ Gemma shrugged.

They all nodded. Fen, though, still looked a little perplexed.

‘Another drink?’ she offered, though no answer was needed.

Abi and Gemma spied her at the bar, having a surreptitious look from her left hand to her right. And though this affectation often irritated them, tonight they praised it as they saw that her eyebrows were no longer knitted together in a furrow of discontent. No doubt she’d be ordering doubles all round. A shot for the right hand, a shot for the left.

It’s not just Otter who wants to play a part in bringing Fen and Matt together. And it’s all very well Gemma and Abi encouraging Fen to the hilt. And Jake banging on about the merits of a zipless fuck, the necessity of The Rebound. More fortuitous, though, Fate is set to lend a helping hand too. Just like in the movies. Eyes meeting across a crowded bar and all that.

‘Crown and Goose?’ Jake suggested to the five-a-side team as dusk descended on Regent’s Park. ‘Who’s coming?’

‘Sure,’ Matt said, slightly disgruntled that he was in jogging bottoms and an old rugby shirt while Jake had brought along a change of trousers and a clean top. ‘Are you just vain or merely more organized?’ he asked.

‘I’m always fastidiously prepared for all eventualities,’ Jake countered, slightly irritated that their team-mates were sloping off to wives and partners and a civilized glass of Chardonnay, ‘plus I had lunch with a firm near us so I nipped back home.’ Matt regarded him nervously. Jake smiled and slapped his back. ‘Fear not,’ he assured Matt, ‘there was no bunny boiling on the stove, no messages on the answerphone and the flat was just as we left it.’

‘Three days of silence,’ Matt said. ‘Perhaps she’s genuinely cool about things. Or do you think she’s planning something?’

‘Your wedding?’ Jake glibly suggested. ‘Or your death,’ he tempered, on observing Matt’s horror.

‘Come on,’ Matt said, walking into the Crown and Goose, ‘lager?’

‘Actually,’ says Fen, looking imploringly at the barmaid and darkly at Jake, ‘I was next.’

‘Two pints of Carlsberg,’ Jake ordered, momentarily and conveniently deaf; looking squarely at Fen before turning on the charm for the barmaid. Giving Jake an accidentally-on-purpose jab with her elbow and a look of utter distaste, Fen raised her eyebrows at the barmaid in a ‘Men! Pah!’ kind of way, hoping to appeal to her feminist proclivities or sense of conduct at the very least. The barmaid, however, was silently praising God that the softball season had started early and, though it gave her no satisfaction to blank Fen, it gave her much pleasure to serve Jake, even more so because she had pipped Sonia, who’d worked there longer, to the post. Fen started humming Aretha Franklin’s ‘Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves’ but the irony was lost on the barmaid who was engrossed in Jake’s tip and smile; both disproportionate to the service she had provided.

‘Come on come on!’ Abi implored Fen when she returned with what were definitely doubles, ‘more Matt!’

‘Yes,’ said Gemma, ‘details.’

Fen, all of a sudden slightly sloshed, was happy to oblige. ‘I was chuffed that he came to the lecture. I think he was genuinely interested, his father championing Julius and all.’

‘Oh God, not that bloody bloody sculptor,’ Abi cried, swiping her brow as if a mammoth headache had descended.

‘Come on,’ Gemma nudged, ‘vital statistics.’

‘I told you,’ Fen said, ‘he’s tall. Ish. And good-looking. Ish. And blond.’

‘Ish?’ asked Gemma.

‘Well – dark blond. Ish?’

‘Natural?’ asked Abi.

‘I would hope so,’ said Fen primly.

‘God, for an art historian, your powers of description are terrible,’ Abi teased.

‘Just because he’s flesh and blood and not stone or metal doesn’t excuse you from technicolor detail,’ Gemma added.

‘I’ve only been there four days!’ Fen remonstrated. ‘I just quite fancy him. Not specifically for his looks. Or his personality. He just seems …’ she stopped and her jaw dropped.

‘Just?’ Abi prompted.

‘Seems?’ Gemma pressed.

‘Over there,’ Fen said.

Thank God the bar was noisy enough for the ensuing squeaks of delight and giggles of excitement from Fen’s group to go unheard. Thank God the bar was crowded enough to dissipate the heat from three sets of eyes burning into Matt.

‘Oh God,’ Fen cried, ‘what do I do? Smile? Wave? Ignore? Die? Loo? Home?’ Gemma took Fen’s left hand and gave it a quick but tight squeeze. ‘Has he seen me?’ Fen asked. ‘Has he?’

‘Delicious,’ Gemma said, not quite knowing if she should be raising a glass to Matt or his friend.

‘You certainly haven’t done him justice,’ said Abi, ‘you didn’t say about the facial hair.’

‘The other one, the other one!’ Fen said, wishing she could just stare at one spot and keep her eyes from continually flitting over to the boys.

‘I rather like the look of the-other-one-the-other-one,’ Gemma said, ‘I’ve never had a man with a goatee. I quite like them. I rather think they could tickle my fancy – if strategically placed.’

‘I’ve had one,’ Abi declared, ‘very strategically positioned. In fact, it tickled my fancy so much, I had a fit of the giggles and fanny-farted in his face.’

‘Shush!’ Fen pleaded. ‘Stop! Where are you going?’

‘Over there,’ Gemma said.

‘To make our acquaintance,’ Abi said, ‘to see if he passes muster and whether he warrants our seal of approval and, therefore, whether we grant you our go-ahead.’

‘Oh God, he’s seen me. I’m going to the loo,’ said Fen, who didn’t need to go and didn’t know why she wanted to disappear. She went, though, and stood by the sinks for a while trying to compose herself, compose what to say. She was simultaneously excited yet felt a certain timidity too. She was bemused.

Abi and Gemma were also bemused.

‘Shy? Fen?’

‘Why?’

‘That girl has spent far too long persuading herself that art nourishes her every need,’ said Gemma.

‘And she’s spent far too long listening to us bang on about the Inevitable Bastard Element Of All Males,’ said Abi, ‘though it’s a risk she’ll just have to take. I mean, we do, don’t we?’

‘We do,’ Gemma confirmed, ‘and it’s often Fen who picks us up when we’re in pieces.’

‘But we invariably go for the wrong ones,’ Abi rationalized.

‘And Fen doesn’t go for anyone at all,’ Gemma continued, ‘so, though Matt might not be a Wrong One, she probably doesn’t want to find out the hard way. Hence taking the easy route direct to the loo. Or home. Or back to the bronze of a nineteenth-century sculptor’s studio.’

‘Oh blimey,’ Abi sighed, ‘she might so be missing out!’

‘That’s the risk she’d probably rather take,’ Gemma qualified.

‘She won’t let us give her a helping hand,’ Abi mused, ‘so let’s just shove her right in there.’

Gemma regarded Abi, knowing the idea would be fine if it was she whom Abi was setting up, but just slightly concerned that they were meddling too deeply, too fast, for someone like Fen.

‘Feeling brazen?’ Abi asked slyly, eyeing up Jake just as much as he was eyeing her.

‘When am I not?’ Gemma sighed as if it was some great affliction, eyeing up Jake just as much as he was eyeing her.

Oh God, no!

Fen?

Cows!

What’s the problem?

They’re over there – with Matt and that bloke. I’m not prepared.

You can’t map out life like you plan a lecture, you know. See – Matt’s spotted you. He’s raising his glass. He’s grinning. They all are. Just a bunch of people chatting. Go and join them. Go on.

Sometimes, a good cliché is hard to beat. Sometimes, it’s priceless, especially if it is obvious that the person delivering it is doing so quite intentionally. Even more so, if they are doing so because it is quite obvious that they need it as a prop, a shield, without which they wouldn’t quite know what to say. Therefore, Matt’s opening line of ‘Fancy seeing you here’ – though it was met with Jake raising his eyebrows and Abi and Gemma swallowing down a snigger – made Fen grin.

‘Do you come here often then?’ she countered.

Refusing to be out-clichéd, Matt retorted, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’

Gemma couldn’t resist, ‘What makes you think that Fen is a nice girl?’ and Fen, who was floundering for a cliché to bat back, didn’t mind this in the least.

Jake murmured to Abi, ‘Can’t really say that nice girls are my bag. I like them naughty.’

‘I’m downright dirty, mate,’ Abi responded, staring at him straight before turning her back on him to give Matt the Spanish Inquisition.

‘What does Abi do?’ Jake asked Gemma.

‘She edits a teenage girls’ magazine,’ Gemma told him. ‘And you?’

‘Advertising,’ Jake said, ‘I’m afraid. You?’

‘I,’ said Gemma, pausing to make sure her lips were parted to great effect and that her eyes had darkened, ‘do most things. But I draw the line at animals.’

Matt and Fen talked mainly about work. But they nattered nineteen to the dozen and were excessively interested in what the other had to say. Even though some would argue that a noisy pub in Camden Town wasn’t quite the venue for a lecture on Fetherstone’s deconstructionist foray 1927–29. Nor was it a convivial setting for Matt’s stories of homesickness at boarding-school from the ages of nine to eleven. But the anonymity of the setting, the background noise, beer and vodka, the unexpectedness of it all, made it seem safe. Fun too.

‘See you in the morning, then,’ said Matt, because last orders had been and gone and the bar staff had stopped begging the punters to leave and were now demanding they do so.

‘Mine’s a cappuccino,’ said Fen cheekily, ‘and a pain au chocolat.’

She winked, did Fen McCabe. She even winked. She didn’t even think to marvel at the disappearance of all that previous timidity. But Gemma and Abi did. And they knew it could not be attributed to vodka alone. The girls walked home, Fen swelling with pride and joy as her friends assured her that Matt didn’t just pass muster but scored very highly on their excessively exacting set of standards.

‘Stringless sex?’ Jake tosses casually as he and Matt make their way down Parkway hoping to hail a cab before they reach Camden Town tube station and have to suffer the Northern Line to Angel. ‘Zipless fuck?’ Jake bandies yet detects a momentary discomfort in Matt. ‘Fanbelt Macbeth?’

Matt shrugs. ‘Taxi!’

‘Well, if you don’t, mind if I do?’ Jake hazards, not because he has any designs on Fen, but merely to elicit a response of more satisfying proportions from Matt.

‘Yes, I bloody do!’

Aha! Jake thinks. ‘You couldn’t have stringless sex with her anyway,’ he declares.

‘Why not?’ Matt says defensively.

‘Because she has you nicely knotted up already,’ Jake defines.

‘Sod off,’ says Matt, unnerved by Jake’s perception.

‘It’s true!’ Jake says. ‘So my advice is not to venture to Vanilla McCabe until you’ve had a good poke elsewhere.’ Matt hopes that his expression doesn’t register “why ever not?” but obviously it has. ‘You do need time out,’ Jake defines. ‘You can’t go from one straight into another. It’ll be out of the frying pan into the fire.’ Jake assessed it was time to lighten up. ‘If she’s out of my bounds,’ Jake says, with a change of tone, ‘what about her flatmates then? The raven-headed sultry Gemma; the feisty blonde sprite, Abi?’

‘Be my guest,’ says Matt, relieved to deflect the attention away from himself and Fen. ‘Which one?’

‘Either,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.

Matt raises his eyebrows.

‘Both,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.

ELEVEN

Fen wasn’t quite sure what the score was with personal phone calls. Her job didn’t require much time on the telephone; just the occasional call, made or received, to a gallery or museum. But on this, the last day of her first week at Trust Art, Fen wanted desperately to make a call. Should she ask? Even if the response was laughter? Or a frown of disapproval? Would Bobbie’s switchboard sound the alarm, start flashing in another colour? Would Rodney scurry in and cry, ‘Good Grief! Fenella McCabe – we’re a charity. You are eating into funds that could be spent saving modern art for the nation!’ Was it a good excuse to pop along to Publications and ask Matt to specify the rules and regulations concerning communication equipment at Trust Art? Just an excuse, any, to pop along to Publications?

I’ll be quick. I only need to say a sentence. It’s too good to keep to myself.

Fen phoned Gemma at work, at the TV production company, though she had to hang on for an agonizing few minutes whilst Gemma was located.

‘Guess what!’ Fen whispered.

‘What?’ Gemma whispered back but had to repeat herself due to much background noise in the editing room.

‘Guess who came into work to find a cappuccino waiting on her desk, piping hot?’

‘Blimey, Fen,’ said Gemma, ‘I’d regard that as symbolic as a diamond ring, if I were you.’

Fen told Gemma to piss off and phoned Abi in search of less sarcasm.

‘But did he remember the pain au chocolat?’ was Abi’s response.

Fen told Abi to piss off and phoned her older sister Pip immediately, hoping for less cynicism and a distraction from her sudden concern over the lack of pain au chocolat.

‘Don’t read too much into it,’ said Pip thoughtfully.

Fen wanted to tell her sister to piss off, but knew Pip meant well and spoke from love as much as from experience. So she phoned her younger sister Cat, now craving a response that was neither sarcastic, cynical nor commonsensical.

To Fen’s delight, her sister cooed appreciatively (though privately Cat felt Fen was reading far too much into it) and said things like ‘He sounds gorgeous’ with the inflection in all the right places. Feeling bolstered, Fen had no need to further abuse the Trust’s trust in her use of their phone; she drank and savoured her cappuccino and then felt well equipped to commence her duties for the day. She didn’t feel like a pain au chocolat anyway. She’d had toast with her butter, for breakfast, as always she did, before leaving for work.

TO: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

FROM: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

RE: caffeine

dear m, thanks for the essential caffeine injection – i’m whizzing through the files at twice the normal speed. for future reference, one sugar too, please. F McC

It took almost seven minutes, and three full edits, before Fen sent that one.

TO: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

FROM: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

RE: caffeine allocation

dear f, and I thought you were sweet enough. M

Matt didn’t send that one.

TO: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

FROM: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

RE: caffeine allocation

dear f, not only will I remember sugar, I’ll also make sure it’s not decaff. Must be the frothy topping that’s enabled you to feel so productive this morning. M

‘Oh God,’ Fen groaned quietly, hiding her head behind a sheaf of letters from 1965 between Lord Bessborough and Henry Holden discussing the gift of a Barbara Hepworth Pierced Form, ‘it was decaff, it was decaff.’

TO: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

FROM: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

RE: RE: caffeine allocation

dear m, froth had fizzled away by the time I prized off the lid. and the pain au chocolat had mysteriously self-combusted because, though I searched in drawers and in a box marked 1965, there was not a crumb of evidence of its existence. f McC (hungry)

Fen fired that one off without so much as checking it.

TO: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

FROM: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

RE: RE: RE: caffeine allocation

head hanging low with shame and remorse. No froth? No sugar? No caffeine? No p au c? Would a sandwich lunch make it up to you? If you haven’t already expired before you’ve made it to 1966? M

Fen actually printed that one off, folded it, slipped it into the back pocket of her jeans and reread it at ridiculously regular intervals during the morning. She also checked her e-mail with alarming regularity but her in-box remained empty.

Mind you, I haven’t responded to his last.

Playing hard to get, Fen McCabe?

No, just playing. It’s fun.

Of course she had a sandwich lunch with him. Sitting in the gardens of the flats opposite the Trust. Otter came too. But neither Fen nor Matt minded. Fen felt a certain pride that their chemistry should be witnessed and later commented on; Matt just didn’t mind that Otter was there. Otter, who adored Matt and, in just one working week, felt very tenderly towards Fen, nevertheless couldn’t resist a gossip and a little action. That a drama in miniature could be played out before his eyes, under his direction, fed the lascivious and puckish side of his nature. A necessary antidote to his daily grind of correcting punctuation and typos. It was therefore with careful timing and timbre of delivery, that he told Bobbie he would let her into a little secret. But he did so only when he knew Judith St John would be in earshot.

‘Love loiters along the corridors of Trust Art,’ he said in a hushed but knowing voice.

‘Ooh blimey!’ Bobbie exclaimed. ‘Who is it, Otter? I thought you was the only nancy boy here!’

‘I am!’ Otter declared proudly, laying a thin hand on Bobbie’s shoulder, which was padded extravagantly in the receptionist’s enduring homage to Joan Collins.

‘You swinging the other way then?’ Bobbie asked him almost accusatorily. She looked him up and down, hoping whomever he chose, of whichever sexual persuasion, would be someone kind who’d feed the poor duck with meat and at least two veg on a nightly basis.

‘Dearest Bobsleigh,’ said Otter, ‘’tisn’t me at all. But lust lurks, mark my words!’

‘Who?’ Bobbie whispered, eyes so wide that the false eyelashes on her upper lids all but meshed with her eyebrows. ‘Where?’

‘In. The. Archive,’ Otter defined, noticing that Judith’s head was unmistakably tilted though her hands rifled through the pile of post in her pigeon-hole. ‘Our Matthew has his eye on young Fenella. You mark my words.’

‘Ahh!’ Bobbie said, tutting with appreciation and high hopes for the young ’uns.

‘There’ll be all sorts of shenanigans behind the Archive shelving,’ Otter prophesied, noting with satisfaction that Judith, post in hand, was nevertheless standing stock-still. ‘Debauchery amongst the boxes,’ Otter offered as his parting shot, winking at Bobbie and walking past Judith as if she wasn’t there.

Not if I have anything to do with it, thought Judith, smiling somewhat disdainfully at Bobbie, whose only crime on this day was a Dynasty-style suit in a lurid cerise.

Judith had no need to go upstairs, but she swanned past Publications and waltzed into the Archive. ‘We don’t, as a rule, use the Trust phones for personal calls,’ she told Fen, ‘not even if it’s supposedly pre- or post official work hours. We’re a charity.’

‘I am so sorry,’ said Fen, wanting at once to be swallowed by the box on her lap and taken to the safety of 1966 (before she had been even a twinkle in her father’s eye).

‘You weren’t to know,’ said Judith, covering her triumph with a spite-sweet smile, ‘but you do now.’

If he doesn’t want me, he’s not having her. Not that I know if he wants me or not. Haven’t tried that one. Yet.

Judith swanned out of the Archive and into Publications, inviting Matt to the opening of the Rothko exhibition at Tate Modern the following Tuesday evening.

‘Welcome to the end of your first working week,’ said Matt, who’d found the pretext of a missing hole punch as the excuse to visit the Archive for the second time since lunch. ‘We’re going to the pub for a—’

Fen’s phone silenced him and he soaked up her wide-eyed excitement at its ringing.

‘Archive?’ she said, almost with incredulity, on answering it.

‘Fen McCabe?’

‘Yes?’

I don’t recognize the voice yet he’s Fen-ing and not Fenella-ing me.

‘James Caulfield,’ the voice drawled. ‘I was told to call you by Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine – I think that’s the right order and the right quota of hyphens – at Calthrop’s. You know, or knew her.’

God! Margot! thought Fen, who really hadn’t thought about Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine since leaving the Courtauld.

God! Margot, thought James, who had thought of her on occasions when he couldn’t sleep.

‘It concerns three Fetherstones in my collection,’ he said, clearing his throat and rearranging his semi-hard cock in his trousers.

‘Margot,’ Fen mused. ‘Three Fetherstones! Three?’

At this point, Matt backed out of the room, making a knocking-back-of-a-pint-glass gesture. Fen, though, was too engrossed in the notion of three Fetherstones in a private collection to respond, or even notice really.

‘I need to sell them,’ Mr Caulfield was continuing.

‘Sell them?’ Fen reacted.

‘Yes,’ the man continued, a forlorn edge to his voice which Fen would never have detected to be just slightly manufactured. ‘But, if at all possible, I want them to go to a public museum or gallery. So that the nation can enjoy them as much as I have.’

I want to marry you and have your babies. Whoever you are. You have Fetherstones. And you have a conscience, thought Fen. ‘I see,’ was what she decided to say, though. ‘What are they?’ She tried not to whisper although she felt as though she was about to peep into a box of unknown treasure.

‘Adam and Eve,’ James Caulfield imparted, ‘two oil sketches and a bronze.’

‘Oh my God!’ Fen exclaimed unchecked, unable to see James grin at the other end of the phone.

‘I live in Derbyshire,’ he said.

‘So do I!’ Fen rushed. She could hear James’s question mark. ‘I mean, I was brought up there. I’ve only lived in London for five years,’ she continued by way of an apology, which for some reason made James smile all the more. ‘I come home frequently,’ she furthered, as if establishing a link with Derbyshire as well as a common love for Julius Fetherstone would seal the deal and head to an offer of marriage from this man, to say nothing of an offer from the Tate – Liverpool or London – for his Fetherstones.

‘Would you like to come and see them?’ James proposed. ‘Or should I bring them down to London?’

Fen rushes out of the Archive, beams at Matt (who takes full credit for the smile, not being the type to eavesdrop on phone calls, personal or otherwise) and heads downstairs to Rodney’s office.

‘There are three Fetherstones in Derbyshire!’ Fen announces, having knocked and been told to enter. ‘A chap wants me to look at them. He wants Trust Art to handle their sale. He wants them to go to a public collection. He’s invited me to go next Tuesday.’

Judith St John is also in Rodney’s office.

It is Friday. It is home time. Fen feels her week’s work is complete. And she feels that her news of three Fetherstones in Derbyshire, the vendor’s desire that she should assess them, that Trust Art should handle the transaction, more than vindicates the three or four minutes of personal phone calls that morning.

Rodney claps his hands together, gives Fen the thumbs up with both thumbs and exclaims, ‘Crikey! Super! Go north, young lady!’

Judith seethes behind her slanted smile.

TWELVE

‘Matt?’ Judith St John had bided her time the next Tuesday morning before going to Publications. She’d loitered in Acquisitions, had a banter with Fund-raising (much to their surprise – the fact that she was visiting, let alone bantering) and even paid more than a fleeting visit to Accounts (much to their trepidation – she only ever came to them when annoyed). With a smile fixed on the accountants, her ear was fixated by any sounds coming from the Archive. She heard Fen leave, heard her hum, detected that her footsteps were headed down the corridor. Aha! Towards Publications. Judith left Accounts when they were in mid-sentence. With precision timing, she entered Publications to see Fen already perched jauntily on the edge of Otter’s desk, Matt standing relaxed with his back resting against the wall, Otter rotating slowly in his chair looking like a puppet from Thunderbirds. Judith approved of the way Fen slithered off the desk and looked embarrassed. She liked the way that Matt stayed exactly as he was and regarded her measuredly. She was amused to see how the situation amused Otter too.

‘The private view is at seven,’ Judith told Matt. ‘I’ve booked Vinopolis for dinner after – if that suits?’

‘Sure,’ Matt shrugged.

‘Is that the Rothko exhibition?’ Otter asked.

‘Yes,’ said Judith.

‘I absolutely love Rothko,’ Fen commented, grinning at Matt.

‘I’m afraid I have only a single plus one,’ Judith said very quickly, should Matt affably invite Fen along. She was aware that Fen regarded her. Good.

‘I’m off home to Derbyshire anyway,’ Fen said, realizing there was an attempt to rile her, not quite knowing why that should be.

‘Home? Derbyshire?’ Matt responded as if Fen had said Dubai.

‘Yes,’ Fen clarified, ‘to see that man with the Fetherstones.’

I never had Thomas the Tank Engine books, Fen mused whilst browsing in the newsagent in St Pancras, but I remember Ivor the Engine. I remember watching it on television, with Pip and Cat, at a time when Cat was too young to figure out why Pip and I dissolved into giggles every time we impersonated Ivor’s steam sound.

Shitty Poof. Shitty Poof. Shitty Poof.

Oh God! I’m twenty-eight years old, standing in the fabulously Gothic monstrosity that is St Pancras station and I’m thinking about a cartoon steam train that went shitty poof shitty poof shitty poof. I’m an art historian, for God’s sake! I should be comparing the interior of St Pancras with the Gare St-Lazare or Gard du Nord in Paris where Monet was as enraptured by the ephemera of steam as he was by clouds and the fleeting aspects of nature. I should be acknowledging Pugin who said, ‘Stations are the cathedrals of our time.’ Instead, I’m berating myself – no, Django more like – for depriving me of never knowing the Fat Controller. Or Percy. And I’m more interested in that pigeon limping because it has a stump, than in admiring flying buttresses and trefoils in the clerestory. I don’t want to nourish my brain, I want junk food! And a glossy mag. And a throwaway paperback. And I’m excited, unnecessarily so, that the only size of Maltesers is a bumper family pack. Doesn’t matter that the price is extortionate, nor that the quantity is obscene for one girl to consume.

Until Luton, Fen fidgeted. She dipped in and out of her magazine with the regularity that she dipped in and out of her bag of Maltesers. She stared out of the window and gazed, as surreptitiously as she could (which was not as surreptitiously as she thought), at her fellow passengers; giving them pasts, presents and futures, names and proclivities which, for the most part, would flatter them all. Her cheese and ham baguette remained half eaten, not because it was tasteless (in fact, it wasn’t merely tasteless, but tasted very peculiar indeed) but because there were Maltesers and things to observe and the trolley service from which she ordered a liquid masquerading as coffee. She gazed out of the train window and thought about Matt.

How would it be to kiss him? I think he’s a ‘take her in my arms and sink my lips against hers’ kind of mover.

And you’d like that.

Fen?

If I admit to it – oh dear.

Stop looking from hand to hand! What on earth can you see there? And why on earth is the notion of kissing Matt a dilemma?

Oh, the mating game. Can I really be bothered with it all? The Rules. Men being from Mars? Me, apparently, a Venusian. And all that bollocks.

Jesus, Fen, you’ve only kissed the bloke in your imagination.

I know I know I know.

Stop looking at your bloody hands. You’ll have us thinking that you have an obsessive-compulsive disorder rather than a mannerism that can be amusing and, on occasion, irritating. Most importantly, stop investing everything with such unnecessary significance.

OK. I know. But you don’t understand. I haven’t felt this fabulous zip of attraction for a bloke for ages. I wonder.

Wonder what?

If the frisson is a two-way thing.

What is your gut instinct on it all?

Fen?

Stop grinning inanely out of the window. Stop resting your cheek coyly on your shoulder.

I think so. Oh, I don’t know! I think he’d like to take me in his arms and sink his lips deep against mine! I don’t know. He might just take me out for a few drinks and then suggest we shag. I don’t bloody know!

After Luton, Fen sat very still for a while because she felt a little queasy on account of her stomach becoming a food processor mixing the various incompatible and hastily ingested foodstuffs, coupled with all that flitting of her eyes outside, inside and on print.

But then, despite the wafts of burgers and bad coffee, it was the anticipated scent of Derbyshire which dominated and took her well away from her London life. Back to home, to childhood, to where memories lingered, were vivid and seemed somehow to almost drive her London life into second place, into secondary importance within her scheme of things.

And the train is pulling into Derby and Matt goes from her mind and her aspirations, to be replaced with Julius Fetherstone. Fen McCabe loves being an art historian. Confident. Stimulated. Informed. Assured. It is something she feels she does very well. They’re sending her north, by train, after all. No one else could be better for the job. That’s what Trust Art thinks. And Calthrop’s. And James Caulfield.

‘Django!’

How fabulous he looked! A batik smock hastily tucked here and there into a fabulous pair of jeans which were constructed from patches of denim in intricate tessellations. Snakeskin boots (fake) and a neckerchief made from what was salvageable from an old Pucci shirt (original) which Fen remembered vividly from her formative years.

And he’s shaved, and his sideburns are fluffy and his hair is the colour of milk, slicked back with God knows what into a pony-tail held in place by God knows what. Ah, a pink towelling scrunchy that Pip must have left on her last visit. Or that she gave him. Or that he asked for. And see, he is holding that Chinese parasol in case of showers.

A Telegraph tucked under his arm and, Fen knew, a Racing Post tucked within that.

‘Don’t know how that came to be here!’ Django would say – she’d put money on it. ‘Oh well, let’s open a page at random and see if anything tickles our fancy.’ And he’d place about seven bets. And would just about break even. His theory would work next time, he’d assure her. ‘If there is a next time,’ he’d then say hurriedly and lightly.

‘Django!’ Fen allowed herself to be enveloped in a hug of prodigious proportions.

‘Dearest girl,’ Django boomed, ‘you come by train. Shitty poof shitty poof.’

The Rag and Thistle was a lively pub and, having been in the Merifield family for four generations, retained many of the qualities that brewery-owned pubs never achieve. One felt, on entering, that this was indeed a house for the public – a family’s home open to locals and visitors alike, where personal trinkets and memorabilia replaced standard-issue props like horse brasses and Toby jugs.

There were no Toby jugs but there were old pewter tankards, each one of which contributed to Merifield legend in some capacity, believable or otherwise. There were horse brasses – but they’d been worn by Badger and Sarge and there were photos of the two Clydesdale horses with Old Man Merifield at the county show in 1929 to prove it. There were no signs saying ‘You Don’t Have To Be Mad To Work Here But It Helps If You Are’, but there was the present publican David Merifield’s graduation certificate from Nottingham University. And in place of mass-produced sepia photos of Rustic Street Scene Anywhere, were a stretch of family snaps of the Merifield dynasty at their various weddings, christenings and hand-shakings with celebrities of a major or minor persuasion.

There was a lovely photograph of Lulu Merifield, aged fourteen, curtseying to Princess Margaret. And a rather blurred one of Polly Merifield in a crowd with Elton John signing someone else’s autograph book five people away. (The point being that both Elton and Polly are looking directly at camera, as if the photographer had said, ‘Smile for the Rag and Thistle.’) The cast of Peak Practice had signed beer-mats which David Merifield had framed in a jaunty pattern around a cast photo. And there was an autographed serviette from a woman who told the Merifields she’d been a backing singer in a band that they’d never heard of and that no one since could shed light on, the signature being somewhat illegible. It was still the topic of conversation on occasions when music was being discussed. ‘Maybe she was a Bananarama?’ Mrs Merifield might muse. ‘Panor-bloody-rama, more like,’ David Merifield would retort. ‘I saw someone similar on Top of the Pops – she was singing and grooving behind Ronan Keating,’ Melanie, the barmaid, might offer, ‘but only similar – not the same.’ Whoever she had been, whoever she was, whatever she was doing now, She With No Name had plinked her small change generously into the oversized whisky bottle whose contents benefited the local hospice at least once a year.

There were no laminated menus with novelty meals at the Rag and Thistle. Just simple home cooking – pies and ploughmans, chicken and chips, lasagne and a lasagne without meat, chile con carne and a chile without carne. And Bakewell tart. Oh! the Bakewell tart. The Bakewell tart was a permanent fixture on the menu. It was still baked according to an old Merifield secret recipe (a proliferation of ground almonds, plus home-made strawberry jam. Always strawberry. Only ever home-made). Moreover, to deprive anyone of a slice, at any time they might fancy one, was such a terrible notion that the Bakewell tart at the Rag and Thistle was available all the time. Even after the bell for last orders had been rung. So that’s why Django took Fen there, to the Rag and Thistle, though it was certainly past lunch-time and really nowhere near tea-time. And that’s why, feeling peckish, James Caulfield had popped into the pub on his way back from Mrs Braithwaite’s but en route to Tammy Sydnope’s.

Melanie the barmaid, nineteen years old and so coquettish and buxom that even the careers advisor at school could come up with no job that would suit her better, had wrapped a slice of Bakewell tart in a serviette for James whilst fluttering her eyelashes. ‘And here,’ she said, when he was about to leave, ‘these are for your dogs.’ She gave him a packet of pork scratchings, with much eye contact and hastily moistened lips.

‘Thanks,’ James said, unable to keep his eyes from her impressive cleavage, ‘their favourite.’

‘From their favourite barmaid,’ Melanie had winked.

‘Thanks,’ James said again, suddenly wondering what she’d be like in bed, ‘see you soon.’

‘Hope so,’ she said, running her fingertips up and down the phallic truncheon of the keg lever, thinking he’d probably be very good in bed. Not athletic, not energetic, but with decades of tricks and licks in his repertoire.

Feeding himself the tart with one hand and tossing the gnarled knuckles of pork scratchings to Barry and Beryl on the back seat with the other, meant James steered his heavy old Land Rover out of the car park with his elbows. And Django had to swerve his 2CV to avoid him. And stalled. And Fen had to chide her uncle for not fixing his seat-belt. And Django said bugger Bakewell tart, I need a pint. And Fen said that’s fine, Django, I’ll drive back. And James just looked in the rear-view mirror, caught sight of Barry (Beryl having fallen off the seat with the violence of the manoeuvre) and said oops. Pork scratchings were all over the floor. But the Bakewell tart was working wonders in his stomach and, though late for Tammy Sydnope, he was nicely refuelled to tend her garden with expertise and energy.

Later that evening, after one of Django’s inimitable suppers (today utilizing chick peas, coley fillets and green tagliatelle), Fen and her uncle settled down into battered, mismatched but equally comfortable old armchairs for a nightcap.

‘Brandy,’ Django declared, customarily, ‘is medicinal, you know.’

Fen took a sip of her Hennessy and hummed in agreement.

‘It’s good for your blood, it’s good for your brain,’ Django continued, as if quoting a fact gleaned from the Lancet, or the back of the bottle, as much as from personal experience. Fen raised her glass in support. ‘It doesn’t do much for the heart, though,’ Django said wryly. He observed Fen. ‘I hear you have a suitor, Fenella.’

‘Django!’ Fen remonstrated, swirling her brandy around the balloon rather violently, pursing her lips and frowning rather harder than the situation warranted.

‘I’m only reporting on a fact imparted to me by your sisters,’ Django shrugged. ‘I just want to know that your heart is in safe hands.’

‘I’m holding on to my heart,’ Fen said rather dramatically. Django was unable to elicit much more from her. But the details imparted by Cat and Pip sufficed. A chap her own age. Educated. Good job. Son of someone to do with that wretched sculptor.

Fen wakes at three in the morning. She has indigestion. Fish and chick peas and pasta. But she doesn’t regret her supper. Django concocted and cooked it with love. And she doesn’t regret the Bakewell tart. It was always a pleasure to pass time in the Rag and Thistle. And as soon as a mouthful of the tart hit the tastebuds, the sensation was exquisite. Like a physical déjà vu. Comforting. No, the culprits must be the Maltesers and baguette on the train. She would refrain on her homeward journey tomorrow. What time had she to be at Mr Caulfield’s? Eleven a.m. Sleep. Come on, slumber, subsume me!

No. It isn’t going to happen.

Fen rises from her bed and looks out of the window. Silver shards of moonlight lick the lawn, tickle the trees and reveal nuggets of platinum in the old stone walls.

God, how I love it here. I forget how it suits me. This is home. I don’t think I’ll ever be a townie. Why would I want to live in a place where night is noisy and diluted by an orange glow? Night should be dark and silent.

Fen tiptoes down through the house and out to the garden to sit awhile under her favourite tree. Until she feels sleepy and cold and longing for her childhood bedroom.

THIRTEEN

Beauty lies in the hands of the beer holder.

Anon

At three in the morning, Matt is sitting by himself in his flat, wondering where Jake is and what the hell tonight was all about.

Due east, in Bermondsey, Judith doesn’t feel tired at all. She’s cracked open a bottle of Chablis and is sipping away, triumphantly.

Oh Lord. What on earth happened whilst our attention was focused on Fen and food and Farleymoor?

Sublime nothingness. That was the phrase that the Rothko exhibition inspired in Matt. Where mass is weightless and space is heavy and colour has motion. Advance and recede. Silence and noise. Tangible then ephemeral. Sublime nothingness that was something incredibly specific. The canvases reminded Matt of the moment of reverie. Or of the moments post orgasm. Or perhaps this was what death was like.

‘I’ve always thought Rothko just a little overrated,’ Judith said.

This struck Matt as far more insulting to Rothko, and patronizing, than an unequivocal negation of his work. And so Matt suggested that they leave. He didn’t want his time and space with the resonant canvases intruded upon. He’d come again. Definitely. On his own. Probably.

‘I’ll just go and say goodbye to Nick Serota and the others – oh! Jay Jopling,’ Judith name-dropped. Matt, however, was far more tickled to observe David Bowie and a couple of supermodels whose names he did not know, from a distance, than to schmooze the great and godly of the British art world. But he didn’t say goodbye to anyone, because he hadn’t said hullo to anyone, because he thought the purpose of a private view was just that – privileged time with works of art.

‘Sublime nothingness,’ he said, indulging in another few minutes in front of a vast canvas, while Judith worked the room, ‘genius.’

Judith just about let Matt choose the dish he wanted at Vinopolis, but she chose the wines and the conversation topics. Excusing himself after the hors d’œuvres, he sat, perplexed, in the toilet.

She’s negative about everything. Rothko. The structure of the exhibition. The service at Vinopolis. The quality of the food. It’s giving me a headache. So what if she found a speck of dust on her wineglass? I couldn’t see it. Anyway, Jilly Goulden often praises top notes of dust or dirt or pencil shavings when she assesses wine. I’m bored. I’d much rather be having a pint with Jake. Or just watching TV, for that matter.

When he returned, Matt did not notice that Judith’s silk shirt had been unbuttoned twice, nor that her lipstick had been replenished. What he did notice was that the wineglasses had now been filled with a full-bodied red with liquorice undertones and whispers of blueberry. And Matt promptly decided that the way to make the evening work for him was to drink and be merry to counter Judith’s drinking and being harsh.

‘I’m not so sure how I feel about the New Girl carrying the Trust’s torch Up North,’ said Judith, running the tip of her middle finger along the rim of the wineglass.

‘New girl?’ Matt said, wondering if Judith had therefore finished her discourse on the shortcomings of the National Arts Collection Fund.

‘Fenella,’ Judith said, taking her finger to her lips, ‘McCabe.’ She flicked her tongue over her fingertip. ‘Gone to Derbyshire.’ Matt wondered whether he ought to have more wine to assist his understanding of Judith’s drift, or whether he’d had too much wine to be capable of fathoming her point.

‘I think you, Matt, you should have gone,’ Judith purred, with persuasive eye contact.

To Derbyshire? With Fen? Why didn’t I think of that? ‘To Derbyshire?’ Matt asked.

‘Yes,’ Judith said.

‘With Fen?’

Judith’s face jerked at such a notion. ‘You,’ she stressed, ‘you should be the one to represent the Trust.’

Matt looked puzzled.

‘I mean, Fen’s the New Girl,’ Judith reasoned, ‘she’s only an archivist, not an ambassador.’

‘I’m an editor,’ Matt shrugged, not liking Judith’s point, ‘and I don’t know diddly about Fetherstone.’

Judith let it lie. She had wanted to draw out of Matt any intentions towards Fen. She had wanted to infuse him with her mistrust of the New Girl. She had wanted to point out Fen’s shortcomings, to allude to the fact that it was Matt and she who were intellectually and professionally on a par – and above Fen. So Judith turned to chit-chat instead. Which Matt found most peculiar, having never spoken to Judith about anything other than Trust matters. So he drank more wine and she flattered him with questions about where he lived, with whom, where he shopped and where he spent his leisure time. Matt answered them as if he was on a quick-fire round of a TV quiz. Once or twice, he wondered where it was all leading. What the prize at the end would be.

There wasn’t a prize. But there was the most almighty surprise. Up against the vaulted brickwork outside Vinopolis.

Lord! What is the woman doing?

She’s pushed you against the wall.

She’s kissing me!

She’s working her tongue inside your mouth like she hasn’t eaten for days.

Oh God. No, stop. No, don’t.

She’s pressed against you, grabbing at your groin. And you’re stirring, Matt. You’re hard. And she’s hailed a cab and it’s taking you to Bermondsey and you can’t remonstrate or even comment because she has welded her mouth to yours. Not that I think you would either remonstrate or comment. If the straining bulge in your trousers is any indication, I’d say you are rather enjoying yourself.

See, now you’re kissing her back.

And you have your hand inside her shirt, over her bra, under her bra, her nipple pressed against the centre of your palm.

Matt has ceased to think. He isn’t wondering what on earth is happening, nor what the ramifications might be. He has no inclination to touch upon whether all of this is a jolly good or rather bad idea. He is in a Rothko painting, where time is not about yesterday and tomorrow but about the present instant being all that matters, a continual and simultaneous past and future.

It isn’t a bad place to be, not least because his cock is being fingered teasingly by Judith as the cab discreetly winds its way east to her apartment. Her tits feel fantastic in his hand. Her mouth excites him. Every time the cab goes over a bump and changes direction, her teeth catch his lips. He likes it.

This must be Bermondsey. Though in the dark and under a haze of alcohol and a blur of lust, Bermondsey looks pretty nondescript. Judith pays the fare whilst Matt turns his back to do up his flies. Judith isn’t aware that her left breast is clearly on view, should the cab driver choose to gawp. Even had she been aware, she wouldn’t have cared. She is on a mission. And the final location, where it will be brought, literally, to its climax, is but yards away. The cab driver has noticed the exposed breast. But he is a family man. He tried not to look in the rear-view mirror this past quarter of an hour. Only for the purpose of traffic awareness. He knew what they were up to in the back, the two punters, slightly sozzled. He found it all rather unsavoury. He might well switch from nights to days.

Two hours later. Three a.m. Matt, sitting alone in his apartment, wonders where Jake is and what the hell that was all about.

She’s so not my type, Judith. I can’t go to work tomorrow! There again, I can’t not go to work tomorrow. That entire article on the Euston Road School has to be re-subbed. Otter’s having a day off, so I’ll have to do it.

What was Judith’s flat like?

What? Oh. Ultra hip. White walls and very wide floorboards. Bathroom a homage to Philippe Starcke, kitchen a replica in miniature of an industrial kitchen, lots of stainless steel and gruesome-looking utensils I bet are never used. Terry Frost on the sitting-room wall. Dark brown leather sofa. White TV and DVD. Spotless. Bed very low, no headboard, no pillows. Therese Oulton on the wall. Frameless. Sheets the colour and texture of sack.

What was the sex like?

What? Oh, we didn’t do it in her bed. On account of the sack-like sheets, I presume. We did it most other places. I came, taking her from behind, while she hung on to a wall-mounted steel rack above the cooker.

But what was the sex like?

What? Oh, it was fine. It was sex. Quite good sex.

I mean, was it rampant? Did it last long? Did she go down on you?

I’m a bloke, for Christ’s sake. It’s not in my nature to workshop through every hump and grind. Yes, she went down on me. No, I didn’t go down on her – she didn’t seem to want me to. We started in missionary on her sofa, then sideways on the white rug. No, hang on. Before that she went on top for a little while and came that way. I presume. I mean, she sounded like she was coming. Then I said could I come. And she said wait. Led me into the kitchen and took a condom out of the cutlery drawer – which only now strikes me as rather odd.

Did you stay long?

She asked if I wanted to stay the night. She didn’t seem that bothered that I declined. She called me a cab and we had a civilized glass of wine whilst I waited.

Do you want to see her again? Sleep with her again?

Jesus – the Spanish Inquisition. She’s quite a hard, independent woman. So, no, I don’t think it is the start of something beautiful. Where the hell is Jake? I feel like my hangover’s coming on now. I’m going to take two Nurofen. Nuro.

Matt?

Fen.

Fen what?

Nuro-fen. If that was the zipless fuck, what are my intentions now towards Fen?

FOURTEEN

While Fen slept in her old bed, Matt sipped a glass of water to make the Nurofen go down and his stomach contents stay down. While Matt sipped water, Jake zipped up his jeans. And Abi watched him, remaining in bed where she lit a cigarette though she knew it was as dangerous as it was decadent. All the while, Gemma, who had gone to bed early with what may well develop into flu, slept soundly; unaware that a man had been in her house, let alone her housemate’s bed.

‘Seen my socks?’ Jake whispered. Abi motioned to the chair by the window, and then to her chest of drawers to the left. Jake found one sock under the former, the other on top of the latter. Fully dressed, he came over to Abi in her bed, and started to kiss her breasts most attentively.

‘You’d better go,’ Abi laughed quietly, though she’d have been happy for him to stay. ‘I’m giving a presentation tomorrow morning and I only want to feel shagged in one sense of the word.’ She eyed the flies of his jeans appreciatively. He kissed her, wishing she’d had a drag of fag after, rather than before.

‘I’ll let myself out, shall I?’

‘No bloody way,’ said Abi, ‘I’ll follow you down to chain the door. Don’t want to find you lurking in the broom cupboard tomorrow morning.’

‘Why don’t you come and lurk in my broom cupboard tomorrow evening?’ Jake suggested lasciviously as he stood on the doorstep.

‘Can’t do tomorrow,’ Abi said, matter of fact, ‘but I could do the next night.’

While Jake strolls out in search of a black cab, Matt decides his flatmate is a dirty stop-out and goes to bed. Matt and Abi switch off their lights at much the same time. Judith continues to sip wine in bed. None of these three can drop off to sleep. There’s too much recent sex bombarding their minds and continuing to make their bodies fizz, throb and ache.

Gemma, though, sleeps soundly – but will wake up with a stinking cold tomorrow. Fen sleeps soundly too. For these two, sex is far from their minds. For the time being at least.

Ten miles from Fen, at Keeper’s Dwelling, Barry the lurcher and Beryl the labrador huff and twitch in their baskets. Upstairs, James is out for the count, snoring; but so lightly that he’s really just breathing heavily. Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine comes into his dream, comes into his house. She brings Fen McCabe with her. Fen is wearing wellingtons. She looks dowdy. She has a terrible laugh. And she’s scared of the dogs. She has horrible hands. Chewed fingernails and red, blotchy, scaly skin. She keeps laughing at nothing. ‘I want to hit her over the head with Eden,’ Margot whispers to James. ‘And then I want you to fuck me like Adam is fucking Eve,’ Margot says, eyeing the sculpture greedily.

James wakes from the dream with a hard-on. But he ignores it. The dream, though bizarre, was vivid. He is disconcerted that he is now a little nonplussed by his future visitor. And yet, hadn’t he cleaned the house, quite thoroughly, quite excited, during the evening? And bought fancy biscuits and pikelets to be toasted?

‘The Fetherstones,’ he reminds himself out loud. ‘I want her to want them. I need the money.’

Sleep continued to elude him. John Grisham was no help. Nor was a Thames & Hudson book on sculpture. Nor was the thought of a wank, let alone a few trial tugs. He switched on the light and listened hard to the silence.

James had brought the oil sketches and the small bronze into his bedroom. Almost as if this was to be their last night in his ownership. He looked across to them, to Adam and Eve in two dimensions and three. Suddenly, he didn’t want to lose them.

Perhaps I’ll cancel Fen McCabe. She in the wellies with the ugly hands. Maybe I don’t need the money quite as urgently after all. I’ll phone the bank first thing. And dependent on their advice, I’ll cancel McCabe.

FIFTEEN

The two divinest things this world has got,

A lovely woman in a rural spot!

James Hunt

‘Gracious, Fenella,’ Django murmured.

‘Blimey, Django,’ Fen responded.

They’d driven towards Matlock, through the small town of Farley Bath and Django’s 2CV had made a brave assault on the 1:4 hill that met them just as soon as they’d crossed the humpback bridge. The steep road ahead was just as twisting as the river they’d been following. An army of oaks and cedars stood to attention as Fen and Django trundled upwards. The density of foliage threw light around the road in shards and pebbles and made the shade seem eerie. Under this canopy, the old stone walls were not grey as those on the moors; here they were mottled with moss and fringed with cascades of ivy. Django and Fen had remarked that they’d been unaware there was a house up this road. They’d thought the whole area was Forestry Commission, that it was a road that merely transported travellers from A to B. They’d never seen the lion and unicorn lurking either side of the entrance of a hidden driveway on the right. When Fen had read through Mr Caulfield’s directions, and come upon the lion and unicorn, Django had taken the sheet of paper from her convinced she was making it up. But there they were, the lion and unicorn, licked with lichen, ears chipped or missing, time corroding a clear delineation of their features. Still, though, they were impressive; the lion had one paw draped nonchalantly over a shield, the unicorn reared up with forelegs slicing the air though his horn was only half its original length. They presented a grand herald, but still Fen and Django weren’t quite prepared for the grandeur of Delvaux Hall at the end of the majestic drive.

‘Gracious, Fenella,’ Django murmured.

‘Blimey, Django,’ Fen responded.

‘Don’t think I’ve met this Delvaux chap,’ Django mused, whilst a pillared double doorway soared in front of his eyes.

‘I think he’s probably long dead, Django,’ said Fen, thinking the proportions of the windows set into smooth, creamy-peach stone, quite beautiful. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m not to go to the main hall, but the keeper’s dwelling.’

Fen and Django sat in the Citroën and regarded the smaller driveways left and right of the main house.

‘Right!’ Django declared. ‘Right!’ he proclaimed. ‘I’m nearly always right,’ he chortled. And he chugged the car off to the right. Only to arrive first at the Forester’s Lodge and then at the Huntsman’s Cottage. ‘Well, right might have been wrong but we’ve had a bloody good nosey,’ Django said, retracing their tracks, the 2CV coping valiantly with the dinks and ruts in the tarmac forming the lane left of Delvaux Hall.

‘Now, you’re quite sure you don’t want me to accompany you to the front door?’ Django offered, having drawn up outside impressive iron gates.

‘Quite sure,’ Fen assured him.

‘And you’re quite sure he does indeed possess works of art by Fetherstone,’ Django continued, gravely serious, ‘and you’re sure that he isn’t a homicidal axe-wielding madman?’

‘Quite sure,’ Fen laughed, ‘on both counts.’

‘Call me if you need a lift to Chesterfield,’ Django said, taking the tip of her nose in the crook of his fingers, like he used to when she was young.

‘What!’ Fen teased. ‘You’d forego dominoes afternoon at the Rag and Thistle to drive me to my train?’

‘If,’ Django paused, lifting his index finger, ‘if I really had to. Though I hasten to add that I’d hold it against you and would dock, accordingly, a great proportion of that which I intend to leave you in my will.’

‘I’m sure Mr Caulfield won’t mind running me in to town,’ an unsure Fen breezed. ‘He probably drives a white Rolls-Royce with a gold-coloured radiator grille.’

‘Not if he has Fetherstones,’ Django reasoned. ‘They would suggest he has taste. A white-and-gold Roller would preclude that altogether.’

Fen was delighted. She never realized that Django actually appreciated the work of Julius Fetherstone. In the past, he’d remarked that Abandon looked like two people being mangled by a tumble dryer. In the past, he’d referred to Fetherstone as ‘a dirty old codger’. He’d looked at a maquette for Hunger and declared it ‘downright rude, just porn legitimized by being in bronze and a century old’.

But that’s all a show, Fen thought with great satisfaction, though she did wonder why she hadn’t twigged before now, that before now she had truly taken it personally.

‘Bye, Django,’ she said fondly, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a heartfelt squeeze. ‘I’ll come home again soon. Hopefully, with my two sisters.’

‘Hmm,’ Django mused, slipping the steering-wheel through his hands, ‘and maybe a new lover in tow!’

‘Django!’ Fen objected, tugging against his slack seat-belt, wishing she could make sure he’d fix it.

‘Have fun, young ’un,’ he said with a wink.

She watched the 2CV list and lurch its way away. And then she observed the iron gates.

‘Julius!’ she said under her breath, suddenly feeling absurdly happy. Derbyshire. Delvaux. Django. ‘J’arrive, Mr Fetherstone. I’m here.’

But no one else was.

Oh dear, James. Did the bank manager tell you there was no need to sell your Fetherstones? Were you not able to make contact with Fen McCabe directly? Up there, on Farleymoor and deep down here, in the grounds of Delvaux Hall, her mobile phone has no signal. Have you gone off to work, then? Mrs Brakespeare’s, isn’t it? And on to Tammy Sydnope who now wants you twice a week?

The gates, despite their apparent age and in spite of their daunting dimensions, swung open easily and noiselessly. Fen walked towards the front door of the dwelling – which she decided immediately was far too humble a name for the building before her. Dwellings, surely, were constructed from wattle and daub, with a split stable door as an entrance, and sleepy small windows sunken into uneven walls. Would a keeper dwell behind such fine stonework and a beautiful, arched oak door? To say nothing of mullioned windows. And a clock and weather-vane. Fen supposed it depended on what the keeper actually kept. And this one has three works of art by Julius Fetherstone.

The doorbell did not seem to work but a rap on the knocker (it was an iron version of the lion and unicorn) was satisfyingly loud and assertive. Only no one came to answer. She knocked again.

The walls must be thick, Fen thought, the interior walls too. And maybe Mr Caulfield is old and infirm and takes a while to totter to the door, to displace a dachshund from his lap, to find his glasses.

Fen, your imagination is far too fertile. I don’t think there’s anyone home.

Well, I’m going to knock again – in a little rat-tat-tat rhythm.

Oh.

Well, now I think I’ll peer through the windows. Kitchen. See! Dogs’ bowls. Two of them. Mind you, each about the size of a dachshund. Looks fairly tidy. And over through this window, on the other side of the front door, a sitting-room. The back of an old leather armchair. I’ll just knock on the windows, in case he’s nodded off.

Oh.

I’ll knock on the door again. I don’t want to lurk around behind the house.

No one answered. Fen stood still, with her back to the front door, wondering what to do. She felt a little embarrassed, as if she’d been led along, as if she should have verified details, phoned last night to check, this morning too perhaps.

Even if he is, as Django fears, an axe-wielding homicidal maniac, I’ll be just fine because at least he is nowhere around to butcher me.

Fen! Your imagination.

She stood against the door and then decided to cross the patio, descend stone steps, cross a gravel promenade and go through into the garden beyond. Because, you never know, the Fetherstones could well be out of doors. As it was nearly the second week of April, the rhododendrons were just beginning to spew their fabulous colour out into the world. Fen was utterly taken by a particularly violet specimen, at least fifteen feet high and wide. With her back to the garden, she gave the shrub her undivided attention, partly because it warranted it, partly because it gave her time to wonder what to do next.

Whump! Something has shoved her in the back, face first into the rhodos. Heavy breathing. Manic panting. Fen gasps and tastes raindrops from the leaves. She spins around. Immediately, something hard and insistent pokes at her crotch. She gasps and looks down. It is an enormous, hairy, wet lurcher. Thump! Something knocks her off her feet and she staggers sideways. Righting herself, she is confronted by a wet, slathering labrador which, standing on its hind legs with its front paws on her shoulders, is practically eye to eye with her. Its tongue is lapping at her cheek. She keeps her mouth closed at just the right moment. Fen is not normally scared of dogs. But these two are huge and, momentarily, she is unsure of the sincerity of their welcome. In an instant, she clocks that tails are wagging. And there’s all that licking going on. And a moment later, with the shock subsiding, the cogs of memory start to turn.

It’s that lurcher – the one whose coat resembles Django’s Astrakhan gilet. I’ve seen this dog before. Recently. Yes! The Rag and Thistle when I was up here last with Cat and Pip.

‘Beryl!’ Someone is yelling and the labrador barks once, turns on a sixpence and bolts away.

‘Barry!’ Someone hollers and the lurcher reluctantly drags its face away from Fen’s crotch. It too tries to turn on a sixpence but its lanky legs threaten to interweave with disastrous consequences. Shoving its flank against Fen’s thigh for support, the lurcher untangles its legs and lopes off with its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth to make way for a deep, hound-like woof.

Fen stands stock-still, with her hand clasped to her heart in a most Jane Austen-like fashion. Raindrops from the rhododendron seep down the back of her collar and course midway down her spine. She shivers.

It’s the raindrops.

You just had the shock of your life, Fen.

Just the raindrops.

Who’s this, striding up the lawn with the two dogs running apologetic circles around him?

Lord Delvaux?

Or maybe the keeper of the dwelling.

The man seems to be making a leisurely, if not downright slow, passage towards her. Before her, the lawn sweeps down and away, fairly steeply, bordered on all sides by shrubs and trees and bushes, all well tended, all bursting with foliage or spring flowers. Beyond the perimeter of the garden, the land sweeps upward, clad in the uniform pine and ordered ranks of Forestry Commission land. The horizon, which, due to the steepness of the incline, is high up rather than far away, is punctuated aesthetically by a folly. All glistens; the skies are clearing, there’s fair weather ahead, after four solid hours of rain this morning.

Here is the keeper, or the squire, or maybe just the gardener, strolling towards her in a battered old Barbour, jeans and hiking boots. Might this be James Caulfield? Fen doubts it. Could Mr Caulfield really be anything other than a nice pottery old man with a dachshund on his lap, a gammy hip and three Fetherstones he’s owned for donkey’s years?

‘I’m so sorry,’ the man calls to Fen while he continues to approach. The dogs look up at the target of his apology and decide to bound towards it, to offer theirs. ‘Dogs!’ the man hollers and, though they do not return to him, their reaction to Fen is much less demonstrative than before. They don’t venture above her knees this time, though her shins and ankles are given a good sniffing. ‘Fenella?’ The man approaches. He holds out his hand, which is dirty with earth. He wipes it on his Barbour, which has damp patches where a rewaxing is needed and trickles of wet trying to cling to where there is wax. Fen clocks his face; he is handsome – weather tanned with good bones, something a little Mediterranean, perhaps because of the dark hair, the olive eyes. His gaze is quite penetrating and she glances away and down the lawn. He extends his hand again. Still muddy but surprisingly long and shapely. ‘James Caulfield.’

‘Fen McCabe,’ says Fen, politely pretending she hasn’t seen the state of the hand she’s shaking. ‘I thought you’d be old.’

James looks surprised and flattered. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be,’ he says by way of an explanation.

‘None of us are,’ Fen theorizes, wondering how on earth the conversation can progress. They stand awkwardly for a few moments. ‘Gorgeous garden,’ Fen offers, ‘it must take some upkeep.’

‘The grounds of Delvaux Hall as a whole were loosely modelled on those at Chatsworth,’ James informs, perusing the view.

‘How interesting,’ says Fen, knowing that her enthusiasm sounds embarrassingly disproportionate.

He doesn’t look anything like an axe-wielding lunatic. He looks, actually, rather fine.

‘Well, Fen McCabe,’ says James, ‘shall I introduce you to them? Barry! Beryl!’

‘I’ve seen them before,’ Fen says as James leads on to the house.

He stops and regards her, baffled. ‘How?’ he asks, a little defensively. ‘They’ve never been out of my sight.’

‘But I saw them a couple of weeks ago,’ Fen corrects.

‘Where?’ James enquires, frowning, going through the garden gates which swing back at Fen.

‘At the Rag and Thistle,’ Fen shrugs, uncomfortable that it’s such an issue.

‘The Rag and bloody Thistle?’ James exclaims, opening the front door which was unlocked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The lurcher buried its nose in my crotch then,’ Fen explains, standing in a rather dark and chilly, flagstone-floored hallway. James flicks on a light and regards Fen. He has a peculiar urge to remove small shreds of shrubbery from her hair. But he decides it wouldn’t be seemly. And his hands are dirty. And why does he want to touch her anyway? Just because she’s seen his dogs before?

‘I thought you meant Adam and Eve,’ James explains, keeping his hands to himself (it’s only now he’s inside his home that he is aware of how dirty they are). ‘The dogs are called Barry and Beryl.’

‘That’s nice,’ Fen says absent-mindedly, not that interested which is which; really craving a nice cup of tea.

James made a very nice cup of tea. And, to Fen’s amusement, he served hers in a fine china teacup and saucer, though he poured his into a mug. She thought of Lady Chatterley and Mellors and felt rather refined and just a little flattered.

‘Biscuit?’ he offered, sitting down.

‘No thanks,’ she said politely because she felt he shouldn’t have to get up again.

‘They’re Belgian,’ he tempted, ‘slathered in milk chocolate.’

‘Go on then,’ Fen accepted. James leant back on his chair at a precarious angle, stretched further to open a low cupboard and retrieved a box of biscuits. They looked luxurious. Only Fen didn’t take one just then. Her hands remained in her lap. This was so that she could have a surreptitious glance from left to right. For James, though, it was a warning bell that maybe his dream had been prophetic in some weird way. His hands might have been rather dirty when they first met, but he hadn’t had a chance to assess her hands at all. Scaly? Bitten nails?

‘Delicious!’ James said, his mouth full, munching contentedly on a second biscuit before the first had reached his gullet. ‘Go on!’

Fen reached for the biscuits. ‘I had kippers for breakfast,’ she told James, as if it was a guilty secret, ‘with hash browns and baked beans. Only Django had run out of conventional baked beans so he heated up a tin of kidney beans and added tomato ketchup and a dash of Henderson’s Relish.’

Momentarily, James couldn’t care what Fen had eaten for breakfast. He was simply pleased to see that her hands were pretty, that her nails were neat and that her skin was pink and even. ‘Henderson’s Relish?’ he said. ‘I thought we’d kept that secret from you southerners.’

‘I am not,’ Fen remonstrated, ‘a southerner. I’ve spent more of my life in Derbyshire than I have anywhere else.’

‘I forgot,’ James said, glad that she’d reminded him. ‘I’m the fraud,’ he confided, ‘I spent my first thirty-five years down south. I’ve only been here fourteen.’

God, he’s almost fifty!

‘Is your mother a Derbyshire lass then?’ James asked, interrupting any thoughts Fen was beginning to have on people not looking their age and age being all in the mind and she’d never met anyone who was twenty years older than her yet to whom she was undeniably attracted. Whoa, Fen!

‘No. Sutton Coldfield originally,’ Fen said, ‘but she ran off with a cowboy from Denver when I was small and my dad brought my sisters and me from Battersea to Derbyshire to live with him and his brother Django.’

‘I see,’ said James, who thought Fen must have a very active imagination, ‘and they still live over at Farleymoor?’

‘Well, actually my dad died when I was little,’ Fen shrugged, ‘so it’s just Django – who is the best mother and father a girl could have.’

James didn’t know what to say to that. He thought perhaps that such childhood trauma had made her bulimic if her inroad into his biscuits were anything to go by. She was already on her third and they were very rich. And of course she’d had kippers and hash browns and some hideous-sounding bean concoction for breakfast. Must be bulimic. Shame. He’d read about how so many young women were unhinged nowadays. Oh God! did that make him sound old. Her hands were lovely though. And her laugh wasn’t that horrendous cackle of his dream but a demure little chuckle. And she was far from dowdy – ‘nicely put together’ being the phrase occurring to James. And she wasn’t scared of his dogs and they seemed to really like her.

‘Could I see Julius now,’ Fen asked, ‘please?’

‘Of course,’ James smiled, wondering how old she was.

Twenty-five? Ish? I had a twenty-three-year old a couple of years ago.

James!

‘Can I use your loo?’ Fen asked.

Oh dear, she is bulimic.

James! For God’s sake don’t hover outside the loo. It’s intrusive. And it’s worrying.

Ah – she’s only peeing.

‘You’re probably the envy of your friends,’ James said to Fen, who was surprised to find him loitering quite so near the toilet.

‘Actually,’ Fen said, ‘their business trips often take them to Europe rather than Derbyshire. New York, even. And their pay is much better than mine. But many of them deal in dull figures. Whereas the figures I deal with are bronze or marble and absolutely gorgeous.’

‘I meant,’ James said, ‘that you can eat and eat but stay slim.’

Fen regarded him as if he were a little peculiar. What an odd thing to say. The comment had suddenly set him apart from her generation. ‘In my day—’ he might say. ‘I remember when—’

Fen was just a little disappointed. And then relieved.

For God’s sake, I’m here to represent Trust Art. Let’s see the Fetherstones.

They went back into the hallway, which seemed quite warm now that Fen could take in a worn kilim, the grandfather clock, a console table heaped with magazines and papers and gloves and dogs’ leads, carpeted stairs up, a door to the back leading God knows where. James led her into the sitting-room she’d spied from the outside, where she’d imagined James as a wizened old man sitting waiting for her but deaf to her call.

And the three Fetherstones were directly in front of her. James had propped the two oil sketches, so that their sides touched, to the left of the fireplace. The bronze was to the right. Fen was speechless, her head turning from the oils to the bronze, back and forth, as if she was watching a tennis match.

‘Blimey, Mr Caulfield,’ she said, not taking her eyes from the works though she turned her cheek slightly.

‘Nice,’ said James, ‘aren’t they?’ He watched her absorbing every detail. ‘Go up close, Miss McCabe – have a sniff and a feel.’

Fen went to the fireplace and sat down between the oils and the bronze. She removed her shoes and curled her legs around her. Which should she touch first? Her right hand reached for the bronze and her left hand found the boards. Holding on to Adam’s head in bronze, she carefully pulled the oil sketches to her and placed them, one at a time, in her lap. The paint, though used thinly, had such exuberance of application.

‘It’s amazing,’ she said quietly, tilting her head back a fraction to indicate that she was talking to James and not herself, ‘he took such delight in the physical handling of media – whether painting or sculpting – sometimes you feel that the subject matter was almost a coincidence, a fluke. Like he was so enthralled with the actual material, then wow! look! what a bonus – I just painted or modelled Eve!’

James had never noticed. But now he did. ‘Exactly,’ he conferred as if it were a long-held theorem of his own.

‘Yes!’ Fen exclaimed, turning right round to beam at James, ‘Yes!’ She turned back to Adam, to Eve, to the two of them together. She ran her hands – fingertips, knuckles, palms, the backs – over all the surfaces that her eyes were dancing over too. She held the oils very very close to her face, loving it that she was allowed to let her nose touch the surfaces, her cheek too. Oh Adam! Julius! She explored the bronze figures, fingering every curve, delving into every space, sensing every twist and dip, delighting in the movement and the stillness, the solidity and the weightlessness, much like foreplay. Clutching the oil sketch of Adam against her, she turned her torso to James.

‘Mr Caulfield, are you very very broke?’ she asked, one arm holding Adam tight against her, the other encircling the bronze, the sketch of Eve in her lap. ‘It’s a travesty,’ she proclaimed, ‘to choose these to sell to raise funds.’

‘They’re really the only items I own of any value,’ James told her bluntly. ‘The grandfather clock wouldn’t pay for the reroofing. And anyway, it has a purpose, a function.’

‘So does art!’ Fen retorted, ‘Jesus, if they were mine, I’d rather sell my soul as well as my body.’

What on earth was James meant to say to that? He thought her histrionics rather amusing, but he wouldn’t let it show, let alone say so.

‘Are you sure there’s nothing else of value here?’ Fen enquired, glancing around the room as if James might have overlooked some large solid silver tureen or nondescript but authentic eighteenth-century landscape that Americans are always delighted to pay inflated prices for. She saw, however, that though the furniture was nice and the bookcase was heaving and there was a crystal decanter of whisky, there was indeed a deficit of silverware or landscape paintings. ‘Couldn’t you, I don’t know, move?’

But if you’d found a place like Keeper’s Dwelling, in an area outstandingly beautiful, would you move, Fen?

James, actually, felt a little awkward now. No, not just awkward, uncouth even. Like he was being deplorably mercenary, or committing a crime against the most basic standards of aesthetics and worth.

‘How badly does the roof leak?’ Fen persisted.

‘I’ll show you,’ said James, offering his hand to assist Fen to her feet, her left thigh having gone to sleep. She held on to his arm, giggling with the sensation as the blood revived her limb. She limped behind him and he took her upstairs. Three large stained patches were pointed out to her, two on the bedroom ceiling, one in the hallway. ‘It’s only a patch job,’ James explained. ‘By this winter, if it isn’t fixed, I’ll be watching stars from my bed.’

Fen conceded that reroofing was essential, at the same time taking a surreptitious look around the bedroom with great interest and absorbing the tiniest of details. A nicely made double bed. Bet he has a cleaner. Sash windows, heavy cream curtains billowing to the floor. Must be a girlfriend’s touch. Carpet slightly worn but well hoovered. A very distant smell of dog. A bone of contention no doubt for the cleaner and girlfriend. Tinted engravings, probably 1920s, most likely of Derbyshire, framed. Four botanical prints, also framed. Camelia. Magnolia. Dog Rose. Field Poppy.

But it was the photos atop the chest of drawers which she found most alluring.

‘Who’s this?’ Fen asked.

‘The only girlfriend I split up with amicably,’ James replied.

‘When was that?’ Fen asked.

‘When we were twenty-two,’ James replied, realizing that such an age was well over half his life away and yet for Fen, probably so recent it didn’t yet qualify as a memory.

‘What was her name?’ Fen persisted.

‘Anna,’ said James.

‘Where is she now?’ Fen asked.

‘Australia, married, four children, a sheep farm,’ James replied.

‘Do you live alone?’ Fen asked, turning towards him and regarding him directly.

James frowned momentarily. ‘Why do you ask?’

Fen turned away. She wasn’t sure why she had asked. Nor why she was genuinely interested in this man. ‘I thought maybe if you had a very rich lover, she would fix your roof,’ suggested Fen limply.

‘I don’t have a lover, rich or otherwise,’ James told her, wondering why he had – and why he didn’t.

‘Who’s this?’ Fen asked, looking at a photograph of a dark-haired woman with perfect lips and undeniable sadness to her eyes.

‘My mother,’ said James.

‘Was she from Derbyshire?’ Fen asked.

‘Italy, originally,’ James said.

‘And who’s this?’ Fen asked, scrutinizing a photo so old, so small, so faded, that it may not have been a photo at all.

‘My great, great-grandmother,’ said James. ‘Come on back downstairs.’

Fen looked at the photo a little longer. The lady looked familiar.

‘So,’ said James, back in the sitting-room, in the armchair, while Fen sat on the floor with art on her lap and in her hands, ‘who will give Adam and Eve the best home?’

‘The best home or the best price?’ Fen asked. ‘I’d give them the best home – but I could only pay you about £70 a month for the next millennium!’

‘The best home,’ said James. ‘Margot Fitzmontague-Le Patrick-Whatever valued the oils at thirty, the bronze at forty.’

‘Thousand,’ Fen said sadly.

‘Of course,’ James said kindly.

‘But why sell all three?’ Fen persisted. ‘The roof can’t cost that much.’

James looked at the Fetherstones and Fen thoughtfully. ‘It would be a travesty to separate them. Look at them! They belong together. They must stay together.’

Fen looked at the pieces. It was true.

‘We have to find an establishment that wants them and can plead a good case for Trust Art to assist purchase with a grant,’ Fen said, racking her brains.

‘And you could do that for me?’ said James.

‘I’ll do it for Julius,’ Fen said with a grin.

‘Would you like some lunch?’ James asked.

‘My goodness,’ Fen exclaimed, ‘it’s almost one o’clock. I think I ought to catch a train home.’

‘Why?’ James asked. ‘Do you need to go in to work?’

‘They’re not expecting me,’ Fen pondered, ‘but being the New Girl, I could do with any Brownie points to be had.’

‘It’s the Sheffield train,’ James reasoned, ‘they’re pretty frequent.’

‘Just a sandwich then,’ said Fen. ‘I had a British Rail sandwich on my way up yesterday. It was very very nasty.’

‘Simply cheese and pickle here,’ said James, hoping that there was still some pickle, ‘if that’s OK.’

‘Sounds lovely,’ said Fen.

‘Glass of wine?’ James offered.

Fen faltered. ‘I oughtn’t to – I’m working.’

‘Chill out!’ James teased. Fen laughed. James looked confused. Fen didn’t want to tell him that the phrase sounded funny coming from his lips.

The wine was lovely. But even without it, she would have felt at ease. Strangely, though James didn’t bother with small talk, Fen still found him engaging. Plus, she liked the creases around his eyes, they spoke of a person who had smiled for many years – decades, she realized. He seemed wholly different – alluringly in between a contemporary and a grown-up. Conversation flowed naturally, not necessitating polite questions and answers though they did ask each other many things, but only because they were genuinely interested in the replies.

James was stimulated by Fen. A bright girl, and of course, very pleasing on the eye. In recent years, James has consistently gone for the latter at the expense of the former; a compromise that has become dull. It was only when James said that they ought to go, that it was nearing three o’clock, that it was no problem to drive her to Chesterfield, that Fen thought to ask him how he had come by the Fetherstones.

‘They were passed down through the family,’ he told her whilst regarding his watch. ‘Come on, Miss McCabe, we’ve a train to catch. You don’t object to Barry and Beryl joining us?’

I don’t want to get to Chesterfield just yet.

‘Here we are,’ says James, ‘it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Keep in touch.’

‘Thanks so much,’ says Fen, ‘for lunch and the lift – and calling on me to consult.’

‘You should thank Margot,’ says James.

Fen suddenly remembers student times at the Courtauld. And those parties. ‘Did she make a pass at you?’ Fen asks, wondering why her heartbeat is quickening as she anticipates the reply.

‘Lord, no!’ James lies and laughs. ‘I’m just about old enough to be her father.’

Fen smiles.

He’s right. Of course he is. What was I …?

She shakes his hand and assures him she’ll call soon.

James watches her go. What a lovely day. Different. Refreshing. Rather like Fen herself. Oh well, time left to do a couple of hours for Tammy Sydnope.

SIXTEEN

I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man

George Meredith

Fen is standing stock-still in front of the news-stand at St Pancras from which she bought magazines and Maltesers yesterday.

How bizarre. How very unnerving. How really quite worrying. How did I do that? How could I do that?

How did you do what?

Spend practically the whole train journey gazing out of the window wondering what it would be like to go to bed with James Caulfield?

I can’t believe she did that, Otter, hovering by the stairwell, thought to himself. He couldn’t possibly go straight back to Publications. He slipped out of the building, crossed the car park and, via a gate, took refuge in a tiny peaceful courtyard that only bonafide Tate gallery employees were meant to know about.

‘I cannot believe she did that,’ Otter said aloud but discreetly under his breath because two dusty-looking art historians were sitting nearby. He shook his head forlornly. ‘How bloody dare she?’

It was not so much the fact that Judith had had sex with Matt that Otter objected to. It was the fact that she had shared this information with him.

‘Damn her! How dare she take advantage of me!’ Otter was truly experiencing something close to physical pain. He sat on the stone bench; his sticks-and-stalks body so twisted with the pressure of it all that it resembled a mangled coat-hanger.

‘I adore Matt. And I think Fen is quite gorgeous. But bloody Judith had to go and tell me. Me! Of all the people! She goes and tells me.’

Highly perturbed, Otter stood slowly and, stooping, shuffled back to the Trust Art offices.

‘I do not like the woman at all,’ he said quietly, re-entering the building. He stopped at the foot of the stairwell. ‘Damn her! She has provided me with the most fantastic gossip. And it is a huge, burdensome affliction – believe me – that I am so partial to gossip.’

Otter returned to Publications and literally bit his tongue all afternoon whilst trying to focus undivided attention on an appallingly punctuated article on Sir Matthew Smith. It looked, to Matt, as if Otter had chronic mouth ulcers.

Actually, Matt had found it surprisingly easy to go into Trust Art, settle down and work well. He hadn’t avoided leaving Publications for fear of bumping into Judith. He’d been down to Reception a couple of times, had had a brief meeting with Rodney and had gone along his corridor to Accounts, to the photocopying room, to the loo. He simply hadn’t bumped into Judith. And yet she was around. He’d heard her; her confident voice from which she’d carefully banished any trace of identifying accent. Her officious walk. Her laugh; ballsy and ever so slightly insincere.

It was tea-time. Fen hadn’t shown up for work. Fondly, Matt supposed she was still gazing at the Fetherstones in that private collection in Derbyshire. He turned to Otter. But Otter was picking through the article, hunched over his keyboard, bony shoulders and aquiline features compounding the impression of a raggedy vulture. Otter wasn’t talking. Sore Mouth. Or Sir Matthew. Or both.

A text message beeped into Matt’s phone. It was from Jake.

‘HAD SEX LAST NITE.’

Matt laughed and replied.

‘ME 2.’

‘1ST PINTS ON ME,’ Jake responded, much to Matt’s approval.

‘You hussy!’ Gemma gawped admiringly at Abi. ‘I can’t believe you did that!’

‘Did what?’ Fen, coming through the front door, asked.

‘Yay! McCabe returns!’ Abi sang.

‘Stop changing the subject, strumpet,’ Gemma said with an emphatic crossing of her arms, her raven curls swishing about her face like angry serpents.

‘What subject?’ Fen enquired. ‘What’s she done now?’ She plonked her bag on the settee and joined Gemma’s side, crossing her own arms over her far less substantial bust and, therefore, to a lesser effect.

Abi giggled coquettishly. ‘Fen?’ she said gingerly, tweaking tufts of her blonde crop.

‘Yes, Miss Baker?’ Fen replied, arms still folded in a teacher-like fashion.

‘You know Mr Matthew?’ Abi said with theatrical shyness and an uncharacteristically coy lowering of the eyes.

Fen looked puzzled. Their landlord was called Mr Michaels. ‘Who?’

‘For God’s sake,’ said Gemma, more exasperated with Abi than Fen, ‘Matthew. Matt. Lover-boy In The Offing.’

‘Oh,’ said Fen, ‘him.’

‘Well,’ said Abi, all sparkly, ‘you know him?’

‘Er, yes,’ said Fen, having no clue where the conversation was going.

‘Well,’ Abi continued, looking utterly triumphant, ‘you know his flatmate, horny Jake?’

‘Yes,’ Fen said, with a slight frown, ‘he of the goatee and flirtatious manner.’

‘Hmm,’ Abi hummed appreciatively.

‘He is good-looking,’ Fen agreed artlessly.

‘For God’s sake,’ Gemma exclaimed, ‘the girl and boy played doctors and nurses all last night.’

‘What?’ Fen looked amazed.

‘And no, I do not mean that they were in Casualty at the Royal Free,’ Gemma added.

Abi raised one eyebrow most lasciviously. ‘He was good,’ she slurred in an impressive southern drawl.

‘Blimey!’ Fen marvelled, the penny dropping visibly as her eyes widened and her jaw gaped. ‘Did you? Do it? With Jake?’

‘Yup!’ Abi confirmed nonchalantly.

‘Matt’s flatmate?’ Fen double-checked.

‘Yup!’ Abi shrugged.

‘Good God!’ Fen exclaimed. ‘Where? When? How?’ She paused. ‘Quick! White wine!’

There was no white wine, and as Gemma and Fen’s thirst for details could not be quenched by a time-consuming trip to the off licence, the housemates made do instead with the bottle of port kept for emergencies. They toasted Abi, while Abi toasted Jake’s dexterity of digit and tongue and ‘stonking great hard-on’. Fen, who had craved a luxuriate in a bubble bath to mull over James and think of Matt, was now pleased for the distraction away from such introversion.

And the fact that I’m saved, by the enormity of Abi’s conquest, from divulging my dilemma and having them laid bare for dissection.

‘I can’t believe you did that!’ Gemma, impressed, said as more of the previous night’s antics were revealed.

‘I can’t believe he did that!’ Fen exclaimed, wrinkling her nose at a particularly lurid detail concerning Jake’s tongue.

‘You get a taste for it,’ Abi shrugged with a sly grin. Fen pretended she was going to throw up.

‘So,’ Gemma concluded, draining the dregs of the bottle between the three glasses, ‘we just need young Fenella to set the wheels turning with Mr Matthew, then you lot can be quite the cosy foursome.’

‘Wait up,’ Abi said, sounding a little concerned and looking rather horrified, ‘it was one night of unbridled passion. It’s not leading on to anything twosomey, let alone foursomey.’

‘God,’ Fen said, quite indignant, ‘you imply that’s far more distasteful than half those things you let that he-man do to you last night!’

‘I’m going to have a bath,’ Abi yawned, ‘anyone want my water? It’ll be Clarins bath tonic.’

‘It’ll be contaminated,’ Fen goaded, ‘I’d catch something! I’ll wait, dear. You go and have a good scrub.’

Abi, though, licked the tip of her index finger and scored an imaginary tick in the air.

Matt and Jake were sitting on plush red velvet in a booth encrusted with Aztec designs in reclaimed mosaic. In Soho. Strange noises, which could have been tribal, or workmen, or terribly avant-garde music, or not music at all, filtered through the private members’ bar from speakers hidden behind wafts of chiffon. They were sipping a rather peculiar vodka and hadn’t ventured into the complimentary nibbles because it was difficult to tell if they were animal, vegetable or mineral. Despite the cutting-edge trendiness of the surroundings and post-modern vodka, the other people looked decidedly normal. Matt wondered whether this was a source of disappointment for the club’s owners.

‘I thought vodka was meant to be odourless and tasteless,’ Matt remarked, ‘which is why it is so easy to drink.’

‘This has a scent and a taste to it,’ Jake agreed, sniffing and sipping.

‘Not that I’m complaining,’ said Matt, sniffing and sipping.

‘No,’ Jake hurried, ‘nor I. Another? Shall we move on to lager?’

The meticulously attired and coiffured bar staff studiously ignored increasingly obvious attempts from Matt and Jake to catch their attention so Matt went to the bar. He returned with vodka.

‘The lager is Latvian,’ he explained to Jake, ‘I didn’t think we should risk it.’

They chinked glasses and Jake lit a cigarette, drawing on it in a leisurely fashion and blowing the smoke through his nose, eyes half closed and fixed contemplatively on a bit of broken glass that was the centrepiece of the mosaic on the far wall.

‘I shagged your intended’s flatmate,’ Jake said, tapping ash into the ashtray and suddenly hoping it was an ashtray and not art or some receptacle for the pips or stalks or inners or outers of the unidentifiable nibbles.

‘Who?’ Matt said, not thinking of Fen and wondering if Jake referred to his ex, Julia.

‘Abi,’ Jake drawled.

‘Who?’ Matt responded, because he thought his ex’s flatmate was called Josie.

‘The bleach-blonde pixie who lives with your Vanilla MeCrave,’ Jake explained, slightly baffled and wondering whether the vodka was having a more potent effect on Matt or himself.

‘Fen!’ Matt exclaimed, half to Jake and half to himself.

Why should he have been thinking of Fen? Judith was the last person he went to bed with. His ex before that. Fen – never.

‘She was rather good,’ Jake nodded, as if with great discernment.

Matt smirked in that charmingly puerile way that remains the prerogative of all men, whatever their age. ‘How? When? More vod!’

‘Great bod!’ Jake smirked back.

‘Will you see her again?’ Matt asked.

Jake swished the ice-cubes around his glass and tipped his head from side to side. ‘Probably,’ he said, ‘I’d quite like to check out Gemma too.’ Matt shook his head in mock exasperation. ‘A glass of white wine,’ Jake shrugged, ‘a glass of red – sometimes you feel like blonde, sometimes brunette. Milk chocolate, plain chocolate. The one, or sometimes the other. Something sparkly and light, or something dusky and more sultry.’

‘I cannot,’ Matt enunciated, ‘believe you are contemplating it.’

‘Anyway, what’s your story?’ Jake moved on, at ease with his personal proclivities when it came to sex. ‘Your sweetheart was not home last night. I peeked in her bedroom though. Very spic and span. And with chains and manacles strategically placed above the bed.’

‘Sod off,’ Matt laughed.

‘Anyway, what about you – last night,’ Jake encouraged.

‘Judith. At work. Deputy director.’

‘Matthew!’ Jake exclaimed, ‘Not Judith! Not at work?’

‘Yes – Judith,’ Matt confirmed, ‘no – Bermondsey.’

‘Bermondsey?’ Jake exclaimed as if the place were commensurate with some very depraved act. And then he totally took Matt off his guard. ‘Nice mess, mate,’ Jake proclaimed, with slight disapproval. ‘You fancy the English Rose who hides away in the Archive and yet you go and shag the Mad Woman who wants to oust the director and take over the art world. I know all about Judith – and from the way you’ve spoken about her, I presumed you didn’t much like her.’

Matt considered this. Then he shrugged. ‘I don’t really. We simply had sex.’

Jake considered this. Then he shrugged. ‘Believe me, it’s rarely simple.’

Matt considered this. Then he shrugged. ‘She made a pass at me. I was drunk. Simple.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Jake asked, ‘about Good Girl in the Archive? And Wicked Witch in the Big Office?’

‘I’ll pursue the former and be mature about the latter,’ said Matt. ‘I guess I’ve done the rebound thing now. I’m cleansed and purged and have a clean slate to see what might happen with Fen.’

‘Let’s hope Judas will be “mature” about it,’ Jake said, a little glumly because thrusting career women intimidated him slightly (probably because he had been cuckolded by one once). ‘Ideally, a zipless fuck should happen with a woman you won’t see again, not one you work with on a daily basis.’

‘Zips aside, it was definitely no-strings sex,’ Matt said, ‘after all, she made all the moves.’

‘Sure,’ said Jake, who actually wasn’t sure at all.

There are always strings, Jake thought as he ventured into the black marble cavern he presumed was the Gents. There’ll even be strings with Abi – if I’m lucky, she’ll just want to tie me up with them or, better still, allow me to strap her to the bed with them.

James sat up late watching television. He wondered, fleetingly, if Fen had arrived home safely. And what she was doing. Asleep? Awake? Eating? Boyfriend? Barry had diarrhoea. Beryl was trying to fuss over him.

SEVENTEEN

Fen adored both her sisters. Being the middle girl, it was as if she constantly looked from this way to that, from left to right, much as she did the palms of her hands. On the one hand, if she looked up, a year older than her, she’d find Philippa. Pip – unusual and outgoing from an early age. Fen had always been in awe of Pip’s ability to entertain, to hold court in such an amenable way. Pip was an accomplished acrobat and an adorable clown, a master of both spontaneous flikflaks and polished slapstick. Fen marvelled at Pip’s strongest personality trait – to be bright and carefree but never self-centred. By comparison, Fen felt herself to be dull, unable to do even a cartwheel or to recount the shortest of jokes. Pip, though, wished she could have that serenity that was so effortless for Fen. For Pip to be quiet, controlled, thoughtful, necessitated yogic breathing and a slow countdown for at least five minutes.

On the other hand, if Fen looked down, a year her junior, she’d find Catriona. Cat. Fen admired Cat’s single-mindedness and her passion for all things athletic. When in Derbyshire, while Fen day-dreamed in the heather or under the shelter of a drystone wall, she’d marvel at Cat charging around the moors on her mountain bike; whether staying on in the most precarious of situations or falling off dramatically. Similarly, whilst Fen might stroll along the lane, eyes low so she could spy plants and flowers, Cat would belt past, perhaps two miles into a five-mile hill run, her eyes fixed ahead, always forward, always making strides. It was Cat’s blueprint for life, Fen decided. And now that her younger sister had chucked out the despicable boyfriend, and though she was suffering so, she was still managing to stride ahead, planning to leave Britain to report on the Tour de France and further her career as a sports journalist.

Philippa, Fenella, Catriona. From the earliest age, they had rarely been referred to by their full names. Unless they were being scolded. Or were lost in the woods. Or had emitted a sonorous belch at an inopportune moment (Django assured them that there were times when it was acceptable to do so). Or had sworn with one of the forbidden expletives (bugger and bollocks and bloody were allowed). Or had rejected Django’s cuisine. Or had scored an anomalously high grade in any science subject at school.

The day that Fen returned from Derbyshire was the day that Cat finally split from her long-term but poor excuse for a boyfriend. Currently, Cat is desperately low. She fears she will never feel anything but the leaden sickness weighing heavy in her stomach; the feeling of panic lurking at the base of her throat; the notion filling her mind that she might never love or be loved again; the searing pain of her heart cracking – surely moments away from breaking altogether. And yet, lucky Cat McCabe. Her eldest sister Pip keeps her distracted and entertained during the day and her older sister Fen is with her each evening, staying the night; listening, soothing, advising. It is these three qualities, held in abundance by Fen, which Cat and Pip have always depended on; drawn upon; coveted.

Matt, however, didn’t know of Fen’s younger sister’s crisis. All he knew was that, since her return from Derbyshire, Fen had seemed somewhat remote. She’d been keeping to herself, mostly taking her lunch at her desk, or cross-legged on the floor whilst sorting through 1964. He was a little disappointed. She’d hardly been in to Publications. She’d come out for lunch only the once. She was in early and left early; mostly he didn’t realize she had gone until he tried her extension or actually visited the Archive. Bobbie asked him if Fen was on a diet, ‘’cos she ain’t been down for her Jammy Dodgers, I save ’em for her and look how many’s stackin’ up’. Otter wondered whether Fen had somehow found out about Judith and Matt, and he spent another afternoon gurning and grimacing and throwing himself into his work to prevent himself from divulging this theory to Matt, or merely asking, ‘Why the fuck did you have sex with the Tyrant?’

‘Are you OK?’ Matt had ventured in what he hoped was a sensitive and not prying tone of voice.

‘Fine, fine,’ Fen said briskly and with a quick smile, ‘I want to wrap up 1959 and then have a preliminary peep at 1963 before I go.’

Fen hasn’t heard from James. She’d dropped him a line to thank him and to assure him she would be in touch as soon as there was any information. But as yet there hasn’t been. So, though she has been tempted to call to say nothing in particular, she hasn’t. And there’s been no point for him to have contacted her. So he hasn’t.

Matt arrived at work early. Jake hadn’t been around for most of the week so Matt had indulged in early nights and a relative de-tox from alcohol. (The bottles of Budvar in the fridge didn’t really count, he decided. ‘If they’re an accompaniment to Crimewatch or The Bill or the News,’ he reasoned, taking a bottle before watching one of the above, ‘then it’s merely the same as a humble cup of coffee.’) This morning, Matt ordered a caffeinated cappuccino, one sugar please, and a pain au chocolat. Just a double espresso for himself. This’ll work, he assured himself as he walked down John Islip Street, it may not be the most direct route to a woman’s heart, but certainly it is a step in the right direction and should elicit some response. I’ve arrived, well armed, good and early. I don’t think a chat over breakfast would be decadent or even unreasonable.

But Fen wasn’t in the Archive. She wasn’t in the building. And, by ten o’clock, Matt hadn’t a clue where she was.

Fen was worried about Cat. Her sister had been the protagonist in finishing the already decaying relationship and, though initially Cat had felt brave, she had quickly sunk and was now pretty inconsolable. Her voice was different, tinged with pure sadness and underlined by a frightening flatness. ‘This desolation, Fen,’ she had croaked, waking Fen at four in the morning, ‘how will I get over it? Oh God, how? When? I won’t! I won’t! I will always feel this way.’ Fen had cradled her to sleep, kissing the top of her head, whispering, ‘I promise you, I promise you – you will so be OK.’ Just before Cat had drifted into a numb sleep she had told Fen, quite emphatically, ‘I don’t believe you.’ And Fen, then, could not sleep. An hour later, Cat awoke crying. She sat up in bed and switched the light on. ‘I want him back!’ she sobbed, her eyes racing from right to left. ‘I can’t! I can’t! I’d rather be unhappy with him than face an unknown future without him.’ Fen knew that if she reasoned with Cat just then, if she pointed out the man’s vices, let alone his inadequacies (and he had many of each), if she emphasized how miserable Cat had been in that relationship, she would only hurt her sister more. So she cuddled Cat and felt extremely perplexed.

Not just perplexed. Impotent. There is nothing I can say or do. I just hope I can soothe her.

Being there for Cat, physically, meant just that. Today, Fen would not countenance leaving her until Pip was there for her too. Pip arrived, as scheduled, on the dot of ten. And Fen, handing over the care of Cat, imparted all that was needed with just one look. Like nurses checking each other’s charts as one shift ends and the next begins.

‘I’d have been happy to have taken the whole day off work,’ Fen said to herself as she walked to Camden Town tube station, ‘happier, actually, than turning up late. Hopefully I’ll just slip in unseen and unannounced.’ She wasn’t to know that Matt had arrived early, and had gone to the Archive armed with cappuccino and cake for her. She wasn’t to know that Judith had announced to Rodney Beaumont that Fen wasn’t just leaving early in the evenings, it now appeared she was arriving late in the mornings too. She wasn’t to know that, by the time she arrived, Matt had removed the stone-cold cappuccino and eaten the pain au chocolat himself.

So, Fen arrived at Trust Art and walked lightly, ever so slightly on tiptoes, up the stairs to her corridor. Fortuitously, Matt was just coming out of the toilet.

‘Fen!’

‘Hi,’ Fen said in a friendly but hasty manner. She kept walking, which required Matt to about-turn so that he could at least keep the conversation going. ‘I’m a bit late today.’

‘Everything OK?’ Matt enquired with a tone of voice he hoped was friendly and not nosy.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Fen, reaching the door of the Archive, ‘but I should really crack on.’

‘Sure,’ said Matt, a little baffled. ‘How about a sandwich later?’

‘Um,’ Fen was reluctant, ‘I’ll see how the morning’s work goes.’

‘You have to eat,’ Matt said.

‘I know, I know,’ Fen replied. She looked agitated. ‘I’ll see.’ She entered the Archive and let the door close behind her.

What the bloody hell is wrong with her? Matt wondered as he walked back to Publications, wondering why he was slightly irritated.

With Cat occupying so much of Fen’s time and thoughts, it was a relief not to talk about it. If I let them know here that there are family problems, Fen had reasoned, because she had at one point thought of mentioning it to Rodney, then every time they see me they’ll ask how things are. And sometimes it’s good, it’s nice, just to have respite.

Fen refused Matt and Otter’s invitation to join them for sandwiches, but they managed to persuade her that they would be her take-away boys. She wasn’t that hungry, but she knew it was because she hadn’t yet eaten. So she was sensible and ordered brie and tomato on baguette, mayonnaise no butter, a cappuccino, and an orange juice. It was Otter’s idea to add the slice of icing-sugar-coated chocolate finger cake. Fen was touched. She presumed that, because Matt had delivered it, it had been his gesture. When Matt knocked and entered with a cup of coffee a little later, he found her talking quietly into the phone. She just slightly turned her back on him. It seemed furtive.

‘I know,’ he heard her say, ‘I know you do. I just don’t know what to do either.’

Then he heard her tell whomever it was she was speaking to that it was breaking her heart too. So he left. He still felt irritated; now he felt disappointed too. He knew eavesdropping was daft and destructive, that picking up fag-ends was unsavoury and pointless. But still, he felt disconcerted all afternoon. And when Judith came into Publications and suggested he accompany her to a private view at the Whitechapel gallery the following Tuesday, he accepted. Slightly absent-mindedly. Forgetting, just then, that he’d even been to a private view with Judith. Temporarily not remembering what had happened afterwards. And then his ex-girlfriend called, in tears, proclaiming love and death. Suddenly, Matt had a huge headache and actually said, somewhat histrionically, to Otter, ‘Why can’t I be gay! Bugger women!’

‘Because,’ Otter quipped, ‘it would mean bugger men! Literally, dearest. And men, in my vast and lurid experience, are ultimately far more demanding than women.’

Matt laughed. He rang his ex-girlfriend back and attempted to soothe her by showing concern for her feelings and sympathy for her plight. It served, though, to delude her that he cared because he’d changed his mind. She rang her best friend to inform her that Matt had just rung! ‘He was so sweet! Caring! I’m sure he feels it too. Shall I call again? Text message him? E-mail?’ Matt received a text message some minutes later, about broken hearts now, wonderful times then, and beauty in the future. Nine kisses. Far more than their combined total in the last months of the relationship. Matt’s headache returned, nagging the front of his skull and coursing down to his shoulders.

‘Do you think Fen fancies me?’ he asked Otter, rolling his head slowly, eyes closed.

‘Who wouldn’t,’ Otter said sweetly, reaching over and giving Matt’s shoulder a one-handed massage.

‘I fancy her. And I have definitely, definitely felt a reciprocal vibe,’ Matt said, eyes open, happy for Otter to continue tweaking his neck. ‘I rather think that was more then than now, though.’ Matt looked a little glum. ‘I think she’s gone off me.’

‘Oh shut up, boy. Go to her. Now. And kiss her,’ Otter said distractedly. Matt, though, took him at his word and left Publications directly. Otter expected Matt had gone to the loo. He had no idea, until Matt’s triumphant return ten minutes later, that he had gone to the Archive and done exactly as Otter had told him.

I never liked him. There was always something – some niggle. He’s too charming. Too keen to ingratiate himself.

Fen is staring blankly at a clutch of correspondence from 1967 between the Trust and a wealthy collector called Sutcliffe Marton. It is probably riveting, concerning as it does a Roger Hilton and a Victor Pasmore. But Fen’s mind is on Cat. And her ex.

He was a con man, really. Mature and affable on the surface, abusive and screwed-up beneath.

‘Wanker!’ she hisses. ‘I’ll kill him.’ There’s a knock at her door. ‘Yes?’ she all but barks, slamming the papers down on the desk and rising, hands on hips, eyes dark, as if it is Wanker himself knocking.

It isn’t. It’s Matt. Though Fen is relieved, she’s really not in the mood. She wants to be left in peace to indulge in murderous thoughts. Luckily, Matt attributes Fen’s mien to 1967 being in a mess – if the scatter and hurl of papers and documents all around her is anything to go by.

‘Hi, Matt,’ she says in a tone of voice that is cursory and flat and suggests that her greeting is conditioned etiquette.

‘Hi,’ says Matt terribly seriously whilst taking three steps towards her, slipping his right arm through the loop made by her hand being on her hip. His hand rests lightly at the small of her back. Or is it the top of her bottom? His other hand cups the back of her head.

God, her hair is soft. She has a biro mark on her cheek.

This is Matt’s last thought before he kisses her. He locks gazes with her, not caring that she looks slightly puzzled. Then he presses closed lips against hers. Just presses. No puckering. No tongues. Just a gentle but steady push. He sees that she doesn’t look so puzzled now, her pupils have dilated, her frown has softened. He lightens the pressure from his lips and feels hers move instinctively forward to find him. She breathes through her nose. She smells chocolatey. Slightly dusty. Quite nice perfume. She makes a small involuntary sound, as if her breath has accidentally caught her vocal cords. It turns Matt on as much as if she’d been gasping in orgasm. He closes his eyes and slips his tongue lightly along the crack of her lips until they submit and he explores her mouth avidly. He holds her tightly. Her hands are no longer on her hips; one is up behind his back grasping his shoulder-blade, the other is grabbing on to the belt loop of his jeans. And she is kissing him back, indeed she is. Energetically. Emphatically.

He takes his tongue away and hers flits along his lips imploringly. He kisses her many times on the lips, quickly. Then he stands back a little and smiles broadly. Neither of them has a clue what to say, really. Kissing, though a long time coming and longed for some time, was not really part of the day’s agenda. Matt takes a step back, raises his hand and lets it fall.

He is aware that Fen has looked instinctively at his groin and has blushed. He glances down. Tent pole. Eiffel Tower. You bet! He doesn’t blush. He feels rather proud. He also feels unbelievably horny.

‘God I want to fuck you,’ he murmurs.

And he goes! He’s gone! And Fen stands there, utterly seduced, buzzing between her legs, breasts heaving Brontë style. ‘Let’s go to bed,’ one of her boyfriends had said to her. ‘I want to make love to you,’ another had serenaded. ‘Do you feel ready to take this relationship to a fully sexual level?’ another had asked.

God I want to fuck you.

God I want to fuck you.

God I want to fuck you.

Matt’s words. They linger in her mind just as the sensation of his kiss is lingering in her mouth. It is the sexiest thing anyone has said. And what turns her on most is the dark-horse element. The intensity of his desire was so unexpected. The phrase employed so un-Matt. Lovely, handsome Matthew Holden, whom Fen has grown used to being charming, polite, well mannered.

She sits down, not knowing what to think. His words are in her head, in her heart, in her sex; repeated and repeated in a deliciously rhythmic way. She glances from hand to hand. I can’t believe I’m about to do this. She slips her left hand between her legs, closes her thighs around it, closes her eyes, and imagines Matt.

Fen comes. Gorgeous. Like a prelude to what’s imminent in reality. She opens her eyes and sees Fetherstone’s Adam, just the Polaroid she took when in Derbyshire. She doesn’t think of James. She retrieves the clutch of papers which had been annoying her so, and now finds their contents utterly scintillating.

TO: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

FROM: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

RE: oscillation

Dear Miss McCabe

That was really very interesting. I’d like to delve deeper and take it further.

Sincerely

M.Holden

TO: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

FROM: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

RE: re: oscillation

Dear Mr Holden

Yes, fascinating. I agree – let’s.

Kind regards

F McCabe (Ms)

TO: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

FROM: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

RE: re: re: oscillation

Dear Ms

Tonight?

Best wishes

M Holden

TO: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

FROM: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

RE:

Dear Mr Holden

Tonight no good.

Apologies.

Ms McC

Nothing came back from the office three doors down. It perplexed Fen; more worryingly, it prevented much progress with the job she was being paid to do. She thought she’d wait half an hour. But what if Matt left early? Ten minutes seemed like an elegant time lapse.

TO: m.holden@trustart.co.uk

FROM: f.mccabe@trustart.co.uk

RE:

Matt

Can’t do tonight – but could do tomorrow.

Here’s my mobile phone number.

Fen

She had added an upper-case X after her name, which she then changed to lower case, and then removed altogether just before sending.

It’s been so long for me. I don’t actually know what the etiquette is, unlike Abi and Gemma who know all the Rules and the merits of Playing Hard To Get. So, I’ll leave off the ‘x’.

But why can’t you do tonight, Fen? While the iron is hot? And love is in the air? And while he has a tent pole in his trousers? And you’re sticking to your knickers? And you’re both feeling just a little triumphant, aroused and ebullient?

I can’t do tonight – Cat duty. But I just might be able to do tomorrow night because Pip generally tries not to work on Saturday nights on account of the proliferation of unsavoury requests from stag nights. She doesn’t mind doing acrobatics in a leotard. But she does object to drunken prats calling for her tits. Someone gave her a ping-pong ball once, and a twenty-pound note. Pip didn’t understand. So she improvised and managed to balance the ball on her nose for a few seconds before performing a trick to make the money disappear. She was quite proud. The bloke was livid.

So, you can do Saturday night?

I can. If Pip is free. If he calls. Oh please do! It’s bizarre – I’ve really never felt single, on account of Julius and his works, but being kissed by Matt has … well … I hope he calls.

EIGHTEEN

Fen’s extension just rang and rang.

James presumed that on Fridays the staff sloped off as early as they could.

He rang again.

They’ve probably gone to the pub.

He tried the main switchboard.

‘I just seen her,’ Bobbie squawked, ‘she’s off home for the weekend. Can I take a message?’

‘No,’ said James, ‘I’ll call on Monday.’

‘Ta-ra,’ said Bobbie.

James took the dogs for a walk. Though they’d been bounding around Mrs Litchfield’s all afternoon, they were eternally eager to please, thus wagged their tails and lolloped along getting good and muddy in the process.

‘I don’t really know,’ said James to Beryl who’d brought him a wet and gnarled stick to throw, ‘what I’d’ve said had she answered.’ Beryl dived off in the opposite direction to that in which James had hurled the stick. ‘I didn’t really have anything to say,’ he said to his dog who’d come back to him with an imploring look. Barry emerged from the thicket with the stick and Beryl chased him. ‘I just felt like phoning her.’ It was a nice evening. ‘I’d like to see Fen again. And soon.’

Maybe James would go to the Rag and Thistle. Flirt with Melanie. Friday nights were always lively there. ‘I’ll call Trust Art on Monday, on some pretext or other.’

Or maybe he’d just bath the dogs. Look at the state of them!

‘Barry! Leave! Beryl! Come!’

NINETEEN

Alas! The love of women! It is known to be a lovely and a fearful thing.

Byron

Abi felt forsaken. Gemma felt overburdened. Fen felt guilty.

Abi felt a little forsaken. It wasn’t enough to divulge with anatomical precision the intimacies of her carnal adventures with Jake to Gemma alone. Abi wanted to observe Fen’s eyes pop with amazement, perhaps envy, at her debauchery. She really did like Cat, and sympathized with her plight, but she resented her for monopolizing Fen. Fen was such a good listener. Abi felt bereft. Gemma had good ears, but as her sexual past was just as depraved as Abi’s present, her reaction wasn’t as satisfying as Fen’s would be. Gemma could also be a little judgemental. Fen would just be overawed.

Gemma felt a little overburdened. Where was Fen to gossip with over Abi’s sexploits? Gemma was finding Abi a little repetitive and dull; too many outrageous positions and far too many multiple orgasms. Gemma was also finding Jake increasingly attractive and tempting.

Fen felt a little guilty. Though she went directly from work to Cat’s flat, and though she stayed up with her sister until the early hours, watching TV and listening to Cat, though she slept in the same bed as her sister and woke any time she woke, Fen was not giving Cat her undivided attention. And she felt bad about this. She was there for her suffering sister more in body than in spirit. Moreover, in her mind, she was in fact giving her entire body, inside and out, to Matt. Fen did feel guilty, but then Cat seemed so caught up within the vortex of her angst that Fen wondered how much constructive use she was at any rate. Nothing she could say seemed to soothe her sister, or make much sense to her, nor really have any effect at all. If Fen could be there in body – a shoulder to cry on, arms to envelope, a body to snuggle against – did it matter all that much that her mind was running rampant, ripping off Matt’s clothes and imagining the feel of his lips on her body?

For once, Fen wasn’t confusing fact with fiction, reality with fantasy, life with art. It was, at long last and for the first time, unequivocally Matt in her day-dreams. At no point did he metamorphose into the male component in Abandon. Or melt into Adam. Or assume any characteristic of any other of Julius’s male muses. More to the point, as she hadn’t looked from hand to hand at all, Matt did not become James either. In fact, Fen hadn’t thought about James. She hadn’t envisaged anyone other than Matt touching her like that. Or penetrating her. Her envisaging was so vivid it made her gasp. Cat presumed her sister was reacting to her recently imparted details on just how ghastly the last holiday had been with her ex.

‘No!’ Cat implored, suddenly panicking that she was being too negative. ‘I mean, we were both going through shit. I was behaving badly myself – stroppy, sulky, unaffectionate. I probably set him off. That’s what I mean! That’s what I’m saying.’ Fen passed her the tissues. Fen knew how destructive and pointless Cat’s train of thought was. But still she couldn’t stop herself from wondering what Matt’s body was like.

I think a smooth chest, with just a masculine smattering of hair coursing down from stomach to groin. I doubt whether he’s downright hairy. Or completely smooth. And I wouldn’t mind either, anyway.

‘Shall I phone him?’ Cat asked Fen, who was herself wondering whether she should phone Matt.

‘Don’t!’ Fen pleaded to them both. ‘Sleep on it.’

Phone me, Matthew Holden. Sleep with me.

Matt couldn’t phone Fen just then. And he certainly couldn’t sleep with her. His ex-girlfriend was sobbing into his shoulder, her hand alternately grasping his arm feebly, or rubbing the crotch of his jeans weakly. Both in a futile bid to appeal to, to rouse, his caring side or his sexual side; either side which he had once devoted to her. But it was like calling and calling a telephone number that has been changed. Ringing and ringing. No answer. Nobody’s home. Nobody’s there – they’ve gone, left. When? Where? How do I get back in touch?

‘I know we can make it work,’ Julia wept, ‘we’ve been through so much. How can you just walk away?’

Matt did truly feel for her, love her still. But though he willingly held her, his mind and therefore his heart were not in it.

‘Is there someone else?’ she asked, her eyes wild. ‘Is there someone else?’

‘No,’ Matt told her.

Not yet.

He felt lousy. His relationship with this woman was categorically over. There would be nothing wrong, furtive, untoward, about taking things further with Fen. And yet, he felt guilty. Phoning Fen tomorrow had now changed from being an event loaded with pleasurable anticipation, to one that suddenly just seemed wrong and now probably wouldn’t happen at all.

‘I’m going to call you a cab,’ he told Julia, who was clinging on to him as if she was clinging on to a glimmer of hope, to a strand remaining of their threadbare relationship.

‘Don’t throw me out,’ she sobbed, ‘please let me stay.’

Matt suddenly wanted to yell at her. But he bit his tongue.

He’d yelled at her before. Like she’d screamed at him. It had been pointless.

‘I’m going to call you a cab,’ he repeated quietly.

He tries zapping through TV channels with a bottle of Bud to hand after she’s gone. But nothing catches his attention. Or tickles his fancy. So he goes to bed and tries to have a wank but nothing tickles his fancy and his cock won’t rise to the occasion. He tries, fleetingly, to think of Fen, to recall the Archive that afternoon. But he can’t bring her face into his mind. He can’t even lie in bed looking forward to phoning her the next day because he isn’t going to phone her.

Bloody bloody women. I think I need a break from them altogether.

TWENTY

Fen walked to work with some trepidation. Matt hadn’t called her over the weekend and she’d been furious with herself for glancing at her phone with alarming regularity throughout the two days. She had even dialled her voice mail, despite common sense and the most basic knowledge of telephone technology assuring her that if a message had been left, her phone would have beeped accordingly and flashed up a little picture of a telephone receiver. On Sunday morning, she went back to her house, taking Cat with her. ‘For fresh air and a change of scene,’ Fen told her sister.

More, though, for me to check the home answerphone and see if Abi might offer any information, indirectly or otherwise, on account of Jake being the cad’s flatmate.

Neither Abi nor Gemma was at home. And there were no messages for Fen on the answering machine, no Post-its proclaiming ‘Jake says call Matt’ stuck to the fridge, no scrawled number hastily penned on the corner of the newspaper by the phone. Nor on the back of the paper bag from the bakery lying scrunched by the toaster. Nor on Gemma’s bed, or Abi’s dressing-table.

Fen’s emotional reaction and her behaviour unnerved her. For so long, she hadn’t been remotely bothered by love and all its panoply; she had found romantic day-dreaming, or simple masturbation, more than satisfactory. She had deemed the traumas many women suffer on account of men to be self-inflicted and for the most part unnecessary. Now, however, here was she not just experiencing all the pangs and neuroses she’d hitherto read about and ridiculed, she was also exhibiting textbook behaviour of the Forsaken Woman.

Oddly, though Fen had spent most of Saturday feeling unattractive and a fool (Why hasn’t he called?) and by Sunday she was silently cursing the bastard (Who the hell is he anyway?), now Monday sees her feeling rather timid and dreading seeing him (Why didn’t he call? Why did he kiss me like that? Does he or doesn’t he find me attractive? If he does, why didn’t he call? And if he doesn’t, why kiss me?).

Standing pensively in the queue for a cappuccino, Fen was struck by a notion so feasible that she felt utterly jubilant and practically skipped to Trust Art.

How could I be such a cow! Poor Matt probably won’t be at work today at all! Why on earth didn’t I think of this before, why the hell didn’t I credit him more? He probably has the flu! That’s it! Even if it’s just a cold – we all know how such ailments knock a man down and render him incapable of little more than groaning and being bedridden!

Fen, dearest, it’s almost May. And mild.

Food poisoning, then. Shut up.

Fen was pleasantly surprised to hear Otter and Matt chatting as she passed by Publications, though she was slightly miffed that there was no e-mail, let alone cappuccino, awaiting her in the Archive. By lunch-time, with no visit and no telephone call, she was starting to feel glum again. This was alleviated by Fen reminding herself fiercely that these very feelings were precisely why she’d forsaken men for such a relatively long time.

All this ‘will he won’t he’, all that ‘does he doesn’t he’ – it’s a waste of my time and a drain on my emotions.

She threw herself into her work, skipping lunch altogether and not feeling hungry in the slightest. Bobbie’s Jammy Dodgers more than sufficed. Most exciting was that, by tea-time, Tate Britain had returned her call, requesting more information and expressing interest in the Derbyshire Fetherstones. She thought of James but then thought she oughtn’t to be spending time thinking of him at all. Not yet. Not until there was sure business to discuss. But then she wondered if he’d appreciate a courtesy call.

‘Mr Caulfield?’

There was a pause. ‘Yes?’

‘It’s Fen,’ said Fen.

There was silence.

‘McCabe,’ Fen said, a little embarrassed.

‘Hullo, Fen McCabe,’ James said.

Fen felt a little awkward. ‘Just thought you’d like to know that Tate Britain has expressed an interest in your Fetherstones. I mean, it’s no done deal but they’d like to know more so I thought you’d like to know.’ She was gabbling.

‘That sounds promising,’ James said, ‘but I’m just on my way out. Can we talk some other time?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Fen rushed, ‘I mean Tate Britain would definitely be my first—’

James butted in. ‘I really have to go – let’s talk soon.’ And he hung up. He hadn’t told Fen that he was taking Beryl to the vet to have a boil on her paw lanced.

Fen continued to hold the receiver to her ear. She wished she hadn’t phoned. She was suddenly tired. She needed a Jammy Dodger.

‘It’s the Wild Woman of Bleeding Borneo!’ Bobbie declared on seeing Fen. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Just 1974.’ Fen attempted to quash Bobbie’s wink wink, nudge nudging. Judith, who was loitering by the pigeon-holes, wasn’t convinced.

I’m going to have a lovely luxuriate in Neal’s Yard bath oil when I’m home, Fen decided, leaving Reception, wash my hair in all things Aveda. And then, methinks, drink copious amounts of vodka.

She enters the Archive. Matt is there. He is seemingly engrossed in a hastily scribbled note from David Hockney to his father.

‘Hey, Fen,’ he says, with no hint of a cold and good colour to his cheeks putting paid to her theory of flu or food poisoning. She swiftly settles on a weekend-long migraine. Which actually isn’t far from the truth.

‘Matt,’ she says, hoping that she’s smiling in a non-affected way though she’s been taken off her guard.

Am I meant to be aloof? Alluring? Angry? Amorous? And that’s only the As. How about Baffled? Bolshy? Brazen?

‘I’m sorry about not calling you,’ Matt says and he does look apologetic, his blue eyes searching her face for forgiveness, his hair going this way and that, suggesting his regret has caused him to ruffle and scratch it. He’s wearing a crisp, mint-green shirt open at the neck, rolled up at the sleeves and tucked nonchalantly into black jeans. Fen feels a little dusty by comparison. Her white shirt is grey around the cuffs and only half tucked into her jeans, which she’s worn all weekend.

‘Don’t worry,’ Fen says, brushing away any awkwardness he might be feeling.

‘Did you have a good weekend?’ he asks politely.

‘Fabulous,’ Fen lies, ‘but too short.’

‘I –’ Matt starts, twitching his lips and tilting his head whilst looking at her.

Longingly. He’s definitely looking at me longingly. And he looks tired. So I’ll forgive him. Because, at the end of the day – literally – he is here, after all, looking for me, in my Archive.

‘Are you free tonight?’ he asks.

Fen purses her lips apologetically and shakes her head. ‘Sorry,’ she says, knowing this is the response that Abi and Gemma would have her make. ‘Tomorrow,’ she ventures, ‘I have no plans tomorrow.’

The girls will probably cringe and chastise me. I’m probably meant to wait at least forty-eight hours.

‘Great,’ Matt smiles, ‘wonderful.’

Fen sees that he looks awkward. It makes her feel calm, confident even. She goes to Matt and puts her hand gently on his neck. Ever so slightly on tiptoes, she kisses him lightly, mainly on his cheek but just catching the corner of his lips. Before she can move away, Matt grabs her against him and slips his tongue immediately into her mouth. She is so turned on by this forcefulness that she bucks her body against his instinctively. She laps at him readily. His hand is grasping her buttock; the other is against her back. He can feel no bra strap. He is desperate to see her breasts. Feeling them through her shirt will have to do for the time being. Until tomorrow. He makes an appreciative noise in his throat whilst he kisses her, which she echoes when her breast is being fondled. She’s grasping his buttocks too. She can even feel his straining cock against her despite its being behind two layers of denim.

And this is precisely how Judith St John finds them. Her two employees. Archivist and editor. Heavy petting in the Archive. She is outraged.

‘For God’s sake!’ she barks.

Fen and Matt leap apart and are speechless. Everyone is acutely aware of wet mouths and the impressive bulge in Matt’s trousers and Fen’s flush and Judith’s indignation. Judith doesn’t just hold her ground and command their darting eyes to her steely glare, she steps right into the Archive. In silence, she holds the door open and raises an eyebrow which suggests Matt should leave. Immediately. Fen feels backed into a corner though neither woman has moved. What excuse can she give? Mind you, what crime has she committed? What should she say? She shouldn’t look guilty. She should be grinning. She feels incapable of doing the latter and fears she is doing the former involuntarily. She waits an eternity for Judith’s response. Judith comes close to her and picks up the Hockney letter, studying it with great interest.

‘Fenella,’ she says at long last, as if to a gifted but tiresome child, ‘I just thought I’d pop in because I know you like to leave on the dot. I was wondering if we could have lunch tomorrow? I’d love to hear an update on the Archive.’ She says it with barbed affability and apparently no memory of what she has just witnessed.

‘Yes!’ Fen enthuses, more from gratitude and relief than from the invitation itself. ‘I’d love to.’

‘Super,’ Judith smiles spikily, ‘I’ll book the Tate restaurant for one p.m. Come and fetch me from my office at ten to.’

‘OK!’ Fen gabbles. ‘That would be wonderful. I’ll really look forward to it. I won’t have my morning croissant and I’ll try to abstain from Bobbie’s biscuit barrel. I’ve never eaten in the Tate restaurant, just the canteen which is really quite good. And I’ve loads to tell you. Not just about the Archive but there seems to be some movement on those Derbyshire Fetherstones too!’

Judith, however, smile fixed in place while her mind whirrs behind, is already on her way out.

She passes Otter. Otter looks simultaneously horrified and elated. Matt has just recounted the ambush. In an instant, from a glance at Otter twisting his fingers and desperately avoiding eye contact, Judith knows that he knows.

‘I’m taking Fenella for lunch,’ she says, connivingly, ‘I feel there are a few things she ought to know.’

‘Oh God,’ Otter wails quietly, though Matt is in a meeting downstairs with Rodney and Fen has left, ‘perhaps it is my duty to enlighten poor Fen before Judith does. Otherwise, it could be the end of something that won’t have had the chance to unfurl.’

What a bizarre end to a very long day, Fen contemplates, walking down John Islip Street to Pimlico tube.

It isn’t over yet, Fen.

Fen had a lousy journey home and, too exhausted to walk up the escalator at Camden Town tube station, she is fantasizing about vodka, lime and soda, Neal’s Yard aromatherapy bath, Aveda hair products and Clarins body lotion, too. She makes a quick detour to the fruit and vegetable market in Inverness Street to buy limes, unwilling for her fantasy to be compromised in any way. When she arrives home, it doesn’t seem that anyone is in so she troops, shoeless, up to her room and lies on her bed awhile, waiting patiently for the water to be absolutely piping hot. She dozes off, happy that sleep should prevent impatience with the temperamental immersion heater. She wakes, undresses and wraps a towel around her. She goes down a floor to the bathroom. A floor beneath that, the front door opens.

‘Hiya,’ calls Abi.

‘Hey, babe,’ calls Fen, hand on the bathroom door handle, ‘just going to have a bath. There’s lime for vodka – do you fancy rustling us up a couple?’

Fen enters the bathroom and comes across a rustling couple. It is Gemma. And Jake. Jake has snatched his hand from Gemma’s unbuttoned jeans, revealing a glimpse of Gemma’s snatch in the process. Not that there’s much to see, Gemma having gone for a Brazilian bikini wax over the weekend.

‘I’ll have one too,’ Gemma calls down to Abi, kissing a flabbergasted Fen on the cheek as she leaves the bathroom. ‘Jake’s just arrived – shall I ask him if he fancies one?’ Jake follows Gemma, kissing Fen’s cheek too. ‘Well?’ Gemma whispers saucily to Jake, well in Fen’s earshot though she’d rather not hear. ‘Do you fancy one then?’

‘Sure,’ Jake murmurs back, ‘with a twist.’

Fen runs her bath full blast, rejecting Neal’s Yard for the last glob of her Penhaligon’s lily of the valley bath essence for added luxury. She emits a near-orgasmic sigh as she eases herself down into the fragrant foamy water.

Abi comes in with her vodka. Fen thinks how bright and funky she looks, like a pop pixie. She must have bleached her hair over the weekend. Her skin is clear and her eyes sparkle. ‘Don’t be too long, Fen,’ she says, ‘Jake’s taking us all out for sushi.’

‘I don’t like sushi,’ Fen says truthfully, the weight of the day making her visibly sink a little deeper into the bath. ‘Too raw,’ she says, ‘too fishy.’

TWENTY-ONE

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

Thomas Hardy

Please tick appropriate box(es) and return to Publications (sealed envelope advisable) by lunch-time.

Fen munched the pain au chocolat and sipped the cappuccino Matt had provided, whilst she read and reread and giggled at his note. He was a flirt – but a creative one at that. She didn’t know which boxes she should tick. She knew which ones, privately, she’d like to tick, but she didn’t know if she ought. She felt a little awkward. Matt’s inventiveness touched her, his presumptuousness turned her on; the fact that he was obviously looking forward to the evening charmed her. But still she felt a little trepidation. Was all of this just too full on? She had so little recent experience to go by. Was Matt too forward for someone who, after all, had only recently split from a long-term girlfriend?

Two hours later, though, she put 1977 to one side to reread Matt’s list once again. She chewed her pen thoughtfully, then made her marks.

Please tick appropriate box(es) and return to Publications (sealed envelope advisable) by lunch-time.

She couldn’t find an envelope, so she slipped the sheet of paper into an acid-free folder and stuck a Post-it note to it, on which she’d written ‘Information from the Archive. FAO Matthew Holden Esq’. She hovered outside Publications and, believing the room to be empty, entered. Otter was there. No Matt. Good. She knew Otter was both party to the attraction between her and Matt and that he actively encouraged it.

‘Hey, Otter,’ she said, ‘just leaving this for Matt.’ She placed the file on his desk. ‘We have a hot date tonight!’ she confided in a whisper.

‘Oh, dearest Fenella,’ Otter groaned, holding his head theatrically in his hands while sheets of paper fluttered and sighed all around him.

‘Otter!’ Fen soothed, going to him and laying a hand gently on his twig-twist shoulders, presuming it was some finer point of punctuation or the choice between adjectives which vexed him. ‘Are you OK?’

‘But you’re having lunch with Judith?’ he wailed, dragging his palms down his cheeks so that he resembled an emaciated bloodhound.

‘Yes,’ Fen confirmed artlessly, ‘but I can eat like a horse at lunch-time and still manage a hearty dinner.’

‘Darling girl.’ Otter looked and sounded as though he was going to weep. Fen felt a little alarmed. Only, Matt came in and she suddenly felt it was more important to exit hastily and leave him alone with the Archive folder, than it was to discover what grieved Otter so. Matt regarded the head-bowed Otter and thought him to be a trifle odd, which he regularly thought anyway, thus finding nothing ominous in his assistant’s deportment today.

‘Cheer up,’ Matt said lightly, ‘it might never happen.’

Otter sighed. ‘Oh but it will, sweet knave, it will.’

Matt saw the Archive file instantly but busied himself with a couple of phone calls before looking inside. He was delighted with Fen’s response and went to the Archive to return the folder and sneak a snog. Meanwhile, Judith St John entered Publications, and spoke briefly at Otter whilst sauntering over to Matt’s desk and glancing at his form for Fen. She noted Fen’s ticks. Immediately, Judith sensed lead in her stomach and tasted bile at the back of her throat. But she had more than one trump card up her sleeve. She left Publications making no comment to Otter who was gnawing his right thumbnail, having already chewed the fingernails of that hand.

Otter didn’t want to have lunch with Matt. He couldn’t stomach a thing, full stop – not food, nor talk of Fen or Judith. He practically ran down to Victoria station to hide, to get away. He spent a very full lunch-hour browsing around the concourse shops; the tannoy comfortingly loud so that he didn’t have to listen to the dilemma in his head.

Fen had spent her frugal freelance days on a lunch-time diet of toast and Marmite (with tinned alphabetti-spaghetti if she’d had an article published); her lunch times at Trust Art had been perfectly served by sandwiches from the nearby café. Therefore, to have lunch at the Tate Gallery Restaurant was a real event. Accordingly, she had dressed very carefully that morning, more for lunch than for the evening with Matt which was to follow. She had no desire, let alone the wardrobe, to match Judith’s penchant for Armani (always collarless, jacket long, skirt short or trousers slim in navy, black or charcoal, T-shirt in crisp cream mercerized cotton), but she had teamed her most expensive skirt (a lilac-grey, crepey, bias-cut just-below-the-knee Ghost special) with a slate-grey Agnés B cardigan. And a selection of Gemma’s Bobbi Brown eye make-up too. Matt of course thought she’d dressed for him. And the notion, along with the indisputably braless fact of Fen’s tits beneath the cardigan, had made him kiss her very intensely when returning the folder.

Fen chose from the menu carefully, nothing with any juice or sauce that might splash or stain. Smoked salmon to start. Grilled corn-fed chicken with celeriac mash to follow. Crème brûlée to round things off nicely. Judith chose salad to start and a salad with goat’s cheese (which she pushed to one side) to follow. And fresh fruit salad for dessert.

Come on! Come on! What was said? What was the conversation like? Did it flow? What was discussed?

Actually, she was really sweet to me!

Did she call you Fenella or Fen?

Fen. Throughout.

Do you suspect it was a veneer?

No! I’d much rather credit her with having an unfortunate manner in company. She was very attentive – asked me lots of probing questions about the Archive.

And?

Was I enjoying myself, had I made friends amongst the staff? You know, usual stuff.

No! More details.

Well, she was even light-hearted about catching Matt and me! She said, ‘Fen, I doubt whether the Archive is the most salubrious of setting for clinches with Matthew.’ I laughed and she raised her eyebrow and told me to be careful.

To be careful?

Yes. Actually, I wasn’t quite sure of the meaning behind that one either. Was she talking about safe sex? Or the metal corners of the shelving being hazardous? Or stains on the papers? Or people not as tolerant as her walking in on us? Anyway, the conversation became quite girly – I told her we were having a hot date tonight. In W1, food and drink – I didn’t say about the bases and breakfast.

What was her response?

Actually, she was fiddling with a message on her mobile phone and fiddling with the spun sugar on her fruit salad and trying to summon the bill. I don’t think she was that interested.

Not that interested?

No. I think Judith St John is wedded to work and promoting her image as a thrusting young force in the art world. I think respect is what she lusts after, and success is what turns her on. She was interested in the Tate’s response to the Derbyshire Fetherstones. There’s an acquisitions meeting in three weeks’ time. I’ll call James Caulfield and see if he can arrange to have the works sent down.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ James sighs, wriggling out of his boots. He is dressed and ready to go to his afternoon assignments, having come home for lunch and to give Barry his antibiotics. He was just about to hold the door open for the dogs when the house phone rings. Whether James is merely stuck in his ways or whether he has standards, he resolutely adheres to a policy of no boots beyond the hallway mat. The phone is ringing.

‘Call my fucking mobile, why don’t you?’

The boots have to come off. He jars his left ankle in the process and winces. He practically skates across the flagstones to answer the phone.

‘Yes!’ he barks.

Fen is taken aback by the aggression.

‘Who is this?’ he demands.

‘Mr Caulfield?’

In an instant, James knows it’s Fen. The pain in his ankle subsides; the fact that Beryl is chewing his right boot is irrelevant. Barry is engrossed in giving his balls a meticulous licking. James sees that, subconsciously, he is holding his own testicles. It’s the sound of Fen’s voice. It’s a balm. It has smoothed away the furrows of irritability from his brow, it has soothed his ricked ankle.

‘Mr Caulfield?’

The fairer sex indeed. Remember, I spend most my life listening to dogs snoring or barking, or to middle-aged busybodies divulging their opinions, and to me droning on to myself.

‘Hullo?’ Fen says again. ‘It’s Fen McCabe. From London. From Trust Art. The Fetherstones.’

‘Hullo, Fen,’ James says in an instantly soothed tone of voice, ‘this is James.’

Fen is smiling subconsciously. She can smell Derbyshire. She can feel the spring breeze on her cheeks. She is relatively full from lunch at the Tate but she could easily manage a slice of Mrs Merifleld’s Bakewell tart from the Rag and Thistle. The Archive is all brown boxes and grey shelving and paint that needs a face-lift. Keeper’s Dwelling smells of wood fires and has dogs that are effusive in their affection. And Fetherstones. Three of them. ‘How are you, Fen?’ James asks. Barry has finished cleaning his testicles and is now humping his rump in a peculiar dragging fashion across the large doormat. ‘Bugger – can I worm him on antibiotics?’

‘What?’ Fen reacts.

‘Sorry, Fen,’ James laughs, ‘Barry is on antibiotics. And I think he’s probably got worms.’

‘Is he doing that funny bottom shuffle across the floor?’ Fen asks.

‘Spot on.’

‘Worms,’ Fen proclaims, ‘yeuch.’

‘Anyway,’ James says affably, ‘enough about my dog’s anal afflictions, what can I do you for?’

‘Yes,’ Fen says, becoming the official voice of Trust Art, ‘could we have your Fetherstones in London, please? The Tate want to see them and then there’s our acquisitions meeting later this month.’

‘Sure,’ James says, ‘sure. Shall I bring them? Send them? Will you send for them?’ He paused. ‘Come for them?’

‘I’ll send for them,’ says Fen, though she does pause momentarily to think twice.

It was nice speaking to James. It was almost four o’clock. The evening with Matt seemed imminent. She’d arranged that Pip should be on Cat duty, but under no circumstances to tell her that Fen had a date.

It had been nice, speaking to James. He has the most wonderful Fetherstones in his collection. Fen would send for them and see them again. It was something to truly look forward to. For the time being, though, the coming evening was what Fen was looking forward to.

Judith St John entered Publications. She glanced at Otter whose eyes were wide with fear for some reason. She looked at Matt who was tapping a pencil between his top and lower teeth whilst looking out of the window.

‘Matthew,’ Judith breezed. He looked up. It was very obvious to her that he had been lost in thought, not thinking about the running order of the current issue of Art Matters.

‘Hi,’ he said.

‘I suggest we leave here at five thirty-ish.’ She said it so nonchalantly, but with such confidence that, though Matt temporarily had no idea to what she alluded, he felt it was more than his job’s worth to enquire what, where, why. Luckily, Judith continued. ‘The Whitechapel is a bugger to get to from Pimlico. The private view starts at six thirty. I’ll order a cab. I thought we’d have a light supper afterwards. I’ve booked that new fusion restaurant in Hoxton.’

There was no room to comment, let alone protest. Matt kept the pencil in his mouth. His facial expression was neutral. Only the flexed muscles on his cheek gave away that he was biting down on the pencil, hard. Judith, feeling triumphant, smiled in a girly-sweet way utterly at odds with her character. ‘It could be an interesting evening,’ she said, most beguilingly.

Both Otter and Matt sat with their heads in their hands. Matt has a sense of duty. He has manners. The arrangement with Judith was made before that with Fen. He was hugely disappointed. But he had to do what is right. His father had drummed it into him. Honesty. Politeness. Decorum.

‘Bugger,’ he sighed, ‘what a fuck-up.’

It was five o’clock.

He went to the Archive.

It is five thirty. Matt and Judith have gone.

‘Fuck,’ says Otter, ‘what a fucking fuck-up.’ He goes to the Archive. He finds Fen, a brownish smudge on her white vest, typing data into the computer. She has a line of biro ink on her left hand. Whether she is chewing something, or whether she is merely masticating with concentration, Otter cannot tell. But he thinks how gentle she looks, fragile even. Oh dear.

‘Fen, dearest,’ Otter says, laying a hand carefully on her head.

‘Hey,’ Fen says. Then she pulls a forlorn face. ‘He blew me out. He’s spending the evening with Judith.’

‘I know,’ says Otter, not wanting to know more, and therefore not noting that Fen’s expression has a theatrical edge.

‘Bastard,’ Fen says, but Otter, so caught up in what he thinks has happened, does not hear the lightness to her tone of voice, that she uses the term almost affectionately.

Fen is indeed hugely disappointed. In fact, she felt quite annoyed when Matt left the Archive; a little rejected too. She tried to understand. It was work, after all. A prior engagement, that’s all.

Otter, however, does not understand what Fen has understood. All he knows is that she has had lunch with Judith, and that Judith had told him that she’d be enlightening Fen on a couple of matters. Otter can only begin to imagine what was said. And what he imagines is enough to compel him to reassure Fen in any way he can.

‘She’s a manipulative bitch,’ he proclaims, now stroking Fen’s hair quite frenetically. Fen frowns and ducks her head from Otter’s touch; she swivels in her chair to face him and he perches on the edge of her desk like a raggedly crow in a bird sanctuary. ‘I promise you, dearest, she’ll have made it sound much more than it was – certainly much more than it ever meant to Matt.’ Fen is frowning still. ‘You have to remember,’ he says very carefully, ‘that he is recently released from a troublesome break-up of a long-term relationship.’ Fen has no idea where this conversation has come from, where it is going, or why Otter is engrossed in it. She doesn’t even know who the ‘she’ is.

‘It was only sex,’ Otter stresses, ‘Matt fucked Judith because he was on the rebound.’

Fen scrunches her eyes tight shut.

Oh fuck. Judith.

She keeps her eyes closed. Otter has presented her with a mapped-out canvas. She has only to fill in the colour. Painting by numbers. Joining the dots. A picture to be revealed.

I don’t want to know!

I want to know everything!

Matt?

Judith?

Sex?

When?

Otter feels that the best thing to do, the most tactful and constructive way to handle all of this, is to play down completely the coupling of Matt and Judith. He will simply stress the physical and do away with any emotional significance Judith might have – must have – emphasized over lunch. ‘And he was drunk,’ Otter proclaims, as if this fact further undermines any relevance whatsoever to the fornication between Matt and Judith. ‘I mean,’ he continues, hoping to calm Fen’s darting eyes, ‘I know it was a couple of a weeks ago – the Rothko private view – but honestly, honestly, it was just a one-off, drunken exchange of bodily fluids. Purely physical. It hadn’t happened before – and I promise you, dearest sweetest darlingest Fen, it won’t happen again. Certainly not tonight.’

Shut up, Otter.

‘It was just sex.’

Stop it.

‘Alcohol fuelled.’

Enough.

‘Seriously, love – for Matt it was little more than an assisted wank.’

Otter, leave it!

‘Don’t let Judith have suggested to you otherwise. She’s a fucked-up cow. She feels threatened by your success and your beauty and Matt’s obvious attraction to you.’

Yeah, right.

‘But just because she’s trying to replicate that evening again tonight – well, I assure you, Matt’ll have none of it.’

Yeah, right.

‘I mean, his ex-girlfriend has been trying to claw her way back on the scene – our poor Matthew, he had a lousy weekend trying to wrest her off him. He only wants you, dearest Fen.’

Now an ex-bloody-girlfriend is thrown into the equation!

‘I give you this privileged information because I will not have you judge this fine boy on the bullshit that Judith fed you over lunch. Nor on the trials of his past. Trust him. You can.’

Privilege? Trust? It’s all bullshit. Judith didn’t tell me a thing, you bumbling, interfering idiot.

‘It was a one-off, drunken, pointless shag. But hey, haven’t we all been there?’

No. I haven’t, Otter. And I’d rather not consort with those who have.

Otter could not persuade Fen to come out with him for a restorative drink. She said she had cat duty at her sister’s, or something. Matt likes cats, Otter thought to himself as, exhausted but with a weight off his mind, he made his way to the tube and home to his meticulous one-bedroom flat in Notting Hill.

Fen sits at her desk feeling shell-shocked. And betrayed. By all of them. Would she rather not have known? She can’t think straight. She doesn’t think she likes Matt very much. She doesn’t like Judith at all. She thinks Otter is an insensitive, gossip-obsessed fool. She stares blankly at the wall. Her focus changes and fixes on a postcard of Abandon.

Yes. Absolutely. Abandon. Abandon it all.

Even from the black-and-white two-dimensional reproduction of this great work, the play of light on mass, the shapes of the spaces in between the forms, the dance between limbs, the intensity of the emotion emanating from within these two lust-locked people, takes her breath away.

It’s crazy. A lump of bronze. And yet they breathe.

‘What a genius.’

Fen stares and stares at the work of art that has obsessed her for over a decade. A tear oozes from the corner of her eye as painfully as the lump that has lodged itself at the base of her throat.

These people do not exist. The physical forms that are here are merely testimony to this sculptor’s knowledge of human anatomy. This is not real. They are as fictitious as characters in a novel, or in a film. I feel I’ve been conned!

‘Con artist,’ she spits. She rips the postcard from the wall and tears it in two. She has severed He from She. Not that they were one, anyway. Not that they were anyone at all.

Cat, who had wept on and off all evening, was fast asleep by ten o’clock. Fen flicked channels on the television. Her mobile phoned beeped that there was a message. She hoped it wasn’t Matt. It wasn’t. Fleetingly, she was disappointed but swiftly chided herself. It was Abi.

‘How wz yr date? R U inflagrante?’

Fen snorted. She sent Abi a text message back.

‘Pants.’

Abi didn’t understand.

‘???’

Fen was too tired to phone through the information. She sent Abi a final text.

‘Tell U 2morro.’

She switched her phone off and put it in her bag. There were two pieces of folded paper. One was a copy of Matt’s list. This she folded into the smallest possible form and expertly launched over to the waste-paper basket. The other piece of paper was a print-out of James’s phone number and address. Fen folded this twice and then tapped it contemplatively against her nose. What had he said?

‘Shall I bring them? Send them? Will you send for them? Come for them?’

She had told him she’d send for them.

She has changed her mind.

‘James?’

‘Fen McCabe? Good God, you’re not still at work are you?’

‘I think I’ll come for them.’

TWENTY-TWO

Give a man a free hand and he’ll run it all over you.

Mae West

The next morning, if Fen had any second thoughts about her impromptu visit to Derbyshire, then what she found in her house when she returned from Cat’s flat, decided her at once that she should be gone from London which, in her eyes, was rapidly disintegrating into a city of iniquity. She wanted to change her clothes, to wash away any vestige of yesterday. Dress not for Judith, nor for Matt. Matt, she thought with a smirk to her face but a churn to her stomach, was probably hunting for his clothes amongst the debris that had no doubt been flung around Judith’s flat in erotic abandon.

Or maybe he went home alone at half past nine. Whichever, what do I care?

It was cloudless. Though the sun wasn’t yet in appearance, a soft spring day was prophesied. As Fen strolled through Camden towards her house, she felt nicely restored. She’d slept well and now the weather put her in a balanced mood.

I have a fair few postcards of Abandon. I must take one or two in to work.

‘God, you’ve a great arse, babe.’

Jake’s lust-soaked voice filtered down the stairs and into the kitchen where Fen was trying to enjoy a simple, refreshing glass of grapefruit juice. Jake’s description was accurate, Fen thought, objectively classing Abi’s bottom herself as ‘pert and inviting’.

Fen found herself straining her ears to hear Abi’s response. There was something simultaneously repellent and yet utterly compelling about eavesdropping on another couple’s sex. She felt both awkward but quite titillated. As though she shouldn’t listen, as though she really should go, but as though some voyeuristic side to her was revealing itself and goading her to stay. Stay, inch closer, listen more, have a peep! A desirous groan from Jake made Fen clasp her hand to her mouth to hold back schoolgirl giggles. Jake was now really moaning and gasping and the bed was creaking.

With all the noise, it seemed the opportune moment for Fen to make her way quietly up to her room. The house was tall and thin with the kitchen and living-room, open plan, spanning the ground floor. The bathroom and Abi’s room were on the first floor and Gemma’s and Fen’s rooms, separated by a twist in the hallway and three small steps to a landing, were on the top floor. Abi’s door was wide open, Jake’s clothes were strewn around it. The bed was unmade but empty. They were obviously up a level.

Please God don’t let me find her strapped to the banisters or Jake humped over the stairs on the landing. Or the two of them in some yogic configuration on my Lloyd Loom chair!

Actually, they are in Gemma’s room, Fen.

What the hell are they doing in there? That’s outrageous, she’ll be truly pissed off.

No, she won’t.

Of course she will be! I would be!

But it is Gemma.

Fen knew she should have just tiptoed past and looked steadily ahead. But there was a magnetic force dragging her eyes to the left. And what she saw rooted her to the spot. She was alternately turned on and revulsed, titillated and appalled.

It was indeed Gemma who Jake was screwing. Fen was stunned to the spot, like a rabbit transfixed by the headlights of a car, drawn to danger. She observed through the slightly ajar door, Jake humping and thrusting and gyrating against Gemma’s admittedly great arse.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’

In a tiptoe dance, with an acute awareness of just how creaky the floorboards were, just how noisy her heartbeat was, just how bad all of this was – them, her – Fen sprung along the landing like a pursued antelope and darted into her room.

She sat on her bed, dumbstruck. Appalled for Abi. Livid with Gemma. Disgusted by Jake.

What the hell am I meant to do with that knowledge?

Her right palm said tell Abi, her left palm said don’t. Her left palm said confront Gemma, her right forbade it. She wrung her hands for a moment or two and then, lightly clasped, she let them fall into her lap.

My potential new boyfriend shares his flat with this immoral, philandering sod.

She held her head in her hands.

What else do they share?

She squeezed the bridge of her nose.

My potential new boyfriend is already screwing the assistant director at my place of work.

Fen looked out of the window.

I don’t think I like these people. Thank God I am going to go to Derbyshire. I belong there.

Fen didn’t feel like Maltesers or dodgy sandwiches from St Pancras station. And every glossy magazine seemed to brim with articles she really didn’t want to read. ‘Dirty Sex For You and Your Man’, ‘I’m Sleeping With My Best Mate’s Fella’, ‘Can A Womanizer Really Change His Ways?’. So she bought the Guardian, the Independent, the Spectator and the New Yorker. She hadn’t phoned work. She hadn’t replied to Abi’s alarming text message of ‘CALL ME CALL ME CALL ME’. Fen couldn’t have anything come between her and boarding that nine-twenty-five train. In two hours and one minute, she’d alight at Chesterfield and be safely ensconced in her own familiar territory.

She phoned Abi only when the train had pulled out of Luton and had picked up speed.

‘Abi?’

‘Fen!’

Fen sank back against her seat with relief. Abi’s tone was light and energetic and not the voice of a girl whose best friend was screwing her boyfriend.

‘Well?’ Abi enquired. ‘Tell me! Last night? Why was it “pants”? Did he rip yours off with his teeth? Does he wear hideous beige Y-fronts?’

‘He blew me out,’ Fen said, really not wanting to go into it.

‘Where on earth are you?’ Abi asked.

‘On a train. Going to Derbyshire. To see a man about some sculptures.’

‘The same bloke as last time?’

‘Yes,’ said Fen, ‘this time, I’m bringing his works back with me.’

‘Gosh, you must have been saving up your pocket money!’ Abi laughed.

‘Yeah right,’ Fen laughed back. ‘How are you, Abs? Are you OK? Are things good?’

‘Darling,’ Abi said, ‘when you have the kind of sex I had last night, even the most shit day at work – as today threatens to be – is not just tolerable but almost pleasurable!’

‘Jake, then?’ Fen said.

Abi’s response was to make the kind of appreciative noises that she normally made on eating a decadently large slice of chocolate cake.

‘Good,’ said Fen, ‘good. Gemma?’

‘She’s fine too,’ Abi assured her. ‘A girly night is long overdue for us three.’

‘Yes,’ said Fen, wondering if a girly night for the three of them would ever be possible again.

‘Why did Matt blow you out?’ Abi asked.

‘He had to go to a private view,’ Fen explained, ‘with Judith St John.’

‘Ooh,’ said Abi, who always listened to everything Fen told her, ‘which lady?’

‘You know,’ Fen said ingenuously, ‘the power-dressing, power-crazed assistant director.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Abi explained, ‘I said, Witch Lady.’

‘Yes,’ snorted Fen, ‘whom he’s shagging, if Otter’s revelations are anything to go by.’

‘Good God,’ Abi exclaimed, ‘thank God you haven’t gone further than snogging, then. Do you want me to see if Jake knows anything?’

‘Don’t worry,’ Fen said, ‘don’t bother.’

‘The bastard!’ Abi said. ‘The cad! The deceptive sod!’

‘Don’t!’ Fen pleaded, horribly aware that the abuse fitted Jake perfectly, probably better, in fact, than Matt – whom she knew, deep down, hadn’t actually done anything wrong.

‘I’d better go,’ Abi said to Fen’s relief. ‘See you tomorrow – don’t drop the sculptures!’

‘Bye, my lovely,’ said Fen with much feeling.

The train was nearing Leicester. It was a good time to phone work.

‘Hello. Trust Art – how may I help?’ answered Bobbie, exaggerating her ‘h’s.

‘Bobbie? It’s me, Fen.’

‘’Allo darling, you all right? You ’aven’t got the lurgy?’ said Bobbie, dispensing with all ‘h’s in her spontaneous concern for Fen’s welfare.

‘No, no,’ said Fen, all bright and breezy, ‘I’m on a train to Derbyshire – can you tell Rodney that I’ve gone to collect the three Fetherstones?’

‘Fen. Derby. Shire. Rod. Three. Feathers,’ Bobbie murmured, scribbling a note. ‘All done, ducks. When you back?’

Fen looked out of the window.

‘’Allo?’ Bobbie called loudly, thinking Fen’s signal must have gone faint. ‘When you back? Today? Tomorrow?’

Fen held her phone against her chin and watched the home counties disappear. She cancelled her call.

She redialled Bobbie a few minutes later.

‘I lost you,’ Fen lied, ‘my signal went. Can you hear me?’

‘Lovely loud and clear, gorgeous,’ Bobbie confirmed.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Fen, ‘I’ll be back at work tomorrow.’

But I might not be back in London tonight.

What are you doing, Fen?

I don’t really know.

Why haven’t you called Django?

I don’t really know.

Are you not intending to stay in Derbyshire? At home?

I don’t know.

Or if you decide to, are you not sure where and with whom?

I don’t know.

TWENTY-THREE

I wonder why the uncle over at Farleymoor isn’t collecting her? I could do without this. I’m having to cancel Mrs Jackman. And less then twenty-four hours’ notice – from Fenella to me, and from me to Mrs J.

Feeling irritated more than resentful, James tried to focus his attention on Mrs Brakespeare’s Acer Palmatum ‘Atropurpureum’.

I suppose, though, that the Fetherstones are going to generate far more income than four hours at £15 an hour with Mrs Jackman. Plus of course lunch with Fenella is preferable to lunch at Mrs J’s. I can’t stand gammon steaks. And it is always, always, gammon steaks.

‘Remember when I took along my own sandwiches?’ James laughed, talking to Beryl who was busy digging a rather large hole at the front of Mrs Brakespeare’s herbaceous border. Beryl looked up momentarily, but she didn’t remember so she returned to her digging. ‘She gave them to you and Barry and I had to have bloody gammon steaks most of which I sneaked to you and Barry too.’ James wondered where Barry was.

‘Shit!’

Mrs Brakespeare’s back door was open. Barry certainly was not in the garden. Mrs Brakespeare was not in the house, having told James she was popping out. James jogged over the lawn, rushed out of his boots and walked into the house.

‘Barry!’ he called in a harsh whisper. Silence. He ventured in further. The sitting-room door, thank God, was shut and the cream sofas remained pristine. ‘Barry! Where the hell are you?’

James groaned on hearing the lurcher lollop down the stairs. ‘Barry!’ he yelled, his dog dropping Mr Brakespeare’s slipper immediately. ‘You’re going to Battersea!’ The lurcher, however, sauntered past his master as if to say ‘yeah, right’. James looked down at the well-chewed slipper. Barry was now looking very eager to enter the dining-room, the door being ajar. ‘Battersea!’ his owner warned and the dog thought better of it and skulked outside. James sighed. Maybe he should just feign absolute ignorance but secretly bury the slipper in Beryl’s keenly dug hole? He returned to the garden. ‘Jesus Christ – where is bloody Beryl?’ James marched around the garden, deciding out loud to trade his dogs in for cats. Beryl, it transpired, was fast asleep in the large hole she’d so meticulously excavated.

James waited for Mrs B to return, even though it meant he was running late to pick up Fen. When Mrs B finally returned (at much the same time as Fen’s train was pulling in to Chesterfield), James apologized profusely for Barry’s altercation with the slipper. And Barry, for his part, did his best to hang his head and look as though he was willing to take a beating.

‘James love,’ Mrs B cooed, distressed to see him agitated, ‘don’t you worry about it.’ She looked down at Barry kindly, but kept her hands away from his raggedy, soil-enriched coat. ‘Mr Brakespeare needed a new pair anyway,’ she told the dog. ‘We’ll keep the tatty old pair for your next visit, shall we?’ James thanked her profusely and Barry panted with relief. They bade her goodbye.

‘Are you off to Rita’s now?’ Mrs B enquired.

‘I’ve had to cancel Mrs J,’ James said.

‘Oh?’ Mrs B responded, alarmed and curious. ‘Why? Everything OK?’

‘All is well, Mrs B,’ James assured her. He grinned to himself but regarded his client with a level gaze. ‘I have a young girl coming up from London to see me. In fact, I must go and collect her now.’

Young? Mrs B wondered after James had gone, how young? A floozy? A niece? London – what’s she coming to see? And how long might she stay? Well! Who shall I phone first? Going upstairs, she looked out of the landing window to her garden and regarded Beryl’s large hole with some exasperation. Just past the bathroom, her husband’s other slipper lay. It had put up a good fight but the rubber sole had been mercilessly torn away from the upper. In her bedroom she gasped. The duvet bore the unmistakable imprint of a very large and muddy lurcher.

‘Oh deary,’ she said, ‘better not let Mr B see this. And better not tell James. He’d be horrified, poor love.’

James had been pleasantly amused by Fen’s abrupt and unexpected phone call last night. Now there was something compelling about catching sight of her, unseen. James watched her for a moment or two. She seemed to be lost in thought, sitting a little forlornly on the station bench. He was twenty-five minutes late.

And now here she was, over there. Lovely in the flesh. Yet James suddenly felt curiously reluctant to approach her. Last night, after her phone call, he’d stared hard at the painting of Eve and had attempted to conjure an image of Fen naked, doing to him what Eve was doing to Adam in the sculpture. It had been a titillating fantasy. But he had quashed it abruptly, warned himself that he was old enough to be her … And had gone to bed with a John Grisham thriller instead.

James glanced at his watch. Then looked again to Fen, the breeze lifting her hair and laying it down again.

You daft sod, she’s come to you because it’s probably Trust policy for personnel to accompany works of art. Plus, a cheap-day return is probably more economical than hiring a courier firm to collect and deliver.

Nevertheless, James gave Barry the honour of greeting her. Fen looked momentarily startled and then soon enough delighted. She looked up and caught sight of James. He waved. She smiled. She left the bench and walked over to him.

‘Hullo,’ she said, holding out her hand.

‘Sorry I’m late, chuck,’ he replied, ignoring her hand and kissing her lightly on the cheek. Her cheek was soft and cool against his lips. The contrast in temperature appealed to them both.

‘Where’s Beryl?’ Fen asked.

‘She’s in the car. Both of them are in disgrace, really,’ said James, leading the way to his war-torn Land Rover.

He doesn’t have hands like a gardener. I remember from last time.

Fen glanced from James’s hand, resting lightly on the handbrake, out of the window to a bustling Chesterfield shopping morning. His hands are more like Matt’s than Alan Titchmarsh’s. But there again, I’ve seen photos of Julius’s hands – and that drawing he did of them – and his fingers were fine and long. James has very nice hands. That’s a new boutique. Blimey, it’s selling Paul Smith! Beryl has bad breath. I’m hungry. What’s the time?

James was just a little disconcerted by Fen’s mien. She seemed contemplative. She also looked wan and tired and he found himself quite interested in why this should be so. What had she been up to?

Partying, most likely. Too many late nights. Not eating properly. Her skin looks lacklustre, her eyes have no sparkle, her hair is a little limp. Perhaps she smokes too much.

‘Do you smoke?’ James asked.

‘No,’ said Fen. ‘My housemates do – sometimes I’ll light a ciggy for them because it amuses them and reminds me why I don’t.’

‘You look rather tired,’ James commented, wondering if it sounded like a reprimand.

Fen, nodding, said she was fine.

‘You look a little,’ James paused and then thought what the hell, ‘pensive.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Fen but without nodding.

‘A bowl of soup when we get in,’ James said, all jolly, ‘how about that?’

Fen turned to him. Sunlight shot through the windscreen, illuminating her face. It spun the most incredible colours through her eyes – shards of charcoal, turquoise and khaki – and turned her skin from pale and flat to sheened porcelain. He had to look away.

‘Soup’ll be lovely,’ she said, with gratitude.

I want to lock the dogs in the utility room. I want to feed Fen. I want to have sex with her. I want to put her in a bath and ease a soapy flannel over her back and down her arms. I want to make her a cup of hot chocolate. I want her to fall asleep in my bed. And sleep. For hours. And I want her to suck my cock. I want to keep her. I want to lock her up.

James’s thoughts turned him on and horrified him.

Don’t you bloody dare. You leave her alone. Concentrate on the road. God, Beryl’s breath is bad. Must be gingivitis again. Must buy those special chews.

Fen felt a flood of calm when James pulled in to Keeper’s Dwelling and switched off the engine. She wanted to curl up with a cup of cocoa and go to sleep. Perhaps have a nice deep bath first. James was bound to have a roll-top cast-iron bath.

‘Come on in,’ he said, key in the lock. ‘Barry, Beryl – have a pee, please.’ Fen watched the dogs; the lurcher tottered over to the gatepost and cocked his leg against it while the labrador padded over to the side of the gravel drive and squatted down, avoiding eye contact.

‘Aren’t they good,’ Fen said, the peace and fresh air, the solitude of the place, reviving her. She felt much brighter.

‘They’re good-for-nothings,’ James grumbled.

‘You’re horrible,’ Fen said, and poked him because it felt right, ‘you don’t mean it.’

James wished she hadn’t poked him. It sent his incorrigible thoughts into a stampede.

The hallway smelt lovely. Fen hadn’t realized that it had a distinct aroma but standing there again proved that obviously it had. The same as last time. Earth on boots. Wood fire. Old mahogany. Wax on flagstones.

I love all of this. As a lifestyle. It’s so me, isn’t it?

‘Sit in there,’ James all but commanded in a tone of voice fairly similar to that which he used for the dogs. He held the door to the snug open and gestured to the particular armchair he wanted Fen to occupy. ‘I’m going to fix some soup.’

‘Can I help?’ Fen offered.

‘No,’ James said, ‘no.’

He didn’t want her with him. He wanted her to sit still. And stay out of sight.

When I tell my dogs to sit, I do so to keep them out of trouble. I’m telling Fen to sit to keep myself out of trouble.

James disappeared into the kitchen. Fen was quite happy to sink into the comfortable leather tub chair. The room was still. No fire. No dogs (Barry and Beryl had been confined to the utility room). And no Fetherstones. Where were they? Where? Should she go and ask James? No, she should stay put. He’d said so. Not a lot to do, really, other than to sit still and relax then. Let the mind wander. And wonder.

Fen wondered how on earth she could go on the rebound against Matt when they hadn’t even been in a relationship for him to have cheated on her.

He slept with Judith before he even kissed me. I oughtn’t to judge him on that. Though I might now think less of his taste.

And yet her desire for James was not caused by a desire to spite Matt, or to bolster her suddenly flagging self-confidence. She simply desired James. All the more so today because of the contrast between him and Matt, between all that she loved about Derbyshire and all that she suddenly loathed about London. Sleepily, she glanced from hand to hand.

I find James incredibly attractive. Not just physically, although he is classically handsome. I like him – he’s slightly aloof, set in his ways, self-contained. I’m actually turned on by his age. I suppose it is the notion of his experience and I don’t know, his weatheredness.

Fen yawned. Where were the Fetherstones?

On the other hand, what I find compelling and, at the moment, preferable, is his differentness to Matt. And men my age. James – I don’t know – he’s a grown-up! Makes Matt seem just too laddish. That’s not fair. I know Matt is attentive, kind, gorgeous to look at, young, successful and outgoing. But he lives with Jake. Jake is screwing both my friends. I rather think I ought to steer clear of someone ensconced in that milieu. Was Matt intending to have Judith and me at the same time?

She yawned again and wondered if James was a safer bet.

You have to have things in common. James and I have Derbyshire. And Fetherstones.

Yes, but Fen, no matter how impecunious you were, you would never sell Fetherstones if you owned them. Anyway, Matt and you have London and age and art in general, in common.

Jesus. Why am I even feeling obliged to choose between the two? Why am I cross-referencing their pros and cons? I’ve been doing just fine, these past couple of years, not being bothered by the presence or otherwise of the opposite sex in my life. Why on earth do I now feel I have to decide between these two vastly different and probably equally unsuitable men?

She yawned expansively.

Neither.

She let her eyes close.

Nope.

She thought of Adam and of Eve. She told herself that this was the reason for her visit today.

Nope. Neither Matt or James. Not worth it – not worth the hassle, not worth the gain.

She fell asleep feeling that, above all, she’d been unfaithful to Julius Fetherstone.

TWENTY-FOUR

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.

Oscar Wilde

James had no ingredients for soup. He didn’t even have a tin of Safeways home-brand, let alone Baxters or Heinz with which to improvise or serve as a base. He did have some Cup-a-soup but the fleeting thought of using it appalled him so much that he pushed the box to the back of the cupboard. He didn’t want to go and ask Fen what she’d like instead. He decided that he’d make chicken sandwiches. And he’d put lashings of mayonnaise on hers, because she looked like she needed feeding up.

I bet she lives in a shared house where supper is invariably baked potatoes or Marks & Spencer ready meals.

You can talk, James, you who frequently dines on Heinz tomato soup, infrequently on Cup-a-soup, invariably followed by a bowl of cornflakes, then a packet of ham which you eat, slice by slice, while watching the television and ignoring the heartstring-tugging gaze of your dogs. Jaffa Cakes before bed time which, if your dogs are lucky and their soulful looks are imploring enough and if the packet is more than half full, you share.

James cut the bread into doorstep wedges. The chicken, leftovers from a Sunday roast, was still succulent and he licked his fingers frequently. He mixed a little mustard in with the mayonnaise for piquancy and made a potato salad with left-over boiled new potatoes. It all looked hearty and appetizing.

‘Fenella,’ he called, ‘lunch.’

But there was no response. He wanted her to come into the kitchen, so he could have the distance and the propriety and the safety of the table between them. A working lunch.

‘Fen?’

Still no reply.

Oh God, I hope she hasn’t gone snooping.

James ventured into the snug. Fen’s arm was lolling over the side of the chair which he had told her to sit in. It had its back to him. He walked around and came across Fen fast asleep. It made him smile. She looked ten years younger, her eyelids softly closed, her lips parted, breathing lightly and rhythmically. Her white cotton shirt was open at the neck. He saw a pulse twitching calmly at the base of her throat. Her white cotton shirt revealed more now that she was slumped and relaxed. James came nearer and peered carefully, to delight in the soft undulation of her right breast. Her skin looked good enough to lick.

Chicken sandwiches. Chicken sandwiches. Wake her.

He inched closer, captivated more by what the shirt concealed than what it revealed. She didn’t so much have a cleavage as a slight dip between her breasts. But that looked good enough to lick too.

Wake her. Sandwiches.

He held his breath the closer he came to her. He didn’t want to wake her. His lips were inches away from her skin. He glanced at her face. Fen McCabe gazed back at him. Wide awake. And just as hungry. A suspended moment, a pregnant pause, lips wet and willing. James, though, straightened up.

‘I didn’t know whether to wake you, sleeping beauty,’ he said hoarsely, one hand on his stomach, the other in his back pocket, ‘but lunch is ready.’ He turned.

‘Prince Charming woke Sleeping Beauty with a kiss,’ Fen said, the pulse in her neck racing.

James pretended not to hear.

But you woke up. You woke up.

They ate in cordial silence. James was pleased to observe how Fen wolfed down the sandwiches and helped herself to seconds of the potato salad. Conversation was frugal and polite over coffee.

‘Where are the dogs?’ Fen asked.

‘In the utility room,’ James replied. ‘How’s your uncle?’

‘Fine,’ Fen said, ‘Django is fine.’

‘Will you see him today?’

‘No,’ Fen said, looking ever so slightly shifty, ‘it isn’t that kind of visit.’

‘What time is your train?’

Fen’s eyes flitted from side to side though she tried to fix her gaze on a piece of potato on the table. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind.’

‘See how things go?’ James suggested. Fen nodded.

‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to see them,’ James laughed. Fen’s eyes sparkled.

They were in his bedroom. The oil sketches were propped on the chest of drawers behind all the old framed photographs; the sculpture was by the side of the doorway leading to the ensuite bathroom.

‘Hullo,’ Fen said to them, to James’s amusement. She turned to him. Slightly flushed. ‘Can I use your bathroom?’

‘Sure,’ he said, motioning to it with a nod of his head, ‘go right ahead.’ He could hear her taking a pee. An unmistakably feminine trickle. His cock stirred in his trousers.

For God’s sake.

Inside the bathroom, Fen was disappointed. The fantasy of taking a bath in a roll-top cast-iron classic was sadly dampened by reality presenting her with a modern plastic suite in a discouraging shade of peach.

‘Can you manage them OK?’ James asked, remembering that the sculpture, despite its humble proportions, was heavy.

‘Sure,’ said Fen, gazing at the intertwined figures. ‘I don’t want to go home just yet.’ She looked a little unhappy.

‘The trains are regular,’ James offered.

She looked at her feet and caught sight of a John Grisham novel lying on the floor by the bed. She was quite taken aback. She’d imagined Garcia Marquez being James’s night-time reading. Grisham was on a par with the peach bathroom suite.

‘Fen?’ James was saying. ‘Train time?’

‘What?’ Fen said. ‘Oh.’

‘Or,’ asked James, ‘would you rather I kidnap you for an extortionate ransom? Then I could keep the Fetherstones.’

‘My family aren’t very flush,’ Fen responded, ‘and most of my friends have excessively burdensome overdrafts.’

‘Not such a good idea, then,’ James replied, wondering why on earth he’d said such a thing anyway. What would Trust Art think? What would Mrs Brakespeare think? What would Fen think?

‘You could kidnap me for free,’ Fen suggested, shy in voice but coy in her sideways glance and tilt of her head. ‘Adam and Eve look very at home here,’ she said, ‘right here, in the bedroom. They shouldn’t be in a gallery. They should be in a bedroom, or outside in a garden of Eden of their own.’

‘My roof, remember,’ said James, wanting to deflect attention away from the intimacy of the bedroom setting.

‘James,’ Fen said.

‘My sodding roof.’

‘Kiss me.’

‘No.’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

‘Kiss me, James.’

‘No, Fen.’

‘Yes.’

She goes over to the window and looks out over the garden. What on earth did she just say? Oh God. Out loud. James gazes at the back of her head. What did she just say? And he’d said no? Of course he wants to kiss her. But it is absolutely out of the question. She’s young enough to be, to be – to be absolutely out of bounds.

Bollocks, James, you’ve had women far younger than Fen.

It’s not right.

Why not?

Suddenly, Fen feels him behind her. He is encircling her in his arms. They do not speak. He takes his left hand and runs his fingertips lightly over her forearm until their fingers lock. They move their bodies around a little. They instinctively find each other’s mouths and they lock lips. Fen feels herself dissolve, like bubbles in a bath. She could crumple to the floor because she knows that James’s arms are holding her. For James, kissing Fen is like having one’s mouth filled with honey. Or petals. Sweet-pea petals, he decides, as her tongue darts lightly over his. James smells heavenly. After a morning’s gardening, there’s a slight musky sweatiness shot through with pheromones; there’s the scent of cold roast chicken, and a very faint linger of a light aftershave. He is tall. He appears to be strong. She can sense his hard-on. She wants it badly.

Fen feels enveloped. Completely enclosed by masculinity. She is overwhelmingly turned on, brought to the edge of orgasm by James’s kiss alone.

‘I have to go,’ she says, pulling away from his lips.

‘No,’ James murmurs, ‘couldn’t we—?’

‘Yes,’ Fen melts, closing her eyes and offering James her lips. He cups her face in his hands, takes his lips to her eyelids, to the tip of her nose, to the corner of her mouth where he flicks his tongue tip tantalizingly.

‘No,’ says James, ‘you’re right. You have to go, Fen. You must.’

They stand facing each other, eyes scorching into one another. She wants to be kissed by him again. She wants to stay.

‘Take the bronze today,’ James says quietly, ‘because of course the oil sketches aren’t here, are they?’

Fen and he regard the oil sketches.

‘No,’ said Fen, ‘they’re not here. They’re at the framers. And I’m cross because I’ve told you to leave them unframed.’

‘But though we have been able to stop the process,’ James says, ‘the earliest I can have them here is next week.’

‘Yes,’ says Fen, ‘next Monday. I can come and collect them then.’

TWENTY-FIVE

‘She’s switched her phone off,’ Matt said, having tried Fen for the fourth time that day. He scratched his head. Otter shrugged. He hadn’t told Matt what he’d told Fen. He didn’t want it to become an issue between Matt and her. Otter had told Fen because he sincerely thought he would be setting straight what Judith had undoubtedly twisted. He simply wanted to furnish Fen with the facts so that salacious inaccuracies would not hinder her impending union with Matt. Otter cared about both of them. He didn’t care for Judith at all. Of course, Matt didn’t know that Otter knew about the recent coupling with the assistant director; certainly not that the assistant director had told Otter herself. So, Matt was merely concerned for Fen’s welfare on a day when she wasn’t at work and her phone was off. He’d been hoping to take her out that night, to make up for yesterday. ‘Flu, perhaps?’ Matt suggested out loud. ‘I wonder if Bobbie has her home number?’

While Matt went downstairs to Reception, Judith paid a visit to Publications.

‘Where is he?’ she asked Otter, who twisted his legs around each other and placed his bony rump firmly on top of his skinny hands in a bid to prevent himself from going over to Judith and hitting her.

‘Loo?’ Otter suggested.

‘I tell you something,’ Judith said, regarding Otter levelly with very dark eyes, ‘he’s bloody odd. Warped, you could say. Twisted. Sexually – I don’t know – unstable.’

Otter couldn’t help looking sheepish and shy – because he had absolutely no idea what on earth he could say in response or in Matt’s defence.

Matt returned. Otter held his breath, wondering if this was perfect timing or the worst timing imaginable.

‘Hi,’ Judith breathed, ‘I was just telling Otter about last night.’

Matt observed her but remained silent. Then he grinned and laughed out loud, curtly. Judith raised an eyebrow and sashayed from the room.

‘And what exactly did she tell you about last night?’ Matt demanded of Otter.

‘That you’re sexually warped, twisted and unstable,’ Otter replied with extreme nonchalance, as if simply recounting Matt’s age, height and weight. Matt laughed and shook his head. It disconcerted Otter greatly. What was he meant to tell Fen now? Because surely, she’d ask. She’d expect to know, at any rate, and Otter had of course given himself the role of her confidante. There was a sharp pain in his stomach and a pervasive acidy taste in his mouth. He thought he very probably had developed an ulcer, on account of so much stress and responsibility.

‘I hear you’re in Derbyshire – you skiver!’ Matt leaves a message on Fen’s phone. ‘Just thought I’d ring, though. I was hoping to wine and dine you tonight. Give me a call if British Rail has deposited you home at a reasonable hour. Um. Or I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Yes. Bye.’

Matt rings her phone again, almost immediately. Otter pretends not to hear though he is listening hard, peeling his ears to catch Matt’s lowered voice.

‘Fen, it’s me again, Matt. Er. I just wanted to – well, basically I’m sorry again for last night. It was pants, anyway.’

He wonders whether that was too corny. But there’s little he can do about it. He hopes she’ll call. He feels badly about last night. And hopeful for tonight.

But Fen didn’t call. The train whisked her back down south. She listened to his messages when there was a signal on her phone. They made her smile. But she didn’t want to speak to Matt. She wasn’t punishing him. She wasn’t playing games with him. In fact she didn’t feel cross with him at all. She wanted to linger over memories of James, instead. Uninterrupted. Because it would be nearly a week until she saw him again. She hugged his rucksack close to her, though the bronze was heavy, digging into her ribs and poking her stomach. The bag smelt of James’s hallway. She closed her eyes and tried to conjure the smell of the man himself. She felt no regret that they hadn’t had sex. Just a yearning.

Jake and Matt met at their local after work. They loved the place. A rarity in London – a pub that has not lost its identity, a pub at ease with itself, a pub whose landlord and clientele had no interest, no desire for even a change of carpet, let alone cosmetic surgery to turn it into a wine bar or gastro-pub or a meetery-eatery with leather sofas and candles. You couldn’t order a Sea Breeze because the landlord didn’t trust pink drinks. If you wanted vodka, the mixers available were all in little bottles, because the landlord did not trust those one-gun-gives-all gadgets. Tonic. Coke. Ginger. Bitter lemon. No diet versions available. There were glacé cherries for the ladies, lemon slices and lime cordial. Crisps were available in ready salted, cheese and onion and salt and vinegar. There were peanuts too, in bags which were a bugger to open. Sandwiches, and sandwiches only, on white pre-sliced bread, were served at lunch-time, and at lunch-time only. No salad garnish. No cutlery. Kitchen roll in lieu of paper napkins. (‘Unnecessary,’ the landlord had explained to Jake and Matt one Saturday lunch-time, ‘poncey paper napkins would just put up the price of the sarnies.’ Kitchen roll was fine for Jake and Matt – more than they had in their flat.)

Though Jake and Matt were lager drinkers, there was something so classic about the bitter at their local – its colour, its luke warmth, its slightly repellent odour of eggy fart, that they rarely ordered anything else. There was a jar of pickled eggs behind the bar, but the contents hadn’t diminished in all the time that Jake and Matt had frequented the establishment. A giant whisky bottle sat on the bar, half filled with coins to benefit charity, but the contents hadn’t increased much in all the time that Jake and Matt had been frequenting the place. The clientele, integral to the atmosphere, hadn’t changed at all.

Ages spanned decades. Personal circumstances probably ranged from flat broke to absolutely loaded. It was irrelevant. All were equal there. They gravitated to this particular pub, because absolutely nowhere else could serve them better. Faces were therefore always familiar, yet the atmosphere was never cliquey. Everyone knew the bar staff’s names and the bar staff knew the names of all the clients. But the clients merely exchanged nods with one another. Affable but respectful. Specific seats had invisible ‘reserved’ signs on for particular people. It was a quiet pub; it smelt – not unpleasantly – of beer towels that needed a wash, windows that should be opened more often, stale Hamlet cigars. It was totally unpretentious and honest, as a good pint itself should be. People went there to sup in peace or in company; not to get drunk, but to wile away an evening. Though it was called the Coach and Horses, its clientele only ever thought of it and referred to it as The Pub. As if there was no choice, no contest; the one and only. Which is precisely why Matt and Jake had gone there. Sitting at a corner table. Two pints of bitter. Salt and vinegar. Cheese and onion. Jamie Oliver would be hard pressed to come up with a better repast for two young men on a weekday night.

‘Did you? Did you shag her again?’

From whose lips came this? Because it could have been Matt enquiring after Gemma, or Jake wondering about Judith.

‘Did you?’

‘No,’ Matt said, ‘I didn’t. But she spent the whole evening coming on to me.’

‘But you didn’t,’ Jake said.

‘Didn’t want to, mate,’ Matt told him.

Jake understood this to mean that Matt hadn’t wanted to mate, as in fornicate. Matt laughed. ‘No,’ he confirmed, ‘I don’t. Not with Judith. I’m ready for Fen, now, I think.’

Jake whistled in admiration. He didn’t think Matt had gone soft. He actually rather admired his outlook. Partly, because it was so diametrically opposed to his own.

‘Abi and Gemma suit me perfectly,’ he said, with a tinge of woe, ‘blonde and brunette. Night and day.’

‘Salt and vinegar,’ Matt said, offering the open packet of crisps to Jake.

‘Cheese and onion,’ Jake responded likewise.

‘You’ll get caught, you will,’ Matt warned.

‘But until I do,’ Jake said, ‘I’ll continue as normal.’

Normal? Matt thought, I don’t think so.

‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Matt said.

‘High levels of testosterone,’ Jake shrugged, ‘interacting with a very, very dirty mind.’

I meant, I don’t know how you do it – how you maintain such a clear conscience.

‘Abi? Gemma?’ Fen called down from her room on hearing the front door open. She had half hoped to avoid both. After all, it had only been that morning – though the trip to Derbyshire made it seem weeks ago – that she had come across Jake and Gemma.

‘It’s me,’ Abi called back.

Shit, thought Fen. Though, had it been Gemma arriving home, Fen’s response would have been exactly the same.

‘Where are you?’ Abi called up.

‘In my room,’ Fen shouted.

‘’Kay,’ Abi shouted back. ‘Glass of wine?’

‘’Kay,’ Fen called down.

‘How was Derbyshire?’ Abi asked, settling alongside Fen on her bed and sipping wine as if her whole day had been geared to such luxury and relaxation.

‘Oh,’ Fen said lightly, ‘you know.’

‘Will that bloke part with his art?’

‘Have a look in that bag,’ Fen said.

Abi left the bed and went to pick up James’s bag. ‘Good Lord above!’ she remonstrated, as her skinny arm snagged against the weight of unseen and unexpected bronze. She looked inside and took the sculpture out. ‘Good God!’ she murmured. She turned to Fen. ‘Did you nick it?’ She was joking, of course, and turned back to the sculpture. ‘Jesus,’ she marvelled, ‘this is pretty damn horny.’ She brought the sculpture over and placed it on Fen’s bedside table. She took to the bed again and Fen passed her the glass of wine. They gazed at the sculpture. ‘You win, Fenella McCabe,’ Abi conceded, ‘you win. It’s bloody gorgeous and erotic and I’m going to have to phone Jake and tell him that he’s to take me to bed or lose me for ever!’

Fen laughed. Now that’s what she should have said to James. ‘Where on earth did you get that line from?’

‘Meg Ryan,’ Abi admitted, somewhat reluctantly.

‘When Harry Met Sally?’ Fen asked.

‘Top Gun,’ Abi elaborated. ‘She had a bit part as the zany wife of Dr Green from ER.’

‘Goose,’ Fen corrected, ‘Anthony Edwards played Goose.’

The girls chattered away, about movie stars and quoted classic lines; glancing every now and then at Eden.

Gemma arrived home at almost ten o’clock. Fen told herself not to be suspicious.

But Abi has tried to call Jake. He’s not answering land-line or mobile.

Just because he’s not with Abi doesn’t necessarily mean that every other moment will be spent with Gemma.

‘Wow!’ Gemma said, catching sight of the Fetherstone as soon as she came into Fen’s room, ‘did you steal it?’

‘Piss off!’ Fen laughed.

‘God,’ Gemma murmured, looking closely at the bronze, turning it, touching it, touched by it, turned on, ‘that’s pretty horny.’

‘Isn’t it just,’ Abi agreed. ‘It’s got me all dressed up with nowhere to go – as it were.’

‘Not seeing Jake tonight?’ Gemma asked Abi, while Fen tried surreptitiously to analyse her housemate’s body language and tone of voice. She could detect nothing untoward.

‘Any idea what time he left this morning?’ Abi asked her.

‘We left together – he took a taxi and dropped me off en route,’ Gemma said.

‘I’m tired,’ Fen suddenly announced not because she was, but because she didn’t want either girl in her room talking about the man they were both having sex with.

‘Poor petal,’ Gemma teased.

‘She’s lugged the Bronze Bonk all the way back from Derbyshire,’ Abi said in Fen’s defence.

‘I’m going back on Monday,’ Fen said, ‘to pick up two oil sketches.’

‘What’s he like?’ Gemma asked, her eyes drawn again to the sculpture.

‘I’ve told you a million times,’ Fen said, not minding that she was to say it again, ‘he’s greatly underrated and yet his oeuvre – in subject matter and execution – is absolutely seminal in the development of figurative sculpture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.’

Gemma and Abi regarded Fen a little blankly. And then with exaggerated pity.

‘I think Gemma meant the bloke in Derbyshire,’ Abi said, as if to a simpleton.

‘Oh,’ Fen said. Don’t blush. Don’t blush. ‘He’s nice enough.’

‘Rich?’ asked Abi.

‘No.’

‘Eligible anyway?’ Gemma pushed.

‘No, no,’ Fen breezed, ‘he’s old. I’m tired.’

‘She blushed,’ Abi remarked to Gemma in a whisper when they’d left Fen’s room.

‘I know,’ Gemma connived.

‘She says he’s old,’ Abi remarked, ‘but that could mean anything over thirty – if age is to be assessed in comparison to us.’

‘I want her to have Matt,’ Gemma said, ‘then it’ll be ever so cosy.’ She looked at Abi. They giggled.

‘Shall I call Jake again?’ Abi asked.

‘Yes,’ Gemma agreed, ‘good idea.’

Jake’s phone rings in the pub. He sees it’s Abi’s – or Gemma’s – home number.

‘Hullo?’ he answers, not quite sure which girl it’ll be and not minding.

‘Hey,’ says Abi. The line is bad.

‘Dodgy signal,’ Jake says, rising, ‘I’ll call you back in a mo’.’

He leaves the pub to return the call, and then returns to his pint not long after. He drains his glass. ‘I’ve been summoned,’ he says to Matt, eyes glinting.

‘By whom?’ Matt enquires, with mock disapproval, wondering what could have the urgency to take Jake away so willingly from last orders.

‘Abi,’ Jake says, licking his lips. ‘She said something bizarre about Fen bringing home some porn.’

‘Porn?’ Matt says, startled. ‘Fen?’

‘Porno art was Abi’s precise term,’ Jake says. ‘Come with me, Matt. Sounds like they’ve been quaffing the Chardonnay whilst we’ve been enjoying our civilized pints.’

‘Come with you?’ Matt asks.

‘Yeah,’ Jake shrugs, ‘why not. Surprise Miss McCabe.’

Matt drinks the last third of his pint. Art? Porn? Fen?

Jesus. Abi. Gemma. Jake.

‘Come,’ Jake says, rising.

‘Sure,’ Matt says, following him out.

There’s a knock on Fen’s door. She’s reading a paperback, she’s cleaned her teeth. She’s sitting on her bed in a vest-and-boxer-shorts night set.

‘Yes?’ she calls, wondering when Abi or Gemma has ever bothered to knock.

Oh God, don’t let it be Jake trying to seduce me!

‘Fen?’

Oh God! It’s Matt! Oh Jeez!

Matt pops his head around the door while Fen is rooted to the spot, be-vested and blaspheming.

‘Hullo,’ he says.

Oh my God, she’s practically naked.

Fen is too stunned to close her gaping mouth.

‘Jake was coming – I thought I’d just pop in. You know, just for a minute or two.’

Fen nods blankly. Matt is still mostly in the hallway, just his head in her room, and his hand steadying the door.

‘Bloody hell, Fen – did you nick it?’ Matt exclaims on catching sight of the Fetherstone on her bedside table.

‘Of course I didn’t nick it!’ Fen laughs. ‘How amazing is it?’ She caresses Adam’s head between her thumb and forefinger.

‘May I come in?’ Matt asks.

His manners touch Fen. ‘Of course,’ she smiles.

Matt concentrates very hard on the Fetherstone because he knows that unless he keeps his eyes trained on the forms of Adam and Eve, they will gravitate over to Fen in her vest. He doesn’t want to notice that her toenails are neatly varnished the colour of aubergine, he doesn’t want to acknowledge that her bare legs are just as toned and smooth as he’d imagined they’d be. He starts to discourse on Julius Fetherstone and cross-references this particular sculpture with Rodin’s Adam and Eve.

‘Of course, the figures of Adam and Eve were never entwined,’ he said, ‘they were to stand to either side of the Gates of Hell.’

Fen nods. She knows all that. ‘How was the Whitechapel yesterday?’ she asks because kissing James has put a perspective on Matt.

‘It was OK,’ Matt answers honestly, ‘nicely curated – but I didn’t like any of the exhibits. There wasn’t one piece I’d have had in my home.’

‘And Judith?’ Fen probes.

Did they? Shall I? Shall I ask him if they did?

Matt looks fleetingly a little alarmed. ‘Judith really liked the show,’ he says diplomatically. Fen nods. ‘She’s odd.’ Fen raises an eyebrow and cocks her head encouraging Matt to elaborate. He doesn’t.

‘I think she has the hots for you,’ Fen says, with an edge of mischief to her voice.

Matt groans. ‘You may as well know—’ Fen puts her fingertips to his lips. She does know. Quite enough. She doesn’t want to hear any more.

Matt takes her fingertips from his lips and kisses them. He holds her hand. ‘Fen McCabe,’ he drawls huskily, ‘do you know how horny you look, in that white, semi-see-through vest?’

Fen giggles. ‘They’re my jim-jams, silly!’

‘Could we take it off, please?’ he asks. Matt’s manners delight her, as do his slightly glazed eyes. Fen knows from James’s example that such a gaze at such a moment is caused by blood flow and energy being focused down to the groin. She glances at Matt’s lap.

Unmistakable.

But still it surprises her. And arouses her. She doesn’t quite know what to do. She plucks self-consciously at the straps of her vest and stares awkwardly at her knees.

‘Can I?’ Matt whispers, running his fingers over hers over the straps of her vest. ‘Let me,’ he suggests, easing a strap over her shoulder. Fen lets him gently lift her vest over her head.

Can he see my heart thuddering?

‘Je-sus,’ he whispers, ‘you are absolutely gorgeous.’ His hand reaches out and then stops, hovering, inches away, as if he is politely waiting for the go-ahead. Gently, he cups his palm over her skin. He gulps. She gasps. His breathing is quick. The feel of his hand on her skin, the sensation of her perky nipple at the centre of his palm, is lovely. Matt kisses her throat, at the exact location James had wanted to when Fen had woken up. Matt raises his face to Fen’s. The deeper he kisses her, the more insistent his fondling becomes. He eases her down, flat on to her bed, and his face hovers over hers, half his body pressing over her. His hand travels along her ribs, over her stomach, his fingertip dips in and out of her navel. Lightly, he traces the curve of her waist and trickles his fingers back up to her breasts. He is tonguing her with some abandon, every now and then nipping her bottom lip with his teeth. Her hands are enmeshed in his hair. Her eyes are closed. Her mind is empty of anything other than savouring this moment.

Matt stops kissing her. He takes his face away so they can look at each other. ‘More?’ he asks. Fen doesn’t know whether her heart is beating so fast on account of apprehension or arousal. ‘I’ll be gentle,’ Matt says. To answer, Fen lets her eyelids close gently while she touches his chin and pulls his face close so that their lips meet again.

‘OK,’ she whispers.

Matt slips his hand down the elasticated waistband of her shorts and skims over her pubic hair. He cups her entire sex in his hand. Fen moves, to catch against his finger. He stops kissing her but the feeling of his breath on her face is just as lovely. Without preamble, he suddenly and deftly has a finger between the lips of her sex. The feel of his hot smooth finger against her clitoris, and at the wet opening of her sex, turns them both on immensely. He alternates between dabbing her clitoris and slipping his finger deep inside her. She is on the verge of coming. As his finger is working magic on her, she kisses him, forcing her tongue deep into his mouth. She is close to climax. Now she is moving enthusiastically. She is almost there. Not quite. Excruciatingly close. Wait! Almost. Almost. Nearly there!

Matt pulls away from her mouth and his finger is suddenly still. Fen stares at him.

‘God I want to fuck you,’ he whispers, staring back, his face close.

Fen comes. Ultimately, Matt’s words brought her to orgasm.

When her sex has finished its spasms of pleasure, he takes his finger away and feeds it into her mouth. The release of sexual tension, pent up from her feelings for Matt, her feelings for James, leaves Fen languid and exhausted. Glazed, she gazes at Matt’s handsome face. Glancing to her left, she sees Eden. James’s face comes into her mind’s eye. She closes her eyes.

‘Sleep,’ Matt demands, ‘you look spent. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.’

He kisses her forehead sweetly. Though her feet are at the pillow end of her bed, she allows him to place the duvet over her. Her eyes remain closed. Her lips are relaxed into a satisfied half-smile.

Matt made his way through the house. All the bedroom doors were closed. He had no idea which was Abi’s room, which was Gemma’s room, and which room, exactly, his rakish flatmate was in. Matt caught the tube home to Angel. If he licked his lips, he could taste and smell Fen.

It’s not just sex. Not now. It’s more. Now I want the whole her.

‘It’s not just sex,’ James told Barry, ‘I’ve had plenty of good sex in my time. It’s her.’ Barry’s eyes twitched to show his master he was considering his words very carefully. Beryl sauntered over, sat by the armchair and sighed. ‘I want her back here now.’ James got up and went to the kitchen. Aimlessly, he looked in the pantry and the fridge. He wasn’t hungry. He made milky coffee but he wasn’t thirsty. He stood with his back to the stove. Barry and Beryl were hovering in the doorway, looking concerned. ‘I can’t be falling for someone her age – not at my age.’ It was midnight. James presumed she and her housemates would still be up. Drinking wine, no doubt; gossiping and theorizing, probably. He picked up the phone and dialled Fen’s home number.

‘Don’t they have an answering machine?’

He let the phone ring on.

‘Isn’t anyone in?’

The phone rang until it rang off.

‘Where is she, I wonder?’

He tapped the receiver against his chin contemplatively. He was disappointed. It was suddenly very obvious that he was alone in a leaking house in Derbyshire with two dogs.

‘I’ll call her tomorrow,’ he said quietly, taking the dogs outside for a last pee. ‘I’ll suggest she comes to me sooner than we’ve arranged.’ The dogs seemed reluctant to come in. It wasn’t even a particularly nice night, with heavy cloud-cover blanketing stars from view. ‘God, to have her in my bed tonight.’

TWENTY-SIX

Whoa. Time Out. Calm down, cool it a little. It seems that everybody in this book – whether male or female, flesh and blood or bronze and marble, has sex on the brain. They are either having it, wanting it or simply spending far too much time in pursuit of it. They think about it while journeying into work by tube, or whilst driving Land Rovers down Derbyshire lanes, or when sipping absinthe with fellow artists at Les Deux Magots on the Boulevard St Germain.

Fen’s sister Cat, and Matt’s ex-girlfriend Julia, go to bed lonely and alone, trying hard to pretend that the last time they had sex with their exes was wonderful. In truth, both girls’ sex lives diminished rapidly in the last months of their relationships. Lovemaking had been a contradiction in terms; because the love was no longer there and all that had been made was an effort to provide or achieve some level of physical gratification. Both women are struck with horror at the thought of their ex-boyfriends being with other women and yet both women had ceased to fancy their partners in those last horrible months. It hasn’t yet occurred to them that one day, perhaps sooner rather than later, they will actively want to sleep with another man, that another man will desire them and take them to bed. Both women are even mourning the children they will never have by their exes, though babies had never been on their agenda.

Jake is physically exhausted. Sleeping with two different but equally insatiable and sexually adventurous women leaves him with little time for musing; whatever spare time he does have he uses to rest up and prepare for the next session with whomever. He has no preference. Sex is incredible with Abi and Gemma. It would be impossible to choose.

Judith St John can’t sleep. She’s too wound up by work, and works even harder at relaxing. When she arrives home, she flicks on classical music, opens a bottle of good wine and cooks for one, healthily and colourfully, in her designer kitchen. She’s seen people on American TV series and films behave like that in their apartments after work. It works for them. They are successful at home as well as at work. They are also successful at being single or having casual relationships. It is not Matthew Holden whom she wants and desires; but control and superiority. What she had enjoyed about sex with Matt was not the physical sensation, but the sense of conquest. It wasn’t about Matt. It was about Fen. If it hadn’t been so obvious that Matt had designs on Fen, Judith would never have made a move on him. She was appalled that she should feel remotely unnerved by the mousy archivist. But she was, not so much because of Fen’s intelligence, her suitability for the job, her prettiness; but because almost on sight Matt had had eyes for her and yet he had never looked twice at Judith. Matt had been an easy lay, that first time, plied with alcohol and compliments, her hand thrust uncompromisingly down his trousers, her tongue stuffed into his mouth.

But it didn’t work yesterday. I had the bait laid but he didn’t even sniff or nibble. What can I do? What can be done? It’s not the sex I crave, nor his person – it’s the success of my little project. It’s as if Fen is proposing a takeover bid. I want it to fail. I cannot have anything at all operating behind my back and beyond my control.

Matthew doesn’t regret having sex with Judith. It makes him cringe when he thinks back on it – but only at himself. He is pretty ashamed that, at nearly thirty years of age, a combination of alcohol (for which he had a strong, well-trained constitution) and a grope (which he was well experienced at giving and taking) could have been persuasive enough for him to have taken leave of his senses. But back then, he hadn’t yet kissed Fen. And once he had, everything changed. The ex-girlfriend at last became very much part of his past. Judith became something daft that happened after too much booze. Last night, at the private view and then hip Hoxton, Matt was neither flattered or amused. He just felt awkward. Judith was on the verge of making a fool of herself with all her unbuttoning and pouting and bedroom eyes and fondling of pepper-pots. Tonight, he could smell Fen and taste her and see her gorgeous breasts clearly in his mind’s eye. He wants a relationship with this girl. And he wants to consummate it soon.

James doesn’t feel terribly comfortable. He has banished the dogs to the utility room so he can have a long think about the consequences of today. Something about Fen unnerves him. He’s had affairs with women younger than her, but there’s a freshness about Fen, a naivety, something a little old-fashioned, chaste even, which warns him to keep a respectful distance. Water is now coming through the roof. Adam and Eve, one propped on the dressing-table, the other on the window-sill, seem to be flirting and goading. You know you want it. You do. You want to do to her what Adam is going to do to me, Eve seems to be saying. She is offering you an apple, take it, take it, Adam abets. Take her. Have her. She wants you.

‘Shut up, Adam!’

James takes both paintings and places them, oil sides facing each other, under his bed. Then he hurries downstairs in search of buckets and pans. As he tries to sleep with an atonal chorus of tinkles, plips and splashes all around him, he pulls the pillow over his head and chants that he will not mix business and pleasure.

Abi and Gemma go to sleep with smiles on their faces and their bodies throbbing. It’s only sex. It’s leisure, it’s pure pleasure. Why wouldn’t they want more? Once their bodies aren’t quite so sore.

And Fen. She is asleep, upside down in her bed. She’s kissed James in the morning and Matt in the evening, and when she came, though Matt brought her to orgasm, she throbbed for both men. Sleepily, she had wondered whether she’s just doing a Jake. And what exactly is it that Jake is doing? Having a taste of this, a soupçon of that so that he can make a choice? Does one need to decide between two? She’s not sure. Does she have a moral obligation? She’s not sure. She’ll have to go further to find out. It concerns her that she could feel so moralistically disapproving of Jake when on paper, she knows she is behaving little differently to him.

And Julius.

As Julius prophesied, and to Rodin’s delight though to Madame Virenque’s dismay, friends of Jacques Antoine wanted to commission Fetherstone for portrait busts of themselves, their wives, even their dogs and children. Soon enough, the young sculptor was able to afford an apartment overlooking the Musée Cluny. He paid rent every Thursday without fail or discount, to a middle-aged landlord who wouldn’t have said no to sex but preferred the money and anyway, didn’t have the temerity to ask. Sex dominates Julius’s life though he has lived celibate for two years since Cosima. Every day, however, through the ooze of the plaster of Paris with which he constructs, or the clay with which he moulds, or the marble which he carves; through the exploration of anatomy, how ecstasy causes bodies to writhe, his life is dominated by sex. Sex doesn’t sell, though. He has learnt, when a potential patron visits his studio with the commission for a bust of his wife or children or himself, not to show him the ‘other works’. He tried that, two or three times. The visitors to his studio were at once sucked into the scenes of lust and yet spat out, too. The works were so uncompromising in design, so blatant in subject matter, so confrontational, they were quite terrifying. How could a mind so perverse, so obsessed, claim also to be a master of the conventional sculpted portrait? Non, Monsieur Fetherstone, non. Wives and children would not be safe in his company.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Fen woke in a fabulously good mood. After all, when she opened her eyes, there was a Fetherstone by her bedside. Gazing at Eden, she felt simultaneously calm yet ecstatic. Swiftly, she made it all make perfect sense to her.

I like to look this way and that, to consult right hand then left. It’s what I’m like – if anything, I’m rather cautious. I like to feel that there are two sides to every coin – and the coin that makes me the person I am has lovely Matthew on one side and gorgeous James on the other. The men are as distinct as heads and tails, as individual as my right hand is from my left. I suppose you could say that there are two sides to every story.

Ah, but you don’t credit Jake with this.

Jake is different.

Why? He’s involved with two beautiful women. He’s hurting no one. For him, Abi and Gemma are your Matt and James.

No. There is a slim but subtle difference. There’s the question of deception. Jake is only in it for sexual gratification, for a spot of bedpost-notching. In fact, Abi is too – she only ever talks about the physical side.

And Gemma?

Gemma’s just wanton.

God, Fen, you sound sanctimonious.

The difference between their triangle and mine is the issue of deception. Poor Abi. Furthermore, theirs isn’t so much a triangle as a knot, a mess. And it’s downright torrid that they all know each other. It’s horribly incestuous. At least Matt and James don’t. Just me. I’m the key. And I hold it with respect and care.

But in which hand do you hold it, Fen?

Abi stares hard at the front door long after Fen has shut it behind her. Gemma giggles irreverently once she deduces Fen to have walked a sufficient distance from the house.

‘Honestly,’ Gemma says, shaking her head in disbelief and pity, ‘Maria Von Trapp watch out.’

‘We kissed! We kissed!’ Abi mimicks Fen.

‘Actually, it’s quite sweet,’ Gemma concedes, ‘and it wasn’t just a kiss – what was her terminology?’

‘She said that Matt “had a good rummage” – those were her words,’ Abi muses.

‘Actually,’ Gemma says seriously, ‘it is quite sweet, in this day and age. A little bit of old-fashioned decorum.’

‘Don’t sound so wistful!’ Abi reprimands. ‘Just because we’re such trollops – it doesn’t make Fen’s morality higher than ours. Just different.’

‘Are you seeing Jake tonight?’ Gemma asks.

‘Not if I’m still walking like John Wayne!’ Abi declares and, to make her point, she swaggers to the front door, wincing theatrically, and leaves for work. Gemma follows a few minutes later, once she’s sent a ludicrously lewd text message to Jake’s mobile phone.

Matt was shaving and emitting a tuneless, absent-minded hum. Rivulets of foamy water trickled down his forearm, clung to the edge of his elbow and then oozed off to drip on to the floor of the bathroom or his bare feet. Today was the first day of his adult life that he had actually enjoyed shaving. When he had been a child, he loved his father to daub his face with shaving cream from the badger brush, which he then had much pleasure removing with an old kitchen spoon, tracing tracks through the cream like a toboggan careering down a hill. Since adolescence, however, Matt had found shaving the most terrible bind, had even surreptitiously read articles in his ex-girlfriend’s glossy magazines about laser hair removal. Once or twice, he’d toyed with the idea of not shaving, of going for the beard, but gave up after four or five days; hating the feeling of grubbiness from the stubble and the way his whiskers caught on his pillow or pullover. Usually, he shaved in a rush, because he was hopeless at getting out of bed when the alarm went. Usually, he nicked himself here and there, and missed little patches which then irritated him supremely during the day. He’d tried aftershave once, which stung so much that his eyes watered and he’d been late for lectures on account of obsessive splashing of cold water against his cheeks. Although a goatee suited Jake, Matt felt it was the worst of all worlds – all the pitfalls of facial hair design coupled with all the inconvenience of shaving.

Today, though, Matt hummed and shaved, wielding the razor in swift strokes decapitating bristles but leaving his skin unscorched. Today, he was ‘full of the joys’. It was a phrase his nanny had used in his childhood, one she had never qualified – thus it was perfect to express the joys of season, time, or general mood. Full of the joys of spring. Full of the joys of tea-time. Full of the joys of being a six-year-old with a new red bicycle for his birthday. Full of the joys of success at school, at university; of being in love. Today, Matthew Holden, two days away from his thirtieth birthday, is full of the joys of simply being out there. Of being young and living in a vibrant city; of having a stimulating job in addition to the stability of family inheritance; of being blessed with a lively social life; of being blessed with good looks and a fine figure; of being on the verge of falling in love with a sweet yet sexy girl.

With his face now smooth and pink, Matt patted it dry – a pointless procedure preceding, as it always did, a long hot shower. With the mirror steamed up, Matt wiped a dry corner of his towel over it. Unlike Jake, Matt had looks but little vanity. He was using the mirror not to marvel but to prove a case in point. Ah, yes. There was his reflection, clear and bright; external proof of his internal sense of vitality. Great shave, smooth as a baby’s bottom. Time to get dressed, to greet the day, hooray! to see Fen. If Matt had been remotely religious he’d have praised the Lord for his good fortune; if he had lived in biblical times, he’d have offered a sacrifice in thanksgiving. Some pieces of gold perhaps, not sheep. No. He liked sheep. He’d grown up in Gloucestershire surrounded by fields peppered with them.

He dressed quickly, yesterday’s trousers and a badly ironed polo shirt, but still looked fresh and becoming on account of his excellent demeanour. Jake, in comparison, looked wan and tired.

‘Sow your oats last night?’ he mumbled in response to Matt’s verve, handing him a cup of coffee. Matt, momentarily, looked confused. Sex had not been on his mind this morning; the thought of it, the imminence of it happening with Fen, was simply one element contributing to his fantastic mood.

‘No,’ Matt grinned, ‘not yet. You look terrible.’

‘I’m shagged,’ Jake groaned, ‘literally. I really don’t think I can keep it up.’

‘Ha!’ Matt joshed. ‘And I thought you were famous for your powers of sexual endurance.’

‘Ha bloody ha,’ Jake answered, but with humility and not rancour. ‘By the way your mum called. You were humming and la-la-ing so loud that you didn’t hear the phone ring. She says call her, that she hasn’t spoken to you in ages, bla bla.’ Jake rubbed his eyes and then kept them closed, his muscular frame slumped on the sofa. ‘Bla bla.’

Matt checked his watch and phoned his mother. Their relationship was a good one, good enough for no guilt to be foisted or felt if phone calls weren’t returned promptly or visits home were not more frequent.

‘Mummy,’ Matt said, because he had never abbreviated it to Mum.

‘Darling!’ Susan Holden, in Gloucestershire, exclaimed, a little alarmed. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Fine,’ Matt assured her, ‘why?’

‘Well, I only phoned half an hour ago,’ she said with friendly sarcasm.

‘I was having my shower and I’m actually on time for work so if we have a quick chat I’ll still arrive my normal quarter of hour late!’

‘Now, darling,’ Susan said, ‘your birthday. Of course there’ll be the dosh from Daddy’s will, but is there anything specific I can give you?’

‘Honestly, Mummy, I’m fine – whatever,’ said Matt, who had forgotten about his birthday and didn’t want for anything anyway.

It had always delighted Susan that an only child, brought up by a rich and aged father and a rich, younger mother, could be so unmaterialistic. ‘Well, how about a suit from Armani? Or a scooter?’

Matt declined, having no need for the one or the other.

‘A VD machine?’

‘DVD player?’ Matt laughed. ‘Jake has one.’

‘Darling, I do so want to give you something special,’ Susan paused, ‘my baby boy is turning thirty!’

‘I’d quite like that book about the Beatles,’ Matt said honestly.

‘Bugger the Beatles on your birthday!’ Susan remonstrated. ‘Well, for the time being, shall I just put a tab behind the bar at the Groucho or the Cobden again?’

‘I’m not a member of either,’ Matt reminded her.

‘But I am,’ she declared, ‘you can leave it to me, Matthew.’

Matt was touched. ‘Thanks,’ he said. Just before the call ended, he spoke up. ‘Mummy?’

Susan hoped he wasn’t going to request the Met Bar or somewhere else she had no strings to pull.

‘I met someone.’

Because historically, Matthew had never really imparted much detailed information about his private life, his mother came to the wrong conclusion, presuming the someone to be someone she knew. ‘Who, darling? The Smythes are in town this week – did you bump into them?’

‘I mean,’ said Matt, ‘a girl. I’ve met someone. Wanted you to know.’

Susan was touched and rendered silent momentarily. ‘Well,’ she said at length, ‘that’s super.’

‘Yes. Hmm,’ said Matt, now clamming up which was far more normal a response to his mother’s ears. ‘She’s lovely,’ he mumbled.

‘Super,’ his mother repeated, eager to know everything but too tactful to probe. ‘Well, I’d better go. Nanny and I are going to do ruthless things to the vegetable patch. You should see it. Your poor father would turn in his grave. It’s a veritable riot. A disgrace. Bye bye, darling.’

In Gloucestershire, she replaced the handset and observed it a while. Her only child, her beloved boy, turning thirty. Met someone lovely.

‘Nanny?’ she called.

‘How was my boy?’ Nanny, suddenly appearing, asked.

‘Top form,’ Susan said, ‘and he’s Met Someone.’

Nanny placed the Mr Muscle on the occasional table with care, and sat down beside Susan on the Chesterfield. They stared at the fire-guard. ‘Ooh,’ said Nanny, ‘someone nice?’

‘Lovely – apparently,’ Susan said, ‘he wouldn’t bother recounting dalliances.’

‘Good for Matthew,’ said Nanny, tapping Susan’s knee. ‘Come on now, there’s the spinach to be done before elevenses.’

Fen was walking down John Islip Street ahead of Matt. He wanted to call out to her, wolf-whistle even, run up to her; instead, he indulged himself watching her unseen.

She wiggles. Unintentionally. But an unmistakable and utterly alluring sway to her bottom. Oops! Easy girl – watch your step.

‘Fen!’

Fen turned around and blushed. They walked the last few yards together, slowing their pace, not quite knowing what to say. They knew their awkwardness was natural, acceptable, after last night’s impromptu intimacy. Chit-chat seemed a good idea, despite being surprisingly hard work. It was therefore a relief to arrive at Trust Art. They said good morning to Bobbie and rifled through their respective pigeon-holes. A delighted and intuitive Bobbie filed her nails with gusto, happy to presume that Fen and Matt had arrived at work together because they had left home together after an evening of passion and a night cuddling cosily together.

Matt hovered at his door and Fen faltered alongside him.

‘I’m a gentleman,’ he shrugged, escorting her the extra few yards to the door of the Archive.

I’m a soft sod, more like!

‘See you later, then,’ Fen said, with a shy smile.

Matt walked back to Publications. No sooner had Fen sat down to check e-mails, than he had returned. He perched on the edge of her desk, fiddling with a paper-clip which he kept dropping.

‘Fen,’ he started, ‘last night – well, I had planned to woo you with the whole seduction thing, you know, dinner, wine, candles, Barry White background music. So, I mean, last night – I mean, this morning. I mean, are you OK about it all?’

Fen was touched. ‘Very OK,’ she said.

Matt tipped her chin up and bent low to kiss her. ‘It’s not good for my balls,’ he whispered, ‘to fill them with such expectation. They’re aching for you.’

‘I’m on Cat duty tonight,’ she said apologetically, laying her hand gently in Matt’s groin.

‘That just makes me want to make a pun on pussy,’ Matt said, dejected.

Fen smiled. She tapped his knee. ‘We can do dinner whenever,’ she said, ‘foreplay or post-coitally!’

‘Fen McCabe!’ Matt marvelled and laughed. ‘Actually, it’s my birthday on Friday.’

‘I’ll tie myself in a big red ribbon then,’ Fen said coyly.

‘I can unwrap you at the end of the evening,’ Matt mused. ‘My mother is footing the bar bill – bring Abi and Gemma, your sisters too, if you like.’

Fen was happy for the focus to shift from an evening entirely centred on consummation. She would invite Pip and Cat to Matt’s birthday drinks. She quite wanted to show Matt off to her sisters. She valued their opinions more highly than her flatmates’s.

TWENTY-EIGHT

James was well aware that Adam and Eve were under his bed, but he resolutely refused to bring them out; ignoring them rather as if they had misbehaved. He had been chastising himself since last seeing Fen. What could he have been thinking? Utterly ridiculous. Impossible too. He was standing over his dogs whilst they wolfed down an early tea or a very late breakfast.

‘I have to nip it in the bud,’ he said out loud, pleased with the horticultural allusion.

Her gorgeous rosy nipples were like little buds in the centre of my palm.

‘For God’s sake!’ he scolded himself, though Beryl thought she had done something wrong and hung her head over her bowl until her master apologized and reassured her and urged her to eat. He checked the time. Four o’clock. He rather thought the London workforce stopped at around this time on Fridays to steam into pubs.

Better phone her. Better cancel Monday. Better explain that it suits me better to have the two oil sketches sent to Trust Art via courier.

‘Archive?’ Fen answered her phone.

‘The oil sketches – they’re back from the framers.’ James James James James James! Fen rejoiced to herself.

‘Unframed, I hope,’ she said, surprising herself at the steadiness of her voice and her readiness to jest.

‘Of course,’ said James.

‘Ought I come to collect them then?’ Fen asked.

‘Yes,’ said James, physically rapping his temple with the telephone.

‘In fact,’ said Fen, ‘it might be practical to come up on Sunday – save myself a tiring day return.’

‘Yes,’ James agreed.

‘I could stay the night with my uncle,’ Fen said.

No! thought James. I mean, yes!

‘But he may not be there, of course,’ Fen mused, wondering when was the last time that Django had spent a night away from home. ‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I think he might have said that he thought he probably was definitely not going to be in, in all likelihood.’

James was silent.

I don’t want to hear this. I’m not listening. The paintings will be sent down by bloody Parcel Force, if needs be.

‘Perhaps I could stay with you?’ said Fen softly.

‘Yes,’ said James, ‘of course you can.’

James replaces the handset and stands in the kitchen shaking his head at himself. Barry and Beryl sit in silent companionship either side of him. They don’t like to hear him groan. They head-butt him with desperate affection.

‘Phone her back,’ he commands, ‘now!’

But he doesn’t.

Fen replaces the handset and feels very pleased that the call came just before her meeting with Rodney and Judith – she will be showing them the Fetherstone bronze before taking it to the Tate for secure keeping prior to next week’s acquisitions meeting. Fen leaves work. She is really looking forward to Sunday.

TWENTY-NINE

‘But I haven’t anything to wear!’

Pip and Fen observe Cat who is sitting in shabby tracksuit bottoms and a shapeless sweatshirt; toying with the idea of actually eating, or rather sucking, cold baked beans directly from the tin with a teaspoon.

‘And I won’t know a soul!’

Pip and Fen, arms folded across their breasts, regard their youngest sister benevolently but sternly.

‘I’m not ready – please – I’d rather stay in and watch Eurotrash. I don’t want to go out. I’ll be a wallflower. A burden. It’s pointless.’

She looks and sounds quite pathetic. If her elder sisters were not aware how hard her pain has been, they’d have thought her unnecessarily melodramatic.

‘Do it for me,’ says Fen, as if requesting a very large favour. ‘If Matt doesn’t warrant your seal of approval, then I’ll know not to sleep with him.’

‘I mean,’ Pip colludes, ‘say you don’t come, and Fen doesn’t take a blind bit of notice of my opinion – say she sleeps with him then you meet him and proclaim him the devil incarnate? Well!’ She does a handstand and walks upside-down over to Cat. ‘Please, Funny Face, please come?’

Cat regards her topsy-turvy sister. And thinks about her responsibility in the development of Fen’s love life.

‘OK OK,’ she sighs. ‘I’ll do it for you,’ she nods at Fen, ‘and for you,’ she nods at Pip, suddenly feeling the urge to tickle her upended sister’s midriff, ‘but I’m not looking forward to it. I don’t want to go. I’d like to leave early.’

Fen and Pip nod at everything she says.

‘I suppose I could wear my Whistles dress,’ Cat says quietly. Fen pretends she’s engrossed in a magazine about bicycles. Pip, who has righted herself, nods with necessary nonchalance. ‘I could just wear my jeans,’ Cat suggests. Again Pip nods while Fen continues to read about yellow jerseys.

Cat emerges fifteen minutes later. She looks gorgeous. She is in the Whistles dress, her hair meticulous in a mussed-up chignon, her pretty facial features enhanced with a flick of mascara and a swipe of lipstick.

‘Come on then,’ she says glumly, as if on her way to the gallows.

Throughout the evening, at various intervals, Fen stopped to ponder the fact that tonight was the night when she’d have sex with Matt. Once or twice, she wondered if tonight wasn’t really the right time. It was his birthday, he was having an impromptu party. There were loads of people. She felt, sometimes, as if she was something of a hanger-on – wearing her genial smile rather fixed because she knew so few people. Actually, she hadn’t been remotely clinging and had, in fact, spent more time chatting to her sisters and flatmates than she had spent with Matt. He’d catch her eye, though, and smile, or they’d just gaze for a suspended moment. Times like those she’d think yes, let’s sleep together tonight. However, observing him at other times, knocking back a drink or laughing in an overanimated way with his friends, she’d think no, let it wait. His friends were very warm and chatty, fuelled as they were by the champagne on tap, courtesy of Susan Holden. In the toilet, Fen looked from left hand to right.

It’s very odd. I’ve been taken aback when some of his friends have said, ‘Oh so you’re Fen McCabe,’ but I’ve been equally offended if they’ve said, ‘What’s your name? Do you work with Matt then?’ and obviously haven’t a clue who I am to him.

Matt had spoken at length both to Cat and Pip, separately and together. The McCabe sisters reported back to Fen that Matt was gorgeous, a honey, a gent, obviously enamoured with her and that she should go for it, lucky lucky girl, what a catch. By midnight, Cat was fairly plastered. She hadn’t been drowning her sorrows – far from it – her inebriation was merely a physical reaction to a simple glass or two of champagne on a stomach that had churned with distress over the past month or so and been deprived of regular meals.

‘I think Cat should go home,’ Pip said surreptitiously to Fen. ‘It is her first outing after all – it should end on a high note. It could well devolve into drunken overemotional rambling and tears if she’s – or we’re – not careful.’ Fen agreed. She looked over to Matt, the life and soul amidst a posse of pals.

Perhaps I should go now too. We could go to bed tomorrow. Or whenever. Anyway, Abi and Gemma are in full swing – literally. So I might feel a little uncomfortable without my sisters.

‘I’ll go and say goodbye,’ said Fen. Pip regarded her as if she was totally insane. ‘I’d rather leave with you two,’ Fen explained.

‘It’s the boy’s birthday,’ Pip said, with incredulity, ‘why on earth would you leave?’ Fen shrugged and looked uneasy. ‘He glances over at you with charming regularity,’ Pip said. ‘Half the time, you don’t even notice. You are making his night. You must stay. You’re his biggest birthday pressie, you daft cow.’

‘I’m not saying I’ll leave on account of being a dutiful sister,’ Fen told her with honesty, ‘I just might feel more comfortable leaving now, that’s all.’

‘Oh shush,’ Pip said, asserting bossiness that was the prerogative of the eldest sibling. She walked over to Matt to wish him a happy birthday, to thank him for inviting them, to say how lovely it had been to meet him. ‘Hope we’ll meet again soon,’ Pip said, shaking his hand. ‘You take care of my sister – and she’ll take care of you.’

Matt grinned. ‘Pip, it’s been a pleasure. Is Cat OK? It must have been a tall order for her tonight – I hope she’s enjoyed at least part of it.’

‘Oh, she has,’ Pip assured him, ‘but it’s time we left.’ She kissed him on each cheek. ‘If I wasn’t so sozzled, I’d juggle with those empty champagne bottles. But I am, so I shan’t. Good-night.’

Gemma seemed to be monopolizing Jake and it was winding Fen up. Abi was very merry, flitting among Matt’s friends all chatty and effervescent. Fen watched as every now and then Abi would return to Jake and Gemma briefly before skipping off to socialize elsewhere. Because Fen did not know what to say to Gemma and Jake, she steered well clear of them. But she avoided Abi too, because she did not want her to spend too much time away from her boyfriend. Matt was attentive towards Fen, introducing her to people he’d already introduced her to, bringing her into conversations by changing the slant or the subject matter, or just giving her hand a squeeze or her shoulders a rub or bestowing upon her a very lovely smile.

At gone one in the morning, a couple of Matt’s friends made a suggestion that Fen didn’t feel so sure about.

‘Come on Matt, let’s go back to yours.’

No! Go back to your own homes. For the past half-hour, I’ve been wanting him to come up to me, to whisper, ‘Come on Fen, let’s go back to mine.’

‘Sure!’ beamed the birthday boy, taking Fen’s hand. ‘Who’s coming?’

Five others, it seemed, excluding Matt and Fen. Not Jake or Abi or Gemma – they were happy to stay put, Jake holding court while the two girls gazed at him starry-eyed and laughed heartily at anything remotely humorous, hanging on his every word and quite often, his arms or trouser legs too.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ Matt whispered to Fen.

‘Of course not,’ Fen said. She was happy to leave. It unnerved her that Gemma’s interest in Abi’s boyfriend should be so brazen.

And now it is almost three in the morning and the last of Matt’s pals are waiting for their cab. Fen is tired, so tired that she keeps popping to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. This means that, with her mascara now gone, she looks exhausted. Her right hand says, ‘Just chill out – you want more from Matt than One Night anyway.’ Her left hand says, ‘Slap your face, splash more cold water, brush your teeth and as soon as those bloody people have gone, give Matt the birthday present you’ve prepared for him.’ Fen makes a compromise; patting her face with more cold water, sucking a fingerful of toothpaste, pinching her cheeks to give her wan expression a bit of colour.

Matt’s friends tell her how much they’ve enjoyed meeting her, how they hope to see more of her, that they’re sure they’ll be seeing her again soon. All the while, they smile their seal of approval on Matthew. It cheers Fen up.

Matt closes the front door.

‘Phew!’ he says, though his back is towards her. ‘I thought they’d never go!’ He turns and smiles. ‘Brilliant birthday,’ he says. They sit on the sofa and appreciate the silence. Fen tells herself to go home, to stay, to kiss him, to stay put.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Matt says.

‘I’ve washed off all my make-up,’ Fen replies a little gloomily.

‘I don’t like make-up,’ Matt says. Fen worries in case he thinks she uses too much.

‘I just use a little mascara, a little eye shadow,’ she rushes, ‘actually, I pinch it off Gemma.’

‘Gemma wears too much, you see,’ Matt says, to qualify, ‘for my liking, anyway.’

‘Not for Jake’s,’ Fen mumbles.

‘Sorry?’ says Matt.

‘Nothing,’ says Fen, knowing it to be dangerous territory.

‘It was great meeting your sisters,’ Matt says and then stifles a yawn.

‘Yes,’ says Fen, ‘I’m really pleased that Cat came.’ She yawns expansively.

‘Miss McCabe,’ says Matt, ‘can I entice you into my bed?’

‘Of course you can, birthday boy,’ says Fen.

Fen and Matt tried to have really good sex. They really tried hard to enjoy it, and tried hard to pleasure each other, and Matt tried hard to be hard, full stop. Fen tried not to be put off by the alcohol on his breath and she tried not to take his feeble attempt at an erection personally. Matt told himself that Fen must just be tired, that’s why she didn’t want him to go down on her. Actually, Fen was concerned that after the long night in a cramped, hot bar, coupled with a microfibre G-string and far too much excitement early in the evening, her nether regions might be a little unappetizing. But she was too shy to say so. They did manage to have sex, but the only conclusion they came to was that seduction was daft at four in the morning. No amount of bump-and-grinding was going to change that. Sleep was a much better idea. Matt brought his body against Fen’s back, so that he was curled around her and she was sitting in his lap almost; lying like a pair of spoons. Just before a dreamless sleep swept down on her, she remembered the feeling of Matt nuzzling the nape of her neck. Then she remembered nothing else. When she awoke, she remembered bad sex but the stronger memory was how comforting she had found sleeping with Matt. It didn’t matter that he was making odd gruffles, or had morning breath. What mattered was that she felt safe and at ease with him.

Funny, that! From work flirtation to prospective boyfriend! I actually rather like the idea of that.

THIRTY

The more imminent it became, the more Fen and James absolutely dreaded seeing each other. Both prophesied a horrible, animal inevitability to it all. It would only take a phone call, a quick one at that, from either of them, to cancel the arrangement. They both knew that. Easy.

If I see her, I’ll sleep with her. It’s not a good idea.

If I see him, I’ll sleep with him. Bad idea.

But they will see each other. In a matter of hours. It’s inevitable.

Throughout her life, Fen had steadfastly refused to lie. Whereas Pip could concoct fabulously inventive stories, while Cat could just fall irritatingly silent, Fen preferred to be simply evasive. She would omit certain details – always primarily to prevent hurt – but she would never out-and-out lie. Therefore, she told Matt that she was going to Derbyshire to collect the Fetherstone oils, but that’s all she told him. She omitted to call her housemates or her sisters – she didn’t phone them because they hadn’t phoned her. If she told Gemma and Abi, and if Pip or Cat then called the house and were told Fen was in Derbyshire, they’d presume their sister to be with Django. If she called Pip or Cat, they’d want to know why she wasn’t staying with Django. Matt simply knew that Fen had family in Derbyshire, so had no need to ask where she was staying, assuming that she was going up on the Sunday so that she could indeed stay with this Django chap. It was so logical that he didn’t ask, and therefore Fen didn’t need to tell any untruths.

So, Matt took her to St Pancras and settled her on the train with the Sunday papers and some chocolates.

‘See you tomorrow,’ he came close to her ear to whisper.

‘Tomorrow,’ Fen smiled. She was already looking forward to it. ‘About lunch-time.’ She kissed Matt’s neck and he left the train, waving briefly before leaving the station. With a contented smile on her face and a warm feeling in her body, Fen settled back into her seat (she had decided to upgrade herself on the Sunday special rate to first class) and organized the papers into her own idiosyncratic order of preference. TV guide first (not that she ever watched much), then the main newspaper, followed by the travel supplement (not that she’d taken a holiday abroad in two years), magazine, newspaper review section, children’s comic supplement, finally the appointments. She always read the appointments with great interest, not that she needed a job, or was remotely interested in any on offer, or that she even qualified to apply for any advertised.

I just like to see what’s out there – all those interesting-sounding careers with a host of applicants waiting in the wings. In comparison, my world is so small. It isn’t really even a notch on the cog of national industry.

Today, though, Fen couldn’t really settle with the papers. It wasn’t the landscape that distracted her, nor her fellow passengers. It was the free rein she had to think about Matt. Before they had cemented their relationship, she would fantasize about what might be. This was exciting to do, not least because he was the first man of flesh and blood rather than bronze or marble to captivate her in some years. But now there was something much more satisfactory about gazing out of the train window and replaying events that had really happened. Now she wasn’t having to write a script and envisage; she was remembering fact. It was as if her recent days had been secretly filmed. Whilst living them, she was far too caught up in the here and now to really appreciate them. But here on the train, she could rewind and then press play, settle back into her comfortable first class seat with the cotton anti-macassar and the complimentary coffee, and indulge herself reliving the immediate true past in glorious technicolor detail.

This she did with ease, and much replaying of certain details, until Leicester. She rewatched herself having sex twice – first on Saturday morning, though it was nearer noon when they awoke. In truth, that had been just as bad an idea as trying to consummate their relationship a few hours before when they were exhausted and somewhat drunk. Although revived and not too badly hungover, morning breath precluded any kissing – which Fen had always rated as one of the most erotic elements of lovemaking, one of the fundamentals of foreplay, probably due in no small part to her love of Rodin’s The Kiss. It was straightforward, safe sex during which Fen did not come and Matt did not seem to notice though he enquired after her pleasure after the event.

Sitting on the train, Fen thought back to strolling along Upper Street desperate for a post-coital, post-hangover carbohydrate overload. In the event, they forsook a traditional greasy spoon for Pizza Express because the garlic wafting out into the street was just irresistible. Fen shifted in her seat and remembered how they had been overcome by a fit of giggles over God knows what. Dough balls really have little comedy value but that afternoon, Fen and Matt had tears streaming down their faces while their bodies were racked with laughter.

Accepting a refill of not-too-bad coffee, Fen indulged in replaying images of the early-evening lovemaking she and Matt had taken their time over a few hours later. Their bodies smelt fresh and though their breath would have kept the vampires away, they were immune to it because they shared it. They thought each other tasted rather delicious, actually, Fen decided, looking out of the window thinking that a large herd of sheep looked like a flurry of litter.

It was a turn-on watching him as he climaxed. Me on top. He locked on to my eyes as he was building up to it, then they glazed over and ultimately closed altogether with the intensity of his orgasm. His gasps and moans really excited me. As did the feeling of his cock jumping for joy. I was rather chuffed that he was so spent and speechless for some minutes after.

Did you come too?

Almost. Nearly. No. Not that it mattered. He was sweet and asked if it had been all right. He didn’t ask outright if I’d climaxed. I told him that it had been lovely, that he had been more than all right. I didn’t lie. I don’t lie, you see.

The train pulled out of Leicester and gathered momentum. To Fen’s horror it was as if Matt had been left standing on the platform she was hurtling away from. And though she tried to crane her neck, she lost him. She lost him. And though she tried to read ‘A Life In The Day Of’ profiling some athlete she’d never heard of in the back of the Sunday Times magazine, James Caulfield appeared in her mind’s eye and refused to go away. It was bewildering for her. Matt had quite categorically disappeared. James held her thoughts until Chesterfield. She disembarked the train with butterflies rampaging around her stomach. It no longer seemed a bad idea, morally doomed, to spend a night with this man. It seemed a fantastic opportunity.

Though, if it’s so good an idea, why is my mouth so dry?

There’s Beryl! Or is it Barry? The Land Rover must be parked outside. There’s James. Smiling. Approaching. Here.

‘Fen,’ he greets, laying his hand on her shoulder, leading the way out.

It was lovely to be back at Keeper’s Dwelling. There felt nothing untoward in being in such close proximity to this man. Fen was in no moral maze because she had no thoughts of Matt whatsoever. Now, feelings for James – positive and good – were at the forefront. Which is why, when she went to the loo, she was so horrified by the knickers she had chosen with such care that morning.

What was I thinking? I am wearing tatty old knickers, chewing-gum grey, back to front. I know my trousers don’t allow for Visible Panty Line – but why did I improvise? Why didn’t I wear one of my G-strings? Why have I tried to emulate the G-string effect with a pair of shabby pants, back to front?

She knew it was for the same reason that she hadn’t shaved her armpits or legs – because this morning, full of the joys of her union with Matt, she wanted to dissuade herself from the temptation that is James. She thought shabby underwear and stubbly limbs would deter her. Alone in James’s toilet, she tried to return to that mind-set.

Art. Art. Think and talk art. Phone Django.

‘Where are Adam and Eve?’ she asked James, who was sitting in the snug with Barry lolling over his feet and Beryl slumped over Barry, both dogs sharing a plate of Jaffa Cakes with their master. James didn’t want to tell her they were on top of each other upstairs under his bed. He didn’t want to say the words ‘upstairs’ or ‘bed’.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said instead, ‘they’re in the other room – nicely unframed, of course.’

Fen took the easy chair opposite him and accepted a Jaffa Cake. He watched as she nibbled all around the edge and then levered off the orangey bit to suck and savour. It was both seductive and charming – rather like Fen. On the one hand, James found her mesmerically sexy; on the other, he sensed a freshness and naivety. He imagined he could take her to bed and subject her to the rudest of sex, or he could sit her in his chair and treat her like a porcelain doll.

‘James?’

Sit still, Fen.

‘Fancy some exercise?’

Just you sit in that chair and stay as you are.

‘James, shall we take the dogs out for a walk?’

Marvellous idea.

‘Marvellous idea.’

Striding through Forestry Commission land near the Folly, James and Fen let their bodies touch, even bump, accidentally-on-purpose. Every now and then, Fen would fall back a step or two. She liked to see James ahead of her. His hands slung into his pockets, his head cocking this way or that to locate some bird or admire some tree. His profile fine, a smattering of bristles enhancing his rugged, outdoorsy mien. She felt he was leading the way, setting the pace, taking her for a walk. She liked his control, his dominance. He took natural paths at random, the carpet of pine needles making footfalls soft and springy. She loved the way his walk was so confident, so in tune with the environment. The dogs were like balls on a bagatelle, careering this way and that, bounding between trees and over logs and through dank-smelling marshy patches; every now and then depositing chunks of well-chewed branch at Fen or James’s feet as a gift.

‘Tell me about Django,’ James said, because it was a safe subject and one in which he was genuinely interested. ‘It’s highly likely that we have crossed paths at some point.’

‘Django is our mother, our father, our guardian angel, our best friend,’ Fen said without gushing, ‘and you’d certainly know if you’d crossed paths with him!’

‘Your mother?’ James probed. ‘How did you cope?’

‘Easily,’ Fen said, ‘as far as I can remember. I wasn’t even three when she eloped with her cowboy from Denver. My only real memory is Battersea. Of our front room. The room is more vivid in my mind’s eye than my parents, though. It had fabulous wallpaper – a little like the opening of Doctor Who – lots of receding circles and stuff.’

They walked on quietly.

‘In fact,’ Fen said, with a chuckle edged with slight remorse, ‘I used to think of those shapes as advancing – only in recent years, I think of them as receding.’

James observed her; she was smiling lightly but there was a fatigue to her eyes. ‘Must be your advancing years,’ he jested gently, ‘you’re getting old.’

‘I wouldn’t want the memory ever to fade altogether,’ she said.

‘It never will,’ said James, as if with authority, ‘I assure you.’ On they walked. James put his arm across Fen’s shoulders. ‘On the face of it, you’re practically an orphan.’

‘Not with Django,’ Fen remonstrated.

‘No,’ James nodded, ‘by all accounts. Plus you have sisters, of course. I hated being an only child.’

Barry interrupted them, hurtling at great velocity on account of being pursued by Beryl who was carrying a branch of such menacing proportions in her mouth, that Fen was sent flying.

‘Bloody dogs!’ James muttered as he righted Fen and brushed her down. ‘Mangy mutts.’ Fen was laughing, having taken no offence from the dogs’ behaviour and having been amused by James’s response. Beryl and Barry squirmed around Fen and James, their noses trying to detect the humans’ true mood, to work out whether punishment or forgiveness was imminent. Dirty paws scratched imploringly at trouser legs whilst brown eyes gazed adoringly upwards; the combined effort saying, ‘Sorry! We love you!’

‘There there,’ Fen soothed, patting heads matted with forest-floor debris.

‘Bloody dogs,’ James said, but not unkindly. ‘Fancy a drink?’

Fen knew the Cross Oaks public house – but not as well as she knew the Rag and Thistle. She was confident therefore that she would not be recognized. Momentarily, she was disturbed by her desire for anonymity. Soon enough, though, she settled in and enjoyed a half-pint of lager and lime to James’s full pint of bitter. She helped herself to the lion’s share of the quite sizeable packet of cheese-and-onion crisps he brought to the table.

‘How about you, James,’ she said, with crumbs at the corner of her mouth, ‘are your folks Derbyshire people? Are they alive?’

‘Both dead,’ James said, ‘my father more recently so. Though it was my mother to whom I was closest as she brought me up and I saw little of my father for many years.’

‘That’s sad,’ said Fen, because she could truly empathize, ‘you really are a bonafide orphan!’

‘All alone in the world,’ James chuckled, ‘though far from lonely.’

‘I love my sisters,’ Fen said, ignoring the internal voice asking why she was keeping such fundamental secrets from them, then.

James drained his glass and chinked it against Fen’s. ‘You’re privileged,’ he said. ‘Come on, we ought to walk back – it’s a good mile and a half from here.’

‘I’ll phone Django,’ said Fen, with little conviction, as they collected the dogs who had been tied up outside and were now excessively pleased to see them.

‘I can drive you over there later,’ said James, unconvincingly.

‘Django!’

‘Hullo there!’

‘I’m sure I saw that niece of yours today.’

‘Niece? Who?’

‘The middle one – the arty one.’

‘Fenella?’

‘In the Cross Oaks.’

‘I doubt it – she’s in London. Lives and works there.’

‘Well, I’ve not seen her for a year or so, mind, but I’ll say it were her all right.’

‘Can’t have been – though she has been up recently. On business.’

‘She was with that Caulfield chap – you know, fancy gardens and all?’

‘Lives at Delvaux.’

Django took his leave of the bar-proppers at the Rag and Thistle and returned home. Just in case Fen was here. Just in case she was trying to call. Bugger. He must buy an answering machine. Poor girl might have resorted to bedding down on the moors. If she is indeed here. Ah, but she’d ring – of course she would.

But Fen doesn’t ring Django. And when he phones Pip to clarify her younger sister’s whereabouts, Pip tells him that Fen is far more likely to be in the bed of her new suitor than on a bed of heather.

‘Matt lives in Islington,’ Pip tells her uncle.

‘Does he now,’ Django says, wondering if Islington is impressive.

James sleeps the opposite way to Matt. Fen has awoken at four in the morning, thinking she may as well be alone in a bed. James is very much on one specific side of the bed. If she lays a hand on his shoulder, or touches his leg with her foot, he moves over even more. Not in a flinch, just a slight but undeniable shift. It occurs to Fen that James Caulfield is as self-contained in sleep as he is in his life. She lies there, wondering if she is taken aback by this. No. She feels that if he was not happy for her to be in his bed, it would be she who would be shunted far over to one end. He is sleeping peacefully. She recalls his words, whispered in the dark, earlier.

‘I will sleep with you, Fen McCabe,’ he had said, ‘but I won’t sleep with you.’

Because he had said so, whilst his hands had expertly traversed her body, she had been unsure of his intention. Would they have sex and then he’d sleep in the snug? Or would they not have sex but sleep together in his bed?

Despite two bottles of Fitou shared during the evening, despite the dogs being banished to the utility room, despite Fen and James gravitating from facing chairs to sitting on the floor with their backs to the couch, no direct pass was being made by either of them. Though he laid his hand on her leg and fondled her knee, the conversation contradicted this, focused as it was on Fen’s opinion of fin de siècle sculpture. Though she ran her fingertips over the back of his hand, tracing his veins, stroking his knuckles, he spoke to her of rosebay willowherb and, tangentially, of having seen Jimi Hendrix play live on the Isle of Wight. Actually, they both found this momentarily a little disconcerting, privately acknowledging that Fen would have been in nappies at the time.

At not even eleven o’clock, Fen yawned first. James yawned very soon after.

‘Did you know,’ Fen said, knitting fingers with him, ‘that the yawn is the most contagious thing in the world? It’s the same yawn, being passed around and around, ad nauseam.’

James laughed. ‘No, I did not know that,’ he said, encircling her wrist and then stroking the inside of her elbow. ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings!’

There was silence. Fen was acutely aware of his touch and of the hush and she felt awkward. ‘Pregnant pause?’ she remarked, not to be witty but to break it. James looked at her, looked a little uneasy. ‘I’m tired,’ Fen said. ‘Bed?’ As soon as she heard the words out in the open, she wanted to take them back again.

‘We can,’ James replied. ‘You’ll have to share my toothbrush, though.’

And she’d used his toothbrush. And she did notice that his physique bore no vestige of youth, that gravity was doing its thing. And she didn’t really mind because to her James was incredibly masculine. She thought how some would say that this man was no longer in his prime. To her, though, he was. Because this is what he looked like right now, and it was right now that Fen had him. In her eyes, there was no room for improvement – because she had no knowledge of his physique when younger to serve as a point of reference or comparison. She wasn’t self-conscious about undressing in front of him. And she didn’t mind if he did notice her strange improvisation at a G-string. James didn’t notice. For him, the beauty of Fen’s naked body far exceeded his anticipation.

Then James had said about not sleeping with her, but sleeping with her. Fen had lain in the dark, wondering what he meant. She didn’t think, therefore, that she should reach for him though she so wanted to. In the dark, after a while’s silence, James touched her. Lightly at first, then assertively. For Fen, it was like him taking her for a walk in bed. Leading the way again. His pace. His territory. It turned Fen on to be passive under his expertise. James was absolutely silent. It was pitch-black in the bedroom. Hands explored and tongues danced and mouths tasted and sucked. James’s lips enclosed Fen’s mouth, swallowing her moans as she came on his hand. She was then ravenous to return the favour but James resisted her. They didn’t have penetrative sex. He didn’t come. And, at the time, it didn’t seem strange.

Odd, Fen thought much later, as she lay awake with James asleep far on the other side of the bed, but in truth, that was the best sex I can remember having.

THIRTY-ONE

Intelligence designs but the heart does the modelling.

Auguste Rodin

Henry Holden had family money – unlike other members of his family, however, he did not put it into ships, but art. His father was appalled – especially when it transpired that the art his son was purchasing was of the modern school. It would have been different if his son had invested in oil paintings of great seafaring vessels. But no, Henry Holden Junior, at the age of seventeen, purchased a nonsensical scrawl by some Russian chap.

‘Wassily Kandinsky!’ Henry marvelled in a whisper, holding the painting up like a father worshipping a new baby. To Henry’s father, it sounded as though his son was blaspheming. However, though strict and not particularly demonstrative with his children, Mr Holden Senior’s particular view on parenting and child development was neither to discourage nor encourage.

‘Courage!’ he had declared to his wife before their first child had been born, ‘Courage is the key! It is attainable only through personal choice. Our offspring must make their own mistakes. They must be accountable for their actions, positive or negative.’

And so, though Mr Holden thought little of Henry’s taste for the seeds of German Expressionism, and though he thought even less of his son’s utter lack of interest in boat building and its history, he allowed his son to spend his funds in whichever way he felt was best.

In Henry Holden’s collection, the Kandinsky sketch joined a small Pissarro drawing, a Sisley snow scene and a Lautrec lithograph. But with the Kandinsky, Henry felt he was bringing back to Britain an example of something not yet seen by his countrymen but which was life-enhancing. It made him feel both archaeologist and pioneer – that he had unearthed a treasure and would start a whole movement of appreciation. And that was the keyword – appreciation – he never bought art for its potential as investment, but only ever on purely aesthetic grounds. He loved passionately every work he had purchased. He bought them to hang on his walls, to illuminate his room and the lives of his family and friends. And when Henry founded Trust Art, he decreed that the acquisitions policy should remain faithful to his own. He would not fund galleries which wished to acquire works of art for any other reason than that they greatly enhanced the institutions’ walls, or floor space, or display cabinets; would thus enrich the lives of those who worked there or came to visit.

When Henry Holden first met Julius Fetherstone in Paris between the wars, all funds for art, for anything really, were at once directed towards the British sculptor. Julius felt suspicious at first, rather sickened by such a sycophant, and he overcharged his young patron accordingly. Before long, he realized that Henry – or Holden as he had decided to call him – was a genuine fellow with a rather charming and unadulterated zeal for art. He was soon at ease with the notion of the young collector being his long-term patron, rather than merely a client. He knew that Holden bought the works to keep, never to sell; that his near doe-eyed interest had absolutely no homosexual overtones, that when he made his frequent trips to Paris, he had no desire to be entertained by the artist, to creep into his world. He came to Paris to sit in Julius’s studio, to gaze at the sculptor while he worked, or thought, or napped; to part with good money and often accompany his acquisitions home personally. Much to his first wife’s exasperation.

‘Who is she?’ Henry Holden, circumnavigating Abandon or Hunger or Desire or any of the other works featuring Cosima, would marvel. ‘Who is she?’ But Henry asked not out of inquisitiveness, but rather out of wonder. He never expected or craved an answer.

‘Do you really want to know?’ Julius once asked Henry.

Henry regarded the sculptor with alarm. ‘Lord, no!’ he gasped. ‘If she exists, if I am to know her name, if it transpires she has crooked teeth, or a lazy eye, or a pungent scent about her, the spell she has cast over me would be broken!’

Julius nodded and returned to chiselling. He remembered Cosima having straight pearly teeth, eyes which swallowed you like a whirlpool. And the scent of her – ah! lilac and musk, lilac and musk.

THIRTY-TWO

By mid-June, the acquisitions committee have met and made their decision. Fen, Tate Britain and James Caulfield are delighted that Trust Art has agreed to contribute funds towards the hallowed gallery’s purchase of the three Fetherstones. Matt has postponed Otter’s article on Winnifred Nicholson to make pride of place for Fen’s assessment of the Derbyshire Fetherstones. Otter hammed up how offended he was. Fen had to dampen down how honoured she was. The works themselves are to remain in Derbyshire until the transaction is finalized. The Trust saw it as an honour, while the Tate saw it as practical, that Fen McCabe should accompany the works back up north. She took the bronze back to Mr Caulfield’s last weekend. The sketches are being X-rayed and analysed and she is to return them soon. Mr Caulfield actually came down to London a fortnight or so ago – at the invitation of Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine from Calthrop’s, who had sent him a train ticket.

‘You could make much more if we handled the sale for you,’ she had said seductively, whilst eating her prawns most suggestively and running her fingertips up and down the stem of her champagne flute, licking her lips and fixing her sultry gaze on James.

‘I’m perfectly happy with the amount agreed with the Tate,’ James had replied graciously. ‘I really wouldn’t want the works going anywhere else.’

Margot F-M-L didn’t want James going anywhere else that afternoon either. She’d manicured and pedicured and primped and preened that morning in anticipation of his visit. To her amazement first and foremost, and secondly to her disappointment, he informed her (whilst she was flicking her tongue fantastically over spoonfuls of zabaglione) that he really had to make this a day visit and needed to catch a train in an hour or so.

James had lied. He had gone directly to a small, insalubrious but nevertheless clean and orderly hotel in Paddington to wait for Fen. Fen, as we know, doesn’t lie. Accordingly, that day she had three cups of coffee on an empty stomach, gave herself a headache, told Roger and Bobbie the truth that she had a headache and left work three hours early.

Fen took two ibuprofen on the tube and felt her headache shifting by the time she alighted at Paddington.

‘I hope you haven’t brought the oil sketches,’ James said, when she arrived.

‘No,’ Fen laughed, ‘they’ll be back next week – I’m intending to return them the following weekend.’

‘Let’s go to Whiteley’s,’ James said, gathering his wallet and picking up the room key. Fen had envisaged Tate Modern. Or the Wallace Collection. ‘I fancy a matinee,’ said James, ‘something trashy.’ As always, whether on a walk through the country or in bed, James was leading the way and setting the pace. Usually, it turned Fen on. Today, though, she’d planned on a cream tea at Brown’s Hotel. Not nachos in the afternoon whilst watching Bruce Willis rampage around the big screen.

‘Where can a guy get a gal a candlelit dinner?’ James had asked, to Fen’s delight, after the film. Fen didn’t want to stray too far afield. They found a gorgeous Moroccan restaurant where they lounged on tapestry cushions on low benches. James held her hand between courses. He kissed her neck when he topped up her glass. She was so hungry for him that she lost her appetite for cous-cous.

‘Let’s go back to the hotel,’ James suggested. ‘Now.’

The room seemed more cramped on their return. And overheated. And just as a small hotel room should be, where urgent sex is concerned. Though the establishment was clean and well maintained, there was a seediness to it all. But it turned James and Fen on all the more.

Fen had excused herself during the meal to leave a message on Matt’s answering machine. Just for a moment, she hated what she was doing. Sneaking away from James. Making excuses to Matt. She left a message saying that, although she was feeling a little better, she would probably end up staying the night with Cat. Probably, she said. Not definitely. Just a possibility. No untruths told.

So Fen has two suitors and she wonders only now and then whether she will at some point have to make a choice, make her mind up. At the moment, there is balance; there is therefore no need to weigh up the situation by gazing from one hand to the other, or one man to the other. Her heart beats steadily, beats as strongly for Matt as for James. Her mind runs with ease, day by day, week after week. It’s summer now. Bright and breezy. Fen feels life could not get much better.

Matthew took her home to Gloucestershire for a weekend not long ago. For a girl whose mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, to be welcomed by two fabulously maternal women – Matt’s mother and nanny – was the realization of a day-dream years old. Matt found Fen’s story in some ways quaint. ‘I mean,’ he’d reasoned to Jake, ‘you hear of women who run off with the milkman, or the husband’s best mate – but only Fen could have a mother who left for a cowboy.’ Matt’s mother found Fen’s story horrific – and was alarmed that the child’s upbringing had been entrusted to an artist-cum-jazz-musician-cum-whatever.

‘Derbyshire, dear?’ Susan Holden had repeated, as if perhaps she had heard incorrectly. ‘Wasn’t it terribly cold and – wild?’ She’d always craved a daughter but her body would allow her only one child and she reasoned it was fitting that it should be a son and heir to the Holden name and fortune. However, had she had a daughter, no cowboy – not even Cary Grant – would have tempted her away from providing the very best, safest, most privileged childhood. ‘Poor duck,’ she said to nanny, ‘but she seems well adjusted. And doesn’t Matthew adore her!’ Nanny had agreed. ‘I believe,’ Susan continued, ‘Matthew has fallen on his feet. I do so hope they’ll make it work.’ Nanny looked out of the window at Matt and Fen strolling hand in hand across the lawn. ‘They do seem dreamy,’ she commented with an approving sigh.

After some furtive corridor creeping, Matt snuck into Fen’s bed. She lay in his arms, sleepy but awake, in a room of beautiful proportions, cosy in the soft silence of the Gloucestershire night. And she nestled closer to him. She felt incredibly lucky, happy too. It was only in the silence of the early hours that she could admit to herself that she was falling in love. And though she was apprehensive about this, she was essentially happy and excited.

I want nothing to come between us.

And just a few weeks later, as she lay awake while James slept on the other side of the bed in the hotel in Paddington, Fen knew that she was in love with this man. In the darkness, the accompanying feeling of warmth which seeped along her veins, felt like a very good thing.

THIRTY-THREE

Django sat with his head in his hands. His supper of cod in beer batter had turned cold on the kitchen table. He had no appetite. He had no desire to watch Coronation Street despite the previous episode having ended on a cliff-hanger of vertiginous proportions. The phone was ringing but he had no inclination to answer it. In fact, Django had no time to think on anything other than the scene he had witnessed that afternoon. It wasn’t that his niece hadn’t told him of her visit to Derbyshire. He’d always encouraged his nieces to live their lives with vigorous independence. Derbyshire was her stamping ground too; he did not own it. It was not betrayal that he felt, though he was a little hurt that she could be within a stone’s throw and yet had not contacted him or his new answering machine. Django’s head was in his hands, a weary weight on his shoulders, not because he perceived Fen to be deceitful. No, Django’s discontent derived in whole from his fear that the grown-up Fen exhibited traits more akin with her mother than with her father, his late and beloved brother. That’s what troubled him so. The duplicity of it. The insincerity. How could she tell him how lovely her boyfriend Matthew From Islington was when it was plain she was also gallivanting around Derbyshire with Another Man? Django had seen her, in the Cross Oaks, cosy as you like, nestling into the neck of a man very obviously not Matthew From Islington.

Django took his head from his hands and regarded the battered fish. ‘An older chap,’ he told it, not quite sure whether he spoke to the head end or tail end, the batter being thick and dark enough to cover up any vestige of either.

He really didn’t want to flatter Fenella’s mother by wasting too much thinking time on her. But his brother’s desolation when deserted still made Django wince; the vivid memory of the three tiny girls, wide-eyed and out of sorts, still made him weep. He blamed his brother’s untimely death in part on the trauma of his ex-wife’s action. The woman had never acknowledged her daughters’ birthdays, or Christmas. The last time she had made contact was a year after she left, when she phoned her ex-husband to say that she and her cowboy were moving from Denver to Albuquerque and that, once settled, she would furnish him with the address. But she never did. So when her ex-husband died, Django was unable to contact her. When Pip was picked to represent her county at gymnastics, there was no way of letting her know. Nor when Fen achieved a double distinction from the Courtauld Institute, nor when Cat broke both ankles and one wrist in a fall from her bicycle. Ultimately, what irked Django so was that, though he had utter confidence in his parenting skills and was convinced that the girls had wanted for nothing, he felt fundamentally that they should have had a mother. He felt that, at the very least, they should have had a mother who hadn’t behaved the way theirs had.

And now there’s my Fenella. Lying in the arms of one man whilst lying to another. I can’t judge the chaps in question, for I have met neither. But I can judge Fen. She should have one or the other. Not both. She should know that. It isn’t wholesome. Someone will get hurt. Is she morally inept? Damn her mother. God rest my brother. God bless my girls. God knows what I’m meant to do with this information.

‘When will I see you next?’ Fen asked James sleepily, with a beguilingly childlike petulance to her voice. She was lying naked in his bed, her head in the crook of his shoulder, her fingers skating patterns over his chest. ‘I’ve returned your art, secured your funds – you no longer have any need of me.’

‘Quite true,’ James jested, ‘you’ve served your purpose – and served it well.’

‘And you’ve serviced me and serviced me well!’ Fen laughed, slipping her hand down his body and finding that a particular part of him was very wide awake indeed. Not even the archaic central-heating system, groaning and protesting and whistling and spluttering, could intrude on the peace felt between Fen and James. The curtains were open but of course there’d be no one to look in. An early owl could be heard in the distance. The window was ajar and a breeze filtered over their bodies. Fen reacted with goose bumps which James stroked rhythmically away. Couldn’t they just never get up? Fen wondered. Suspended moments like these were blissful. She’d never experienced them before. They were unique to this man, this place.

I’m sure I couldn’t achieve this sense of centredness in London. Or with anyone other than James.

‘When will I see you next?’ Fen asked again.

‘Well, I assume that you’ll be visiting your uncle? Soon?’ James said. ‘And of course, you really ought to check up on me – I might store the paintings incorrectly, might position the sculpture in the pond as a water feature.’

‘I don’t want to check up on you,’ Fen said softly, ‘I just want to know that I’ll see you. Soon. When?’

They began to kiss. Though he was taller than Matthew, James’s physique was softer, rounder here and there. Yet, without comparing the two men, the unique and precious sensation Fen always derived from James’s embrace was that she was utterly enveloped and safe. His age, his experience, his self-containment all contributed to this. She nuzzled against him, feeling him soft here, very hard there. Their groins rocked gently, automatically. Their kissing became deeper. Lust started to seep through love and soon enough sexual desire and satisfaction became their prerogative. James’s post-coital habit was to withdraw almost immediately, to lie on his back, on his side of the bed, eyes closed, and sleep. Fen didn’t mind. She rather liked feeling that the experience of making love with her could render a man speechless and exhausted.

THIRTY-FOUR

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Henry Fielding

The smell of her. Matt’s eyes closed with heady pleasure.

‘Can’t we hook up once you’ve seen Cat and Pip?’ he murmured, his lips touching her ear lobe, his hands grasping her buttocks and pulling her tight close against him. It was stuffy in the Archive but he didn’t notice. The door was ajar but he didn’t care. His desire for Fen was so strong that he would tolerate an audience, and subsequent dismissal, if only she would let him take her here and now.

‘Let me take you from behind,’ he said hoarsely. Fen giggled. ‘Come on,’ he said, deadly serious, leading her hand to the rod-stiff protuberance in his trousers, ‘fast and furious. What do you say?’ He fondled her breasts, the intensity of desire causing him to stay only just within the limits of being downright rough. Fen gasped. It turned Matt on. ‘God, Fen – it might sound clichéd and cheesy but I find you so bloody horny.’ Fen felt herself melt and throb, offered her mouth to Matt and drifted away from the Archive into his arms.

There was a knock at the door. Fen and Matt sprang apart.

‘For the love of Jesus,’ Otter declared with theatrically exaggerated disapproval, covering his eyes with one skinny hand whilst feigning a faint by grasping on to the desk with the other. He cleared his throat and stared hard at the middle distance: ‘It’s the Burlington Magazine on the phone for you, Ed.’

Matt was facing away from him, in a valiant attempt to hide his hard-on. ‘Coming,’ he said.

‘In the conventional sense only, I hope,’ Otter said with great disdain, opening one eye, ‘and watch you don’t knock over that entire shelving unit when you turn around, big boy.’

Fen laughed and bit her lip.

‘Strumpet!’ Otter growled at her before flouncing out of the room.

Matt turned around and Fen raised an eyebrow approvingly at the tent pole holding his trousers out. ‘I shouldn’t be long this evening,’ she said, touching his cheek tenderly. ‘Pip said it was a family matter – Cat’s off to the Tour de France soon, I presume we’re to assess whether this is a good or bad idea.’

‘Just head over,’ said Matt, ‘whenever.’

He didn’t dare look at her, let alone kiss her. He had only just physically calmed down sufficiently to leave the Archive for his office and take the call from the Burlington Magazine.

Recalling the afternoon made Fen smile intermittently during her journey home. She strolled up Camden High Street with a spring to her step. It was nice and early – she’d nip home, have a bath, pop over to Pip’s and then head straight to Islington. Once home, she took her post into the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. She wondered, as she did every month, why her bank statements always arrived on the same day as her credit card statement. The latter demanding that she pay X whilst the former proclaimed that her funds were basically minus X minus a whole lot more. She tucked the envelopes into her back pocket and made what Django would term an NCT. A Nice Cuppa Tea always soothed problems, whether of a financial or emotional nature, even if it was in a chipped Spice Girls mug. She took a KitKat and decided she’d have the NCT in her bath, rather than waste time watching TV. She wanted to see Pip and Cat and then head over to Matt’s as soon as she could.

Oh God.

Unmistakable.

Fen hovered at the bottom of the stairs, listening to the creaking bed springs, male grunts and female groans from upstairs.

Which one, though?

Because recently, she’d spent so much time at Matt’s flat, she’d not been confronted with the unsavoury reality of her boyfriend’s best friend bedding both her housemates.

Unfortunately, in a very literal sense, that’s precisely what she’ll have to confront now.

Fen sighs as she makes her way up to her room. She can feel that the KitKat is starting to melt against the mug of tea so she slips it into the pocket of her shirt. The moans are increasing in regularity and intensity.

It’s Abi. That’s a relief. Hopefully it’s over between Jake and Gemma.

Up she goes. Only, the door to Abi’s room is wide open, as are the curtains, and there’s no one in there. Fen crosses the landing and climbs the next flight of stairs. Gemma’s door isn’t shut.

But I can still hear Abi. I’ll just walk calmly by. I’m carrying a hot mug of tea, after all. And, after all, I’m home early. Abi would presume she had the house to herself so I’ll just tiptoe quietly and quickly past.

Now, Abi is a great giggler, but the short laugh of delight that rings out just as Fen approaches is at odds with the sprightly trill that is Abi’s trademark. Deludedly, for one moment, Fen justifies that Jake must be doing something quite extraordinary to so alter the timbre of her voice. It really doesn’t sound like Abi at all. Listen.

Don’t look don’t look don’t look.

But as she passes by the threshold of Gemma’s room, and hears the squelching and the panting and the creaking and the giggling, Fen’s head is turned against her will. And her eyes alight on a feast of flesh writhing around Gemma’s bed. It is Abi. Of course it is. And it is Jake. Of course it is. But it is Gemma too. Without a doubt. No need to do a body recount. Gemma, gloriously butt naked, is part of the mêlée. The door is open but only ajar. Fen cannot be seen and though she doesn’t want to see, she is rooted to the spot, unable to take her eyes from the action.

Gemma.

Jake.

Abi.

Jake and Abi enjoying Gemma.

Gemma, by all accounts, enjoying it very much indeed.

Jesus Christ.

Fen is as intrigued as she is horrified. Though she adores both her flatmates, she has never felt the slightest inclination to snog either of them. Certainly not to fondle their breasts or have hers fondled by either of them. And most definitely not whilst being penetrated by a man who isn’t officially her boyfriend. But that’s what’s going on in there. Abi’s boyfriend is having sex with her best friend whilst Abi’s tongue flicks over her. Wait a minute, Abi is now straddling Jake and Gemma is embracing her.

‘God I’m close,’ Jake says and Fen can see that his cock looks as though it will torpedo right off his body. ‘OK, ladies, ready for tea-time?’

For someone fully clothed, holding a very hot mug of tea, with no proclivity for a threesome, let alone a smidgen of sexual attraction for any of the participants, Fen finds Jake’s words risibly ridiculous. Not only does his huskily drawled term ‘ladies’ make her toes curl, but the fact that he has referred to his imminent climax as ‘tea-time’ has caused her to spill hers. Jake might be hot, but Fen’s tea is hotter.

‘Fuck!’ Jake yells.

‘Fuck!’ Fen yells. As she drops the mug and tea spills all over the carpet, Jake drops his load – his ‘tea’, as he has so delicately termed it. Fen is already bolting down a level to the bathroom to hold her hands under the cold tap.

‘Fen?’ Abi calls down.

‘Fen?’ Gemma calls down.

‘Fen?’ Jake calls down.

She doesn’t reply. There’s no way she’s going back upstairs. If the tea stains the carpet, the landlord can take cleaning costs out of her deposit. For now, she wants to be out of the house immediately.

‘I just came …’ she calls up, ‘I just came to, to – dump my stuff.’

‘So did I,’ Jake calls down. Fen hears them all laughing. She feels suddenly offended. Are they laughing at her?

‘I have to shoot off now,’ she calls.

‘That’s precisely what I’ve done,’ Jake calls down and Fen can hear them all giggling in a horribly self-congratulatory way.

Fen wants to cry. She isn’t sure why. She isn’t sure what to say next.

‘Bye,’ she calls, because it’s neutral and safe and has no opening for a double entendre. Even if it did, she’s closed the door and is marching up the street on the double; out of sight, out of sound.

When Pip opened the door to her flat, Fen thought how the look on her sister’s face must mirror her own. An element of shock-horror mixed with a dose of bewilderment, a dash of unease, all laced with unhappiness. How could Pip know, though? Had Abi or Gemma phoned her?

‘Urgh!’ said Fen, flopping down on to the settee next to Cat, whose facial expression matched both of her sisters’. Pip perched on the coffee table in front of Fen and Cat, her knees practically touching Fen’s. ‘You’ll never guess,’ Fen continued, holding her throat as if to quell nausea. ‘Honestly,’ she went on, ‘it’s not as if I’m a prude – but …’ Cat and Pip regarded their sister with level gazes. Fen shook her head forlornly. ‘It’ll sound like the juiciest of gossip,’ she explained, ‘but it isn’t – it’s horrid. I feel very very uncomfortable.’ Still Cat and Pip watched her. ‘I feel I should move. But first I want to have a bath – it’s made me feel dirty, which is ridiculous.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Cat.

‘It isn’t,’ Pip agreed.

‘What?’ said Fen. ‘It is ridiculous – I catch both my flatmates having sex with the same man at the same time and I feel so appalled and revulsed that I’m the one who feels she should scrub herself clean!’

Pip and Cat observed Fen in stony silence. At length, Pip spoke. ‘How could you, Fen?’

‘Oh,’ said Fen ingenuously, ‘I wasn’t peeping – it was unavoidable, the door was open and they were all making such a racket.’ Her sisters were giving her very odd looks indeed. ‘Do you know what Jake said – oh Jesus – he said, “OK ladies, time for tea,” when he was – you know!’ Fen giggled and blushed and covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh God – I shouldn’t laugh but it is so toe-curlingly revolting,’ she said, all muffled.

‘How could you do it to Matt?’ Cat probed, shaking her head and looking quite miserable.

‘Matt?’ Fen asked. ‘I haven’t told him yet.’

‘Are you going to?’ Pip asked.

Fen fell silent.

‘Because it isn’t fair on him,’ said Cat, ‘not one bit, not at all. He’s so so lovely.’

Fen considered this. ‘Jake has probably told him,’ she said, ‘I mean, I bet it wasn’t the first time. I wonder how Matt will respond.’ She looked from sister to sister. ‘That will be telling, won’t it?’ she theorized. ‘If he reacts as I have, all well and good. But say he thinks it’s not that untoward? What then? Do I really want to be with someone with such dodgy morals?’

‘Dodgy morals!’ Pip cried. ‘Dodgy sodding morals!’ She regarded Fen, fire in her eyes and a harshness to her voice that Fen had never heard. ‘Pot!’ Pip yelled. ‘Kettle! Black!’ She leapt up and paced around the room.

Fen looked utterly flummoxed. ‘I don’t follow,’ she faltered.

‘What we’ve been trying to ascertain,’ Cat said coldly, ‘and the reason for us having you here, is how on earth you can do what you’re doing to Matt.’

Fen stared at Cat. There was no penny dropping just yet. ‘I don’t follow,’ she repeated.

Pip returned to the coffee table and sat with her face inches from Fen’s. ‘You have a lovely boyfriend,’ she said in a horribly controlled way, ‘who is obviously besotted by you – and yet you choose to jeopardize what you have with him so you can fuck around in Derbyshire.’

Fen’s jaw dropped. The penny dropped like a lead weight straight to the bottom of her stomach. The crossed lines of the previous minutes unravelled and wrapped around Fen’s throat.

‘Derbyshire,’ Cat stressed, ‘your own bloody doorstep.’

Fen had not yet closed her mouth.

‘How could you?’ Pip asked, a look of utter revulsion crossing her face.

Fen changed the aperture of her mouth but no sound came out. She put her hand to her throat. ‘I …’

‘Django saw you,’ Cat elaborated, ‘in the Cross Oaks, snug as you like with some bloke.’

‘I …’

‘Couldn’t you be more discreet?’ Cat spat. ‘Couldn’t you just hole up in your lover’s pad – rather than upset Django so? I mean, it’s one thing not to even call him – but it’s another to flaunt.’

‘Django?’ Fen whispered.

‘Saw you,’ Pip confirmed.

‘You know what,’ said Cat, slapping her hands down on her knees, rising from the settee to pace the room, ‘what I don’t get is how you can dare to come here, all hurt and shocked and self-righteous about Jake and Abi and Gemma. I mean, they’re consenting adults, larking about with sex. But you – you. The deception, Fen. The dishonesty.’

Fen looked from hand to hand.

‘Stop looking at your bloody hands,’ Pip barked, ‘and look into your soul. What you are doing is wrong. We presume that they don’t know about each other?’

Silence. Fen shook her head.

‘Have you stopped to imagine,’ Pip continued, ‘how either would feel if he found out? Have you stopped to consider how much unhappiness you have the potential to wreak?’ She took two apples and an orange from her fruit bowl. ‘I can juggle, Fen,’ she said, doing just that, ‘but you can’t.’ She let the fruit fall. The orange caught the side of the coffee table and then thudded to the floor. One apple rolled underneath the table, the other bounced, bashing the skirting-board before coming to rest, bruised. The orange was alone in the centre of the floor. ‘Where do you get it from?’ Pip enquired, quietly, bewildered. ‘Where do you get it from?’

It was all too much for Fen. She started to cry. Neither sister was inclined to comfort her. Both felt let down and confused and very cross with Fen. She stood up.

‘The lies,’ Pip sighed, disgusted, ‘the lies.’

‘I have not lied!’ Fen protested. ‘I haven’t – to anyone.’ There was uneasy silence. ‘Piss off, both of you!’ she cried. ‘Piss right off! Who the hell are you two to judge?’ And yet Fen knew she should stop, sit down, sob her heart out and then pour her heart out. She knew, most importantly, that she should say no more. She knew she’d regret it. But she continued. ‘Who are you to judge me! Cat with your fucked-up love life, and Pip with no love life to speak of. You have no right, no authority!’

With that, she stormed out of Pip’s flat.

THIRTY-FIVE

’Tis an awkward thing to play with souls,

And matter enough to save one’s own

Robert Browning

‘Bugger,’ said Fen out loud on the top of Primrose Hill. Her indignation at having been told off had subsided. She felt ghastly. Though, as we know, she has a slight obsession with her hands, Fen has never bitten her nails. But sitting on one of the benches on the top of Primrose Hill, she had her fingers in her mouth and was half-heartedly chewing away. It seemed, really, the only thing to do. The McCabe sisters rarely argued. Never had Cat and Pip united against Fen. Never had she spat such spite at her sisters. It simply wasn’t her nature. Thus, the top layer of the distress Fen was currently experiencing focused on the insults she had cruelly levied at Cat and Pip. Under that was the wretchedness she felt, now that home truths had been unequivocally pointed out. On all fronts, her behaviour had been bad. To Matt, to James, to Pip, to Fen. Even, unwittingly, to her beloved Django.

‘Mess,’ she whispered to herself, tears coursing down her cheeks, ‘my fault.’ She looked over to the aviary in London Zoo. It depressed her. Is that what she had been doing? Kidding herself that she was flying free, flying true, when in reality she was far from her real territory and heading for a bump at any moment? She hadn’t been to the zoo in years, she had no intention of visiting it again. On Primrose Hill, lone dog walkers strolled around, friends flopped on the grass chatting, couples walked hand in hand. Fen didn’t dare look at her hands. She knew she’d only reprimand herself, whichever palm she consulted. Instead, she just sat there because it was cathartic just to do so, crying quietly, feeling miserable. After a few minutes, though, she knew, too, that it was thoroughly self-indulgent.

How much courage do I have? she wondered. Enough to return to Pip’s and apologize? Enough to go to Matt’s, hold him close and tell him that I love him? Because I’ve already told James how I love him.

Do you love James more than you do Matt, then?

No. Ironically, it’s because James is so guarded with expressing his emotions that I wanted to tell him how I feel – like it might prompt some kind of reciprocation from him. Matt is much more open and demonstrative. But no. I certainly do not love one more than the other. But this is not the point, this is skirting the issue. How on earth do I manage to leave Primrose Hill?

You should prioritize, Fen. Matt and James are both safely in the dark. It is to your sisters that you should go. It won’t be easy, there will be music to face and it may well be dissonant.

Saying sorry is one thing – but they’ll judge me, they’ll judge me.

Fen dragged her heels. She looked in all the shop windows in Regent’s Park Road though she knew their wares well, having spent Saturday browsing there with Matt. More to the point, it was futile because she knew she could not afford any of the things she fancied. She switched her mobile phone on. No messages. She switched it off again. Then on again. She dialled her voice mail. No messages. No surprise there. She bought two apples and an orange, also a bumper-size block of Galaxy chocolate, Cat’s favourite, and walked with resigned purpose – if slowly – back to Pip’s.

The beauty of true sisterhood – whether women are united by blood or friendship – is the ability not to hold grudges. Men, after disagreements or fallings-out with each other, will invariably just bury the hatchet and pick up where they left off. Women, though, will relish the chance to work through the issue. When they have done so, they are further on than they were when they left off. They move forward, on foundations which are firmer than they were prior to the rift. Simply saying, ‘Sorry mate,’ might be easier; to agree quickly over a pint to let bygones be just that might be very agreeable, but making up shouldn’t be easy – if it is, then surely it wouldn’t be difficult to fall out again.

‘She’s back,’ Cat said, seeing Fen’s legs descending the stairs to Pip’s basement flat.

Whilst walking back to Pip’s, Fen had polished up three or four variants on an impressive soliloquy. However, by the time she was hovering her finger over Pip’s doorbell, all were utterly redundant. The knot in her throat had already lodged itself as she approached Pip’s building. When Cat opened the door, Fen felt her eyes smart over. When Pip greeted her with a gentle, ‘Hullo, slapper,’ the tears fell. The three sisters sat together on Pip’s sofa, though it was only a small two-seater. Pip and Cat were silent, Pip’s hand on Fen’s shoulder, Cat’s hand on her knee. They let her sob. And snort back the snot. And be quiet for a moment before starting up again. Eventually she was all cried out.

‘Here,’ she croaked, thrusting the plastic bag at Pip. Pip smiled at the replacement fruit and laid them gently in the fruit bowl. She and Cat had eaten the surprisingly unbruised apples while Fen had been on Primrose Hill. Cat handed out great big chunks of the chocolate to each sister and they slouched back on the couch and munched.

Pip spoke first, loving chocolate so much that she found it impossible not to gobble it down. ‘Fen,’ she said, with no anger to her voice, ‘what I’d like to know is exactly how you can do it? Not just on a moral level – but on a practical one too?’

Fen stared at Pip’s wall so intently that Pip and Cat could all but see the cogs and wheels of her mind turning. They gave her time and more Galaxy. Fen arose and took a pew on the coffee table, facing both her sisters. ‘I know it sounds odd – especially for someone as hooked on romance as me.’ Pip and Cat nodded. ‘They’re just so different, these two men,’ Fen continued, ‘yet it’s not as if either lacks anything physically or in personality that the other makes up for. That’s what’s so odd.’

‘But don’t you feel guilty?’ Cat enquired.

‘It’s been effortless to keep them apart – in my soul, mind and heart. Matt lives in London, he is my age, my milieu. James lives in Derbyshire. He’s forty-nine.’

‘Almost fifty!’ Cat exclaimed.

‘A sugar-daddy?’ Pip asked.

‘A gardener,’ Fen explained.

‘Oh,’ said Pip, whilst Cat just looked disappointed.

‘I’ve a clear picture of Percy Thrower,’ Cat said, referring to the Blue Peter TV gardener of their childhood.

‘I’m thinking Alan Titchmarsh,’ Pip said, slightly perturbed.

‘You’re both far off the mark,’ Fen assured them. ‘Think back to the Rag and Thistle – to that chap you were ogling with the dogs.’ Pip and Cat’s jaws dropped. Fen nodded confirmation. ‘Him.’

The sisters gazed up through the window to street level where disembodied legs made their way either late home from work, or out for a drink or meal or movie. ‘Both these blokes enhance my life,’ Fen said, ‘because I’ve come to realize that there are two very different sides to me. On the one side,’ she said, careful not to look at her right palm, ‘is the city-dwelling young thing that I am – enjoying London life, having a hip and gorgeous boyfriend like Matt. On the other side, though, are my rural roots, my love of Derbyshire, of the outdoors and all that is different to the city.’

She regarded her sisters.

‘Two sides of the same coin,’ she shrugged, ‘town and country. Rich and poor. Young and old. Matt and James.’ Pip and Cat wore furrowed brows. ‘Put another way,’ Fen said, ‘it’s like really enjoying a programme on television but flicking over to another equally interesting programme during the advert break.’

‘Fenella,’ said Pip, using her sister’s name in full to stress the anxiety in her voice, ‘you mustn’t toy with men just for your entertainment.’

‘And Fen,’ Cat said, ‘who is the main feature and who is the intermission break?’

Fen shook her head slowly. She shrugged. ‘I couldn’t tell you,’ she said, ‘honestly. But I assure you that I am not using them for my amusement. I am, I think, I suppose, dare I say it, simply in love with two men.’

‘And do you know what to do about it?’ Pip pushed.

‘Carry on?’ Fen said, after a very loaded pause.

‘OK. But what do you think you ought to do about it?’ Pip persisted.

Fen shrugged. Pip used her name in full again, in a soft low voice with an unmistakably menacing edge to it.

‘Minimize the potential for hurt and thus make my bloody mind up?’ Fen suggested.

‘Now say that without the question mark at the end,’ said Cat. Fen twisted her brow and her hands. Cat and Pip waited. Eventually, in almost a whisper and with a tear glassing over her right eye, Fen did as she was told.

‘Who is it to be?’ Cat asked.

Fen wiped her eyes and shrugged, shaking her head vigorously as if to try to forget the weight and urgency of her responsibility.

‘Who loves you more?’ Cat asked. ‘Matt or James?’

‘I don’t know!’ Fen declared, because she had put herself right at the centre of both men’s worlds and hadn’t really stopped to think.

‘Mind you,’ Cat continued, ‘ultimately you should choose according to your heart.’

‘I don’t know, Cat,’ Pip cautioned, ‘I think Fen’s head should keep a close check on her heart. Which man is least likely to hurt you?’

‘I can look after myself,’ Fen declared with a certain petulance.

‘Bollocks!’ Pip said. ‘That’s my line and even I know it’s bullshit, deep down.’

‘What are they like?’ asked Cat, not so much because she wanted to steer the conversation back on track as that curiosity had simply got the better of her. ‘how do they compare? These two sides of the coin?’

‘I don’t compare them,’ Fen insisted, ‘but I can try to describe them.’

Pip and Cat snuggled deep into the sofa, as if story-time on the radio or at nursery school was about to commence. ‘Well, you sort of know Matt,’ Fen began. ‘I so love the way he combines old-fashioned manners with cosmopolitan funky liveliness. He’s also incredibly attentive on an emotional level – very caring, romantic. He sends me little e-mails and text messages and sticks Post-its on my computer monitor for no reason other than he cares for me. That makes me feel wonderful. And in bed – well!’ Fen broke off to blush. ‘At first, it was a little nondescript, but now we don’t so much make love as have rude and rampant sex. He’s amazing – dirty and desirous. I feel very adventurous and abandoned with him. The things he can do with his lips and tongue – a sort of magic-whispering in any of my orifices!’ Fen regarded her sisters, both of whose jaws had dropped. ‘He’s had a long-term relationship that broke up finally just before I arrived on the scene. He cares about her. I’m glad he does. But I’m gladder that it’s now me whom he wants. I’m even cool about his fling with mad Judith at work. I can in no way wonder if I’m his rebound shag. And also, he has a lovely, conventional family. His mum is a real honey. And there’s Nanny too.’

‘And the country pile,’ Pip added, but not wanting to sound cynical, ‘and Daddy’s inheritance.’ Fen poked her tongue out at her sister.

‘We like Matt!’ Cat proclaimed with a wriggle to grab the Galaxy from the table. ‘He’s gorgeous on the eye and a really lovely guy. Hey! I’m a poet – not that you’d know it. Sorry!’

‘Continue,’ Pip encouraged, her mouth full of chocolate.

‘James Caulfield,’ Fen started, as if it were the title of a lecture about to be delivered. She refused the chocolate. ‘Is incredibly and compellingly self-contained. He’s classically dark and handsome – looks slightly Mediterranean. True, he’s turning fifty – but I really, truly don’t think about the age gap. It’s not an issue, not for me. He was a surveyor in Bath but he down-shifted to Derbyshire and took up landscape gardening. He’s not as sociable, as outgoing as Matt – in fact he can be a little outspoken or else frustratingly quiet.’

‘He sounds like a sulky old git too set in his ways,’ Pip muttered, because she’d already decided Fen should forsake all others for Matt.

Cat, however, was suddenly rather taken with the idea of James. ‘He sounds rather brooding and exotic to me,’ she marvelled.

‘He is,’ Fen assured them, ‘he’s intelligent and experienced and, I don’t know, smouldering. What I love about James is essentially a wavelength thing,’ Fen mused. ‘His family background is similar in its dysfunction. Even his house is a bit rumble-tumble down. So it’s comforting – and it’s a refreshing change from London pretensions. Plus he has two gorgeous dogs. And of course, we share a love of Fetherstone.’ Fen reflected for a moment. ‘James and I tried to resist the strong mutual attraction – initially, it was most definitely a physical desire that existed between us, on account of him not being that sociable and me meeting him with my art historian’s hat on. Yet, when we went to bed, it was really quite tender. The hunger we initially felt gave way to gentle lovemaking rather than raw sex.’

‘Who’s the better in bed?’ Pip asked.

‘Again – incomparable – both great, both different.’

‘Who do you fancy more?’ Cat pressed.

‘Neither one,’ Fen said. Both her sisters raised their eyebrows. ‘Honestly.’

‘Who gives you the better orgasm?’ Cat asked, with a giggle she couldn’t help.

‘Believe me,’ Fen shrugged, ‘both leave me begging for a break, rather than wanting more.’

‘Do you worry that you’re James’s totty?’ Pip probed. ‘That it’s every fifty-year-old’s fantasy to have a nice nubile bit of skirt?’

‘Do you worry that you might be a mere conquest for Matt? He and Jake being lads-about-town?’

Fen wasn’t offended. ‘They’re both special,’ she said, ‘and I know that they both adore me. It’s lovely to hear it from Matthew, and just to sense it from James.’

‘Does James not tell you how he feels?’ Cat asked. ‘Has he not told you that he loves you?’

‘He doesn’t need to,’ Fen said.

Pip opened her mouth and then closed it. She tilted her head and twitched her lips. ‘That may be so,’ she said, ‘but actually a women deserves to be told.’

Fen shrugged. ‘It doesn’t make me doubt the depth of his affection.’ Pip nodded to concede that this may well be so. Deep down, though, she felt that her gorgeous sister was perhaps being somewhat short-changed by this mature gardener.

‘At the end of the day, though,’ Pip said, ‘I still feel you should choose one or the other. The more involved you become with both, the more hurt is in the offing.’

‘They say men are like buses,’ Fen said, ‘that you wait and wait and suddenly two or three come along at the same time.’

‘But Fen,’ Cat pointed out, ‘you can only get on one bus at a time. What’s the point of hopping off one just to hop on another? You’ll never get anywhere.’

‘Different routes?’ Fen tried feebly. ‘Different places to visit?’

Cat and Pip regarded their sister looking from palm to palm. Fen didn’t tell them how analysing each man to the nth degree had actually made her realize just how much she loved both of them.

‘Matthew Holden,’ Fen said, holding up her right hand. ‘James Caulfield,’ she said, holding her left. She grasped both together and clutched them to her heart. Then she dropped her head to her hands and sighed. Pip took her right hand. Cat took her left. They all sat still and silent, holding tight.

THIRTY-SIX

Fen left Pip’s, having phoned Matt to ask if he’d mind if she just went home. He sounded touchingly disappointed. Family pow-wows, she explained to him, always left her exhausted. While they spoke, she heard Jake return.

Oh to be a fly on the wall, thought Fen.

Gemma and Abi were sitting very comfortably, sipping wine. They looked neither surprised nor embarrassed to see Fen. In fact, if the clean, extra wineglass was anything to go by, they were actively anticipating her return. Fen wondered why on earth it should be her who smiled sheepishly. Anyway, smiling sheepishly, she accepted a glass of wine and took her seat in the armchair opposite Abi and Gemma snuggled on the sofa together.

‘Are you horribly shocked and disgusted?’ Abi asked with true concern, her pixie crop looking far more tousled by tension than by passion or pillow.

‘Do you judge us and hate us?’ Gemma asked, in a tone that suggested that she truly hoped Fen didn’t.

Fen sipped and contemplated.

How can I judge? I’m hardly a paragon of moral virtue myself. Anyway, what is it I feel about the torrid triangle?

She sipped and contemplated some more.

And which torrid triangle? My own? Or theirs?

Fen took another sip. ‘What can I say?’ she said, wondering what to say.

‘You can call us a pair of slappers,’ Gemma suggested, as if it would make her feel better if Fen did.

‘Because, categorically, that’s what we are,’ Abi said. It was as if both girls actively wanted Fen to be livid, insulted and moralistic, that if she was, they’d then not feel quite so badly.

Fen sipped her wine and replenished all three glasses.

‘I mean, we know you’re a one-man woman,’ said Abi to Fen’s undetectable wince, ‘and we’re one-man women too – it’s just that he happens to be the same man.’

‘Yes,’ Gemma said, ‘it’s not like we’re promiscuous and out shagging anything in trousers.’ Her voice carried an edge of relief, as if it had suddenly occurred to her that she was not wanton at all. ‘It’s not like I’m sleeping with two men at once,’ Gemma continued, ‘just that the sole man I’m sleeping with happens to be sleeping with two women at once.’

Fen nodded vigorously. She felt hot and bothered. Put the way Gemma had theorized it all, Fen felt that it was she who was morally inept.

‘We’re all happy with this arrangement,’ Abi explained, ‘jealousy doesn’t figure.’

‘But your best mate is sleeping with your boyfriend,’ said Fen, to make herself feel not so smutty.

‘But I’ve ceased to see him as my boyfriend,’ said Abi.

‘And he certainly isn’t my boyfriend,’ Gemma agreed.

Fen frowned. ‘But you two …’ she said, gesticulating with her hands and knotting her fingers together in simulation of writhing bodies.

‘It’s sex as a recreational and non-emotional, physical activity,’ Abi enlightened.

‘It’s not like we’re in love with him,’ Gemma agreed. ‘I don’t know whether the sex would be as exciting if that was the case.’

‘But the more emotionally involved you are with someone,’ Fen said, ‘the more erotic the sex.’

Abi sipped. Gemma sipped. Both regarded Fen with absolute tenderness and respect.

‘That’s why you’re blessed with fulfilling relationships,’ Abi reasoned genuinely. Her innocent use of the plural hit Fen in the solar plexus. Fen didn’t dare say a word, though. She wasn’t going to tell Abi or Gemma about her own infidelities.

They wouldn’t understand. They might even feel let down. They’d probably only see the situation in a titillating light.

‘God knows what Matt’ll make of all of this,’ Abi said. ‘I only hope he wouldn’t dare to judge you by it.’

And how you and Gemma would judge me if you knew what I’m involved in.

‘It’s odd,’ Fen said out loud instead, ‘and I mean this with no disrespect – but I’ve been worried that he’ll share Jake’s traits.’

‘I doubt it,’ Gemma assured her. ‘Jake often moans that a revelation of his sexploits falls on deaf ears and withering looks from Mr Holden.’

Shit, thought Fen, excusing herself and soon staring menacingly at herself in the bathroom mirror. Shit. I can’t, then, behave like this to Matt. He deserves more. Cat and Pip are right. Someone is going to be very hurt. I’ve been thinking solely of myself, focusing only on me – that I’d be the one hurting.

So, you are going to finish with James?

Finish it with James? No!

You intend to call a stop with Matt, then.

I couldn’t do that!

But you can’t go on like this, can you?

No.

So you have to do something about it.

I know.

What, though?

I don’t know! I don’t know! I do love them both so.

Fen returned downstairs.

‘So you don’t think we’re wicked, wanton wenches?’ Abi asked.

‘Well,’ said Fen, ‘I do – actually – but it doesn’t change my depth of affection for you. And just don’t ever – ever – even consider inviting me to participate.’

Abi and Gemma laughed. ‘Just as long as you promise you won’t take it personally that ultimately we simply don’t fancy you,’ Gemma said slyly.

They finished the wine and watched a terrible game show on Channel 5. Fen gave an expansive, half-fabricated yawn. ‘I’m going to have an early night,’ she said. ‘I’m off home to Derbyshire tomorrow.’

I’m so looking forward to seeing James. But I miss Matt even now.

Fen sits up in bed, the phone in her lap. Matt or James. James or Matt. God, it was difficult enough deciding which man to phone first. She has a headache and a leaden taste in her mouth.

When I’m in James Land, Matt is safely far away. When I’m in Matt World, James is totally out of the picture. But just now, alone in my own space, these two men collide. And that’s not right.

THIRTY-SEVEN

‘Children!’ Django boomed as his three nieces piled out of Pip’s car and bounded into his kitchen where they stood in line, hands behind their backs, rocking their bottoms against the Aga though it was nearing July and no one was cold. ‘It’s an outrage that you haven’t been to see me, en masse, since I don’t know when!’ He loosened his Pucci neckerchief. ‘I can’t remember who is who.’ He then proceeded to incorrectly name each of his girls. Soon enough, they were all falling about laughing and hugging and wondering why on earth they didn’t come home more often. Tea was taken in the garden. Django had run out of jam so cranberry jelly had to do. But it was very nice on malt loaf. He’d forgotten to buy chocolate biscuits but had improvised quite successfully making a paste from cocoa, muscovado sugar and a dab of margarine, trowelled on to rich tea biscuits slightly past their prime. It was a beautiful day and the garden looked magnificent though, as Django said, it basically looked after itself.

‘I know your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Django reasoned with Cat, ‘but you chasing through France after a bunch of boys on bikes – well, isn’t that taking the family tradition to new extremes?’

The family chatted about Cat’s imminent departure. Though they worried that a month away, travelling as a journalist with the Tour de France, might take its toll on the still emotionally fragile Cat, they all agreed that it was potentially a very good thing, the chance for adventure, the opportunity to move on. The conversation soon turned to the other two sisters. Though Cat and Pip teased Fen in front of Django for having a choice between two men to make, no one acknowledged that Django had spied his middle niece with her gardener, nor that he had discussed the fact with her two sisters. This enabled him to deliver something of a pep talk, and it also meant that Fen had to listen openly, rather than switch off or jump to the defensive.

‘Fen,’ he said, eyes closed under a battered Panama hat, ‘you are undeniably gifted with fall-in-loveable qualities. This is both a blessing and an affliction. It is something you have that you must respect and must never take advantage of.’

‘But it’s the reverse,’ Fen remonstrated quietly. ‘You misunderstand. I didn’t set out to ensnare these two men. I’ve just gone and bloody fallen in love with both of them.’

‘I did the 1960s,’ Django proclaimed wearily, as if the experience had been a most tiresome one. ‘The only conclusions I drew were that marijuana smokers are boring sods, the Aldermaston march gave me frightful blisters, Joe Cocker did a better job on ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ than the Beatles and, fundamentally, monogamy was a very good concept.’ His nieces gawped at him. They wanted to know more about everything. ‘Believe me – but please, without questioning me too probingly – I’ve done them all. I was there. I did it, saw it, smoked it.’ He sighed and sipped a Pimm’s into which he’d put coriander in lieu of mint. ‘Hash, acid, mushrooms. Credence Clear Water. Barclay James Harvest. Ten Years After. Free love, paid-for love, secret love, open-air love, love under the influence of drugs, love under the instruction of Mahringi Yogu Prishna,’ he listed. ‘They were all so –’ Django paused. Pip held her headstand. Cat and Fen hung on his every word. ‘forgettable. Ultimately. Damn tiring too.’ He observed Fen. ‘You see, Fen, you look peaky,’ he commented, ‘thin, too. Love should make you bloom. But alongside your well-being is the fact that I do not want you turning into a cavorting self-obsessed moral imbecile.’ The accusation sounded harsh to all the girls. Fen looked at her uncle steadily. ‘You might be in love with both men,’ he said, ‘but do not lose sight of the fact that each is in love with you exclusively.’

Fen looked at her lap.

‘They deserve to get what they give,’ Django qualified, ‘they do not deserve to be toyed with just so that you can indulge your whims.’

Fen plucked blades of grass and nodded. ‘I’m not playing with them,’ she said, ‘they are not toys. I feel deeply for both.’

‘I will not have you turn into your mother,’ Django said, staring at her hard. ‘This has nothing to do with your father’s memory, nothing to do with the fact that it was he who was my sibling. It has only to do with a moral judgement I believe I am informed to make.’

Fen felt all eyes upon her. She bit her lip.

‘It’s make-your-mind-up time, Fenella,’ Django cautioned, using her name in full to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

Fen went to bed and really tried to make her mind up. But by the next afternoon, she is sitting in James’s kitchen watching him singe the Scotch pancakes. His shirt sleeves are rolled up and revealing his gorgeous forearms. His lips are pursed in concentration of preparing tea. He’s in socks. So is Fen. They both leave vaguely damp imprints from their footfalls. They’ve been for a vigorous walk. It was gorgeous – the weather, the land, the privacy, the togetherness. Now Beryl is spark out across the doorway, Barry is slumped over Fen’s feet and James is preparing food for her. She looks from dog to dog to man.

I daren’t move. I can’t get out anyway. I’m being held captive. Willingly.

‘Here,’ says James, proffering a plate heaped with heavily buttered drop scones and toasted teacakes, ‘eat.’

Fen feels revived. And nourished. By the food, but mostly by her feelings for James. The thought of denying herself its sustenance seems utterly idiotic.

THIRTY-EIGHT

‘Bugger Matisse,’ Fen said under her breath, but not quietly enough for Matt not to have heard as he passed by the Archive after a heated exchange with Accounts, who were suggesting that Art Matters be printed on cheaper paper of a lesser quality.

‘Beg your pardon?’ he said, poking his head around the Archive door. ‘Doesn’t that constitute blasphemy?’ Matt enquired, coming into Fen’s room and swivelling on the chair while she remained cross-legged on the floor, papers and illustrations scattered about her like the skirts of some old fashioned petticoat. In fact, she was wearing a tight little T-shirt under a strappy navy-blue sun dress which, when she stood, skimmed an inch or so above her neat knees. As she was sitting cross-legged, though, it hitched itself up to reveal a glimpse of white knickers.

‘Love the white knickers,’ Matt said with a lascivious wink.

‘But they match my top and my trainers,’ Fen protested with a cheeky pout, ‘that’s all.’

Immediately, it struck her just how easy it was to slip back into London, into life and love with Matt, despite the fact that her afternoon with James in Derbyshire was all that had filled her mind that morning. And yet because of her sisters challenging her, the pep talk from Django, the impact of coming across Jake and Abi and Gemma, for the first time, Fen felt a fleeting stab of guilt.

‘What has Monsieur Matisse done to piss you off?’ Matt probed. Fen was grateful for the change of subject. She could put the guilt and what to do about it to the back of her mind for the time being and put her art historian’s hat on instead. Actually, Matt had changed the subject to distract himself from incorrigible thoughts of molesting Fen in her white knickers.

‘He died the same year as Julius,’ Fen explained, ‘1954.’

‘How very inconsiderate,’ Matt said.

Fen nodded vigorously. ‘Much as I adore Matisse, I wish he’d died the year before or after Julius. I just feel that Julius didn’t receive the recognition he deserved. He wasn’t even granted a respectful measure of obituary column inches. The Times merely mentioned his passing most cursorily.’

‘I’d boycott the paper if I were you,’ Matt teased gently.

‘Oh, I already have,’ Fen answered.

‘What’s brought all this on?’ Matt asked.

‘Actually,’ said Fen, rummaging around the papers, ‘you’ll find this quite interesting. I came across a clutch of photos from your father’s collection taken in the artist’s studio a few months before his death.’ She presented Matt with a fan of photographs. Though the studio was lofty and capacious, the space seemed dwarfed by the proliferation of sculpture. Despite there being only seven humans in the studio, the room seemed packed on account of the crowd of characters cast in bronze, hewn from marble or modelled in clay or plaster. Though wizened in stature and sitting in a bath chair piled high with blankets, Julius nevertheless dominated the room in each photograph. It was as if the sculptures and the visitors to the studio were on pilgrimage, paying homage to the great artist in the last months of his life. Henry Holden was in each frame, standing close to Julius. A couple admiring the works kept a respectful distance from the sculptor. Elsewhere, a tall woman, her back to the camera, appeared to be lost in her own world, staring into the middle distance, or at the elbow or ankle of one of the works. A small child was captured in each frame, darting here and there. In one, with a tiny hand on the arm of the old sculptor, the child appeared mesmerized by Julius’s beard. In another, the child seemed to be mid-hop – holding on to Henry’s trouser leg for balance. In another, the child was clambering over a headless reworking in plaster of Eve. In another, the child was skipping out of shot.

‘Did Julius have children?’ Matt enquired.

‘No,’ Fen confirmed, ‘I reckon he belongs to that tall lady. It is a boy, isn’t it? The Peter Pan collared smock and little straw hat are ever so girly – but a girl wouldn’t have been dressed in trousers back then?’

Matt scrutinized the photo and shrugged. ‘Looks like a little chap to me,’ he said, ‘but we only see profile or back view. Could well be a tomboy called Marie-Celeste or something.’

Fen looked at the photos. ‘I wonder who the mystery lady is?’ she said. ‘It’s almost as if she’s avoiding the camera on purpose.’

‘Oh Fen,’ Matt laughed, ‘your imagination is overactive – I mean, look at the other couple, are you telling me they moved intentionally so their features would be blurred?’

Fen looked hard. ‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘This is a sculptor’s studio photographed in the 1950s and deposited in an archive,’ Matt teased, ‘it isn’t a still from a security-camera in police records!’

Fen smiled sheepishly. ‘It’s just that Julius’s last months are not well documented. We have a fragmented jigsaw,’ she said. ‘I’m just trying to piece the possibilities together.’

Matt made to leave. ‘Well, if you get bored with the day job, you could always be a researcher on Crimewatch UK!’ He kissed her nose and slid his hand fleetingly up her thigh.

Alone, Fen looked at the photos again. Really analysed them because she didn’t want to consider Matt’s honesty, his affection. And she didn’t want to hear Pip and Cat and Django. And she didn’t want James appearing in her mind’s eye. The photos, the photos. From the brace of the woman’s back, she could detect an emotion. What was it? Not shyness. Tension? Not really. Sadness? No. Loneliness? No. What then? Unease. That was it. Made all the more apparent by the ebullience of the child, obviously having a fabulous time.

Look at the little mite utterly enthralled by the mass of Abandon! All the adults are engrossed elsewhere; Henry and Julius deep in conversation, the tall woman gazing at the knees of Eve on one side of the room, the couple – his hand at her waist – sharing thoughts on Julius’s late work, Tristan and Isolde. The child has been left to his own devices, given free rein to explore what to him must seem a fantasy adventure playground peopled with the most extraordinary characters – including a man old enough, with beard white and long enough, to be God himself!

‘Lucky little bugger,’ Fen said aloud, ‘I bet he doesn’t even remember the day he visited the sculptor’s studio.’

HH. Paris. June 1954. That was all that was documented on the back of each of the photos. The HH was from a stamp, enclosed within an oval. The place and date were written in copperplate, in blue ink. Four months later the sculptor would be dead, buried and – to Fen’s enduring consternation – really rather forsaken. Abandoned. The studio would already have been rented out to an abstract expressionist called Brochard. Fen shuddered when she thought how Julius would have turned in his grave had he known of the hastily discordant action painting being produced in his studio.

‘Where did Abandon go?’ she wondered out loud. ‘Within four months, this huge work had disappeared. Where did it go? Who took it? Who has it?’

By fair means or foul, she prayed the work still existed.

Please let it have been stolen to order.

The thought of it having been destroyed was unbearable.

As Fen travelled home, she comforted herself, downright amused herself, imagining Abandon having pride of place in some opulent casa in a secret location in South America. She conjured a huge open-plan room with white walls and a ridiculously thick cream carpet. Monet’s Impression: Sunrise on one wall. Abandon with ten feet of floor space all around, positioned near to the window-wall. A faceless figure sitting in a chair gazing at the work – some art-loving drugs baron perhaps, or maybe a reclusive spaced-out rock star whom most presumed to be dead and buried in Père-Lachaise.

Wherever it is, and with whomever, as long as Abandon exists, as long as it’s safe and adored, and gazed upon regularly and marvelled at, then Julius can rest.

Still, though, Fen would love proof. As would the rest of the art world.

THIRTY-NINE

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Sigmund Freud

Although Fen’s relationship with Abi and Gemma was restored to its former level of intimacy, she felt very much that it had also moved on. It was different. The affection each had for the other was as strong as ever it had been – but oddly, Fen felt left out. Saying that, however, she had no desire to be included in the antics of their lifestyle. Threesome syndrome, that’s what it was – an inevitability that a pairing will always materialize leaving an outsider. It had never transpired amongst the McCabe sisters, whose inter-relationships were utterly equal. Fen didn’t even think that the sexual angle of Gemma and Abi’s relationship had that much to do with it. It was a wavelength thing. She simply wasn’t on theirs – nor did she aspire to be. Furthermore, though she had accepted – without approving or disapproving – the situation with Jake, it did not necessarily follow that she felt any easier about it. Gemma and Abi spoke openly about their open relationship but at such times, Fen politely and subtly switched off.

Consequently, she’s been spending more and more time at Matt’s flat – where Jake spends less and less time. The quality of the time that Matt and Fen share is beginning to change. As it develops and deepens, ironically it becomes more mundane. But it is the very way in which it fits so snugly into everyday life that makes it all the more enjoyable and fulfilling. Not all evenings now lead to sex, not all conversations are fact-finding missions or focused on flirtation. In fact, Fen and Matt have started to coexist as a couple very nicely, sharing silence, snuggled up watching television, doing their own thing but in close physical proximity to one another – Fen reading whilst Matt snoozes; Fen pottering about his kitchen whilst he checks page proofs; Fen luxuriating in his bath whilst he chats to friends on the phone. They fit in and around each other’s space as fluidly and comfortably as Fen’s head fits in the nook of Matt’s shoulder, or when their bodies gravitate into spoons position during the night. Fen has woken up on occasions to find Matt’s hand gently and almost subconsciously cupping her buttock. She had started to wake up to check. She doesn’t need to wake up now. She sleeps very well.

‘Do you know what I like?’ Fen mused one day, stopping midway along the soft-drinks aisle in Marks & Spencer in Islington.

‘Doggy position?’ Matt tried. Fen laughed. ‘Monty Python?’ he persisted. She punched him lightly. ‘Slightly burnt toast with an inordinate amount of butter?’ he said, because he’d noticed that was precisely what she liked.

‘What I like,’ Fen persisted, ‘is coming back from work together and doing this whole homey thing.’ Matt, blushing a little, turned his attention to a bottle of ginger-and-lemongrass carbonated drink. Fen continued. ‘But also, I like meeting up elsewhere – having primped and preened myself at home. I like it that we have hot dates!’

‘Best of both worlds,’ Matt quantified.

‘I suppose so, yes,’ said Fen.

Fen is exhausted yet wide awake. She can’t sleep – despite Matt sleeping soundly, cupping her buttock in his hand.

Django is right. Matt is placing his heart in my hands. I have the potential to handle it with all the care this deserves. But I also have the power to drop it and break it. I am, to a degree, responsible for his emotional welfare. And James too. Yes he appears all set in his ways and emotionally self-sufficient. But the vibe that we share is strengthening. He has bemoaned the physical distance between us. He sighs, ‘Oh Fen,’ when he comes. What did Matt say? The best of both worlds. Oh God.

So you’re lying there thinking of James, while Matt sleeps with a handful of your buttock.

I have to start treating these men better. Django is right. I’m being selfish and unfair. I must treat Matt, treat James, with the deference they deserve. I must start, finally, to make my mind up.

And thereby lay your own path to walk confidently along. Hand in hand with one other.

I feel stifled. Not by Matt. Not by James. But by my own actions. I can’t think straight. I can’t breathe.

See her lying there, hot tears coursing silently down her face? She’s wondering what she’s done. What on earth has she done? What is she going to do? What the hell is she going to do? Her breathing is shallow and short. She is perspiring at the back of her neck. Her head hurts and her heart is very very heavy. Partly because it is filled with the enormous weight of loving two men. Partly because she knows she is overstretching it. She must let one go, for her health, for their sake.

‘Babe?’

Instinctively, Matt has woken. He reaches for Fen and finds her damp and distressed.

‘You OK?’

He senses that she nods. He turns towards her and places his arm gently, protectively across her shoulders. He kisses her cheek. He tastes salt.

‘Bad dream?’ he mumbles, sleepily.

‘A nightmare,’ Fen admits.

‘Go back to sleep,’ he says, with a little squeeze and another kiss, ‘I’m here.’

FORTY

Fen gave little warning to Matt, or James, of her departure with Pip for a long weekend in France. The Tour de France was in full swing and their aspiring journalist of a younger sister had left England almost three weeks before to join this circus of sorts. Django approved the mission to the extent that he wired money to facilitate their surprise visit to this lycra-clad world, currently heaving its way up and over the Alps.

Fen had in fact planned to visit Derbyshire that weekend but hadn’t told Matt of the fact. Matt was thus musing whether to whisk his girlfriend away to Suffolk for the weekend, but had not told her because he loved planning surprises. James, expecting Fen for the weekend, had eschewed Safeways in favour of the lovely delicatessens and butchers in Bakewell, buying lots of fresh food, which he’d hidden carefully from the dogs. He’d also ironed his sheets (for the first time in his life), placing them carefully in the airing cupboard (which he’d forgotten he had), though he had scolded himself thoroughly for being a ‘soft bastard’, and had scalded his wrists from the steam on Egyptian cotton. He’d also bathed Barry and Beryl with a particularly expensive brand of human shampoo-conditioner – a somewhat overzealous reaction to his dogs having found a secret stagnant pool to which they were paying a daily pilgrimage, its whereabouts a mystery to James.

‘How does a room with a view, a four-poster bed, complimentary shortbread and sherry, fluffy towelling robes and gourmet dinner in the heart of Constable country sound to you?’ Matt asked Fen in the queue at the sandwich shop.

‘Pretty idyllic,’ Fen grinned. She licked her lips – though her mind was mainly focused on potential sandwich fillings. She had reached the head of the line and was changing her choice for the umpteenth time. ‘Emmenthal and tomato on granary,’ she ordered. ‘No! on baguette, please. And a little mayonnaise. Large cappuccino, one sugar. Slice of that too. Hang on! Does that one have nuts in it? OK then, a slice of that other one, then. Thanks!’ Matt ordered salt beef and mustard on rye, a double espresso and a caramel brownie, which Fen insisted on paying for – though Matt jokingly put her arm into a half-nelson while attempting to hand over his cash to much remonstration from Fen. Their larking and laughter gave others in the queue cause to grin or sigh wistfully.

‘Shall we take a half-day?’ Matt said, as they strolled to the gardens opposite Trust Art.

‘A half-day?’ Fen replied, confused – and ultimately more interested in making headway into the foot-long baguette. ‘What for?’

Matt finished his mouthful. The salt beef was unnervingly stringy. ‘The four-poster gourmet weekend in Constable country,’ he said.

‘Oh!’ Fen responded. Then she looked at him and prayed he hadn’t gone ahead and done what she suspected and now dreaded.

Not this weekend. Please don’t let him have booked it for this weekend.

‘When?’ she asked a little shyly.

Matt leant forward, his eyes sparkling. ‘I’m going to whisk you away for the weekend tomorrow!’

Fen’s appetite had suddenly disappeared. Even without France in the equation, her weekend would have been doubly booked. Upsetting one person was one thing, upsetting two was quite another. France was going to cause upset to both James and Matt. Yet France was also saving her the task of choosing between the two. And there was the rub. Suddenly, Fen had no idea which she’d have chosen. Derbyshire or Suffolk? Who did she want to spend time with more? James or Matt? Who did she wish to hurt the least? James or Matt? Who would hurt the most? James or Matt?

She had no idea.

She hadn’t really been thinking of anyone but herself.

She was appalled.

‘Fen?’

This was just the sort of knot her sisters had prophesied her behaviour could create. However, instead of it having a humbling effect, Fen’s feeble reaction was one of irritation. Though this was of course directed mainly at herself, it seemed much easier for the time being at least, to assuage her guilt by redirecting her frustration on to Matt.

It would have been enough to have merely told him that actually, she was off to France at the last minute with Pip to find Cat. But for some reason, she saw fit to preface this by accusing Matt of being presumptuous and hasty. Furthermore, why she had to also employ such an impatient and unkind tone of voice, I do not know. To top it all, her facial expression was unfriendly and hard. Insult to injury.

Matt, stunned by content and delivery, simply stared at her, his face criss-crossed with hurt and bewilderment. For Matt to display such a clear reaction to Fen’s total lack of tact and sensitivity served only to compound her guilt. Ironically, the worse she felt the more badly she behaved. It caused her to lose her appetite – but that meant she could not even manage the smallest portion of humble pie. Therefore, she steered well away from apology or remorse by walking away from Matt instead. Briskly. Swearing audibly under her breath.

Matt sat there, stunned. He couldn’t swallow – even without the salt beef stuck in his throat. He coughed it back up into the sandwich bag. He threw the bag in the bin and went directly to his office. He spoke to no one for the rest of the afternoon. He didn’t even phone the hotel in Suffolk to cancel his reservation though he was aware that he’d lose his deposit because of it. He just couldn’t find his voice.

Shit. James.

James, of course, was busy gardening. His phone rang. He could see from the caller display that it was Fen. It made him smile. However, James was handling manure. Mobile phones being fiddly things, the thought of having to gouge out bits of dung from the keypad meant he did not take the call. He’d phone her back. He went about his work again, now with a jaunty whistle.

Tammy Sydnope phoned Ruth Brakespeare immediately.

‘He’s whistling,’ she told her furtively, though James could neither see nor hear her. ‘Has he ever, ever, whistled whilst at yours?’

Mrs Brakespeare wished she could affirm that he had. But he hadn’t. James? Whistle? How very out of character. Whatever can be the matter?

‘He’s in love,’ Tammy deduced, with a very flat edge to her voice. ‘He’s working very productively, so much so that he can afford to stop every now and then to gaze at nothing in particular. He’s in love, I tell you.’

‘Or he’s won the lottery,’ Ruth added with a glimmer of hope for this preferential scenario.

‘If he had won the lottery,’ Tammy reluctantly philosophized, ‘he wouldn’t be working for us for £15 per hour.’

‘Who is she?’ Ruth wondered out loud.

‘How about the young ’un he was seen with in the Cross Oaks?’ Tammy wondered back.

‘Who is she?’ Ruth repeated. ‘No one seems to know who she is.’

James was working his way around her garden with such conviction and efficiency, even his dogs were reduced to lying very still in the middle of the lawn and regarding their master suspiciously.

‘All done, Mrs S,’ he said, his eyes glinting, ‘I shovelled the shit must faster than I anticipated so I did a little cutting back too.’

‘Rushing home?’ Tammy Sydnope probed. ‘Plans?’

‘Not really,’ James said, ‘not today. Tomorrow, though.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Tammy repeated with persuasive vagueness whilst gazing at her potentilla in a bid not to appear too nosy.

‘I have a guest for the weekend,’ said James, swinging his key fob about his index finger.

‘Oh yes?’ Tammy said, stooping to fiddle with her well-tended pieris. ‘Family? Friends?’

James just grinned. His clients amused him, and it amused him to be stubborn about imparting any personal details. It was very flattering, after all, to know that you fluttered the hearts and dominated the conversation of the section of your clients who were female and under seventy years old.

James continued to whistle behind the wheel of his Land Rover. He stopped, however, when Barry and Beryl joined in, yowling and whining and inadvertently filling the air with dog breath. James found it difficult to tell whether they were singing and happy, or downright distressed.

‘Hullo, Miss McCabe,’ James says, phoning Fen’s direct line at Trust Art.

‘James,’ she says, a little slowly, wishing it was her who had made the call.

‘You rang?’ he says. ‘I was up to my wrists in horse shit.’

‘I’m not coming tomorrow,’ Fen states briskly, after a moment’s silence, ‘I can’t come at all this weekend.’

Images of the ironed sheets in the airing cupboard and the larder full of fine provisions flit across James’s mind. ‘Any particular reason?’ he enquires flatly.

‘I’m going to France,’ Fen tells him.

‘France?’

‘With Pip,’ she informs him, ‘to find Cat.’

‘Is everything OK?’ James asks.

‘Yes,’ Fen replies. There’s silence. Fen’s uncharacteristic aloofness and lack of manners astound James. Cancelling him is one thing – indeed, the reason for doing so would be totally understandable – but the manner Fen has seen fit to employ is quite another.

‘Sorry,’ she says perfunctorily.

‘Fine,’ James replies with a coolness equal to hers.

However, it merely makes Fen stroppy that James should sound cross. ‘It’s last minute,’ she says, but not by way of an excuse. ‘I have to prioritize,’ she adds in a tone to suggest that James is being unreasonable.

‘Fine,’ James says again, tonelessly.

Fen really doesn’t feel remotely flattered that both her men are obviously discomfited by plans which exclude them. Instead, she feels encumbered.

Thank God it’s France tomorrow. And the focus can be on Cat.

Fen goes home. Both Abi’s and Gemma’s beds are unmade. Jake’s shoes are in Gemma’s room but there’s a pair of his jeans strewn on Abi’s floor. Fen packs a rucksack and phones Pip to say that doesn’t it make sense for her to stay the night at Pip’s.

‘I’m working this evening,’ Pip reminds Fen.

‘That’s fine,’ says Fen, ‘I’ll just watch TV at yours, if that’s OK.’

‘Of course it is,’ says Pip, wondering why Fen would choose not to spend her last night with Matt, but also knowing instinctively when not to probe.

Both Matt and James do a fair amount of carpet pacing and blank-wall contemplation that evening. They both feel uncomfortable. It occurs to both just how much they were looking forward to seeing Fen. And both feel singularly perturbed at her behaviour. Because it is anomalous, is it ominous? They hope not. They are both rather in love with her, you see. Thus, they both feel somewhat rejected. No one sleeps particularly well that night.

FORTY-ONE

No, when the fight begins within himself, A man’s worth something.

Robert Browning

Who is it to be, then? Any ideas? Preferences? Inklings? Does one man deserve her more than the other? Is she truly deserving of either? Can and ought she to carry on as she is? Sense would suggest Matt, who adores her so vocally and looks after her so well. If we were to feed his attributes and those of James into a computer love-compatibility programme, Matt would probably score higher on account of age, logistics, job, personal wealth. But then, the romantic would suggest James. There’s an undeniable, almost indefinable, wavelength link that Fen shares, mostly unspoken, with him. Here, age and location, pasts and circumstances are irrelevant. The still point of the turning world. But that’s just it. In life, time can’t stand still and it’s unrealistic to attempt to create a state where it does. There again, time passes all too quickly and lives are too short to make the wrong decisions and have regrets. Should Fen follow her heart or her head? Therein lies the nub – because it is not as if Matt exclusively occupies the one place, or James the other. Fen really is in love with both men – head, heart and body.

Is this a moral dilemma, then? What is morality but a human construct? Just because morals differ, does that mean that one set is superior, more correct, of higher virtue, than another? Who decided that monogamy is the morally superior way? Ah! this is where the issue of consent swings the pendulum. Abi, Gemma and Jake consent to a non-monogamous way of life. Fen, however, has gone ahead and chosen this for herself but without the go-ahead from those with whom she is now deeply involved. There is, therefore, an element of deceit and duplicity and though she won’t admit to lies, essentially they are there too; in abundance. Would Matt and James agree to their arrangement if they knew about it? If they knew about it, how would they feel? Appalled? Amenable? Hurt? Happy? Betrayed? Or just bewildered?

Pip, Cat and Django firmly believe the choice and responsibility lie with Fen. But maybe it won’t be that simple. Perhaps the best solution, the ultimate conclusion, won’t lie with her at all.

So, Fen McCabe has, quite literally, left the country. She has no idea where she and Pip will be staying for the next three nights, just that they are heading by train for Grenoble. Her phone has no network in France. There is little room in her rucksack for much other than a weekend’s worth of clothes, the Procycling official guide to the Tour de France, the current issue of Cycle Sport and packs of Mars Bars for Cat. She has left behind, in a messy pile, all her ditherings. She is focusing instead on the welfare of her sister. Because she cares, does Fen; she truly cares for those she loves. And those she loves, she loves intensely.

FORTY-TWO

Women – their nature is not ours, we are far from grasping it.

Auguste Rodin

Barry and Beryl joined their master in a spectacular meal, taken as a carpet-picnic in the snug. They dined on duck-liver pâté, the finest slithers of cold cuts, olives drenched in Provençal herbs and garlic, the most pungent of premium cheeses. To accompany were melt-in-the-mouth breads, an exceptional potato salad and chutneys so delicious that it was completely acceptable to scoop fingerfuls direct from the jars.

‘Lovely,’ James said out loud though his dogs were asleep at his feet, bellies distended. James was convinced and satisfied that the food would not have tasted better for Fen’s presence. It would have tasted no different. In fact, there would have been less to go around, on account of her hearty appetite. She wouldn’t have added anything at all, James decided.

Bedtime, though, would have been more fun.

Matt had a really nice meal too. He and his ex-girlfriend. Cosy as you like in their favourite restaurant. Alberto, the manager, welcomed them back to his bosom as if they were his children, presenting her with a stem of white freesia, clasping his heart and cooing, ‘Bene bene,’ while regarding the couple with hope and benevolence. Julia was glowing, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright and expectant. She could hardly eat for gazing at Matt and making every effort to appear chatty and gorgeous. And she did indeed look gorgeous and Matt found her very amusing and entertaining. There was lots of laughter, and gentle sighs, and ‘remember when’-ing.

Are you shouting out, ‘No, Matt! Don’t be tempted! Give Fen a chance!’? Or are you quietly thinking, ‘Go for it, Matt, give Fen a taste of her own medicine!’?

What will he do? How well do we know him?

‘Come back to mine?’ Julia suggests, the candlelight spinning sparks into her eyes. Matt shrugs and nods and says, ‘Sure.’ They go back to her flat and she pours Amaretto and dims the lights and puts their all-time favourite Neil Young CD on softly for maximum background ambience and subliminal memory manipulation. Cleverly, Julia now steers away from talking about ‘us’ to focus instead on simply chatting and conversing about work and politics and television and gossip, just like new couples out on a date tend to do. As stimulating intellectually as it’s been, she is desperate now to reach over and trace her fingertips down his neck, to slip her hand under his shirt and feel his chest and find his heart beating. She sits on her hands while Matt pours more Amaretto.

‘Have you seen the new Sean Connery film?’ he asks her. ‘It’s good – fairly standard brain-rest fare, but entertaining. And that man is so damn cool.’

‘No,’ Julia says, ‘I haven’t, but I intend to. Who did you go with? Jake?’ She asks as nonchalantly as possible while her heart races in anticipation of his answer.

‘A colleague from work,’ Matt says, noncommittally.

I went with Fen. I went with Fen. I went with Fen. I bought her a Häagen-Dazs choc ice – she nibbled off all the chocolate outer, got bored with the remainder after a couple of licks and gave it to me to finish. She grabbed my hand at the twist in the plot, then she softened her grasp and knitted fingers with me.

Matt awoke at four in the morning. He wasn’t in his own bed. Nor was he in the four-poster in the charming country house hotel in Suffolk. He was in Julia’s bed. Her limbs were wrapped around him; her head was nestled against his chest. Her breath smelt of garlic. Her hair smelt very fragrant. Her shoulder was digging into Matt’s side. The only thought in Matt’s head was what was the best way to extricate himself. It was difficult to tell whether she had wrapped herself around him like a cocoon or a praying mantis. He wasn’t comfortable, that was for sure. Physically or otherwise. He debated whether to go for speed or dexterity. He went for a mixture of the two. She woke up of course.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, a tinge of panic underscoring her sleepy voice.

‘Home,’ Matt whispered.

‘Don’t go,’ she pleaded, sitting up in bed and holding her arms out.

‘I’ll call you,’ he said.

‘Stay,’ she implored, hugging her knees and rocking, ‘please?’

‘I’ll call you,’ he said, kissing her forehead lightly and leaving her flat for his.

Matt felt very at peace walking home because he loved London passionately at a time like this, at 4.37 in the morning, when the city was dozing without actually being asleep.

Jake rolled home just after lunch-time the next day.

‘What are you doing here?’ he greeted Matt.

‘I live here,’ Matt said, ‘I own the place.’

‘I thought you were going for a dirty weekend?’

‘So did I,’ Matt said glumly.

‘Where’s Fen?’ Jake asked, actually looking around the flat because it was so normal to see her there.

‘France,’ Matt said.

‘France?’ Jake said. He regarded Matt and decided that they should watch the cricket on the television whilst getting drunk. Matt thought this a splendid idea.

‘I spent the night with Julia,’ Matt told him between innings.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Jake exclaimed, with extravagant displeasure.

‘Not sexually,’ Matt stressed. ‘I called her. We went out for a meal. We went back to hers. Had half a bottle of Amaretto. I slept in her bed.’

‘Did she try and seduce you?’

Matt had to think hard on that one. ‘No, actually – oddly – she didn’t.’

‘Whoa!’ Jake said, waving his hands, ‘There’s a reason for that! She has a cunning plan, something up her sleeve – you know, take the pressure off to lure you and insure you return?’

‘Possibly,’ Matt agreed. ‘She did beg me to stay.’

Jake turned a glance out of the window into a contemplative gaze at the window-sill. ‘Don’t do it. Don’t take a leaf out of my book,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘The chapters may be full of fun and frolics but I have a hunch that the ending won’t be a particularly pretty one.’

Matt raised his glass to Jake.

‘I’ll talk it through with Julia tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I think Fen’s back on Monday.’

The next day, Matt did just that – he phoned Julia and took her out to lunch. As gently as he could, holding her hand and maintaining unflinching eye contact, he told her that he really did love her, that he always would, but that their romantic and sexual relationship was over and no amount of hope or elaborate plans could possibly revive it. Julia stared at her plate, dabbing her fingers on the cocoa-powder-and-icing-sugar design that had encircled the chocolate mousse cake. She gazed up at Matt. Ironically, it was the care and kindness in his gaze that convinced her it was indeed over. She knew then that he loved her. But in the past tense.

‘Is there someone else?’ she felt confident enough to ask.

Matt dabbed at her plate. Shyly, he nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is.’

‘Did you go and see the Sean Connery film with her?’ Julia asked, but non-accusatorily.

‘Yes,’ said Matt, ‘we went last week.’

‘Did she enjoy it too?’ Julia asked.

‘Yes, she did,’ said Matt.

‘More than I would have,’ Julia stated without malice. ‘Not really my sort of movie.’

‘No,’ Matt affirmed, ‘you’re probably right.’

‘What is her name?’ Julia asked.

‘Fen,’ Matt said, ‘Fenella McCabe.’

Julia went very quiet, Matt’s heart felt heavy. He had loved Julia very very much. In their early days, he’d seriously entertained theories of marriage and babies and happy ever after. He felt sad now, but without feeling that they had failed in any way. It wouldn’t have worked. But he knew that neither of them was at fault or to blame. They had grown over the years – but grown apart instead of together.

‘I do love you very much,’ Matt told Julia.

‘I know you do,’ Julia said. Oddly enough, she felt rather calm. She couldn’t feel any tears welling, could not detect a knot in her throat, experienced no desperation in her heart, sensed no longing in her soul. ‘I know you do.’

They smiled meekly at each other. Matt asked for the bill.

‘Do you mind if I go?’ Julia asked.

‘No – do,’ Matt said.

‘One last thing,’ Julia said, standing then sitting again, ‘was there an overlap? Between me and Fen?’

‘No,’ Matt smiled gently, ‘there wasn’t.’

Julia had suspicions about indiscretions on Matt’s part in the latter months of their relationship. Yet one-off shags or brief physical flings were suddenly easier to stomach and accept than if he’d fallen in love and left her for someone else. For this Fen.

‘Bye, then,’ Julia said, standing again, tilting her head and giving him a little wave.

Matt stood, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. ‘You take care,’ he said and he really meant it.

Matt leaves the restaurant and emerges on to Hampstead High Street where the pavements are awash with the usual proliferation of nattily dressed Sunday shoppers browsing the windows for this week’s must haves, despite having to dodge the young families with three-wheeled baby buggies heading for the Heath. Poor Julia. Lovely Julia. She’ll be fine. I know she will be. Bye bye, sweet girl. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it didn’t work out. Matt feels like crying. He heads for a bench on the Heath and sits quietly with his thoughts. Telling Julia that there was indeed someone else was to end the relationship once and for all. No room for hope, no doors left ajar. You can’t come in here now. I know – I won’t try again. Her acceptance was surprisingly hard on Matt, too. Though he was relieved that the anger and tears and delusions she had foisted on him over the last few months were now resolved, though he truly wanted her to move on, he also knew deep down that it had been just a little comforting, secretly flattering, to have her in love with him from afar. He was having to say goodbye to that. No more e-mails or text messages or voice mails or phone calls from her. Would he miss these? Quite possibly. But you’ll have Fen, Matt.

I don’t think so.

Pardon?

‘I don’t think so,’ Matt says aloud, rather hoarsely, which causes the couple sharing his bench to move off promptly, pushing their baby, in the three-wheeled buggy with mini mountain-bike tyres, over the grass with ease.

Matt! All she said was that she was going to France rather than Suffolk!

‘No,’ Matt repeats, ‘I don’t think so. Not Fen. I don’t think it’s what I want.’

Matt marched to Highgate, stopping at benches along the way to collect his thoughts and regain his composure. He now realized why he had found Fen’s behaviour so unnerving. He felt utterly compromised. It was a feeling he hadn’t yet encountered with regard to women. Work, occasionally. Mates, once or twice. Women? Never. Had he always had the upper hand in relationships? Probably. What did that mean? Did it mean that his women had always felt more deeply for him than he for them? Possibly.

I’ve never had to do much chasing. I’ve never had to look around or hedge my bets or worry about rejection. If anything, I’ve had pick of the crop.

Women falling at your feet?

Well, I may have caused many a heart to flutter but, to my knowledge, I haven’t made anyone faint.

I mean, there’s always been someone – you’ve never really been single, have you?

No, not in my twenties. I was blessed with a veritable succession, a queue, if you like. Always someone in the offing, no need to spend a night – let alone a week – on my own.

But your relationship with Julia finished before Fen was on the scene.

Yes. But that was my longest relationship. It had staled long before I met Fen. I succumbed to temptation a fair few times. It didn’t make me any happier. But I knew, I guess, that it was wrong just to keep it going whilst keeping my eyes open for a viable alternative.

A Viable Alternative dressed in a skirt and making eyes at you?

Yes. But though I was no longer in love with Julia, though things were pretty grim – non-communicative, complacent – I still had a certain respect for her. And for myself. I didn’t want to spend years to come having furtive shags behind her back. Been there, done that. It had become boring. Thrill of the chase – and then what? Feeling guilty, feeling flat. Though I was no longer in love with her, I didn’t want to hurt her. And I really didn’t want the reason for our split to be the presence of someone else. I had to believe unequivocally that the relationship was over purely because it had run its course.

You didn’t want to string Julia along, keep her dangling, then cut the rope and have her fall.

Exactly. When I met Fen, I had already left. So when I met Fen, my slate was already wiped clean.

And yet initially you balked at the idea of going straight from one relationship into another.

That’ll be a testosterone thing – Jake’s notion of The Rebound seemed both healthy and what was expected of me.

So you shagged Judith.

Yes. But in truth, the idea of the sex was far more titillating than the physical reality itself.

‘So I got to shoot my load. I came. Whoosh! Big bloody deal.’

Matthew Holden! Hush! You’re sitting by Highgate Ponds, there are children in earshot!

And then along came Fen. And shagging Judith could well have jeopardized my chances there. So that’s when I thought how contrived it would be to delay the possibility of getting it together with Fen just so I could embark on a conventional rebound and put some space between proper relationships.

You got the girl. And you’ve been very happy.

Really happy.

So why on earth are you contemplating finishing what has only just started?

Has she gone off me?

‘Has she gone off me?’

‘Who?’ asks a small boy in red shorts and red wellington boots and a T-shirt that was probably white this morning but is now speckled and splodged, Jackson Pollock style, with foodstuffs, vegetation and pondlife.

‘Maybe it’s actually been too fast too soon? Right person, wrong time?’ Matt tries to reason with the child. The boy takes a seat beside Matt on the bench. Suddenly Matt wishes he was young enough, small enough, to wear shorts and wellies and swing his legs because his feet were a long way from touching the ground. Oh, to be trouble free, so full of energy.

‘Maybe that’s true,’ says the little boy very seriously though of course he doesn’t understand a word of what Matt is talking about. He’s just picking up on Matt’s tone and contemplation and is trying to make friends in the way he knows best – mirroring.

‘Or do I just feel emasculated by her rejection?’ Matt theorizes.

‘Yes,’ agrees the boy, ‘you probably do. I often am emastilated.’

Matt knows not to laugh. ‘I don’t know,’ Matt says, ‘has it been a little one-sided? It’s not a good idea to start off with an inbalance, is it?’

‘It’s very bad idea,’ the boy comments sagely, ‘isn’t it?’

‘But,’ Matt says, ‘wooing and pursuing her – was that for my own amusement or because I truly wanted Fen? Did I crave light relief and a laugh – in the shadow of my break-up with Julia?’

‘I do that,’ the boy says encouragingly, ‘I do.’

‘If I think about it,’ says Matt, not knowing where or how to start really thinking about it.

‘I have to think about it too,’ says the little boy and he holds his finger to his lips, frowning with the effort of Thinking About It. ‘I have thought about it,’ he tells Matt, ‘and my answer is yes.’

‘I should call it a day?’

‘It is Sunday. My birthday is never on Sunday. It is on Wednesday November the twenty-first.’

‘Is she worth it?’ Matt asks, affectionately ruffling the boy’s hair. ‘I wonder.’

‘Is she indeed!’ the boy exclaims, raising his hands and letting them fall down on his knees. He sighs, as if he is shouldering Matt’s worries plus the weight of the entire world.

‘Who’s leading who a merry dance?’ Matt probes.

‘We do country dancing at playschool – shall I show you?’

The little boy clambers down from the bench and holds out his hand. Matt takes it and stands. The boy darts around, clapping and singing tunelessly. ‘Do a merry dance!’ he shouts gleefully. ‘Do it with me!’

Matt laughs. ‘Actually, I ought to go home now,’ he says. ‘Anyway, I have two left feet.’

The boy looks at Matt with alarm and very slowly drops his gaze to Matt’s feet. Matt ruffles the top of his dirty blond head and says goodbye.

‘Bye,’ says the boy, scampering off to do a commendable long jump into a puddle.

FORTY-THREE

Matt wasn’t much looking forward to Fen’s return. James was, though. Firstly, he was intrigued; genuinely interested to hear of her trip. He was sure she’d have an adventure or two to recount. Secondly, he wanted to gauge her manner. Her brusqueness last week had been so out of character, unattractive too, that hitherto he’d attributed it to PMT or some other hormonal affliction unique to women.

Fen, however, did not return on Monday. Nor did she phone Matt or James to let them know. She stayed in Paris, alone, for a night. She made the decision to do so on the spur of the moment – right beside the Eurostar gates at the top of the escalator in the Gare du Nord.

‘I can’t come home yet,’ she told Pip, ‘I’m not ready.’

Pip regarded her sister. ‘Don’t tell me!’ she jested gently. ‘You’re going off to find Julius Frigging Fetherstone?’

Fen nodded. ‘Now that I’m here, it would be daft not to – there are documents in the Bibliothèque Nationale – it would really benefit the Trust Art Archive.’ She didn’t tell Pip that her desire to find Julius had next to nothing to do with art history – more that she felt confident that Julius would help her decide what to do. She didn’t have to – Pip knew her well enough to know that, though rifling through documents sounded plausible, it wasn’t the only reason for Fen to stay. As the train headed for home, Pip had a very vivid picture of Fen strolling dreamily along the streets of the Latin quarter talking quietly to a long-dead nineteenth-century sculptor. She’d be OK, she’d be in safe hands. The thought made her grin.

I mean, if I can spend half my life as a clown called Martha – with a separate wardrobe, completely different voice and portfolio of facial expressions – my younger sister can certainly have an imaginary friend in Julius Flipping Fetherstone.

And so Fen McCabe went back down to the Métro and headed for the Left Bank. She found a small pension near the Musée Cluny where the owner let her choose between two rooms available. Fen chose the smaller, though it was the same price, because it was like one she’d seen in a hundred black-and-white French films. Curled up on the bed, she left a message on Rodney Beaumont’s voice mail, exaggerating both her tone of enthusiasm and the benefit to the Trust Art Archive. She didn’t even entertain the idea of making any other calls, not least because the telephone rates were exorbitant. It was tea-time. She’d leave the research until the morning. She was anxious to be out, to see where she might find Julius.

Nowhere. He simply wasn’t around. Not even in the tiny street near the Rue de Buci where his studio had been. He wasn’t taking coffee at tea-time in any of the cafés, or Pernod early evening in any of the bars; nor did he join Fen for a buckwheat galette and an earthenware cup of cidre in a cheap, cramped, delicious restaurant populated mainly by art students. He wasn’t passing the time on the pedestrian bridge of Pont des Arts, though plenty of other people were. He wasn’t sitting on any of the benches in the Luxembourg gardens. By now it was getting dark and Fen didn’t want to be sitting by herself in the gardens either. Deflated, she returned to the pension and watched the highlights of that day’s stage of the Tour de France instead. She thought of Cat, amongst new colleagues and friends in the cramped press rooms, with her new boyfriend in some cramped two-star hotel in the evenings. Cat had worn a veritable sparkle on top of her creased clothes. She had shone. Luminous. Energetic. Her sisters were reacquainted with the Cat of old, whom they had not seen for so many months they had all but forgotten about her. How lovely to see her again. Fen and Pip had left the Alps knowing that they were leaving their sister in safe, loving hands.

Fen looked at her own hands. Were they safe and loving? She didn’t want to look too hard. She fell fast asleep with the small table lamp still on.

Fen awoke very early. She swung open the tall, elegant windows and peered over the intricate railings to the street below. The pavements were being washed. Boulangerie vans were driving recklessly half on the pavement, half on the roads. There were few people around. The sky was an interesting mix of hopeful pale blue fighting for space against bruise-grey clouds and scorches of orange from the sunrise. She was glad she was in Paris, though how fruitful her day would be she had yet to discover. She climbed back into bed and refused to allow herself to think of Matt or James. That’s why she was in Paris – to ask Julius what she should do. There was little point, therefore, in worrying about it before then. She zapped through the television channels and came across the Magic Roundabout in French, where the personalities of the characters seemed entirely different to those so infamous in the English version. She sat in the bath – a classic deep square structure where the water covered her shoulders – and practised her French accent, making it more and more extreme with a strong nasal inflection, until she giggled out loud.

‘Come on, girl, there’s work to be done.’

It was good to be back with the Fetherstone Archive. She hadn’t been there since researching her Master’s dissertation. There were no new documents, nothing really to benefit Trust Art at all, or to justify a day away for Fen and the expense of the hotel. Fen just sat with the pictures and letters spread before her and gave herself a sizeable but silent pat on the back.

You’ve done well, you’ve come far. You worked hard and can feel good about reaping rewards.

She felt acutely the passing of time; able to remember herself vividly as a fresh-faced student, always earnest, on a mission to publicize and canonize Fetherstone. Now, six years later, she was a salaried expert on the sculptor whose reputation was growing thanks to her efforts.

Oh look! Here are duplicates of those photos that I found amongst the Holden collection – of Julius in his studio months before death with the couple and Henry and the small boy and enigmatic woman.

The pictures were identical. It was difficult to tell which were the originals – Paris or London. Fen scrutinized the backs. They didn’t have Henry’s stamp but were inscribed instead in tiny wiry writing in black ink. She couldn’t make out the words at all. Collection Someone-or-other. The librarian couldn’t tell either; he shrugged and made murmuring noises with suitable facial gesticulations, all in a quintessentially Gallic way. Fen asked if he might photocopy them for her. The librarian obliged – he vaguely remembered her from years ago and was amused anyway that someone should have expressed interest in this folder. He checked his books – the Archive had only been requested twice in the six years since Fen was last here.

Julius, Julius, where the bloody hell are you? I’ve come all this way, all this way. Please come!

Fen toyed with the idea of visiting either the Picasso museum or the Pompidou. But she felt sceptical whether she’d find Julius in either place.

I could go to the Musée Rodin – but as Brancusi said when a student of Rodin, ‘Nothing grows under the shadow of a great tree,’ – so I’m unlikely to tune into Julius in that place.

She had over two hours until her train and decided that she wouldn’t mooch or mope, or get gallery guilt, she’d indulge herself with some shopping instead. She headed for the Galeries Lafayette where she tried on many things, procrastinated over all of them but left the store having bought nothing. She went to the station, chose a bar-restaurant nearby and marvelled to herself over the quality of such establishments in comparison to those around the London stations. She ordered a sandwich with cheese and piquant cornichons, also a pression, s’il vous plaît. The combination was perfect, the meal was satisfying.

‘I prefer ham.’

Fen didn’t need to turn – in fact, if she did she’d run the risk of breaking the spell. ‘Do you, Julius.’

‘I do, child. And I would refrain from coffee, dearest – you’ll feel queasy on the train.’

The waiter came and Fen requested a bottle of Evian.

‘I cannot believe that water is bottled and good money paid for it,’ Julius said.

‘I couldn’t find you yesterday,’ Fen said. ‘I looked hard. It upset me.’

‘You should know by now, child, that it is I who comes to you.’

The waiter brought Fen’s water, and a pastry too. He’d been watching her. She seemed so absorbed, so deep in thought, that he presumed some unkindness had befallen her. Mind you, had he known that she was chatting away merrily to an artist dead for almost forty years, he would have given her the pastry anyway, out of pity. Insanity in one so young and so pretty – how cruel!

Fen glanced at the old clock above the bar; she synchronized it with her watch and knew that she needed to pay, to go, to catch her train, to return to England.

‘I have to go, Julius. I have to go home and sort my life out.’ She felt like crying – but the innate knowledge that, in reality, no one was there to wrap a protective arm around her shoulders, kept the tears at bay.

‘Tell me what to do,’ she implored, crossing the road.

‘One is ultimately responsible for the progress and path of one’s own happiness – but one also has a degree of responsibility to safeguard the happiness of others.’

‘Can you love two at the same time? Is it possible? Is it right?’

‘I only ever loved one woman.’

Fen had reached the escalator. She really had to get a move on.

‘Where’s Abandon?’ she asked, now out loud and to the bemusement of an elderly lady who spoke no English. Fen mounted the escalator. ‘Tell me, Julius – it’s a travesty that the world is denied this monumental, seminal, magnificent work.’

She looked around her. The station was full of people. She knew no one. Certainly there was no sculptor with sage beard and the answer to her question. Of course there wasn’t. He died almost half a century ago.

It’s time to go home, Fen. You’re in danger of missing your train. Hurry.

FORTY-FOUR

Matt wasn’t in work the next day. Otter told her that he’d gone for a meeting at the printers about paper quality and charges.

‘I love Matt very much,’ Fen said instead, looking as though she was about to weep.

‘I know you do,’ Otter soothed, ‘of course you do.’

‘I do,’ Fen stressed, as if Otter had argued otherwise.

‘I know you do,’ Otter reiterated, unable to fathom why such a positive declaration should be accompanied by eyes stung red with tears held at bay. ‘Now, girl, I want news of all those bike boys – in glorious technicolor detail.’

‘I have to speak to Matt,’ Fen said, her voice wavering, ‘today. But his phone is off.’

‘He’s in meetings with the printers,’ Otter told her again, wondering whether his arm around her shoulders would blot tears or create a deluge. He gave her a light punch instead. ‘Ed is on a crusade today, dearest, to save Trust Art money – and to save the reputation of Art Matters as a quality read on good paper.’

Fen nodded.

‘He’ll be back tomorrow,’ Otter said. ‘You can talk slushily to him then. For now, though, you have to furnish me with what you saw out on the Tour. Dimensions, Fen! I demand dimensions. How much is just padding? And how much is truly Boy Bulge?’

Fen sits, forlorn, in the Archive. She has the photocopies of the backs of the photos from Paris but the writing is no clearer. She looks at the shelves. The boxes are now in impeccable order. In fact, she has only four years to organize – and they being more recent, that shouldn’t take long at all. Perhaps a month. What then? Will she be out of a job? With whom should she discuss this? Rodney? Judith? What is the etiquette? Should they be approaching her? Should they have done so by now? The fact that they haven’t – is it ominous? Should she reconsider the PhD that her tutors at the Courtauld were so keen for her to undertake? Would the British Academy still grant her the award that they had offered but that she had turned down?

Maybe I should just move back to Derbyshire.

‘I wish Matt was here today. I hate this! I hate this!’

But why should everything tick along to your timescale, Fen? Why should you always call the shots when it suits you?

I have to speak to James. But I’d like to speak to Matt first.

Well, you can’t. Unless speaking to James can wait until you’ve seen Matt tomorrow.

It can’t wait.

‘James?’

‘The return of the native!’ James says, happy to hear from her, slightly perturbed that his heartbeat should have picked up so. It is difficult to deduce her tone from her brief opening. ‘How was France?’ he asks. ‘How was your sister?’

‘We found her to be in fine form, high spirits and rather in love,’ Fen tells James.

‘Good,’ he says, pulling Barry’s ears gently and twisting them around his fingers, much to the dog’s delight. Beryl, craving attention, head-butted his thighs.

‘Then I had a day in Paris by myself,’ Fen says, ‘trying to find Julius.’

‘Productive?’ James enquires, pleased that Fen today bears no resemblance at all to the snappish girl of last week. He crooks the phone under his chin so he can dispense physical affection to both dogs at once.

‘Yes,’ Fen says.

She’s gone slightly quiet. Barry, leave Beryl’s tail.

‘Fen?’ James says, encircling his hand around Barry’s snout.

‘Can I come and see you?’ Fen asks. ‘This weekend?’

‘Of course you can,’ James says, ‘we’ll look forward to it.’

‘How are Barry and Beryl?’

‘Very well,’ James says, looking at the two dogs with a mixture of pride and exasperation.

‘I love them,’ Fen says with great certitude. James thinks this is a little exorbitant.

She must be tired from her weekend.

‘We’ll see you in a couple of days, then?’ he clarifies, his dogs looking at him expectantly.

‘Yes,’ Fen says softly.

‘Bye for now, then,’ James says.

‘Bye,’ says Fen.

She phones him back immediately.

‘James?’

‘Hullo again!’

‘James – I do so love you.’

FORTY-FIVE

How sad and bad and mad it was –

But then, how it was sweet!

Robert Browning

‘Is Fen back?’ Matt asked Otter, looking at his diary as if trying to find an opportunity to slot her into the day.

‘Yup,’ Otter confirmed, ‘she was back yesterday – seemed pretty lovelorn, if you ask me, absence obviously made her heart grow fonder.’

Matt chewed his lip thoughtfully. ‘Yesterday was something of a mercy mission,’ he justified, ‘and I return victorious – I’ve negotiated the same quality paper, ten per cent price reduction.’

‘Without selling your soul or your body?’ Otter enquired with much scepticism. Matt raised an eyebrow. ‘I’d love to be a fly on the wall when you tell Accounts – ha! they can put that in their pipe and smoke it!’ Otter remarked with glee.

‘I’m going there directly,’ Matt said, with great reserve. He couldn’t keep his grin at bay any longer. ‘Then I’ll go and blow my trumpet a little in Rodney’s office.’

‘We should celebrate,’ Otter said, ‘a triumphal luncheon to celebrate Art Matters’ honour being safeguarded.’

‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ Matt agreed. ‘I’ll book the Tate restaurant. Right, I’m off to lord it over Accounts.’

What about Fen, Matt – when will you have time to see her?

Fen had so many butterflies that there was no room for croissant or cappuccino. Not that she’d eaten last night – for the same reason. She’d psyched herself up so much yesterday, needing to see Matt, that she had slept badly on account of all the adrenaline still surging around her. This morning, it had dissipated only slightly into a rampage of butterflies. Seeing Matt was a foregone conclusion. In a matter of hours. Soon enough, in a few minutes. Only, the minutes cruelly stretched back into hours. Fen waited in the Archive. She’d sent an e-mail as soon as she’d arrived; sweetly if rather formally requesting his company at his earliest opportunity. Only he hadn’t shown. He hadn’t replied. And Publications’ door was closed – the blind down to signify a meeting. When it was open again, just before lunch, only Otter was in there.

‘Miss McCabe!’ he welcomed. ‘Have you heard what a hero Holden is?’

Fen shook her head.

Where is he?

‘He’s in with Rodney at the moment,’ Otter said, reading her mind. ‘He’s probably being given a golden crown, or Freedom of the Corridor – or a pat on the back at the very least.’

I really have to speak to him.

‘We’re going out to lunch,’ Otter was saying, checking his watch which, on account of his skinniness, always twisted around so that the face rested on the inside of his wrist, ‘to celebrate the continued use of quality paper at a rate less than that which we were paying!’

‘Good old Matt,’ Fen murmured, for whom this talk of paper and prices was somewhat irrelevant on both professional and personal levels.

I have to see him. I have to tell him. It really can’t wait. For his sake, as much as mine.

‘Will you tell him, Otter,’ Fen said, ‘will you tell him that I’m here? That, when he has a mo’, I need to see him?’

‘Of course, Funny Face,’ Otter assured her, never having seen her looking so serious. It became her though, investing her everyday prettiness with a certain soulful beauty.

Rodney was delighted at Matt’s victory. His immediate reaction was to leap from his leather chair and give Matt a double thumbs up. When he’d finished pacing around his office, punching the air with pleasure, he then invited himself along to the lunch at the Tate restaurant.

Why shouldn’t he, Matt remarked to himself quite happily, firstly he’s director of Trust Art, secondly he’s offered to foot the bill from his own pocket.

The three men returned from lunch at gone tea-time. To those who did not know the reason for their lengthy boozy lunch, the trio looked slightly the worse for wear. The men themselves, though, felt fantastic.

‘Crikey, am I squiffy!’ Rodney commented with a boyish giggle as he negotiated the stairs up to his floor.

‘I’d say I’m downright pissed,’ Otter clarified, to Rodney’s great amusement.

‘Pissed!’ Rodney whispered, as if in awe of a major expletive.

‘Drunk as a skunk, me,’ Matt said, with much thoughtful nodding.

‘Go to your desks and push paper,’ Rodney said, ‘lovely, lovely quality paper! Actually, shall we go to the pub?’

Otter looked horrified, having always thought that the director of Trust Art ought to display the same sort of discipline and authority as a headmaster.

‘Maybe after work,’ Matt said diplomatically.

‘Jolly jolly fantastic idea,’ Rodney enthused, ‘fan-tas-tic.’

Watching their boss sway and falter off towards his office, Matt remarked to Otter that it was a good job the director’s office was a flight of stairs below theirs.

‘He’ll have a stonking hangover in about half an hour,’ Otter concluded.

They entered their corridor as Fen was coming out of the Archive, ostensibly to go to the loo, or down to Bobbie’s for a biscuit – anywhere so that she could walk past Publications. She stopped in her tracks. Otter and Matt appeared not to have seen her. She watched them weave and swagger into their office.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said under her breath, ‘they’re pissed!’

She’d be packing up for the day in an hour or so. She had to talk to Matt before then, whatever his capabilities of comprehension. She walked to his office, knocked and entered.

‘Fen!’ Otter, with very flushed cheeks, exclaimed.

‘Fen,’ said Matt, his eyes really rather beautifully dark with dilation.

‘Hey,’ Fen said, with a little semicircular wave, ‘do you have a moment? For a chat?’

Matt sighed as he looked down at his desk and the scatter of papers and Post-its that had collected during his absence. He looked at his watch. Looked at his desk again. Looked at Fen. ‘Sure,’ he said. He stood up, a little unsteady. ‘Otter,’ he said, raising his hand in a wave of sorts, ‘I’ll be five minutes. Vet my calls!’

Otter saluted. As soon as Matt had left the room, he let his head droop and drop on to his desk and fell sound asleep.

In the Archive, Fen feels shy about facing Matt. She has to say what she has to say and she wishes he wasn’t drunk but she realizes, perhaps for the first time ever, that she simply cannot stage-manage everything as she’d like.

‘Fen,’ Matt says, at the very moment she turns to him, saying his name. ‘Please,’ he says, sweeping through the air with his hand to invite her to continue.

‘You first,’ Fen says, who finally acknowledges it is important to let Matt have not just an opinion but the forum in which to express it. She will listen. She will listen and then she will talk.

Matt rocks very slightly from side to side and back and forth. He nods his head and tries to keep it steady, staring at the top button of Fen’s Agnés B cardigan. He lifts his eyes to her face and smiles a little meekly. In an instinctive but uncontrolled gesture, he cups her breast in his hand and kisses her a little clumsily.

‘The thing is, Fen,’ he slurs though he is obviously trying hard not to, ‘I actually really love you.’

She stares at him.

‘I do,’ he nods vigorously, ‘I really do. I love you.’

Still she stares. Tears welling.

‘But I don’t think it’s going to work out.’ He shakes his head and looks desperately forlorn.

What? What did he say?

‘I don’t,’ he shrugs unhappily, ‘it’s not. Nah. I actually want just to be on my own for a while.’

Did he just say—?

‘Single,’ Matt is saying, ‘bachelor,’ he continues, ‘for a bit.’ He tilts his head, regarding her with a mixture of benevolence, love and the simple effort to focus on just one Fen. ‘It’s too much,’ he explains, ‘to go from one to another so quickly.’ He looks at her and looks at his feet. He has about five of them, he thinks. ‘It’s unwise.’ He shrugs, bringing his head up, though his eyes continue to count his many shoes. ‘Unfair on you because it’s not right for me.’ Finally, he raises his eyes. ‘Sorry,’ he says, with real remorse, ‘I do love you, Fen – but it is the wrong time. It really is.’

And he leaves, does Matt, he leaves the Archive. He goes back to Publications, vaguely notices that Otter is spark out at his desk. He collects his wallet, his mobile phone and, for some reason, a thesaurus, and leaves for home.

Fen?

Fen?

Are you crying?

I am crying. Of course I am. Wouldn’t you?

But hasn’t he just made it easy on you? Saved you a ghastly task?

Fen awakes in the early hours. She flicks on her bedside lamp. No Matt in her bed. No more Matt full stop. She glances around her room. There were things she wanted to say to him, too. Quite a lot, actually. It would be wrong to, she decides, now that she knows the score. She leaves her bed and sits on the floor with her back to the wall, focusing intently on the temperature knob of the radiator on the opposite wall. Though it is summer, her room is always just a little chilly, not that she’s had the radiator on. Radiators only work from October to April – Django had told his three nieces so, and they still believed him. Django. Django. She’d be home in a day or so.

‘Oh Matt,’ she murmurs, ‘I so love you. I am so sad. So sorry.’

She goes to her window. There is no vestige of dawn at all. She hears sirens. An ambulance, she presumes, on its way to or from the Royal Free Hospital. She crosses her fingers, as Django taught her, to invest the unfortunate with luck and life.

‘Matty,’ she says, though she has never called him that. A tear oozes from the corner of her eye. It makes a very slow, hot and stinging passage down, along the side of her nose, to under her nostril where her tongue, stretched to the limit, dabs it up. ‘Oh Matt.’

Fen goes back to bed.

‘I wanted to tell you,’ she sobs into her pillow, ‘that I am deeply in love with you. I’d realized that it is you with whom I want – wanted – to walk forward. I’d made my mind up – and it was you. It was you.’

FORTY-SIX

Being at Trust Art for the remainder of that week was hard for both Fen and Matt. Fen arrived early, left early, bought her lunch on her journey in and ate it in her Archive. She also exerted the powers learnt as a schoolgirl, managing to restrict her trips to the toilet to once mid-morning, once mid-afternoon. Matt had taken a day off on account of his hangover and, on his return, had so many outstanding obligations that he barely left his office, sending Otter to fetch his post or bring him sandwiches.

‘It’s over with Fen,’ he told Otter, but not until the close of the week.

Otter, bewildered and unhappy, could elicit little from Matt. He went to the Archive. No Fen. She’d obviously left early for the weekend.

Fen had phoned Django from St Pancras to announce that she was coming home on the next train out. Django knew his niece well enough to know when to probe and when to just let her be. He had always been able to judge Fen’s level of distress by her degree of politeness. He deduced that she was troubled indeed, extremely sad, on account of her being so excessively formal and courteous. Varying degrees of quietness meant the girl ranged from out of sorts to downright angry. Excessive chatter meant she was fretting about something. But politeness had always signified sadness.

‘Darling!’ he had said. ‘How the devil are you?’

‘I’m very well, thank you,’ Fen had responded, ‘how are you?’

Later, he had asked after her job.

‘It’s going very well, thank you,’ Fen had told him.

Django had had a bit of an accident with the Tabasco bottle and rather too much of the fiery condiment had hurled itself into the gazpacho soup he’d made. He’d apologized for it, assuring Fen that he wouldn’t be remotely offended if she left it and had cheese on crackers instead.

‘It’s very nice, thank you,’ she told her uncle, sipping demurely from the spoon to prove it, ‘a little spicy – but in a piquant way. Honestly.’

He ascertained that her sorrow must run to a great depth indeed when he offered her After Eights that evening. Almost absent-mindedly, she worked her way through the entire box, thanking him for each and every chocolate, whilst listening very courteously to all that he rambled on about that evening. Django knew, unequivocally, of the depth of her distress when she took her leave of him to have a very lengthy but silent bath.

‘She always sings in the bath,’ Django said to himself, finding two After Eights that Fen had overlooked, camouflaged at either end of the box. He took both chocolates and slipped them into his mouth, hamster style, to the inside of either cheek. It was the way he ate satsumas too. And cherry tomatoes.

‘She always sings in the bath, that girl, always.’

Fen?

If things are about to slot very nicely into place, why are you so out of sorts? With Matt now out of the picture, you can at last develop your relationship with James on an equal footing. The contract on your house is up for renewal next month. You could indeed take up the option on your PhD and move back to Derbyshire too. Where else would you find an atmosphere as conducive to study as your beloved home county? It all makes sense. You were equally in love with two men. Now there is only the one man available to you. So why the melancholia? Yes, yes, we all know how dear Julius denied himself love after he lost the one woman for him – but life needn’t imitate art, Fen. You have a home with James, and he has a home in your heart.

‘There’s something I have to tell Fen,’ James says to himself, quietly but sternly, whilst tending to Mrs Brakespeare’s roses. ‘I’ve put it off and put it off, but I shall tell her this time. I have to.’ He wields his secateurs with expertise. ‘I have no idea how she’ll react, really.’ He pricks himself on a thorn. It’s actually such a rare occurrence that it shocks him. ‘But I have to tell her.’ There’s blood. ‘She deserves to know.’ He sucks his thumb tip. ‘She needs to know as soon as possible.’

‘Whatever happens – however she is – I must tell her. At all costs. The cost will ultimately be too dear otherwise.’

FORTY-SEVEN

All the best work of any artist must be bathed in mystery.

Auguste Rodin

Barry and Beryl bound up to Fen, slathering on her, shoving her, whacking her with their tails.

‘Hullo, dogs,’ she says, rubbing the tops of their heads and trying to keep her face well away from their slobbering, ‘hullo, you two.’ Beryl scoots off, haring from Fen to nowhere in particular, returning at full pelt to welcome her again. Fen stands with legs apart and braces herself for Beryl’s hurling rebound. Barry then runs circles around Fen, hampering her passage to James, who is standing on his doorstep laughing. She trips just as she’s about to reach him and he catches her, planting a kiss affectionately on her forehead.

‘Hullo, gorgeous,’ he greets her.

Fen throws her arms around his neck and keeps herself pressed against him, her mouth at his neck, the smell of him filling her nose. Remember it. Remember it. Her eyes are scrunched closed. She will not allow herself to cry.

I must not wimp out.

‘That’s some welcome,’ he marvels, trying to keep his arms around her while protecting her from the paws and claws of his dogs who are leaping up at her.

I mustn’t put it off. I have to tell her today.

As she sat in the kitchen, watching James make coffee, Fen realized how much she loved being there. With both dogs resting their chins on each of her knees while gazing up at her adoringly, she thought how much she loved them too.

‘The money came through for the Fetherstones,’ he told her. ‘That’s why we’re having Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee rather than Nescafé.’

‘Coffee beans won’t fix the leak in the roof,’ Fen said, sipping the hot, delicious liquid though she knew that caffeine on top of her current high levels of adrenaline was a very bad idea.

Start! Stop putting it off.

‘The Tate has invited me down to the unveiling next month,’ James told her, ‘but I don’t think I’ll go.’

Fen was relieved, but nevertheless asked James why he wouldn’t attend. He took a seat opposite her. Though his dogs regarded him thoughtfully, they chose to return their chins to Fen’s knees.

‘It wouldn’t seem right,’ James explained. ‘It’s not as if I’m a philanthropic benefactor – I did it for the money.’

Fen nodded.

‘You can represent me, if you like,’ James said.

I must tell him. I must talk to him. The longer I leave it, the more uncomfortable I’m feeling – and the more unfair it is on him. I’m boiling hot but my blood has turned cold. Darling James – forgive me.

‘James –’ Fen said, staring at her plate. She continued to stare at her plate. James waited for her to continue. ‘May I have more coffee?’ she requested lightly.

Stupid girl! I’d kick myself – and hard – if I didn’t have these two gorgeous dogs monopolizing my legs.

‘Biscuit?’ James offered, regarding her quizzically – not that she’d know as she was avoiding eye contact at all costs.

Maybe right now is not the right time – but I have to do it soon, before she goes.

‘Thanks,’ said Fen, taking a chocolate Bourbon and scrutinizing the glints of sugar crystals scattered on its surface. Come on, come on – you need to do this. ‘I – it’s –’

‘Oh dear,’ said James, looking into the biscuit tin and knowing for a fact that the Hobnobs were well past their best-before date, ‘gone stale?’

Fen snorted quietly at the irony – but turned it into a blow of her nose so as not to be hurtful. Or, rather, to steer clear of the imminence of broaching the subject she’d come all the way from London to discuss.

James was now well aware of her unease. It unnerved him. After all, today was the day he had to tell her that which he’d been putting off. She was still holding the Bourbon biscuit, she was still staring at her plate. She was twitching her lips and he could see that she was simultaneously trying to talk but stopping herself, too.

Does she know? Has she somehow found out? She was quiet, obviously uncomfortable. Shall I own up right now? Is that what she wants? Is that why she’s here?

‘Fen,’ James began, ‘I wonder – I need –’

‘Wait!’ she butted in. ‘It’s just that I –’

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ James suggested briskly, taking the uneaten Bourbon biscuit from her fingers and holding her hand. He tried to look into her eyes but they were resolutely downcast. He thought how neat and shapely her eyebrows were.

‘’Kay,’ Fen said.

‘Come on,’ James said softly, giving her hand a squeeze.

You’re a funny girl – I do rather love you, I suppose. But –

The dogs, blissfully unaware of the impending but major event, charged about the garden, head-butting hedges and nose-diving into the shrubbery, barking spontaneously with delight every now and then. James took Fen’s hand as they walked. She let it be held. In fact, she didn’t want him to let go; she didn’t want to let go. But she knew she had to. They walked through the garden, where James hovered once or twice, and strolled out into the woods. They talked about the weather, they talked at length about the dogs, Django, Fetherstone; they veered sharply from talking about that which they needed to. They continued to hold hands. Every now and then, Fen took James’s to her lips, kissing his fingers lightly (he smells heavenly, he smells of wood smoke), having to turn away from him should he spy the tears prickling her eyes. Every now and then, he’d touch her cheek with his thumb, or kiss the top of her head (she smells of apples, she smells delicious), or place his hand gently on her bottom.

There’s never going to be a right time, he thought, but chose instead to point out tiny violets growing with determination in seemingly the dankest of places

There’s never going to be a right time, she thought, but decided she’d rather tell James all about the Alpine stages of the Tour de France, specifically the statistics of L’Alpe D’Huez.

Both knew, however, that timing was essentially in their command. Both knew they were ignoring the fact. They were helpless to do otherwise. Soon enough, of course, they were heading back again. Through the woods. Into James’s garden.

For Christ’s sake, he reprimanded himself, I’m practically fifty years old – why on earth do I feel so bloody timid? I know the difference between right and wrong by now.

Jesus, Fen chastised herself, get a fucking grip. Do what you know is right.

Their pace had slowed dramatically. James was now hovering by the great cedar, under whose boughs the wooden hut, like a miniature Swiss chalet, was nestled. James’s hands were thrust deep into his pockets. Fen’s fingers were pulling at her lips, itching her nose, scratching her forehead. Barry and Beryl, having dutifully peed, were racing each other up the incline of the lawn, over the gravel promenade and up the stone steps. There they sat, waiting for their master to catch up and let them into the house. But James stayed put. And so did Fen. The dogs turned to statues.

‘Um,’ he said, ‘you need to know something.’

‘Er,’ Fen replied, ‘so do you.’

Oddly enough, now the time had come, there was no need for deep breaths. She could hear her voice out in the open.

Thank God, it will all be out in the open.

It was time.

With a hand on each of James’s shoulders, she gazed lovingly, sadly, into his face. ‘James,’ she whispered, because it was all she could manage, ‘it’s just – I can’t.’ She shook her head and tears were flung from her eyes like heavy raindrops preceding a downpour. Two sharp, painful swallows kept sobbing at bay for the time being. James was scanning her face, his eyes darting here and there, as if to find clues, as if to guess how her sentence would end, as if he knew what she was about to say, as if to commit to memory every detail of her.

‘James,’ Fen said, her voice loud but broken, ‘I do so love you. But I feel – I really do – that I must call it a day.’ He stared at her. She couldn’t gauge his reaction and therefore was obliged to elaborate. She turned away from him and gazed up at his charming house, at his two gorgeous dogs sitting expectant at the top of the steps, still stock-still like statuary. She breathed deeply the sweet clean air and tuned her ears to the skylarks. Underfoot, the lawn was springy. All around her, the land was fertile and verdant. It was peaceful. Beautiful. It was Fen’s idea of paradise. ‘It’s over,’ she said. Fleetingly, he frowned and a muscle twitched along his jaw. ‘It’s just,’ she elaborated, touching his chin with her fingertips and longing to kiss him there one last time, ‘I come here to escape – that’s the crux of it. To escape London, my week, my house – all my day-to-days. I come here to retreat. And when I melt into your arms, I’m sort of escaping, retreating, too. When I’m here,’ she continued, having paused to gaze at his Adam’s apple, ‘when I’m with you, it’s like make-believe come true.’ Her eyes locked on to his. She shook him gently in rhythm with her words. ‘But only whilst I’m here.’ She held him at arm’s length to judge whether he understood. She wasn’t sure. ‘The love that I have for you, James, is very real,’ she told him, ‘but the circumstances under which it is generated are not.’

She dropped her gaze. Regarded his feet and hers. Stared at the lawn, the mossy springy grass. She heard James take in breath and release it.

I won’t tell him about Matt. It would just be an easy way for me to dump my guilt elsewhere, shift the weight of it away from my shoulders.

She brought her eyes up to his. James smiled at her; a gentle, mature smile infused with regret, sadness, acceptance.

‘Fen,’ he said, brushing away hair clinging to her tear-slicked cheeks, ‘there’s something you need to know.’

He brought keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to the wooden den. He pushed the door ajar. ‘Go in,’ he said, placing his hand on her shoulder almost sternly. He walked off up the lawn to let his dogs into the house.

Fen felt his hand on her shoulder long after he’d taken it away. Then she felt a little flummoxed. She frowned and wanted to swear.

‘I’ve just finished the relationship and he wants me to go and look in his sodding shed?’ she said out loud. She turned and watched him walking up the steps. Barry and Beryl had metamorphosed from elegant statues to hurling, leaping mutts.

‘Doesn’t he have anything to say? Doesn’t he feel a thing? Does he not give a toss?’

Fen felt somewhat ungratified.

I suppose I thought we’d talk through our feelings. I feel, perhaps, my words have fallen on deaf ears. Or perhaps his reaction suggests this was never the relationship for him that it was for me. Perhaps the love never had the depth for him that it has had for me. Maybe he’s simply not bothered in the slightest.

Actually, Fen, James Caulfield is sitting at his kitchen table with his head in his hands. Oh, he understands all right. He understands perfectly. But he is sad. He is so sad that not even keeping his outdoor boots on indoors, not even the adoring faces of both of his dogs resting their chins on his thighs, comforts him in the slightest.

Leave him be. Grant him his space, his privacy, his prerogative to react in his own idiosyncratic way. Go and look in his shed instead.

The shed has one window, the frame subdividing it into four panes, one of which is cracked diagonally. The interior is not visible because the window is nearly opaque with dust. Fen creaks open the door. It is heavier than she anticipates; than the somewhat ornate design of the exterior would suggest. The shade of the huge cedar tree casts shadows over everything under its boughs. The shed itself is dark inside.

Fen enters. She stands still, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Underfoot, she can detect leaves from last autumn – perhaps the autumn before, or even before that. Gradually, shapes emerge from the darkness. To her left, there are sun loungers. A rake is propped immediately to her right. There are some tea chests stacked up just further along. A dog’s carrying basket. Jerrycans. A neat pile of dust-sheets. And then not much else. It’s quite roomy inside. Quite spacious. A fabulous structure for a Wendy house, Fen thinks distractedly, or for children to play at the Swiss Family Robinson. Only James doesn’t have children, she remarks to herself, he just has his dogs. You can buy battery-driven lighting, she muses. A lick of whitewash inside would work wonders. Little gingham curtains at the window. Some brightly painted furniture – however mismatched.

‘Mismatched,’ she says softly, ‘me and he.’ There’s something cathartic about the rhyme, about grammar abused for emotional ends.

Her breathing has calmed. Her hostility has abated. Eventually, her eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, she peers deeper into the interior. There is something very large looming at the back of the room. As it takes form, it gives Fen a jolt – it looks like a monster, whatever it is, lumbering under its heavy shroud. She takes a step forward. It’s all that’s needed. She stops abruptly. Her heart is in her mouth. It is as if she can see through the heavy canvas cover though she has walked only a step further into the darkness. She has started to cry – painful chucks of her voice; tearless. She continues to edge in deeper. Gingerly, she extends her left arm and her fingertips make light, quick contact with the canvas. It is thick, waterproofed; an industrialized tarpaulin of sorts. She’s only touched it briefly but the entire form it cloaks is known to her at once.

Though dust and moths and cobwebs and even a bat start careering around the shed, Fen pulls and hauls and heaves the covering away. She is choking. She can’t see a thing. Mind you, she doesn’t need to keep her eyes open any longer. She puts out a hand to steady herself. She has touched down on stone. It is smooth and cool but not cold. A marble elbow. Dust settles. Fen stops crying. A little light seeps in from the garden. Light radiates out from the marble. Fen stands still. Dust and dirt and her heart are in her mouth. She looks up. Her hand is holding a marble elbow. She looks up. Fetherstone’s Abandon towers above. She is dwarfed by it. She is absolutely terrified.

FORTY-EIGHT

Fen stayed in the shed for a long time, though she was utterly unaware of the passing of seconds, minutes or hours. Time was suspended. Initially, she just stood there, mouth agape despite dust and debris catching at the back of her throat. She backed up a few paces and sat on one of the tea chests awhile. Then she crossed the room and heaved down a sun lounger, reclining on it to gaze at the sculpture. Finally, she stood and went over to the marble, circumnavigating it, her hands never leaving its surface; touching, feeling, grabbing, groping. She smelt it and she licked it, she pressed her face, her torso, her back, against it. She stared and stared and stared. She hadn’t a clue what to do. She knew, though, that she’d never be the same again. It was one of those life-defining moments.

She remembers Cold Comfort Farm, which she’d read years ago as respite from studying for her A levels. She thinks she’ll probably become like Stella Gibbons’s character of Aunt Ada Doom who was never quite right having seen what she saw in the woodshed.

I will never be the same again.

That took care of the future – but what, exactly, should she do right now? Should she call the police? The Tate? Django? There again, if she told no one, Abandon could well be hers. She could leave London and live here. With James. With Julius. Should she go back to the house and say she hadn’t meant what she’d said and that, actually, she’d rather like to live with him until death did them part?

Hang on.

How the hell did it get here?

How the fuck did James come by it?

‘Oh my God!’ Fen cried, believing she knew the definitive answer. ‘Of course! He’s a thief! Is he? Is he a thief?’ Suddenly, she felt sick at the thought of the Adam and Eve, the bronzes and oil sketches, about to take residence in the Tate gallery. Ill-gotten gains. Illegal, full stop. She’d have to do something. Because, it struck her, she’d had something to do with it. But what? And what could she do? And would she? A tiny, evil little voice was telling her that Abandon could well be hers.

No one need know – because no one knows it’s here.

But Fen felt trapped. The pressure of making sense of the immediate situation, of trying to figure out what to do, was all too much for her. Instead, for some reason, all she could think of was The Thomas Crown Affair – a favourite film of hers in its original and remade state. ‘Steve McQueen! I mean, Thomas Crown!’ she whispered. ‘Pierce Brosnan! – James Caulfield! Suave! Elusive! And he’s conned me! He lured me into his bed so he could pass the buck and heap his filthy secret on to me!’

Fen was absolutely enflamed with rage. She was livid – a state she had seldom experienced; certainly never this degree of anger. She stormed out of the shed, stomped up the lawn, stamped over the gravel, marched up the steps two at a time and strode into the house, not taking her boots off.

Fen barged into the kitchen, stood still momentarily with her hands on her hips, and glowered at James. Instinctively, Barry and Beryl slunk off to the utility room and curled up together in just one of their baskets. James arose. Fen went directly to him and, with all the force she could muster, belted him with the flat of her palm smartly across his cheek. She couldn’t even hiss an insult. She simply stood there and shook.

‘I –’ James attempted. He certainly hadn’t anticipated that she’d react like this. Fen thumped him hard on the shoulder. Then she pummelled his chest with her fists, the effort finally opening the sluice-gates to her torrent of tears and rage and frustration and fear.

‘You bastard,’ she sobbed, backing off him before returning to his body. She had little strength left but feebly, she tried to punch him some more. ‘Bastard!’ she cried, her sobs heaving her entire body which started to crumple. James supported her, literally holding her up.

‘Fen, listen,’ he implored, ‘just sit down and listen.’

‘You’re a thief!’ she exploded, unable to listen. ‘You’ve conned me! You’ve conned everyone.’ She stamped her foot. ‘I’ll see you go down for this!’ she cried histrionically.

‘Fen!’ James exclaimed, as if to a child. Fen, behaving like a child, hurled the biscuit barrel on to the floor, shoved James hard and ran out of the house, down the steps, across the promenade, down the sweep of the lawn and back into the shed, slamming the door behind her. Then she heard the latch lock behind her. She held her head, scrunched and pulled her hair, and yelled with exasperation.

James left her there. Not as punishment but because he knew it was the only place that she would calm down. If he was honest, he was, quite literally, knocked for six. Knocked, hit, punched, shoved. And he felt bruised, inside and out. He’d anticipated that divulging his secret would elevate him to hero status in the eyes of Fen. In reality, it had served only to disgust and distress his now ex-lover. He picked the smashed biscuits from the floor. Glancing round, he saw his dogs lurking at a safe distance in the utility room. They looked uneasy but they couldn’t help themselves from glancing longingly at the crumbs and fragments of Bourbon and Hobnob.

‘Come on, dogs,’ James invited. They came into the kitchen with caution, regarding James, regarding the floor, regarding James again. ‘Go on,’ he encouraged. They began to lick the floor cleaner than it possibly had ever been. ‘Poor Fen,’ James said, sitting down watching his dogs. ‘I mean, it’s not every day one comes across a long-lost work of art in a shed in Derbyshire.’ He suspected that, in her rage, she’d locked herself in the shed. He felt it would do her nerves good to stay there awhile. She needed to calm down. She needed time to formulate questions – all of which he could answer.

‘My ex-lover is locked in my shed,’ James said aloud. He laughed. There was, undeniably, a comedy element to it all. ‘Shall we keep her there? Ranting and fuming?’ he suggested to his dogs. ‘A twenty-first-century Mrs Rochester?’ The dogs didn’t seem to understand. ‘She’s locked in my shed, she is,’ James said quietly, ‘my ex-lover.’ The dogs seemed to understand that. They came and sat by his side. James felt sad, an emotion that years of self-sufficiency and contentment had kept at bay. ‘We’re not right for her,’ he told them, with conviction. He fell silent. He thought over her words – about how their love really only existed outside their day-to-day lives. How it took form and flight only in the confines of the house, the grounds, a hotel room in Paddington; when it was just the two of them. And now she was confined to the shed. With Abandon. James glanced at his watch. She’d been in there three quarters of an hour.

‘I’ll go and release her.’ The word struck James as highly appropriate.

Sweet Fen. I will release you. I could plead with you to continue with me – just the way we have been. But I have a responsibility to your future – and I think you are right, I am not your future. Nor are you mine.

Fen looked at her watch. She did not know precisely how long she’d been locked in the shed but she reckoned it was almost an hour. She’d been clambering all over Abandon. She’d felt the breasts of the woman, the pectorals of the man; she’d run her hands over his smooth buttocks and fingered the woman’s lips which were parted in a gasp of sexual ecstasy. Being with the marble apotheosis of a work so familiar to her was incomparable. Hitherto, the bronze casting she’d been so captivated by as an A level student visiting the Neue Pinakotek in Munich had been her most intimate experience of the work. But she hadn’t been allowed to touch, just to look, to marvel, to study every aspect of it. She thought she knew Abandon by Julius Fetherstone. But it was only now, today, having had hands-on, direct contact, that she really felt she understood the work. It was about climax, she defined. Not just the thematic depiction of the throes of sexual ecstasy. Somehow, there was tragedy imbued in it – Fen sensed that the work marked the climax of the figures’ relationship. That when they pulled apart physically, they left each other too. In terms of technique, of anatomical awareness, it was unarguably the virtuoso highpoint of the artist’s career.

‘But who are you?’ she asked the figures, her face on a level with their stomachs. ‘Who are you?’ she asked the man, looking up at him. ‘Are you Julius?’ She thought he very probably was. ‘But then, who are you?’ she asked the woman, staring intently at her beautiful face. ‘I mean, I know you are Eve – and every non-portrait female form Julius ever sculpted – but who – who – were you?’

‘Fen?’

James.

‘Tell me!’ Fen pleaded quietly, as if she believed the sculptural figures could do so only whilst the shed door was locked and they were together.

‘Fen?’

James. Don’t! Don’t let me out! Don’t unlock the door! Don’t break the spell!

James, though, had no intention of letting Fen out until she so requested.

Fen walked behind Abandon and looked towards the window of the shed. She couldn’t really see much, just blurs of green and, once or twice, a dark patch she realized was James’s shadow. With one palm pressed against the woman’s shoulder-blades, with the other pressed against the small of the man’s back, Fen held her cheek to the heavy space their bodies created. She breathed deeply. She sighed. She left them. Why should they speak to her? Who on earth was she, Fen McCabe, to them? They were utterly self-contained in their desire for one another. As they had been since Julius Fetherstone had released their forms from the great chunk of marble a century ago.

‘James?’ Fen called a few feet from the door.

‘Would you like to come out?’ James’s voice replied.

‘Yes, please,’ said Fen.

She comes out, blinking, into the light; into the late July late afternoon. She walks with James over and up the lawn, across the gravel promenade, up the stone steps and into the house. He has his hand on her shoulder, lightly, very supportively. She’s comforted that it should be there.

‘I expect,’ said James, ‘that you have a fair few questions for me?’

Fen nodded. James settled into an armchair in the snug. He turned over his hands so his palms were uppermost, signifying that she should start, that he was ready and open.

‘Did you,’ Fen faltered, ‘steal your Fetherstones?’

James was not offended. ‘No, Fen, I did not, they were left to me by my father.’

She believed him. ‘But why do you have Abandon? How did your dad come by that? Why you?’

‘It was decreed that he should have it,’ James said, ‘to hold it for me.’

Fen stared at him, her eyes darting around his face to try and glean some tiny particle of sense.

‘Come with me,’ James said. He led her out of the snug, across the flagstone hallway and up the stairs to his bedroom. There, he opened the drawer of his bedside cabinet and placed a clutch of photos on his bed.

Fen sat down and looked at them. ‘How odd!’ she said, ‘these are like the photos in the Archive at Trust Art and in the Fetherstone files in Paris.’ She turned them over. From what she could remember, the handwriting on the back was identical to that on the back of those in Paris. There were five photos, she’d seen them all before. She looked at James expectantly. He handed her three more. Fen took them from him, looked at each quickly and then drew breath sharply. Her hands began to shake.

In the first, the elusive woman was staring directly at the camera, standing posed formally between Julius and Henry. In the second, she was half out of frame, Henry and Julius were in deep conversation, and the small child sat on Henry’s knee, his back to the camera. In the third, a close-up, Julius was hazy in his bath chair in the background. The frame cut off half of Henry and half of the woman. It was focused entirely on the child. The child was holding the hand of the woman, the hand of Henry. It was unmistakably a boy. About four years old. Smiling at the camera. Filling the frame. It was, unmistakably, James Caulfield.

Fen stares at James who nods, silently. Fen looks at the photos again. James takes her hand and leads her to the chest of drawers, with the lovely old framed photos.

‘This is my mother,’ he says, and Fen recognizes her as the lady in the studio. Is that why she looks so familiar? But didn’t Fen feel she was familiar, for some unknown reason, when she first set eyes on James’s photo? Fen is tired and overawed and can’t really remember. ‘This is my father,’ says James, showing Fen a photo in a silver frame she hasn’t seen on the chest of drawers before.

‘No, no. Actually, this is Henry Holden,’ Fen explains to James, as if he might not know, as if he might be mistaken, misled; as if he hasn’t realized.

‘I am Henry Holden’s son,’ James says, ‘and Theresa’s son too.’

Fen is frowning with the effort of trying to absorb too much near-surreal information. James sits her down on the bed, allowing her to keep hold of the two framed photographs. ‘Theresa Cattaldi was the granddaughter of Cosima Cattaldi.’ These made no sense to Fen. ‘Cosima married Jacques Antoine.’

‘Oh!’ Fen interrupts artlessly. ‘Julius did a portrait bust of Cosima Antoine!’

‘Fen,’ James says, ‘this is privileged information. Julius had an affair with Cosima. Brief. Passionate. That’s all I know. She is the Woman – the anonymous woman. In Eve. In Abandon. In Hunger. In Desire. In all the works where the sitter is unknown. We’re so used to knowing Cosima’s face from the official portrait bust and sketches, we would not recognize her in any other way.’

Fen is dumbstruck.

‘Henry Holden had a brief affair with Theresa Cattaldi. He was married to his first wife at the time. Theresa fell pregnant. Henry, therefore, had an illegitimate son.’

‘You.’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re English!’ Fen remonstrates, as if it is the one true fact she knows. ‘You’re not French! Or Italian!’

‘Henry brought Mother and me over the year after this photo was taken. I was four and a half years old. Abandon was left to me. Julius told Henry I was to have it.’

‘But Henry was married,’ Fen says, slotting the jigsaw together, ‘hence the need for discretion – secrecy.’

James nods. ‘We didn’t really see him,’ he tells her, a little sadness tingeing his voice, ‘but he ensured we were comfortable which, in those days, counted for a lot. I adored my mother,’ he says taking the photograph of her that Fen is holding, ‘I adored her. Anyway, when I was a teenager, Henry married a second time and lived happily ever after until his death, I do believe. I did so adore my mother.’

It is difficult for Fen to find her voice or think of what to say or ask next. She lies back on James’s bed and closes her eyes and drifts off into a numb sleep.

They awake, wrapped in each other’s arms, very late that night. They undress and slip between the sheets. Fen snuggles up to James.

‘I love you, James.’

‘I know you do. And I believe – truly I do – that what you’re suggesting is for the best.’

‘Being born of Cosima’s blood,’ Fen says sleepily, ‘you are probably as near as Julius came to having a son.’

‘He liked to think so,’ James says.

‘That’s why he bequeathed you Abandon,’ Fen defines, feeling at ease for the first time in days. It all makes sense. Or at least, much more sense than it had made earlier. It makes enough sense to allow her to go to sleep relatively content.

Over breakfast the next morning, Fen and James talked easily.

‘You do realize,’ Fen said, ‘that if we put Abandon up for sale, it’s not just a new roof you can buy!’

‘I do know that,’ James replied, ‘but it simply isn’t for sale.’

Fen looked at him. ‘What are you going to do with it?’ she asked. ‘I mean, there’s something of an indignity about it being in a shed in Derbyshire under a smelly old sheet.’

‘I’m not going to do anything with it,’ James said, quite abruptly, staring at her squarely, ‘but you are.’

Fen is back in the shed. She has a train to catch. She wants time alone with Abandon.

‘Goodbye, Julius,’ she whispers, gently touching the man’s forearm. ‘Goodbye, Cosima,’ she whispers affectionately, lightly stroking the woman’s knee. ‘I’ll find somewhere safe and beautiful for you both, I promise. Goodbye, lovers, goodbye.’

James drives Fen to Chesterfield station. Fen hugs the dogs so tightly they yelp. James walks her to the platform. He gives her an envelope.

‘It’s a letter from Julius to Henry, about Abandon, about me,’ he tells her.

‘We can do this,’ she assures him, ‘discreetly.’

‘In your hands,’ he says, ‘in your hands. Abandon couldn’t be safer anywhere else.’

Fen smiles at him. She gazes into his eyes. For a moment, there’s the possibility they will sink their mouths against each other. He clasps her against him in an enveloping hug and kisses the top of her head four or five times. ‘I could ask you to think again,’ he says, ‘but I won’t. You have so much ahead of you, Fen – so much to do. And, truthfully, I am very content as I am, as I have been for some time. I love you and I will miss you but I am happy to part as we are parting today.’

When I woke this morning and gazed at you sleeping, I realized that, unknowingly, I had been waiting most of my adult life for you. You came with the key to unlock my Fetherstone dilemma, but not the key to my heart. Now you have done so, you can go, I can let you go.

Fen’s train is pulling in. Should she tell him? Should she tell him? Now? She touches James’s cheek. ‘You have a half-brother, James,’ she tells him.

But should I tells him?

‘He works at Trust Art.’

Should I tell him everything?

‘He’s called Matthew,’ says Fen. She looks at her feet. She thinks of Matt. She smiles.

‘He’s lovely.’

FORTY-NINE

Fen didn’t tell a soul about Abandon. She knew that when the time came to divulge, to share, her private audience with the work – still vivid to her – would have to be relinquished. She kept Julius’s letter under her bed, in the shoebox that contained all her childhood treasures. She knew that when it came to handing the letter over – to validate, authenticate and legitimize James’s loan – that then she would be grown up. She wouldn’t be able to chat to Julius thereafter, nor to refer to him by his Christian name. She wasn’t quite ready for that just yet, so she kept the letter under her bed and didn’t tell anyone what she’d seen in the shed.

She thought of James often, wistfully. But she thought of Matt even more – despite seeing him every day. They were friendly towards each other. Fen, though, did not make a play for him. She didn’t feel entitled. She’d regarded her right palm which said, ‘Fight for him! Tell him you demand the relationship is given a fair chance! Ask him if abstaining from the comforts and commitments of a relationship is making him happier!’ Her left palm, however, said, ‘You blew it, girl. This is your just deserts for wanting everything your own way, for not respecting the potential you had for abusing his honesty, for damaging him, should he ever have found out that you were spectacularly unfaithful to him.’

Otter just wants to bang their heads together hard, to then enable them to kiss each other better. He wants to tell Matt that he’s being ridiculously self-righteous, he wants to tell Fen she’s being a feeble martyr. He can see that neither of them is happy being apart, and because he knows both of them well, he is absolutely adamant that a romantic attachment between them is fail-safe.

‘You’re perverted, you are,’ he jested with Matt, ‘letting Fen go!’

‘Pervert!’ Matt remonstrated. ‘Me? It’s you who indulges in poking around bottoms of the same sex – I rather think Pervert is your middle name!’

I shouldn’t have let Fen go! I shouldn’t! But I felt I ought. And now I feel I ought to stick with that. Partly, I suppose, because I’m not quite sure how to get her back. And if I were to, it really would signify that we embark on a full-on bonafide relationship.

‘For God’s sake, Ed,’ Otter said, exasperated with Matt. He clasped his fingers and stretched them back on themselves, the ensuing hollow crackings setting Matt’s teeth on edge. ‘Now I have your attention,’ Otter said. ‘I just feel – really believe – that you are making a mistake. Fen is charming and gorgeous and sexy and you interact and interlock together beautifully.’

Matt stood up and stormed out. ‘What would you know,’ he barked, ‘gay boy!’

‘Woo him!’ Otter pleaded with Fen. ‘Pursue him!’

‘I wouldn’t know how,’ Fen told him, ‘and anyway, his reasons for ending the relationship make sense. I don’t like them, but I do understand.’

And then came the day when, without fanfare or palm-consultation, Fen brought Julius’s letter into work. She came across Rodney by the pigeon-holes.

‘Please could you spare me five minutes?’ she requested.

‘Good Lord, Fenella!’ he remarked. ‘Are you telepathic?’ He took a custard cream from Bobbie’s biscuit tin and left Reception, shaking his head. In her pigeon-hole, Fen found a note, hand-scrawled from Rodney, suggesting a quick chat in his office after lunch. Fen half wondered if perhaps James had called or written. Oh well, she’d soon find out.

By lunch-time, it became immensely important to her to let Matt know before she told anyone else. She went along to Publications.

‘Hullo, Matt,’ she said, really wishing she could simply not notice that he looked very fine in indigo jeans and a quite tight T-shirt. She glanced at Otter with a faint but perceptible raising of one eyebrow and he took the hint immediately.

‘Dying for a slash,’ he said, rising and leaving the room with a highly exaggerated bladder-about-to-bust walk.

Fen hovered. ‘Um –’

Matt looked up. He refused to be swayed by her smooth bare legs and the fact that she was in the little navy-blue sun dress that had secretly been a favourite of his. ‘Hiya,’ he said. He swivelled in his chair and Fen walked over to him.

‘I wanted to tell you something,’ she said.

Tell me that you love me, Fen. Tell me that you refuse to allow me to be so stupid. Tell me that you will not tolerate this relationship being over, just when it was on the verge of really taking off.

‘What’s up?’ he asked instead.

‘I’ve –’ Fen regarded him. ‘It’s just – I wanted to tell you something.’

Matt looked at her expectantly. Fen approached his desk and perched on it. Her knees, all he could focus on were her knees. He sat on his hands for safety and made a rotation swivel on his chair.

‘I’ve found Abandon,’ Fen said.

Though of course it would have appalled Fen, if truth be told, she really was the only person – possibly anywhere – who thought about Julius Fetherstone on such a regular basis. Matt, though appreciative of the sculptor’s work, certainly didn’t think about him on a weekly basis, let alone daily or hourly. Consequently, he stared at Fen rather vacantly and, because her revelation did not blow his mind, it did not divert his attention from the pressing distraction of her neat knees.

‘In Derbyshire,’ Fen continued, as if that was the further information Matt required to comprehend the magnitude of her announcement. ‘Julius Frigging Fetherstone’s Abandon!’ she marvelled. ‘In a shed in Derbyshire!’

The penny dropped for Matt and he was suitably impressed. ‘Blimey!’ he said. ‘Well done you.’ To emphasize his praise, he felt a friendly tap on her knees was appropriate. God, he wanted to linger. God, did Fen want him to linger!

‘I have a meeting with Rodney this afternoon,’ she told him. ‘I can’t wait to tell him.’

‘Good for you,’ Matt said, ‘good for you.’

And then he didn’t really know what to say next. Nor did Fen. What she wanted to do was fling her arms around his neck and be kissed by him, to have him suggest champagne and celebration. But, sadly, she acknowledged that wasn’t going to happen. ‘Anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘you’re the first person I’ve told. Because I wanted you to know first.’

Matt liked the sound of that. ‘Let me know how Rodney reacts,’ he told her. ‘My bet is that he’ll jump up and down on his desk and say, “Yippee!” and then charge around his office giving the thumbs up!’

Matt and Fen shared laughter at their director’s expense.

Only Rodney didn’t behave like an overgrown schoolboy. He didn’t jump for joy and shout, ‘Yippee!’ and dart about brandishing his thumbs. When Fen knocked on his door, Judith’s voice told her to enter. Fen came into Rodney’s office to find him and Judith sitting there, looking very serious indeed.

‘Have a seat,’ Rodney said. Fen sat down. Her director looked very unhappy indeed. Oh well, news of the Fetherstone would no doubt lift his spirits and make his day. How could it fail to do otherwise!

Rodney fiddled with paper-clips on his desk and pursed his lips thoughtfully. ‘Dear Fenella,’ he said, ‘dear Fenella.’

Judith took the reins. ‘With the Archive so near completion,’ she said, wearing a smugness across her face utterly opposed to the clear distress etching Rodney’s, ‘we thought it only fair to alert you to the fact that the job itself will also be complete.’

Fen looked a little blank. Weren’t they meant to be talking about Julius Fetherstone? Judith watched for Fen’s reaction. Fen obviously hadn’t understood. Judith would have to be more blatant. Rodney wasn’t going to be much help, Judith noticed, seeing the director poking paper-clips into an empty juice bottle nervously. ‘Fen,’ Judith said, with kindness so gracious that it was jarringly false, ‘we’re going to have to let you go.’

‘Go where?’ Fen asked, her mind still being firmly in the shed in Derbyshire.

‘Well, with the Archive project finished,’ Rodney said, snapping to attention and wresting control from Judith so he could add the tact and sensitivity Fen deserved, ‘unfortunately, the job is finished too. And there isn’t anything else here that we can give you.’ Fen stared at him. He looked as if he was going to sob. ‘I wanted to give you warning – so you could start scouting around. I wish the Archive had been bigger!’ he rued. ‘Then you could still work with us.’

I’m being given the sack, the push, the elbow! I’ve lost my job. I’m unemployed. I won’t be working for Trust Art. I’ll have to go job hunting. I’ll have to buy the Guardian every Monday and Saturday. I’ll have to tell my bank. I’m going to be broke. I’m going to be dismissed.

The shock of it rendered Fen incapable of saying anything other than a mumbled thank you for having me I’ve loved working here; all she could do, really, was leave the director’s office to seek sanctuary in her Archive.

Matt had been awaiting Fen’s appearance in his office, anticipating her effervescence at Rodney’s reaction to the reappearance of Abandon. But she didn’t show. She couldn’t still be down there. He phoned her extension. A very very small voice answered at the other end.

‘Fen?’

‘Matt?’

He went directly to her. As soon as she saw him standing in the doorway, as soon as she clocked the genuine concern on his face, she cast her eyes to her lap and let her tears fall. Quietly, Matt came into the room, shutting the door.

‘Was it a fake?’ he asked. ‘Or stolen?’

‘I didn’t tell them,’ Fen croaked. ‘My job is finished. Unrenewable.’

‘What?’ Matt said, though he heard and understood clearly.

‘They’re letting me go,’ Fen whispered, ‘when the Archive is finished in a fortnight or so.’

Matt was stunned and horrified. Not so much because he felt that Trust Art would be the poorer for the loss of a talent like Fen’s, but because he suddenly thought how dull his days would be without her floating around. Fen would always be in the Archive – surely? Invariably sitting cross-legged with a clutch of documents in her lap, enthusing over pamphlets of some long-forgotten exhibition, marvelling at photographs of artists and patrons, delighting in handwritten letters by people dead for years. Fen was the Archive. The Archive was what Fen did. What would it be without her? An empty room, door mostly closed, contents meticulously and lovingly organized within.

‘I can’t believe it,’ Matt said, squeezing her shoulders though he felt he was in need of comfort himself. ‘It’s appalling that they’d do that to you.’

Fen sniffed snottily. ‘I didn’t tell them about Abandon,’ she said, ‘I forgot.’

Matt phoned her late that night. She’d gone to bed early, having put Julius’s letter back in the shoebox. Her heart lifted to see it was him calling. How she’d love him to be here in person.

‘Just phoning to check you’re OK,’ he said.

‘I am,’ said Fen. ‘I’m just sad – I always knew the Archive was a project to be begun and therefore to be concluded too – but I’m just sad that I’ll be leaving.’

‘Me too,’ said Matt, ‘me too. But listen, you must tell Rodney about the Fetherstone. If Trust Art could handle its placement, there’d be no better man for the job than you.’

‘Do you think so?’ Fen asked.

‘Of course,’ Matt encouraged. ‘Promise me you’ll go and tell Rodney tomorrow.’

‘OK,’ said Fen.

‘And you just watch him leap with unbridled joy and give you a huge thumbs up!’

‘Thanks, Matt,’ said Fen.

‘Night, babe,’ he said.

Why did I phone? I should’ve just gone round there.

I’m so glad he phoned. And I don’t want to sound ungrateful but I sort of wish he’d just turned up on the doorstep.

Easy, you two, one step at a time.

Rodney did indeed bound around his office on hearing of Fen’s discovery. He shook her hand so vigorously it hurt. He slapped her on the back too, hard. And when she left his office, he gave her an ecstatic double thumbs up.

‘Marvellous!’ he exclaimed to himself. ‘Good old Fenella McCabe – she’s an asset to the Trust and now it seems we can keep hold of her.’

There’s just a minor spanner in the works to cause a little last-minute disruption. After all, we can’t have a happy-ever-after immediately. It would all be just a little anticlimactic, just a little too cosy and therefore slightly unsatisfying too.

In a quirk of symmetry, the potential disruption at the close of the story comes in the same form as it did at the start of this tale – in the sharp-suited guise of Judith St John. Judith didn’t particularly like Julius Fetherstone. Nor was she particularly taken with Matthew Holden. She didn’t like Fen McCabe at all – mainly because everybody else did, plus she found Fen’s femininity somewhat cloying. The trouble with people like Judith, who find it easier and more pleasurable to dislike rather than like, is that they really don’t care if they themselves are disliked. Judith wasn’t sly or cruel, she didn’t want to ruin Fen’s life or consciously cause her unhappiness. However, Fen had something Judith wanted and Judith simply couldn’t see why Fen should have it if she herself could have it instead. And if, in the process, Trust Art would benefit, surely that was all the more reason to pursue something that was ultimately for the best.

Fen’s salary as archivist had been provided by Lady Helena Minchey – widow of the Sir Michael who, along with Henry Holden, was surely one of the greatest benefactors of the visual arts. Lady Helena ruled her late husband’s charitable trust meticulously and constructively. Whereas Sir Michael would have bestowed thousands of pounds on any impoverished artist, Lady Helena maximized funds available by demanding detailed presentations and documents from applicants. This scared away individuals who thought that merely holding out a begging bowl would be enough. She had ensured that Trust Art had taken her to lunch twice, plus produced a ten-page paper to justify the donation from the Minchey Foundation to fund the Archive.

Now she was back in the offices in John Islip Street, being nattered to by Bobbie whilst awaiting Judith and Rodney and lunch at St John’s, Smith Square. Bobbie didn’t care for airs and graces. If someone was wearing a suit from Marks & Spencer that was the same as her sister’s, she’d remark on the fact.

‘It’s not from Marks & Spencer,’ Lady Helena all but hissed.

‘It is too,’ Bobbie remarked, ‘and your hem’s down at the back.’

‘This is Daks!’ Lady Helena declared, appalled that her hem was down at the back.

‘Whatever you say, ducks,’ said Bobbie, who then thought that Lady Helena would be interested in her sister’s husband’s gout and thus proceeded to tell her all about it.

Rodney put the case to Lady Helena for a continued salary for Fen McCabe.

‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘she’s discovered Abandon by Julius Fetherstone.’

Lady Helena looked up from her pavlova sharply. ‘Where is it?’ she asked.

‘In a shed in the country,’ Rodney elaborated, because for a Surrey boy, anywhere rural and north of Watford was simply ‘country’.

‘Good God!’ Lady Helena exclaimed. ‘Is it all above board? Is it stolen?’

‘There’s a letter of authenticity from Fetherstone,’ Rodney said, ‘which specifies to whom he bequeaths the sculpture.’

‘Who?’ Lady Helena demands. ‘Who has it?’

‘It’s a very, very sensitive issue,’ Rodney says honestly and with no manufactured ambiguity. ‘The chappy wishes to remain anonymous.’

Lady Helena nods. ‘But what do you want from me?’ she asks.

‘Lolly!’ Rodney cries. ‘Dosh! The placing of this work will have to be sensitively handled – we can’t just give it to the first institution which offers it a home. The publicity surrounding it needs to be carefully handled. There will be scholars and sceptics to entertain, too. The process itself – from the shed to a gallery – could take half a year or so. Anyway, Fen McCabe discovered the work so I feel we should set her up to see it to completion. She’s done magnificently with the Archive!’

‘Granted,’ Lady Helena agreed, ‘OK. I think it’s a worthy enough cause. If I do sponsor the role, I would like to be privileged to all this guarded information – just for my own amusement.’

‘Of course,’ Rodney nodded. ‘Oops! Little boys’ room, I rather think!’ And he disappeared off to the loo.

‘You’re frightfully quiet,’ Lady Helena remarked to Judith.

‘I’m just thinking,’ Judith said. ‘Do you mind if I think out loud?’

‘Please,’ said Lady Helena.

So Judith delivered the theory she’d formulated and honed all evening the night before. ‘However exciting this project, I’m not entirely sure that it warrants a full-time position within the Trust,’ she told Lady Helena, ‘or even a part-time position. Yes, Fenella found the work – but the job would be about coordination, in the main.’

By the time Rodney had returned from the toilets, settling the bill on the way, Lady Helena was looking very pleased and Judith was looking decidedly flushed.

‘Golly, Judith,’ Rodney said, ‘have you had a little too much wine?’

‘God, Rodney,’ Judith sighed.

‘Judith is a fabulous administrator,’ Lady Helena told Rodney. ‘She’s pointed out that the placing of the Fetherstone is well within her capabilities, well within the specifications of her job and will hardly eat into her ongoing responsibilities. So there is no need for a separate individual. Judith has saved the Minchey Foundation funds that could be so usefully applied elsewhere. I am therefore going to make an extra donation to Trust Art this year. Marvellous.’

Rodney listened carefully. He had to agree, Judith’s theory made sense. Damn! He’d have to disappoint Fenella yet again, poor girl.

This hit Fen far harder than the end of her role as archivist. Whereas Matt and Otter wanted to do voodoo on Judith, Fen displayed enormous dignity and generosity.

‘But she’s right,’ she said softly, ‘it makes sense, it saves money – which of course means there’s more money there to save art for the nation. Judith’s just doing her job.’

‘But Julius is yours,’ Otter remonstrated huffily.

‘Hear hear,’ said Matt.

‘You’ll have done all the hard work – over years,’ Otter stressed, ‘for that harridan to reap all the glory.’

‘God, has the woman no pride,’ Matt muttered.

Fen contemplated her baguette of brie and pickle. She placed it in her lap and took a sip of cappuccino. ‘But boys,’ she said, ‘it isn’t about glory and ownership, it’s about the greatest work of late-nineteenth-century figurative sculpture.’ They looked at her. ‘I just want to see it placed in a safe and loving home.’ She shrugged.

‘But you found it,’ Matt protested. ‘Surely you’d like to accompany it?’

‘Of course I would,’ Fen said, ‘but I didn’t find it, Matt, it found me.’

‘What do you mean?’ Matt asks as he walks with Fen back to the Trust offices, Otter having made a detour to the newsagent for a copy of the Evening Standard, ‘about you not finding it? I thought you said it was in a shed in Derbyshire?’

‘It is,’ said Fen, ‘but I was no detective, Matt. The chap who has it came to me. I didn’t really have to do a thing.’

Matt stopped in the middle of the pavement and looked at her. ‘He came to you?’ he verified.

‘Yup,’ Fen said, ‘I handled the transaction with the Tate for his other Fetherstones.’

‘Eden?’ Matt checked.

‘Yes,’ said Fen, ‘so I presume I simply sprung to mind when he decided to reveal Abandon.’

‘Right,’ said Matt thoughtfully, ‘right.’

Later that afternoon, when Otter had gone down to raid Bobbie’s biscuit tin, Matt made a phone call.

‘Hi, Mummy. Hey? Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine. Listen, are you around this weekend? Can I come home? I want to talk to you about something.’

FIFTY

Every woman should have one old love she can imagine going back to … and one who reminds her how far she has come …

Anon

The last day of August was Fen’s last day as archivist for Trust Art. Rodney had organized a send-off on a par with the welcome brigade he’d prepared for her arrival in the spring. A breakfast in the boardroom with brioche and Bollinger. Rodney had made a gushing speech and there’d been cheering – and tears too, from Bobbie and Fen. Otter and Matt were to take her out to lunch. Before then, she spent the morning checking and double-checking that the Archive was in order and could rest until it was needed. She was pleased with her work. It had been fascinating, however dusty and disorganized it had been along the way. She decided to leave her Fetherstone postcards on the pinboard. She had plenty more at home and liked the idea that whoever visited the room could have them to gaze upon should they glance up and catch sight of them.

‘I’ll always be looking for converts,’ Fen said to the postcards. ‘I’d make a great Jehovah’s Witness!’

She sat and swivelled in her chair, checked her e-mails and noted down addresses – electronic and otherwise – of friendly contacts she’d made at galleries and collections over the last few months. It all felt like the last day of the school year. Only she wouldn’t be returning next term. There was a knock on her door. Otter poked his head around.

‘Lunch-time, sweetie?’

‘Great,’ said Fen.

‘Matt can’t make it,’ Otter said, ‘he’s having lunch with Rodney and Judith – very last minute.’ Otter could see disappointment cross Fen’s face. ‘Won’t I do?’ he asked her with a sorry pout.

‘Of course you will,’ said Fen, giving his waist a squeeze, hoping she hadn’t crushed his hip bones in the process.

They walked along the corridor. ‘Ooh, I am cruel,’ said Otter. ‘I’m bullshitting you something rotten – it’s me who can’t make lunch, not Matt. I met a charming boy at a revolting club over the weekend – and, well, he said he’d love to meet me for lunch.’

Fen was happy for him. And very happy that it meant she had Matt to herself for an hour.

Matt had roast beef and horseradish on rye, Fen had egg, cheese and spinach in a granary bap. They took their lunch to the gardens opposite the Trust building.

‘End of an era,’ Matt mused.

Fen nodded. Her mouthful was suddenly stuck in her throat because of a knot tying itself there. She put her sandwich to one side and took thoughtful sips of her apple juice. Matt was wittering on about work, weather and the weekend. She was only half hearing him. She was staring very intently at each of her palms in turn. He watched her. He didn’t know what she was thinking but he could see that her mind was whirring away. She had very neat hands, but he wasn’t sure quite why her palms so frequently invited such utter scrutinizing. He slipped his hand on top of her left, he placed her right hand on top of his and then held that himself. The best sandwich ever.

Fen panics for a moment.

I need to see my palms!

No, you don’t.

But I do! I do!

No, you don’t.

But I haven’t quite finished my ponderings.

Yes, you have. Go on, Fen.

Fen contemplates their interleaved hands for a moment. She can sense Matt is looking at her.

‘Just because you were in one long-term relationship that went wrong is no reason whatsoever to prevent you from embarking on another,’ Fen blurts. ‘Sorry,’ she says meekly. Matt is silent. But he’s keeping his hands in place. ‘I just feel,’ Fen says, ‘that we were very good together. And I respected the space you wanted. But I don’t any more.’ Matt raises his eyebrows. ‘You see, since we split up, we’ve actually been able to maintain a friendship,’ Fen says, ‘and friendship is the most fundamental basis for a relationship.’ She nods. Then she nods again because she doesn’t really know what to say now.

‘But there has to be sexual attraction, too,’ Matt says, out of the blue.

‘Well,’ Fen mutters, ‘well.’ Then she looks at him directly. ‘I fancy you like crazy, you daft, annoying sod!’

She wishes he’d smile. She cannot gauge his reaction, or how he’s feeling, or whether she should just shut up now and save her dignity. It would be ghastly to be chucked again when already chucked.

‘I think,’ she says quietly, ‘that for us lot – hitting our thirties – it was impossible to sustain relationships started in our twenties. That’s the decade during which we grow and develop into who we really are – with all the opportunities and experiences laid at our disposal.’

‘Oh, shut up, Fen,’ Matt says. She doesn’t really hear him, nor does she feel him squeeze her hand.

‘And, if I’m honest, I wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I actually wanted you,’ Fen says with honesty that hurts her, ‘and I’m worried that I’ve blown it.’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Matt says again, though again unheard.

‘But I really think that you shouldn’t deny yourself the potential happiness of a relationship just because you’ve been there, done that and it didn’t work out.’

‘I agree,’ says Matt.

‘And the rebound is utter nonsense,’ Fen continues.

‘I agree,’ says Matt.

‘And –’ says Fen. She stops. ‘What did you say?’

‘I’m holding your hands, agreeing with everything you say,’ Matt shrugs. ‘Will you take me back? Will you take me on?’

‘Me?’ Fen says. ‘You? But I feel I should be asking you the same!’

‘Will you?’ Matt asks.

‘Will you?’ Fen asks back.

Hand squeezing is all that’s needed. And a deep kiss, in full view of the other workers taking their lunch, in full view of Judith glancing out of her office window, seals it all.

‘One thing,’ Fen says, as they cross the road to the Trust Art building. ‘If we do the whole love and, in time, the living-together thing – promise me we can still have rude sex. That we don’t have to go for lights out and missionary position just once a week?’

Matt looks perplexed. He bites his lip and furrows his brow. ‘I don’t know if that’s possible,’ he says, running his hand down her back and cupping her buttock in his hand. As she climbs the stairs a step ahead of him, he slips his hand right up her skirt, right between her legs. They stop on the landing and have a really good snog, not caring who might see them. No one does. ‘Once a week?’ Matt says, with mock horror. ‘How exhausting!’

Matt has requested a meeting with Rodney and Judith. Rodney is suddenly irrationally terrified that Matt is going to hand in his notice and inform them he has a job editing a lad’s mag. He confides this fear to Judith who looks at him as if he’s a halfwit.

‘Come in!’ Rodney cries, to Matt’s knock. ‘Have a seat! Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?’

Judith is seriously worried that Rodney is going to come straight out with some huge pay-rise offer. ‘What can we do for you, Matthew?’ she asks.

‘It’s like this,’ Matt says. He sits down and settles himself very comfortably in the chair. ‘I was at home a couple of weeks ago. And the long and the short of it is that my mother would like to direct further funds from my late father’s trust to Trust Art.’

Rodney beams. Judith has to stop herself licking her lips. Rodney can’t help himself from giving Matt the thumbs up. ‘Specifically, the funds are for a salary,’ Matt continues, ‘for a job position to be titled the Henry Holden Research Fund.’

‘How terrific!’ Rodney enthuses, though still unsure of the precise demands of such a job.

‘My mother wants to encourage other collectors – or their families – to donate or loan documents or works of art for the Holden Researcher to organize, to collate, to disperse.’

Judith and Rodney are absolutely hanging on Matt’s every word. ‘Such people need to know that there’s a place and a specialist who will analyse and archive and, if they wish, rehouse their collections.’ Rodney starts clapping.

‘Did you realize,’ says Matt, looking at his nails and then looking from Judith to Rodney and then back again, ‘that Fen McCabe did not come across Abandon?’

‘She didn’t?’ Rodney looks horrified, Judith looks very interested.

‘No,’ Matt confirms, ‘Abandon came to her. Or, specifically, the man who owns it. He approached Fen because he trusts her, because he knows that her absolute love for art would mean that hers are the safest hands in which to entrust his beloved collection.’

Now Judith is starting to look a little horrified while Rodney just looks riveted.

‘The Holden Research Fund should sponsor Fen,’ Matt says. ‘She’s a brilliant scholar, a thorough archivist and she’s a respected art historian.’

‘Hear hear!’ Rodney cries, thumping his fist on his desk and grinning at Matt and at Judith.

‘So that’s a weight off your hands,’ Matt says to Judith. ‘You can get on with your work without worrying about managing the rehousing of Abandon.’

Judith shifts in her seat. Her eyes are dark with distress and humiliation.

‘It’s right that the project should be given to Fen,’ says Matt, ‘don’t you think?’

‘Absolutely,’ says Rodney, ‘Judith?’

Judith coughs but manages to nod.

‘Crikey,’ says Rodney to Matt, ‘can I thank your mum in person?’ Matt smiles. ‘Righty ho! Bloody waste of time and money Fenella’s leaving do this morning – we’ll have to have a welcome-back do now, too!’ Matt smiles. ‘I say,’ says Rodney, ‘who’ll go up to the Archive to tell her? Shall you or I?’

Matt smiles. ‘I think Judith should,’ he says.

EPILOGUE

And you, great sculptor – so, you gave

A score of years to Art, her slave,

And that’s your Venus, whence we turn

To yonder girl that fords the burn!

Robert Browning

Fen McCabe is packing her bags. She glances out of the window. If London leaves are dull brown this morning, she knows for sure that those in Derbyshire will be burnished copper, all shades of russet, auburn and gold. She considers what to pack. It won’t be cold enough for her Puffa jacket but the nip in the air will necessitate a couple of layers plus a chunky polo-neck. Thick socks and walking boots. Nivea for the face, after an afternoon stomping the moors with the wind and probably some rain and an overall chill. Invigorating! She can hardly wait to arrive. She’s taken a day off work. Now that she has a salary, she has proper holiday entitlement too.

Fen leaves her room predictably neat and tidy. Gemma’s room, surprisingly, is meticulously spic and span. It appears, from the stripped bed and upended mattress, that some major autumnal spring clean is going on. If that’s not a contradiction in terms. Down a level, Fen goes to the bathroom. When she comes out, whistling for some reason, she is halfway down to the ground floor when she hears her name being called. It is Abi’s voice, coming from her room.

‘Hang on,’ Fen calls back. She places her bag by the front door and lightly springs back up the stairs to Abi’s room.

‘Abs? You OK?’ says Fen. ‘I was trying not to wake you – I’m off to Derbyshire, remember.’

‘Fen?’

‘Gem?’

‘Come and say goodbye,’ Abi is saying.

‘Yes,’ says Gemma, ‘come in and say goodbye.’

Fen pushes open Abi’s door. Why anything should surprise her where her flatmates are concerned is baffling, but still she is slightly taken aback to find them both snuggled up in Abi’s bed. Fen actually scans the room for Jake, or evidence of him.

‘Are you looking for Jake?’ Abi asks.

‘Because we chucked him!’ Gemma giggles, her luxuriant curls all tousled by the demands of sleep. Abi and Gemma sit up, clutching the sheet demurely to their breasts.

‘He had become,’ Abi drawls, ‘superfluous to our needs.’

Fen stands there and takes it all in.

‘It’s just us two now,’ Gemma explains.

‘Two’s company,’ Abi shrugs.

‘Three’s a crowd,’ Fen colludes.

‘Are you shocked?’ Gemma asks.

Fen thinks about it. No, not shocked. ‘No,’ she replies, ‘seeing your room so clean and tidy – that was far more of a shock.’

‘We thought we’d have my old room as another lounge, a sort of non-TV, chill-out kind of den,’ Gemma explains enthusiastically. ‘Are you OK about that?’

‘Sure,’ Fen says.

‘And are you OK about this?’ Abi asks, tenderly and with hope.

Fen regards the two of them. They look relaxed and happy. They really look rather sweet. ‘Sure,’ she says, ‘more than OK. You’re my friends!’ They look so relieved. ‘And you make a beautiful couple,’ Fen purrs in an American accent. They all giggle. A car’s horn sounds. ‘I must go,’ Fen says, ‘see you Sunday.’

‘Have fun!’ they call after her.

‘I will,’ Fen calls back, the front door open. ‘You two have fun, too.’

‘We will!’ they call back as the front door closes. They snuggle back down under the sheets. It’s very early. They don’t have to get up for a good hour.

‘Sorry!’ Fen said, throwing her bag into the back of Matt’s car under a barrage of irritating horn parps from the cars behind. She settled in and put her seat-belt on. ‘Only Abi and Gemma wanted to inform me that they’ve chucked Jake for each other.’

‘I know,’ said Matt. ‘Jake had his head in his hands all last night. He says it’s the most emasculating thing that’s ever befallen him.’

‘Oh dear!’ Fen responded, mingling concern with just a touch of sarcasm.

‘He’ll bounce back,’ Matt assured her. ‘He was talking about going to Amsterdam for the weekend with a couple of his old pals from college rugby.’

‘I doubt whether they’ll be spending much time in the Rijksmuseum,’ Fen mused. She went a little quiet.

Matt glanced at her and put his hand on her knee. ‘Jake is talking about moving out by Christmas,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ said Fen.

‘You might think about moving in,’ Matt said, ‘once he’s gone, of course. Three being a crowd and all that.’

Fen laughed. And then she smiled to herself. Three was a crowd, a triangle with sharp edges. She slid her hand over Matt’s forearm. She kept it there. He glanced at her, after negotiating a dustcart and some school children. Fen was smiling at him and her eyes were sparkling.

Matt and Fen arrived in Derbyshire just after elevenses. This was Matt’s second visit. In preparation, he had had only the lightest of breakfasts this time and was therefore well able to tackle the lunch Django had spent all morning concocting with great imagination and practically every ingredient in the house.

On Saturday morning, Fen and Matt decided to take advantage of the dry day and go for a good long walk, made all the more tempting by the promise of ploughman’s lunches at the Rag and Thistle halfway round. Mrs Merifield’s pickled onions were incomparable, as were the hunks of unpasteurized cheddar. The pub smelt delicious, cosy and warm and beery. It was crowded.

‘You can’t leave that!’ Matt remonstrated, eyeing the celery sticks and mound of home-made chutney on Fen’s plate. ‘It’s an insult!’

‘I’m full,’ Fen protested, stretching back and patting her stomach for emphasis. ‘What’s it worth to you?’

‘To me?’ Matt joked back. ‘What’s it worth to you – you’ll be hitchhiking back home tomorrow otherwise.’ With that, he tucked into the remnants on her plate. Fen settled back into the chair and soaked up her surroundings: the smell of the place, the laughter and chatter, the familiarity of it all. Her territory. She felt safe. She gazed over at Matt, sipping his beer, unaware of the splodge of chutney on his chin. She felt superbly content. She was so happy to have him here with her. She reached for her bitter shandy. And suddenly, her knee was soaking wet with it. So would yours be, after an energetic head-butt from an amorous labrador and the snout of an adoring lurcher being thrust into your crotch.

Barry?

Beryl?

Fen was being licked and nudged and gruffled at by the two dogs.

Oh my God, she thought, stroking them, pulling their ears, scrunching her fingers into their necks, oh my God.

‘Dogs!’ The voice came from right across the pub.

Oh my God. James!

She couldn’t see him. Nor could the dogs so they ignored him and drenched Fen with their affection instead.

‘Dogs!’

She couldn’t see him, she could only hear him.

‘Dogs! Battersea!’

Reluctantly, Barry and Beryl took their leave of Fen and slalomed through legs and bodies to the door.

‘Excuse me a mo’,’ she said to Matt.

‘Someone you know?’ he asked. Fen nodded and touched his cheek.

She’s in the car park. The Land Rover is there. Where are they? Suddenly, the dogs bolt back at her and James’s arms prevent her from being thrown to the ground.

‘James!’ she gasps.

‘Hullo, Miss McCabe,’ he says. All the excitement has exhausted Beryl, who is sitting and leaning hard against Fen, nudging her every now and then. Barry is having a lengthy pee against someone’s particularly shiny Jaguar.

‘How have you been?’

‘Great,’ Fen beams, ‘very well. You?’

‘Just dandy,’ James tells her. ‘How’s Django?’

‘In fine form,’ Fen says. She looks at James’s boots. ‘There’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ she says.

‘Oh yes?’ says James. Fen nods.

‘A bloke?’ James asks.

Fen regards him and nods.

‘The chap you were sitting with? With chutney on his chin?’

Fen smiles and nods.

‘Someone special?’ he probes.

Again, Fen nods.

‘Then I’d be happy to meet him,’ James assures her.

‘He’s special to you, too,’ Fen whispers, keeping her eyes fixed on James’s face to gauge his reaction, ‘it’s Matthew Holden.’

Just momentarily, a tiny part of James wants to shout, ‘Not fair! I want you!’ But seeing Fen so happy is balm indeed. ‘Bloody hell!’ James says instead.

‘Shall I’ Fen asks, ‘fetch him?’

‘Of course,’ says James. Fen walks briskly across the car park. She is gorgeous, James thinks to himself, but nostalgically and without longing or regret. It’s so lovely to see her. It really is. ‘Good to keep her in the family,’ James says out loud, ‘hey dogs?’

Matt is about to come looking for Fen, fearing that the huge hounds have dragged her off somewhere. But here she is, returning, looking flushed, looking as if she’s wet herself where the spilt shandy has stained her jeans dark. She doesn’t take her chair, she comes to sit beside him, presses close next to him.

‘Matt,’ she says, holding his hand, ‘there’s someone I’d like you to meet. There’s someone who wants to meet you. There’s someone it is important and wonderful for you to meet.’

‘Not your mother returned from the cowboy in Denver?’ Matt gasps, because that’s the only person he could think of just then who would warrant such a serious preamble from Fen.

‘No, no, no!’ Fen says, brushing the air with irritation. ‘James Caulfield.’

‘Who’s James Caulfield?’ Matt asks. Fen’s eyes are darting around his face. ‘Oh!’ The penny has dropped. ‘The chap with the Fetherstones?’

‘Yes,’ says Fen, ‘and two dogs.’

‘I’d love to,’ Matt says.

They stand up.

‘Matt,’ says Fen and she cups his lovely face in her hands and kisses the smear of chutney off his chin. ‘Matt,’ she says and she takes his hand and kisses the palm of it, laying it against her cheek. She closes her eyes for a moment. ‘Matt,’ she says, with an ecstatic smile, ‘you have a half-brother.’

AFTERWORD

Fen was meant to be my fourth novel – yet it became my fifth. It is the only book I’ve started twice – initially in 1997, then again in 2000. I was at a bit of a low ebb first time round but luckily the opportunity to research Cat came along so I threw myself into the world of the Tour de France instead and picked up Fen almost three years later. Of course, I’d come to know her better through writing about her sister, Cat. The novels are set within the same time frame so I had an inkling of what she’d be up to during the setting of her own story. Sometimes I feel little more than my characters’ PA – they bring me their tales and I take dictation. Really, I have little control over what they do. Some people talk to trees, some people talk to themselves – I talk to my characters, but I am far from being their puppeteer. My job is to relay their stories to you. Which is why, sometimes, my own voice comes through – encouraging them when they lack confidence and, more often, scolding them for misbehaving! Fen falls for two very different men simultaneously – but she is far from being an old trollop and I became extremely fond of her and totally embroiled in her dilemma. This was the novel where I also fell utterly in love with Django – interestingly, he is perhaps the most popular of all my characters amongst my readers.

I thoroughly indulged my love of art whilst writing Fen – specifically, my own obsession with Rodin. I also drew upon my experiences (both good and, er, interesting) of working in the art world – as an archivist at the National Art Collections Fund (then located a stone’s throw from Tate Britain) as well as for a private sculpture garden (deep in Wiltshire – and worthy of a novel in its own right!). The only way I could truly bring to life the works of fictitious Julius Fetherstone was to sketch them out – otherwise, they were almost impossible to describe and I’d become befuddled about whose limb belonged to whom! My study walls were papered with photos of Rodin sculptures and my own drawings on behalf of Julius. I’m always enormously flattered when readers tell me that they’ve been to the Tate … but there were no Fetherstones on display!

Rereading Fen recently, I was struck how, despite being my fifth novel, it was the first of my books where emails became suddenly a natural part of a couple’s courtship – though there’s still a distinct absence of text messaging! However, the landline phone calls between Fen and James have a real frisson which perhaps would have been diluted via casual texting and it makes the distance between London and Derbyshire feel marked. I’ve always loved Derbyshire, specifically the area around Matlock and my great friends the Merifields enabled me to stay and potter around – and were rewarded with cameo appearances!

Of course, my second novel Chloë featured a wide range of animals during her trip to Wales. In Fen, James’s dogs Barry and Beryl were true characters in their own right as well as strategic to the plot. Location, too, was more than a backdrop as it also aided and abetted the characters’ actions. The tension between town and country was crucial – not least because I was a city girl with a yearning to live rurally. It also defined James and Matt and made their differences so obvious – thus making Fen’s choice so difficult.

My books are pretty raunchy – but whilst writing Fen I became pregnant with my first child. My hormones were all over the place and parts of the book were, if I say so myself, downright filthy! In fact, it’s the only book of mine where my editor, Lynne Drew, has taken her red pen and actually crossed things out – with notes in the margin which varied from ‘Too much information!’ to ‘Tone it down’ and, most memorably, ‘YUK’! I do of course have the original uncensored version, stored in the loft at home – and I’m open to offers … Perhaps one day I’ll publish it – under a pen name of course!

Fen’s choice between Matt and James – both such smashing blokes – really had my readers divided and from the letters I’ve received it’s obvious that both chaps have equally passionate fans. Want to know a secret? I would have gone for James, myself. I had hoped Fen would too but, as I’ve said, my characters have minds of their own – it was her choice, her decision, and I had to respect that. And if you’ve read Home Truths – which takes up the McCabe story five years on – you’ll know she made the right one.

Freya North

Spring 2012

Acclaim for Freya

‘Darkly funny and sexy – literary escapism at its very finest’

Sunday Independent

‘Secrets will make you smile, sigh and cheer as this story proves love can be found in the most unexpected places’

Sunday Express

‘… another sure-fire hit for Freya’

Heat

‘A breath of fresh air … fresh and witty’

Daily Express

‘A fab read’

Closer

‘Fast paced, page-turning and full of endearing, interesting characters. I defy anyone who doesn’t fall in love with it’

Glamour

‘Settle down and indulge’

Cosmopolitan

‘The novel’s likeable central characters are so well painted that you feel not only that you know them, but that you know how right they are for each other … the beauty of the North Yorkshire countryside contrasts convincingly with the bustle of London’

Daily Telegraph

‘North charts the emotional turmoil with a sexy exactitude’

Marie Claire

‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals with the darker side of love – these are real women, with real feelings’

She

‘A delicious creation … sparkling in every sense’

Daily Express

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship’

Glamour

‘Plenty that’s fresh to say about the age-old differences between men and women’

Marie Claire

‘An eye-poppingly sexy start leads into a family reunion laced with secrets. Tangled mother/daughter relationships unravel and tantalising family riddles keep you glued to the end’

Cosmopolitan

‘You’ll laugh, cry, then laugh some more’

Company

‘Freya North manages to strike a good balance between drama, comedy and romance, and has penned another winner … touching, enjoyable’

Heat

‘An addictive read with a realistic view of home life, sisterhood and identity crisis’

Prima

FREYA NORTH

Pip

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain
by William Heinemann 2003

Copyright © Freya North 2003

Afterword © Freya North 2012

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

‘The Tears of a Clown’. Words and Music by Stevie Wonder, William Robinson and Henry Cosby © 1967, Jobete Music Co, Inc./Black Bull Music, Inc., USA. Reproduced by permission of Black Bull Music Inc., Jobete Music Co., London WC2H 0QY. All rights Reserved

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

Source ISBN: 9780007462254

EPub Edition © June 2012 ISBN: 9780007462261

Version 1

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

For Mum and Dad

We never know the love of our parents for us till we have become parents.

Now I know! Thank you.

Contents

Cover

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

Afterword

Acclaim for Freya

ONE

‘There’s really not that much difference between lap dancing and doing what I do,’ Pip McCabe proclaimed in a very matter-of-fact way over a robust but imaginative dinner that her uncle Django had spent the afternoon preparing in celebration of his three nieces’ weekend visit home to Derbyshire. Django spooned a large portion of something alarmingly beige on to his plate and appeared to contemplate it at length. In fact, he was considering his eldest niece’s words, wondering if he’d misheard, wondering if Pip had changed jobs; wondering, basically, what on earth he was going to do with her. Pip’s two younger sisters, Fen and Cat, sniggered into their semolina. Django had proudly called it ‘polenta’. But that was imaginative both with the truth and with the ingredients of the dish itself.

The three sisters tactfully referred to it as ‘polenta’ because they, too, were being imaginative with the truth as well as heedful of the chef’s sensitivities. Having been brought up single-handedly by their uncle Django, the McCabe girls were well accustomed to his eccentricities and loved him all the more because of them. He devoted the same imaginative attention to idiosyncratic detail in his dress sense as to his cooking. The sisters saw nothing untoward about pea soup with tuna and stilton, or rhubarb crumble with Jelly Babies instead of rhubarb. They had never gone hungry and their taste buds had developed a commendable and valuable robustness. Nor did they think it odd that a man in his late sixties should dress in the souvenirs of his colourful past. Today, as Django dolloped polenta on to his plate and enlivened it with a hearty slosh of Henderson’s Relish, he tucked his paisley cravat (he’d partied with the Kinks in the 1960s) into his cambric shirt, and loosened the enormous buckled belt he’d acquired at some free festival or other, currently holding together a pair of jeans Clint Eastwood would have coveted for a Spaghetti Western.

‘Philippa,’ he said, chewing thoughtfully, ‘I implore you to elaborate.’

‘Not much difference at all, really, between lap dancing and my line of work,’ Pip mused whilst masticating. ‘Same attention to make-up, same use and abuse of one’s body. Strutting one’s stuff for money. Having often ghastly punters to deal with. Always being gawped at. I’m pretty much a painted lady, too – quite literally.’

Her family regarded her. Everyone chewed. They all thought to themselves that they were sure polenta was meant to melt in the mouth, not glue the hinges of the jaw together. If Jamie Oliver was to be believed. It tasted good, though, and surely that was the point.

‘It’s a new take on polenta,’ Django reasoned out loud. ‘A polenta for the Millennium.’ Privately they each wondered how long he could credit (or blame) his experiments in the kitchen on the Millennium. As his jaw worked energetically, his mind turned to the vagaries of his niece’s career.

‘The main difference between my work and lap dancing,’ said Pip, holding her fork aloft for good measure, ‘is the working hours. Because, of course, I tend to work days and not nights.’

The McCabes observed with awe how the polenta on Pip’s fork defied both gravity and her expressive hand movements to adhere with such determination.

‘Surely the main difference,’ Django said, sipping sherry from a teacup because he had used the sherry glasses earlier to measure olive oil and Tabasco, ‘is that you wear substantially more clothes when you perform.’

Django, Fen and Cat were momentarily unnerved by the fact that Pip’s confirmation was not immediate.

‘Yes,’ she responded at length, ‘and no.’

‘No?’ Fen asked.

‘No?’ Cat echoed but with a raised tone.

‘No!’ Django boomed as an order, not a question.

‘I’ve modified my motley,’ Pip shrugged. ‘Somewhat skimpier – it’s spring, after all.’

‘God, I wonder whether to move back,’ Cat said, with an audible lump in her throat, as the sisters journeyed by train away from rural Derbyshire and Django, back down to their lives in London.

‘Listen, it’s still very early days for you,’ said Fen, thinking that actually Cat’s split with her odious boyfriend hadn’t come a moment too soon. ‘Why don’t you see how you feel after the summer? After all, it’s been a long-held ambition for you to follow the Tour de France as a journalist – give it your all.’

‘God,’ Cat sighed. Her dream-come-true was now more like a nightmare-in-waiting, such was the low ebb of her self-esteem.

Pip regarded her youngest sister and decided in an instant that humour was essential. ‘Think of all those bronzed thighs, all that testosterone, the lashings of Lycra!’ Cat couldn’t help but giggle. Pip felt she could now introduce a little common sense. ‘You’ve wanted to get up close and personal for years. Here’s your chance. It’ll be an excellent opportunity for someone in your position – further your career as a sports journalist plus get over Bastardwanker. And, of course, you never know whom you might meet.’

‘I’m off to Paris soon myself,’ Fen announced, ‘also to be surrounded by mouth-watering male physiques. Not in Lycra on bicycles, though,’ she all but apologized to Cat.

‘You’re a weirdo,’ Pip teased. ‘The men you salivate over are all marble and bronze sculptures.’ Fen, an art historian, found nothing remotely weird in her penchant for the work of Rodin and his followers and she screwed up her face and poked her tongue out at Pip in protest.

‘Well, I have no plans for Paris or pedallers,’ Pip said in such a tone as to suggest that she wouldn’t want to cross the Channel anyway, ‘but I, too, am due to be surrounded by men.’ She opened a packet of salt-and-vinegar crisps and offered them to her sisters. ‘Holloway, actually,’ she said, with such gravitas that she might well have said Hollywood. ‘I’m doing a show for a young man called Billy. And all his mates.’

TWO

‘Billy Billy Billy,’ Pip chants under her breath whilst putting on a hair band and laying her make-up out in front of her, ‘Billy’s the birthday boy. He’s the blond one in the Gap sweatshirt.’ She stares at her reflection in the mirror she always takes with her. She’s learned from experience not to trust other people’s mirrors – distortion, however subtle or slight, could have utterly drastic consequences. So, wherever she performs, regardless of the size of her audience, the length of her performance, the shortcomings of the venue or the fee she charges, Pip always demands of her client a changing-room with good natural light and a suitable surface other than her knees on which to prop her mirror. Today, she is in Holloway. The gentrified side; where fashionable young folk with large sums of money have been buying up the gorgeous terraces from elderly owners who paid ‘two bob’ for their homes decades ago.

‘Billy’s the birthday boy,’ Pip murmurs, applying her slap, ‘blond hair, Gap sweatshirt.’ She stares at her face.

I remember, when I was fourteen and had bought my first eye-shadow – admittedly bright green – Django saying, ‘Philippa, you’re pretty enough without make-up!’

Now look at me!

‘Positively garish,’ she mutters, wielding a bright red lipstick with gay abandon and adding a final flourish of powder to set the lot. She scoops her hair into two schoolgirl bunches, tying large polka-dot ribbons on each. She puckers up her lips and blows her reflection a pantomime kiss. ‘Well, this is for Billy,’ she says, standing and springing up and down as a warm-up. ‘He’d expect nothing less from me. He’s the birthday boy.’ She hops lightly from toe to toe, jiggling her arms and fingers. ‘Gap sweatshirt. Blond hair.’ Pip clears her throat and hums ‘Happy Birthday’ very fast. She’s ready.

‘She’s great,’ Zac Holmes, who’s been watching quietly from the back of the room, murmurs to the man standing next to him. ‘I must get her number. So many of her ilk can be such a let-down – and pricey, too. You sometimes don’t get what you pay for.’

They watch as Pip does the splits. Billy and his mates gasp with delight. The man next to Zac gives her a round of applause and chuckles, ‘Do you reckon she has business cards to give out?’

Zac feels tired. He rubs his eyes, wondering why he’s wearing contact lenses and not his glasses. His eyes feel dry and uncomfortable. It’s suddenly all a bit too noisy and frantic for him. He’d rather not be in Holloway; he’d rather be diving into a gorgeous cool swimming-pool in the Caribbean, soothing his eyes, refreshing his limbs. But chance would be a fine thing. He hasn’t taken a holiday for over a year. He stifles a yawn. He really ought to go home. He has work to do, despite it being the weekend; regardless that it’s the first weekend he’s officially had off in weeks. Billy’s birthday was fun for a couple of hours but Zac has had enough now. He doesn’t much like Holloway. He’s never really cared for birthdays. He let his own thirtieth come and go without so much as a quick drink with colleagues after work, let alone a celebration with friends or family. And that was almost five years ago. Birthdays. Bollocks. Yes, he’s going to go.

The show now over, Billy and the gang are guzzling down the drinks and tucking into the grub. Zac is hungry but doesn’t really fancy anything on offer. He’ll grab something on his way home to Hampstead. Someone knocks a drink over and it soaks Zac’s right trouser leg. No one seems to notice, let alone apologize. It really is time to go.

‘Happy birthday, Billy old man,’ Zac says, turning on the charm and ruffling Billy’s hair boisterously. ‘I have to go. I’d love to stay but I can’t. I have to work.’

Someone else is vying for Billy’s attention and another drink is sent flying.

‘Have a great party,’ Zac continues. ‘Happy birthday.’

‘Where’s Tom?’ Billy asks, not seeming too bothered if Zac stays or goes.

‘He was hoping to come,’ Zac says, ‘really wanted to. But he hasn’t been feeling too well.’

‘Say “hi” from me.’

‘Happy birthday, Billy,’ Zac repeats.

Alone, out in the hallway, Zac rummages around for his jacket. He has a headache lurking and is muttering ‘Nurofen’ under his breath. He’s suffered with his headaches a lot recently. He searches his pockets but finds only Marlboro Lights. Why does he always carry cigarettes when he rarely smokes more than two a day and doesn’t know why he even smokes those two anyway?

‘Stupid fucking idiot,’ he hisses at himself.

‘Language!’ chastises a female voice.

Zac turns around. Who? Oh. Her. Without the make-up, eyes still quite a startling blue-green. Dressed down in jeans. Upright, not doing the splits. Hair in a plain pony-tail. She’s smaller now, close to and not in costume.

‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes off,’ says Zac and then cringes. ‘I mean, with your clothes on. I mean, in jeans.’

She laughs. ‘Did you enjoy the show?’

‘Great,’ Zac answers economically. He really doesn’t feel much like chatting. He’s hungry and headachy in Holloway when he’d so much rather be home alone in Hampstead.

‘Thanks,’ the girl says, with grace.

‘Have you a card?’ Zac asks, remembering he wanted one though now wondering why.

‘Sure,’ she says, and one seems to materialize, as if by magic, from what appeared to be the swiftest snap of her fingers.

‘Ta,’ says Zac, not looking at her, pocketing her card without even glancing at it. He’s at his car. He gets in and drives off. Doesn’t give her a backward glance nor even so much as a ‘goodbye’. His headache is threatening to consume him.

Pip McCabe thinks he’s rude, though. She stands on the kerb side, watching him drive away – too fast.

THREE

You can tell a lot about a person by the friends they keep. You would think you could tell a lot about a person by the clothes they wear and the place they live. However, you’d be hard-pressed to guess what Zac does for a living by analysing his dwelling, his dress or his disposition. Each is at odds with the other and none are remotely representative of the stereotypes traditionally associated with Zac’s particular vocation.

Take a look around his flat. To say it sings with colour is an understatement. It’s not so much a symphony of colours as a full-blown rock opera. To forgo the approved, if ubiquitous, muted heritage hues predominantly deployed by fellow Hampsteadites was no act of rebellion, no salute to the Shock of the New on his part. Zac simply opted for oranges and turquoises and citrus greens and parma violets because they are his favourite colours. Leyland Paints groan when he comes into the store. He spends a fortune there because he is so exacting. ‘No. I said ultramarine and I mean ultra,’ he’d complain and they’d have to spend a morning adding a dribble of this and a drip of that until Zac nodded and grinned and proclaimed something along the lines of ‘Turquoise-tastic! Fan-bloody-brilliant! Ultimate ultramarine. Ta.’

Zac’s inspiration comes not from the Sunday Times ‘Style’ section, certainly not from Changing Rooms, not from hip clubs, but really just from his own predilections. Zac is in no pretentious pursuit of retro-psychedelia; nor is his home an arty-farty appraisal of the merits of kitsch. Objectively, elements of his colour schemes are indeed psychedelic and some of his furniture and objects are quintessentially kitsch. But he only chooses what he loves. He doesn’t refer to style magazines. In fact, when he flicked through a copy of Wallpaper at a friend’s house, he thought it so brilliant that he started chuckling because he genuinely assumed that the magazine was a parody on other style magazines. He was quite horrified to learn it was serious. ‘But it’s so far up its own arse,’ he’d reasoned, ‘they might as well call it Toiletpaper.’

Zac doesn’t read about art but he does love to look at it. He didn’t consider trend when he was choosing colour for his walls and furniture for his rooms but he did pay homage to Matisse. Zac simply loves colour for its own sake. He loves the greenness of green, the blueness of blue, and he finds great expanses of solid colour incredibly satisfying. He cannot comprehend how colours can be in and out of fashion. He loves it that he cannot fathom how colour can convey movement, rhythm and mood. It’s a mystery he is content to be awestruck by.

My job’s stressful. The building is grey. I want to come home to energy and a place that – I don’t know – grins. Turquoise and orange have always made me feel positive. Green makes me feel refreshed. What’s all this crap about blue being a ‘cool’ colour – cool in what respect? Cold? Or hip? Pardon? I just find blue relaxing. Swimming-pools and cloudless skies.

Zac goes for things he really likes the look of. He loves things that amuse him. His acid yellow PVC banana beanbag chair is just as comfortable as his black leather Eames lounger. He knew the Eames was almost vulgar in cost but what price ultimate comfort for reading papers or snoozing or chilling out with a beer? The Eames serves much the same purpose as the banana chair but the banana chair was forty pounds. Zac didn’t think it a ‘bargain’, he simply thought ‘funky chair, great colour, really comfortable’, bought it on the spot and took it home on the bus. He doesn’t own a coffee-table so it’s just as well that he doesn’t buy sumptuous coffee-table tomes. Though he loves the feel of his Folio editions of fables and myths, he also devours commercial paperbacks. His book shelves are crammed with them. ‘What’s wrong with Grisham or Herbert?’ he might say. ‘They’re bloody good reads.’ He sometimes rereads Wilbur Smith and he really quite liked Bridget Jones’s Diary. He read it on the tube going to and from work. He was aware that people stared at him. He didn’t care.

It’s always open house at Zac’s. His flat just has a subliminal effect of putting people in a good mood. He doesn’t officially entertain but he has the sort of personality and the type of place that encourage people to pop in. Male friends stop by for a beer or two if they’ve had a crap day at work or a row with a wife or girlfriend. And those very same wives and girlfriends pop in if they’ve walked their feet off perusing Hampstead’s shops. Zac tells them to ‘take a load off’; while he fixes them a juice, they revolve a while in the Eames, or snuggle gratefully into the bizarre banana chair. If their kids have thrown tantrums at the Finchley Road Sainsbury’s, they’re dragged in to let off steam at Uncle Zac’s; scampering around his flat, throwing themselves on to his large low bed, rolling off on to the tufty orange rug by the side, coming back into the living-room to snuggle on Mummy’s lap and gaze at the lava lamp or quietly snigger at the massive painting that’s allegedly of mountains but really looks like a large pair of blue bosoms.

Ah, but have a look inside Zac’s wardrobe. It’s like an archive for Gap. Beige, navy or black. No deviation. Trousers, shirts or pullovers. He owns one suit. It’s currently at the dry-cleaner. It’s navy. He never wears it by choice; only if he must – a meeting with specific clients, a wedding, a funeral. His underwear is unremittingly black and blue.

His kitchen reveals his obsession with gadgets which he affectionately calls ‘toys’. A top-of-the-range fully automatic espresso machine, a sixties-inspired juicer, an impressive if intimidating array of Global kitchen knives, all manner of high-shine stainless-steel utensils hanging from hooks above the granite worktop. His fridge-freezer is, of course, one of those cavernous walk-in American machines that do ice and cold water and can take a whole sucking pig plus the apple. There is no pig inside, just a staggering array of ready-meals. Does this man work for M&S? No? He must have a discount card, then, surely? No? Does he have substantial shares in the company, then? Or is this simply what you’d call brand loyalty? Or is it just plain laziness? No wonder that all his utensils and gadgets look so pristine – they’ve never been used. He has no need of any of them. You do not need a mandolin from Divertimenti to prepare an M&S ready-meal. The only things requiring any chopping are the tomatoes (aesthetically still on the vine) and, of course, the oranges for the juicer (despite the fact that there are cartons of fresh juice, every conceivable variety, in the fridge). His friends’ offspring like the cupboard over there best; it contains the most astonishing variety of biscuits, chocolates and crisps. Have a peek in his kitchen bin – nothing but chocolate wrappers and cartons from his shove-it-in-the-oven-at-190-degrees meals. Zac Holmes hides nothing. He is totally at ease with his likes and dislikes and the choices he’s made.

‘I like figures,’ he said ingenuously on a recent date with a Canadian girl who’s the cousin of one of his friends. ‘I really love getting my teeth into them.’ The Canadian girl was so charmed by his open personality, so taken with his slate-grey eyes, handsome face and naturally athletic physique, that she told him her figure was honed to perfection because she worked out five times a week and could they please get the bill right now, though their main courses had not yet arrived, so he could take her back to her hotel and get his teeth into her figure. Zac obliged. He doesn’t like to disappoint people. And he does love figures. He didn’t let her down back at her hotel. He didn’t get his teeth into her but he certainly employed a fabulous technique of nibbling and sucking.

Zac likes sex very much. He has quite a lot of it. To him, it’s a colourful, fun, recreational activity and he’s rather good at it. He doesn’t mind at all that over the last three years or so sex has not led to deep and meaningful relationships. He’s had two of those during his life. One from his late teens to his early twenties, the other in his late twenties. He’s not now shying away from commitment. And, nearing thirty-five, though he does, of course, have a past, it is one with which he is at peace. If there is any baggage, he certainly doesn’t look on it as a burdensome weight on his shoulders. He hasn’t been in love these past five years. But his life hasn’t lacked for it. He’s loved his last five years, loved the sex he’s had – the quick flings, the threesome, the three-month dalliance, the couple of six-month demi-relationships. He hasn’t met the right girl because he really isn’t looking. Sex wouldn’t be the better for it. Nor does his life want for lack of it. So, being single is neither a problem nor a conscious decision. However, because he’s not on the lookout, he might well not recognize Her.

In all probability he certainly wouldn’t recognize Her if she came dressed as a clown: all stripy tights, mismatched lace-up shoes, a short frilly ra-ra skirt, pigtails sticking out starchily at odd angles. And a face powdered white, eyes delineated with black diamonds and star shapes; a comedy smile; a nose with a very red tip.

But there again, why would an artist like Pip fall for a chartered accountant?

In fact, how would their paths cross anyway?

They crossed the once, at Billy’s party. But by next year, Billy probably won’t want a clown. He’ll want to take a posse to the cinema. Or McDonald’s. Or both.

And so, when Zac came across Pip’s card a few days later, it had been through a hot wash, fast spin and tumble-dry. It was frayed and faded when he found it, half stuck to the back pocket of his jeans. He could just make out ‘Clown and Children’s Entertainer’. After some scrutiny, he reckoned the name was Merry Martha. The phone number remained legible. But he didn’t make a note of it and he put the card in his kitchen bin without another thought.

FOUR

Pip McCabe’s flat, like Zac’s, gives away little about the career of its owner. There’s nothing remotely zany or even vaguely theatrical about the interior. It’s neither colourful nor quirky. Though the basement flat is a small space, it doesn’t seem cramped on account of Pip’s aversion to clutter. No ornaments. The pictures on the walls are non-representational, frameless and subdued in colour. Photos held in stylish thick glass sandwiches are of her family, though Pip herself features in few. Pip’s home is an essay on calm; gradations of neutral hues for walls, floors and soft furnishings. The stripes and spots and frills and flounces and plastic and kitsch of her clowning – her clothes, her props, her funky chunky shoes – are immediately and neatly stored as soon as she returns from work. There’s never any leftover washing-up to be done. There’s never a damp towel left scrunched on the bathroom floor. The bed is made as soon as she’s left it. Not that it even looks that crumpled when she rises each morning.

Pip’s favourite drink is red wine. She doesn’t care for white, for champagne or for spirits. She likes a good Rioja best of all. And she has the utter confidence to happily drink it – and sometimes quite a lot of it – in her spic-and-spandom, with not one spillage to date. Maybe her training as an acrobat has something to do with it. At work, she flops and flaps and fools around but such japery is attributable to consummate physical control; at the centre of her slapstick and tumbling are balletic grace, athletic stability and acrobatic control.

When Pip McCabe is out and about, at work or at play, she is the life and soul, she’s the girl who gets things going, she tells the first joke, she’s the last to leave. When Pip McCabe is at home, however, she wafts around quietly with music playing softly. She’s happy with the solitude, confident with quiet, content in her own company. Alone in her flat, she provides the best audience in front of which she can truly be herself. She’s entertaining; she’s a children’s entertainer. But she’d really rather not entertain at home. Which was why Mike, her last steady boyfriend, left her. She never let him in. The door to her flat and entry to her heart remained closed.

She’s a great illusionist, is Pip McCabe. Her home isn’t Conran, none of her stuff is from stockists recommended by Elle Decoration. Rather, she has a cunning way with calico bought cheaply from Berwick Street and furniture bid for at Tring Auction Rooms. If she wasn’t a clown by trade, Pip could well earn her living as an invisible mender. However, that’s not to say there aren’t a couple of flaws, a little fraying, in her own fabric. But she’d rather keep them invisible and try to fix them in her own way and in her own time.

There are two nights a week when Pip would rather not be at home, absolutely never alone if she is. Tuesdays and Thursdays are exhausting for her though she works a maximum of four hours in the afternoons on these days and never as Merry Martha. Pip won’t ask for support, for help, for company, but she tries to ensure that her evenings on these days are occupied. Pizzas are good, movies are better, a fair few drinks in a raucous bar is the ultimate, watching Friends at a friend’s home will do and she has even been known on one or two occasions to have people round to hers, Rioja at the ready and comfort food aplenty. This Thursday she quite fancied seeing her sisters but Cat is in bed with flu and doesn’t want a visit, much less to provide company, and Fen is suddenly up in Derbyshire again, assessing sculpture in a private collection. Pip turned to her honorary sister instead.

‘Megan?’ she phoned.

‘Philippa McCabe,’ Megan responded, thinking to herself But of course, it’s Thursday. ‘I was going to call you. Do you want to do something?’

‘Sure,’ Pip said casually, as if she had only been phoning for a chat but Megan’s suggestion of meeting up was most appealing and how convenient that she herself happened to be free. ‘What do you fancy?’

‘To be honest,’ Megan said in a lascivious whisper, ‘I fancy a bit of Dominic. He’s the brother of Polly’s boyf, Max – you’ve met them. But I don’t think he’s on the menu tonight – so I’ll settle for pizza.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Pip laughed.

‘Or alcohol,’ Megan interjected excitedly, as if she’d overlooked its existence.

‘Either,’ said Pip.

‘Both!’ Megan declared and they arranged to meet at Smorfia in West Hampstead.

Pip settled down to a bath, dipping her body deep into the water, right up to her lower lip.

Wash the day away. Soothe. Cleanse. Breathe.

She closed her eyes on the day just been and what she had seen. She opened her eyes and stared at the taps. She could be in West Hampstead in less than half an hour.

The waiters flirted extravagantly with the two women. Megan was a regular and Pip had been often. The restaurant was small – friendly, noisy and smelt heavenly. Megan and Pip filched food from each other’s plates and chatted nineteen to the dozen, though on occasion this meant talking with their mouths full.

‘Was it tough today?’ Megan asked, tearing a much larger slice of Pip’s pizza than she’d intended.

‘It was,’ Pip confirmed, helping herself to Megan’s pappardelle, ‘particularly.’ Megan didn’t ask more and Pip didn’t elaborate. Pip enquired about this Dominic chap and Megan swooned off on elaborate tangents, describing potential wedding cake design and fantasy honeymoon destinations.

‘Has he asked you?’ Pip enquired.

‘Asked me what?’ Megan responded.

Pip thought about it. ‘Anything? Your favourite colour? If you snore? If you’ll marry him?’

Megan laughed heartily. ‘He hasn’t even asked me out yet,’ she admitted, raising her eyebrows at herself, ‘let alone kissed me, never mind asking me to marry him. But hey, I’ll live in hope. Or in day-dreamland at the very least.’

‘Well,’ said Pip, slightly histrionically due to a fast-flowing Chianti and a lot of garlic in the food, ‘if you ask me, day-dreams endanger reality.’

‘You’re too bloody cynical for your own good,’ Megan pouted, ‘and for mine.’

‘No, I’m not,’ Pip protested, ‘I’m just sensibly circumspect.’

‘Bollocks!’ Megan retorted, because Pip was her best friend so she was allowed to. ‘Your mum ran off with a cowboy when you were a kid and bang! you don’t believe in true love!’

Pip chewed thoughtfully. ‘I’m fine about love. I just don’t trust men with a penchant for rhinestones and rodeos!’

They chinked glasses and laughed.

Megan picked a large glistening black olive from her friend’s pizza, scrutinizing it admiringly before popping it into her mouth. Pip mopped at Megan’s sauce with some leftover bruschetta. ‘The thing about love,’ she said with her mouth full, ‘is that it requires one to get naked.’

Megan looked a little blank. ‘Well, if you leave your clothes on, you tend to get a little messy.’

‘But that’s my point,’ said Pip. ‘Once you’ve laid yourself bare, it often becomes messier.’

Megan looked baffled.

‘Reveal?’ Pip said first, tipping her head one way. ‘Or conceal?’ she continued, tipping her head the other way. ‘I guess I’d rather keep covered up than expose myself.’

‘But you have a great physique,’ Megan protested artlessly.

‘I’m talking metaphorically,’ Pip laughed. ‘God, I forget you work in numbers not words.’

‘Being a maths teacher doesn’t make me an emotional moron,’ Megan sulked – but not seriously.

‘Of course not,’ Pip said, ‘but you do fall in love too easily and you get hurt.’ Over the years, Pip had witnessed Megan in pieces several times. Privately, Pip felt Megan’s experience in terms of quantity and variety thus counted for little; certainly it hadn’t paved the way to happy-ever-after. Pip found it difficult to fathom how someone who had been badly burnt by love’s flame could continue to thrust herself into the fire.

Megan pouted through Pip’s silence but was quietly relieved that Pip was keeping her misgivings to herself. Megan topped up their wineglasses and winked lasciviously. ‘Well, I bet you I’ve had more fun and frolics than you with your “I don’t need a man” bollocks.’

‘But I don’t!’ Pip attempted to proclaim though it was met with another energetic ‘Bollocks!’ from Megan. ‘Seriously,’ Pip remonstrated.

‘Well,’ Megan said, ‘just as well, then, isn’t it? Because working as a clown called Merry Martha doesn’t really make you millions and dressing like a clown called Merry Martha really isn’t going to have the men flocking. At least, no male over the age of eight.’

‘Ouch!’ Pip winced theatrically because she didn’t want Megan to know that her words had actually confronted her more than anticipated. Megan had meant no malice. Like many around Pip, Megan had become used to her friend shunning romance, wealth and the panoply of either. And, like those closest to Pip, Megan knew Pip would actually benefit from a little of each.

‘Share a pudding?’ Pip suggested, changing the subject.

‘How about share each other’s – order one each? Asking me to choose between pannacotta and tiramisu would be the same as asking me to choose between George Clooney and Brad Pitt.’

‘Hmm,’ Pip mused, ‘I was going to choose fruit salad.’

‘You’re just trying to be wholesome!’ Megan said astutely. ‘Live a little!’ Soon enough, she was swooning over desserts and Dominic in equal measures.

‘I hope it happens for you,’ Pip said sincerely whilst wielding her spoon with gay abandon between the two bowls. ‘He sounds lovely. And suitable.’ Megan raised her glass and her eyebrow. ‘Thing is,’ Pip said, because the wine was enabling her to do so, ‘I say I don’t need money because, in truth, I’ve never wanted – let alone needed – anything I can’t afford.’ She sipped contemplatively. ‘I like bargain hunting. I rather like doing upholstery. I get a kick out of people asking “Heals?” and me saying “Hell no, house clearance”.’ Megan spooned the last of the pannacotta into Pip’s mouth. ‘And I say I don’t need a man,’ Pip continued, ‘because I’ve never felt for someone enough to really feel that life wouldn’t make sense without them.’ She ran her finger around the tiramisu bowl though their spoons had already scraped at practically every vestige of the dessert. ‘I guess,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I’ve managed to reach the grand old age of thirty without ever being in love.’

Megan contemplated this. She chinked glasses with Pip. ‘You know what, McCabe,’ she said, ‘to be honest, that’s no bad thing.’ Megan sighed. ‘Sometimes being in love is more hassle than it’s worth. Way too costly.’

Deep down, that’s what Pip had long had a hunch about. ‘You see, for me,’ she said, pouring the last of the second bottle of wine into their glasses, ‘there are nice blokes like good old Mike for every now and then. And in between times,’ she whispered, eyes wide for dramatic effect, ‘there are vibrators.’

Megan shrieked with laughter. The other diners turned and stared.

Pip snorted into her wine. Paulo, the young waiter, had eavesdropped the conversation. He decided it prudent and hopefully profitable to present the girls with complimentary Sambucas.

‘You get what you settle for,’ Pip murmured softly. It was the early hours of Friday morning when Pip finally decided to go to bed. She’d been sitting up with a bottle of Evian, waiting for her living-room to stop revolving at such an alarming rate. ‘If I settle for anything less, I’ll be the one who pays.’ The revolutions of the room had slowed to approximately three per minute. ‘Anyway, you don’t enter your thirties without a fair weight of baggage from your twenties. And I’m not having someone else’s dumped on me. I’m absolutely not unpacking it for them. I don’t do baggage and that’s that, really. Simple.’ The room was settling nicely into one revolution per minute. ‘Vibrators it is, then.’

The room is stationary. And silent. The Evian is finished and Pip feels hydrated enough to see what lying down feels like. ‘Friday Friday,’ she says to herself, trying to recall her timetable as she walks through to her bedroom.

Face painting at Golders Hill Park, lunch-time. Party in Chalk Farm at tea-time.

You could have a lie-in, Pip.

Me? God, no. If I have spare time, why on earth fill it with doing nothing? I have loads to do. I can find loads to do.

Can you face being horizontal?

Let me see. Not too bad.

Are you all right in the dark?

Yes. I’m not afraid of the dark.

Pip is in bed. Lying still in the dark. She loves her bedroom. No clutter. Walls the colour of oyster mushrooms. Thick curtains the colour of crème caramel and behind them, cream roller blinds at the window the colour of cappuccino froth. She bought the blinds in the Habitat sale; the curtains were a freebie from a set-designer friend of hers. They had been on a BBC costume drama and had required a fair bit of deft needlework from Pip. The blisters and pricked fingertips had been a small price to pay for such hallowed curtains. She laid the carpet herself. It doesn’t quite fit but her strategically placed furniture hides this from view. It looks like sisal but is much kinder to bare feet. The massive rusty stain that enabled Pip to purchase it for less than a quarter of the price is conveniently straddled by her bed. Her bed has a birch, Shaker-style headboard, very simply panelled and beautifully made. She picked that up for next to nothing as it had a split right through it. But she worked with wood filler and sandpaper and stain; it took her a month, but now you can’t see the join.

However, what she loves most of all about her bedroom is something she had to pay full price for – indeed, over the odds – and that is the remarkable quiet considering her flat’s proximity to Kentish Town Road. This had cost her the asking price for the flat two years ago. Though most of her pennies go straight towards the mortgage and Camden Council’s absurdly high council tax, she doesn’t begrudge a penny. It might be a small space subdivided by stud walls, but it is her own place, her haven, and she loves it.

Pip submits herself to the stillness and silence and stares upwards to where the ceiling ought to be though she can’t determine its surface in the darkness. She tells herself it is now Friday, that Thursday was indeed yesterday. But in effect, it still feels very much Thursday that she is closing her eyes and going to sleep from. Right now, her evening with Megan doesn’t seem as current as the afternoon preceding it. Sure, Megan and she talked about life, love and the universe. And vibrators. But none have the resonance of her afternoon.

‘Night-night, little ones,’ she says out loud, ‘see you next week.’

FIVE

George Saunders is nine years old. He is into his sixth month on Reynolds, the renal ward at St Beatrix’s, the children’s hospital in the City affectionately known at St Bea’s. He’s uncomfortable and fed up. And now he’s agreed to having his eyes tested because they’re about the only part of him that haven’t been tested. He thinks they’re fine. But he wouldn’t be surprised if they’re poorly. Everything else seems to be.

‘Well, here we go, then,’ the doctor says. ‘Cover your left eye – that’s right – what? Yes, I know it’s your left one – I said that’s right, right? Good, use that hand, right? Or that one, left – we’re not testing your hands, are we? Right. Left! Whatever. Ho-hum. Just shut that eye and tell me what’s written on this card.’

George stares at the card held in front of him.

i

‘i,’ says George.

The doctor is making those stern contemplative muttering sounds that they are famous for. ‘Right. Now please cover your right eye with the other hand. Lovely. Can you tell me what’s written on this card?’ Another card is held in front of George. He looks at it, then looks at the doctor. He really doesn’t want to smile but invisible magnets haul the corners of his mouth up towards the mobiles dangling from the ward’s ceiling. He reads the card again.

I

‘Um, i,’ he says, stifling a giggle.

The doctor looks at him sternly. Regards his mother, too. And nods sagely at the ward sister who is hovering. ‘I declare that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever wrong with this young man’s “i”s,’ the doctor says. And then the doctor takes out a hammer and starts bashing George’s arms. George giggles as the hammer makes funny beeps and dongs on impact. After all, the tool is made of red and yellow plastic and is light as a feather. ‘Now look what you’ve gone and done!’ the doctor chastises. ‘Nurse! Nurse! Quick, call the doctor! My nose! My nose!’

The nurse laughs. ‘Incurable!’ she declares and walks away.

George is smiling widely. The doctor’s nose, bright red at the best of times, is flashing. ‘Quick!’ George is told. ‘Give me your bed and your tubes and those things that do all that bleeping – I need them more than you!’

‘Are you coming back next week?’ he asks, very interested in the stickers the doctor has just given him, having magicked them from behind George’s ear.

The doctor regards the young patient. ‘Yes. I reckon so. Perhaps. If I can switch my nose off.’

‘Brill,’ says George. ‘See you then, Dr Pippity. Bye!’

‘Good aftermorning,’ says Dr Pippity, clicking her heels together and saluting so clumsily that she clonks herself in the eye. Her nose continues to glow on and off. She points at her gift of stickers: ‘Don’t eat them all at once!’ she declares. She turns from George and walks away, jauntily, with a peculiar skip every step or so. ‘Pippitypippity,’ she mutters as she goes. ‘Pip. Pip. Good aftermorning!’ She settles herself quietly into a chair by the bedside of a small girl who feels too poorly to move, let alone speak. But, in a glance, Dr Pippity clocks a glimmer of welcome in the girl’s eyes. So we’ll leave her sitting there awhile, performing simple and silly tricks. She’s carefully placed a magic wand in the little girl’s hand. It’s one of those trick sticks that segments and collapses. Dr Pippity is feigning frustration with her bedridden assistant. Who, in turn, now has eyes that hint at a sparkle.

The shift is over. Dr Pippity is exhausted but as she makes her way to the small room she uses to change in, she skips and ‘pip pip’s everyone she passes; the sounds of squeaks and bells emanating at random from any of her many pockets; her nose lighting up every now and then, apparently much to her consternation.

Her changing-room is basically a glorified cupboard along a corridor on the ground floor. Dr Pippity doesn’t mind. There’s a sink. A small table to prop her mirror on. A stool. She removes her nose. She takes off her slap and in doing so, emotionally wipes away the tougher parts of her day. She hums softly as she unbraids her hair from the taut pigtails. Her scalp feels both sore and relieved. She runs her fingers through her hair, amused, as always, by the kinks and curls that will take a few hours, if not a wash and blow-dry, to calm down. It proves to her that her naturally straight hair suits her best. It still amuses her to remember how she longed for a perm in her teenage years and how she cursed Django who forbade it. The hippy in him, however, was happy for her to experiment with henna (‘If it’s herbal it’s harmless! If it’s organic don’t panic!’ being one of his favourite maxims). Unfortunately, henna turned her mid-mousy brown to garish barmaid orange in the space of half an hour. It took half a year to dull down and fade. Pip has decided to be at peace with her natural colour ever since. She keeps her cut softly layered and shoulder length. It may be mousy and straight, but it’s glossy and frames her face becomingly, crowning her features well.

From her doctor’s coat pockets she lays out the tools of her trade and wipes everything with antiseptic cloths. A comedy stethoscope. Five different types of magic wand. Small red foam balls that, with a little surreptitious rubbing between the palms, or a heartfelt ‘abracadabra’ from a child, metamorphose into a selection of miniature animals. A huge pair of plastic scissors. Handfuls of stickers. The squeaking plastic hammer. She takes off her doctor’s coat. It’s a real doctor’s coat, in thick white cotton, but embellished with colourful patterns on the pockets and with her name, ‘Dr Pippity’, emblazoned on the back like some kind of patchwork tattoo. An intricate circuit and a couple of AAA batteries enable her to make the squeaks and dongs. She takes off her luridly striped pinafore, with the flowers on springs attached to the kangaroo-style pouch, the badges dotted here and there with ‘I am 8’ and ‘smile’ and various cartoon characters. She peels off her tights – she customized this pair so that one leg has multicoloured dots and the other has wriggling lines. She showed them off that afternoon, very forlornly, to a girl with no hair up on Gainsborough, the cancer ward.

‘I’ve not got no hair no more,’ the child had told her. Dr Pippity had sat beside her and stretched her legs out. ‘This leg here,’ she showed the girl, ‘has the multicoloured measles.’ The girl gingerly placed a finger over the spots to check. ‘And this leg here,’ Dr Pippity declared, ‘has worms!’ She’d been able to muster a giggle from the girl. The girl hadn’t giggled for days. It felt good. For Dr Pippity. For the nurses. For the children in the beds to either side. But especially for the little girl with cancer and no hair. And she was the point.

‘And that’s the point,’ Dr Pippity says as she takes off her tights and puts on a pair of navy socks instead. ‘That’s my job.’

The clothes and the bits and pieces that accessorize Dr Pippity are placed carefully into a really rather dull beige holdall. Pip checks her reflection and wipes away a smudge of slap that she’d missed. She pops her mirror into her bag, tucks her white shirt into her jeans and leaves the room, closing the door quietly. Not that there’s anyone to disturb. The wards are all upstairs. She walks through the main entrance, not now recognized by anyone, though many of them would know her at forty paces in her slap and motley.

Zac did a swift double take when Pip passed him, but he didn’t linger or even look back. Over the years, he has known so many people at the hospital – as faces, or as names, too, or even well enough for a quick conversation – that he doesn’t think to try and place Pip. He’s got things on his mind, anyway. So has she, she didn’t notice him at all.

‘Fen? It’s me.’

‘Hiya, Pip.’ The sisters chatted on their mobile phones as they left work; Fen walking away from Tate Britain, her older sister hovering near the ambulance bay.

‘Fancy a film?’ Pip asked, pronouncing it ‘fill-erm’ as is a McCabe tradition. But Fen explained she had ‘a bit of a date’ and would Pip mind awfully therefore if she didn’t. ‘A bit of a date?’ Pip teased. ‘Which bit – just the arms and torso of some poor sod? Oh, for God’s sake, tell me it’s a real hunk, not just a hunk of sculpture you’ve fallen for.’

‘Shut up!’ Fen protested lightly. ‘It’s only that Matt bloke, the editor of the Trust’s magazine, Art Matters,’ she justified. ‘I’m still just the new girl at work, remember. Nothing to read into – it’s just a quick drink.’ However, Pip was sure that there was a veritable novel to read into. Fen could sense her older sister’s smirk. And Pip knew her younger sister was blushing slightly.

‘Be good!’ she warned her. ‘And if you can’t be good—’

‘—be careful,’ groaned Fen, finishing off another McCabe-ism.

‘Have you spoken to Cat today?’ Pip asked. ‘Is she OK?’ Fen hadn’t. ‘I’ll give her a call,’ Pip said, ‘cook her something hearty and wholesome.’ Deep down, Pip would have preferred someone to do the looking-after her. It was a Tuesday, after all. But she’d never ask. Certainly not her younger sisters. As eldest sister, she had duties to them, responsibilities – in lieu of their mother who had left them to cavort in Colorado.

‘Are you off, Pip? Off duty? Off home? Off somewhere else?’ Pip turns. It’s Caleb Simmons, all chocolate eyes and husky voice and olive skin smoothed over exceptional cheek-bones.

‘Just wondered if you wanted to go for a quick drink? I’m through for the day,’ says the brilliant young paediatrician, ruffling his immaculately tousled hairstyle. Handsome enough for a role on ER. Compassionate to the children, patient with the parents, charming and courteous to the nurses, to the hospital staff, to the clown doctors and to the janitors alike. He’d asked her the same question a couple of weeks ago. Today, she gives him the same answer she’d given him then.

‘Sorry,’ says Pip, with an apologetic shrug, ‘I already have plans.’

No, you don’t.

I do. I just haven’t quite made them yet.

‘Another time, then,’ Caleb suggests with equanimity and a dashing smile. With hands in his pockets, his white coat flowing out behind, he turns back to the hospital, sharing banter with the porters and patients he passes.

Pip went to see her youngest sister, Cat. And had a draining evening. Cat was heartbroken, now at the stage of denial and daft hope. She begged to be allowed to phone him. Pleaded with Pip to promise that this was a bad dream and she’d awake soon. Prayed that they’d get back together. Yet if Pip could grant wishes, she wouldn’t allow a single one of Cat’s to come true.

‘He was horrid to you,’ Pip tried to reason without lecturing, ‘he was a nasty piece of work. You are going to be fine. I know it doesn’t feel that way right now, but I promise you that there will be a time when you breathe a sigh of relief that your life has no place or space for him.’

Cat looked absolutely flabbergasted. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she sobbed. She didn’t believe a word Pip tried to say, didn’t want to believe her, didn’t eat a mouthful Pip had prepared. In protest, Pip wanted to shake sense into her sister, to yell home truths at her. But she didn’t. She was trying hard to be sensitive and diplomatic, although, after the day she’d had, she really didn’t feel like counselling Cat. But she did. It was her duty.

You should have said ‘yes’ to that lovely Caleb Simmons.

Then what would Cat have done without me?

Exactly as she did with you there.

Caleb’s not the answer.

But he might be a nice little diversion. A handsome distraction.

I haven’t the time. Or the inclination, to be honest.

Honestly? Really.

SIX

So that’s who it is. I remember. She was the clown at Billy’s party. She did that extraordinary juggling thing whilst doing the splits. She told terrible jokes which the kids loved. Didn’t I take her card?

Zac was over at the drinks machine when two clown doctors bustled into Out-patients, creating merry havoc in their wake. From his quiet vantage point outside the fray, he recognized Dr Pippity as being the clown from his nephew’s party – albeit with toned down make-up, wearing a doctor’s coat and performing at a very different venue today. He sipped his coffee by the machine, watching the clowns at work, enjoying the children’s reaction to them. Though the clowns brought colour and a certain cacophony with them, there was a moving gentleness to their gestures and jokes.

‘Hey ho and what’s your name? Is it Mildred? Or perhaps Millicent?’ Dr Pippity asked, shaking the hand of a small boy in Out-patients who she’d seen before up on the wards. Eczema. His skin looked so sore but she gauged in an instant that a level of physical contact would be right. So she shook and shook his hand, operating a hidden squeak in her pocket. ‘Dear, oh dear, would you listen to that! I’d say your elbow needs some grease!’

‘My name’s Tom,’ the child protested, having a giggle at his squeaky elbow, ‘not Mildew or Militant.’

‘Of course it is!’ Dr Pippity exclaimed, clasping her hand to her head and setting her nose alight in the process. She almost fell over, whilst rolling her eyes. ‘And Tom is a very fine name. My brain has run out of battery. Can you help start it again?’ She handed the boy her toy hammer and pointed to two positions on her forehead, much to his delight. ‘How old are you?’ she asked. ‘One hundred and thirty-two?’

‘No, I’m almost six years old,’ he said, as if to a simpleton. ‘I live in Swiss Cottage.’

‘In a swish cottage, hey!’ Dr Pippity gasped. ‘Is there room for me?’ The boy said he didn’t think so and the clown doctor pretended to cry, blowing her nose into an enormous polka-dot handkerchief.

‘Sorry,’ Tom shrugged.

‘Do you like Kylie Minogue?’ asked Dr Pippity, merry once more. Tom shrugged. ‘Britney Spears?’ The child dipped his head in a fairly noncommittal way.

‘I like Hermione,’ Tom offered, ‘from Harry Potter.’

Dr Pippity scratched her head, looking perplexed.

‘Her-my-oh-knee,’ Tom elucidated.

‘Your knee? Her knee? What knee? Oh! Hermione! Well,’ said Dr Pippity, ‘I have a present for you, a lovely picture of Hermione on Harry’s Potty. For you to colour in.’

Tom looked happy and expectant. Dr Pippity presented him with the picture. Tom stared at it and tried very hard not to look disappointed, and then not to smile. A grin triumphed over a pout. ‘It’s you!’

Dr Pippity looked horrified. She looked from the picture to herself. ‘Good golly – you’re right!’

‘Thanks,’ said Tom, looking at the picture; he was secretly starting to like Dr Pippity just as much as Hermione. And certainly more than Kylie or Britney.

‘Ta-ta, ta-ra, toot-toot!’ sang Dr Pippity. ‘I must be on my way.’ And with a hop, skip and a jump, she left Out-patients for her ward rounds.

‘Look!’ Tom showed off the picture to his father who had returned to his son’s side with a cup of water from the vending machine. ‘You missed her – she’s funny! Last time, she made me a tortoise from a balloon. Is she a real doctor, Daddy?’

‘A real clown doctor,’ Zac replied, taking a nearby leaflet publicizing the Renee Foundation by whom Dr Pippity was trained and funded. ‘Have you seen her before, then?’

Tom nodded. ‘A couple of times on the ward. And when Mummy brought me last time, that clown lady was here.’

Zac nodded and kissed the top of Tom’s head. ‘Laughter is brilliant medicine.’ Out-patients now seemed dull and down without the clown.

‘Yes,’ said Tom, ‘that’s what the nurses say, too. And it doesn’t sting like creams.’

‘If it stings today,’ Zac said, ‘you squeeze my hand and say any swear-word you like. Though you’re so brave I doubt whether you’ll need to.’ He could see Dr Pippity down the corridor by the main entrance, standing on one leg. Really quite a nice leg, actually. Despite the lurid tights and clumpy, bright orange DMs.

‘Can you buy me some new crayons,’ Tom asked, ‘after they’ve done me?’

‘Magic word?’ Zac prompted.

‘Please-please-please-thank-you.’

‘Have you heard of these hospital clowns?’ Zac is in Marylebone, eating Lebanese with friends. ‘I took Tom for his appointment today and there were a couple working. They’re amazing.’

‘There was that Robin Williams film a while back,’ said Will.

‘Patch Adams,’ his wife, Molly, filled in, ‘but he was actually a bona fide doctor.’

‘I picked up a leaflet,’ Zac said. ‘It’s a charity – they fund specially trained clowns to work in hospitals all over the world. It made a difference to Tom, that’s for sure.’

‘How is he?’ Molly asked.

‘So so,’ Zac said, but with a note of hope to his voice. ‘That’s the cruelty of eczema – when it fades, so does your memory of it; when it suddenly comes back with a vengeance, you have to deal with the physical and mental affliction anew. Tom seems to be coping this time around. He’s not being teased at school, thank God, but it breaks my heart, it really does.’ He looked to the middle distance. ‘He’s too young to have to be so brave.’

They ate in contemplative silence awhile. ‘June?’ Molly asked.

‘She’s fine,’ Zac referred to the mother of his child, ‘getting married in – well – June!’

‘Same bloke?’

‘Yup,’ said Zac, ‘it’s cool – he’s great.’

Molly picked spinach from her teeth. ‘You must meet my friend Juliana – you’d really get along. She’s gorgeous.’

Zac replenished the wineglasses. ‘Sure,’ he said. His friends were always setting him up – not because they wanted to see him matched and hitched, not because they were remotely concerned about him being single in his mid-thirties; in fact, they didn’t do it for his sake or benefit at all. Zac was so universally liked, famous amongst his friends for being well-adjusted and fun to be with, that they introduced eligible women to benefit from his company. Zac, they felt, had such a heart that it couldn’t be broken.

‘Great,’ said Molly. ‘I’ll fix up drinks or something for the weekend. She’s over in London from South Africa for about six months on some project. Tall, very tall. She’s a babe.’

Zac didn’t enquire further. He trusted his friends’ judgement. They always presented him with lovely women to play with. And what made the game such fun was that when it was inevitably over, there never seemed to be winners or losers. It seemed to him (and hitherto thankfully to them) that it was the taking part that was the point.

‘I hated clowns,’ Zac mused, ‘when I was young. They frightened the fuck out of me.’

‘Isn’t it a risk, then, putting them in hospitals with sick kids?’ asked Will, who had been far too engrossed in his lamb to participate in the conversation thus far.

Zac thought back to St Bea’s. ‘I think the hospital clowns obviously tone down their make-up and slapstick and tricks. Their faces weren’t lurid at all – just a bit of white here and there, rosy cheeks, neat little red nose, funny pigtails.’

‘Weird job to choose, though, don’t you think?’ Molly pondered. ‘You know, literally making a clown of yourself every day. Having to look daft and behave like a fool.’

Zac considered this. ‘I suppose,’ he shrugged, ‘but the one who spent time with Tom was bloody good. And, obviously, she could judge her success immediately so it must be pretty rewarding.’ He poked around the couscous with his fork for crunchy bits. ‘She didn’t look daft at all, really.’

Quite beguiling, actually, if I think about it. Which I have been, for some bizarre reason I can’t fathom.

Plates were cleared, puddings were chosen and the subject changed. Molly and Will were hiring a villa in Sardinia over the summer and did Zac want to join them at all? And then Will started talking about work and his nightmare boss. And Molly started telling Zac about Juliana.

‘She was young,’ Zac said, slightly absent-mindedly, ‘late twenties? Something like that. You could see how hard she was working; how she was tuning herself totally to the needs and quirks of each kid she sat with. She was great.’

‘Who? Juliana?’ Molly asked, very confused and a little drunk by now.

‘No, the clown,’ Zac said, ‘the one who treated Tom today.’

‘Clowns give me the creeps,’ said Will, asking for the bill.

‘I’ve never found them particularly funny,’ Molly said.

‘I found them pretty scary,’ Zac repeated, ‘when I was a boy.’

Zac dreamt of Dr Pippity a couple of nights later, which he found odd, having not thought about her since the day at St Bea’s. The dream oddly disturbed him, though it was completely out of context – no Tom, no hospital. Dr Pippity had no make-up, no clothes defining her as a clown. In fact, she had no clothes on at all. She didn’t speak with a zany voice, she didn’t speak at all. But she did perform the most amazing trick on Zac. Her mouth, his balls. Zac awoke with a hard-on that required urgent attention. He went to his bathroom to clean up and caught sight of himself, sleep bleary, in the mirror.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he chastised himself, ‘I thought clowns scared me – they’re not supposed to seduce me!’

I must need a shag or something. About time. Ah well, the luscious Juliana, considerately lined up for me by Molly.

He couldn’t get back to sleep so he went through to the living-room, flicked on the television and lounged in his banana chair, zapping channels and settling on MTV. Soon enough, the vacuous pop tunes irritated him, though the volume was low. He went to the kitchen for a glass of water and was momentarily bemused by the sight of the fridge. Dr Pippity, meticulously coloured in by Tom with his new crayons, grinned back at him.

He wanted to see her again. And he knew how simple that could be.

‘Billy’s party! I just phone and ask my sister-in-law for the entertainer’s number. Pretend it’s for Tom or one of his friends.’

Momentarily, he was quite excited about how easy this would be but soon enough, this disconcerted him. So he turned his back on the picture and took his briefcase to the bedroom.

Why on earth am I still thinking about her – let alone dreaming of her? She’s a bloody clown – she probably hides behind her make-up and is a total social imbecile underneath it. Or irritatingly zany. Or just plain weird.

You liked her legs and can see that she’s pretty even in preposterous pigtails and pan stick.

God, all she did was visit me in a wet dream and now I’m telling myself I want to see her again. I must be overdue a shag, that’s what it is.

Zac fell asleep, sitting up in bed, the lights on, papers strewn all over the duvet.

Zac met Molly’s friend Juliana. She was sexy in a sophisticated, cool way. Zac decided he could forgo a sense of humour for such seductive eye contact. However, before he called her, there was something he needed to qualify first. The next Thursday, Zac told June he’d take Tom to hospital for his creams. June was pleased – she could have her wedding-dress fitting in peace, she told him. The clowns were there, but this time both were male. They were great and lifted Tom’s spirits. It helped him enormously, his mind was taken away from his physical discomfort and he had a balloon in the shape of a parrot to take home. Though Zac knew all along that was the point – the clown doctors were not for his benefit but Tom’s, of course – he couldn’t help but be slightly disappointed not to see Dr Pippity.

His disappointment did, however, make him feel a little foolish. He sat Tom down with a drink and a biscuit when they arrived back in Hampstead.

‘I’m just going to make a quick call,’ he told his son. Tom was happy to munch and sip.

‘Juliana? Hi there, this is Zac. We met at— Oh! Sure. I’m fine. Are you well? Great. I was wondering if you had plans tomorrow night? Shall we go out to play? Cool. Super.’

The lovely Juliana. Why on earth I was disappointed not to see Clowngirl again, I don’t know. Hot date tomorrow – what could be better?

SEVEN

Zac has had no further dreams, wet or otherwise, featuring Pip. Which is just as well, really. Firstly, it wouldn’t have been fair on Juliana, who Zac has been seeing for a good few weeks now. Secondly, it would have made it just a little more awkward and loaded when, the next time they did meet, Pip was to run her fingers through his hair, fondling his ears in the process.

Dr Pippity frequently ruffles the hair or tweaks the ears of patients’ parents and siblings. She’s been trained to. It’s part of her job. It serves a twofold purpose. It’s another way of eliciting laughter from the sick child, plus an important part of a clown doctor’s work is to treat the family of the patients because they’re often suffering, too. Clown doctors aim to lighten the load; to help diminish the burden carried by patients and their families in some small way, however temporarily. A minute spent grinning, laughing even, is a veritable tonic. It is also a minute when pain subsides and worry is sidetracked.

However, Pip has never had her handling of a parent backfire. Sure, sometimes her jokes and tricks have fallen flat – the parent perhaps feels awkward or reluctant due to desperately concealed stress and worry. But the patient has always enjoyed the tomfoolery and Pip knows, and the parent knows, that that’s what matters. For Pip, though, to be hit on by the father of a patient, in front of the mother, too, is a situation wholly unexpected and for which she’s had no specific training.

June, Tom’s mother, hadn’t intended to come to the hospital that day. She was up to her eyes preparing for her wedding that weekend and Zac had said he’d take Tom for his appointment.

‘It’s guilt,’ Zac had teased her gently, when she had phoned to say that she’d come to the hospital. ‘You running off on some glorious Caribbean honeymoon, leaving your son behind to fend for himself.’

‘Bastard!’ June had cursed in her defence, but fondly. ‘He’s not fending for himself, he’s staying with you!’

Zac gave a sharp intake of breath. ‘Dicey,’ he warned, ‘leaving him with me – well, that’ll be fending for himself, all right.’

‘You are a sod,’ June laughed, ‘and anyway, you cad – it’s not as if you ever took me on a sumptuous honeymoon.’

‘Well,’ said Zac, ‘that’s because I never married you.’

‘Bastard in capital letters,’ June jested. ‘I’d’ve declined even if you had asked me on bended knee with a rose between your teeth and a fuck-off diamond ring. I’m late. We’ll see you in Out-patients at 3.00.’

I didn’t ask her to marry me. It didn’t cross my mind. Or hers. And, if I had, she’d have said ‘no’ anyway and thought me insane. It wasn’t an issue. The only issue was to be good parents to a child born to two people who were strong friends and had been having good sex for quite a while.

Zac, wouldn’t most people define the ultimate relationship to be one where friendship and good sex prevail?

Now, yes. At my age now – yes. Though the two never seem to go hand in hand nowadays – not that I’m complaining. Juliana is fabulous in bed, but neither of us is pursuing this even for friendship, let alone intimacy. And lovely lovely Lisa – one of my closest friends but the thought of screwing her verges on incest. Or take Pru – the two occasions we’ve been to bed were pretty nondescript, yet we have a great laugh together, getting drunk, talking rubbish. So that’s why my life wants for nothing. I have great friends. And I have fantastic sex. But it’s horses for courses in my book. I’d rather have an enviable stable of different steeds and a choice of, er, mount, than only the one horse, just the one all-rounder.

You’re talking a string of spirited fillies versus just the one old nag?

No. I’m not. That makes me sound a cynic and a cad and I’m neither. June and I were young and impetuous and full of those ideologies that, in your twenties, you formulate and think are the answer to life itself. We had an on-off relationship for a long time. She actually fell pregnant during a time we weren’t officially seeing each other. It was a casual one-nighter, like we were prone to have in those days. But our philosophy – then as now – was that we could be awesome parents and great friends and simply not live together as Man and Wife, or Girlfriend and Boyfriend, or He and She, full stop.

And it works?

You ask Tom. Just you ask him.

Out-patients. June and Zac sat with Tom, looking like a very normal family. Except for the fact that the topic of conversation between the three of them was June’s imminent wedding.

‘Mum is worried in case I drop the ring,’ Tom said, looking to his father for camaraderie and perhaps one of his inimitable one-liners.

‘We’ll sellotape it to your hand,’ Zac said, ‘and I’ll carry a couple of spares in my pocket. In fact, we’ll do a swap, Tom. You give me the real ones – I’ll give you cheap imitations. Your mother won’t know the difference – and I doubt Rob-Dad would realize, him having more money than sense, your second dad.’

‘I’ll be sure to tell him you said so,’ June chided with a chuckle.

‘So’ll I,’ Tom said, with glee. Zac, though, had already teased Rob along these lines in the pub recently and Rob had quite ably sparred back.

‘Anyway,’ Zac continued, ‘you and I will flog the jewels at the pawn shop in Camden and we’ll bugger off to the Caribbean on the proceeds. Which hotel did you say you’re staying in?’

‘Daddy said “bugger”,’ Tom remarked.

‘The Jalousie in St Lucia,’ said June, ‘and don’t swear in front of the children.’

‘But you said “shit” this morning, Mummy,’ Tom said artlessly, ‘when you dropped that glass.’

‘I said “shoot”,’ June fibbed feebly. Tom was about to protest when a commotion caught their attention.

‘Look, Tom!’ said his father.

‘The clowns are here!’ said his mother.

Dr Pippity recognized the little boy with the eczema though she couldn’t remember his name. She’d seen him upstairs and down. Up and down. It was good to see him in Out-patients again. She remembered seeing him on the ward once, swathed in dressings and looking like a mummy. Eye contact, on that occasion, had really been all she could use. So, in Out-patients, it really was a pleasure for her to use what she referred to as her Princess Diana approach – to touch and hold what others’ prejudices would recoil from. She did ‘round and round the garden’ for Tom, and the ‘tickle you under there’ part produced a Harry Potter keyring from behind his neck that he was most chuffed to be allowed to keep. Pip had bought a job lot from a dodgy stall at Camden Lock – unlicensed merchandise about which she had no qualms, confident that most children wouldn’t notice the lack of a surreptitiously stamped TM.

‘Are you still in love with Hermione?’ Dr Pippity asked the boy, because though she couldn’t remember his name, she did recall that he wasn’t into Kylie. That Britney wasn’t his kind of girl.

‘Sort of,’ Tom said, because it was the truth – he quite likes Natalie Portman now, too.

‘Does that mean I have to wait for you to marry me?’ Dr Pippity pouted. Tom looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Well, I can wait for about, hmmm, twelve and a quarter minutes,’ Dr Pippity continued, taking out a huge toy clock from her pocket. Tom laughed. As did his mother. As did his father. She’d seen him before, too. Probably right here in Out-patients or perhaps upstairs on the wards. The boy’s father was looking at her almost imploringly. She misread his gaze. She thought perhaps he needed treatment by the clown doctor.

So she ran her fingers through his hair.

Pip ran her fingers through Zac’s hair.

She’s running her fingers through my hair.

‘Yuck! Yuckkity yuck!’ she declared whilst Tom laughed, June giggled and Zac was showered with the paper bits from a hole-punch. ‘I don’t think Head & Shoulders will get rid of that dandruff. That’s terrible. Have you come to see the doctors? On account of that horrid dandruff? Are you here for a head and shoulders transplant?’

‘No,’ Tom interjected, a little seriously, ‘it’s me. We’re here for me. For my eczema. Not my daddy.’

‘Well, I think I can fix your daddy’s Dandruff Disaster,’ said Dr Pippity, producing an oversized pair of green plastic scissors the size of gardening shears. She hummed and sang and worked the toy all over the father’s head whilst his son and the mother grinned. ‘Oops!’ Dr Pippity declared. ‘I have cut off his ear.’ She held a hand over Zac’s left ear and made a theatrical display of searching high and low. Balancing the scissors precariously on his head, she produced a large, false ear from her pocket. ‘Ear you are, dear,’ she said, ‘ear you go, ear’s another one.’ Her jokes were so corny that the adults had to laugh and to Tom, not quite six, her puns were extraordinarily brilliant and the cause of much mirth.

Undivided attention for just five minutes seemed to have a value lasting much longer – but soon enough, Dr Pippity was on her rounds, with her scissors and her hole-punch clippings and her spirits and her skill. Tom remained animated right up until he was called. June went with him. Zac stayed in the waiting area. And when Dr Pippity yodelled a heartfelt goodbye to everyone, that she was off on her rounds, Zac followed at a discreet distance.

What Zac didn’t know – how could he – was that when clowns are in slap and motley, they are locked into their clown personae until the moment of make-up remover and cotton wool. It’s not dressing up. It’s not acting. It’s a dignified art and profession. It’s a very serious business. Who would ever accuse Superman of being Clark Kent in fancy dress? Clowns never drop their guise. Not even when they are on their own. And so it was Dr Pippity, not Pip McCabe, who was alone in the small washroom the clown doctors use to sterilize their props, wash their hands with antiseptic and compose themselves between ward rounds. Though the door was open, she was unaware of having an audience. Zac loitered out in the corridor, glimpsing her now and then as she larked about with the bin, treading on the pedal so that the lid opened and shut like a mouth – and a very good conversationalist it made, too.

‘Excuse me,’ Zac said, when she emerged. ‘I just wanted to say “thanks”.’

Momentarily, Dr Pippity couldn’t quite place him – her mind was on the cancer ward she was about to visit. Then she caught sight of a few stray hole-punch pieces. ‘That’s okey-dokey,’ she said, in her clown voice.

‘I saw you at my nephew’s party,’ Zac said, wanting to keep her there for a moment, wanting her to be herself, wanting her to himself; not wanting to follow her towards the ward. ‘Billy?’

‘Dr Pippity doesn’t do parties,’ she said, needing to be on her way and slightly disconcerted by this man’s attentions. Weren’t his wife and child downstairs?

‘In Holloway? A couple of months ago,’ Zac persisted. ‘You gave me your card, not Dr Pippity, the other one. Mad Molly or someone. I had a headache.’

‘That’ll be the dandruff,’ Dr Pippity jested, inwardly slightly insulted that Merry Martha could be thought of as Mad Molly.

I knew a Mad Molly once – she was barking mad and pretty unpleasant.

‘I lost your card. Can I have another?’ the man asked. ‘I mean, do you get a coffee break on this job? Can I buy you a coffee? Or a drink – what about a drink after work? I live in Hampstead – where do you live?’

What the fuck am I doing? June is downstairs. And Juliana is this evening.

What the fuck is he doing? His wife and kid are downstairs and he’s asking me out for a drink and wanting to know where I live?

‘I only drink orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash,’ Dr Pippity declared, initially irritating Zac until he saw that she spoke mainly to a young patient who walked slowly past them, ‘and that yummy stuff,’ the clown continued, pointing to the drip the child was trundling and managing to raise a hint of a grin from the patient in the process. ‘I have to be on my way,’ Dr Pippity told the man, adding sotto voce, ‘it’s good to see your son in Out-patients rather than the ward. I’m pleased for him. For you, for your wife.’

‘She’s not my wife!’ Zac declared, immediately regretting the urgency and defensiveness in his voice.

That’s as may be, thought Pip as she made her way towards the ward, but whoever she is or whatever she isn’t, she is the mother of your child and she and he are just downstairs.

‘Idiot!’ Zac cursed himself, as he returned to Out-patients.

‘Weirdo,’ Dr Pippity said to herself as she entered the ward. ‘I don’t think I’ll ruffle the hair of grown men for the time being.’

EIGHT

‘Gold is ill!’ Tom chanted. ‘Please? Gold. Is. Ill!’

Zac never tired of his child’s propensity to pronounce a word the way he heard it, even if the meaning became skewed. Tom was a master of this. He thought his grandpa was ill with Old-timers because he was seventy-five, after all. For Zac, Old-timers seemed to sum up June’s father’s affliction much more astutely and more sensitively than Alzheimer’s. And now, this Saturday afternoon, Tom was saying that gold is ill with great conviction and joy.

‘Golders Hill it is,’ Zac granted and was rewarded with a hug that turned into a full-on rough-and-tumble. Zac loved the park at Golders Hill, an annexe to the heath extension at Hampstead. Flamingos and wallabies and rhea birds and deer, not to mention excellent home-made ice-cream, too, were all on offer. Families commandeered this section of the heath; mums and dads with Mamas&Papas prams and Bebecar buggies and every Fisher Price toy ever produced. There was a delightfully old-fashioned feel to Golders Hill Park; it had none of the pretensions of nearby Hampstead High Street. The Barbour brigade, with their designer labradors and under-retrieving retrievers and aesthetically muddied Range Rovers parked in the pay-and-display in Downshire Hill, never ventured to this enclave of the heath near Golders Green. And the gays who cottaged and rummaged and flirted and felched in gloomy areas of the heath nearer Whitestone Pond also left Golders Hill untouched.

‘Do you think Mummy and Rob-Dad are having ice-creams too?’ Tom asked as he and his father strolled and licked their way over to the paddock to gaze at some goats.

‘Probably,’ Zac said. ‘Hey! This time last week you were performing your ring thing.’

Tom looked at his toy watch which permanently read 3.30. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t need sellotape.’

‘You were brilliant,’ Zac said earnestly, ‘and you made their day. You made everyone’s day.’

‘I hope that Mummy and Rob-Dad are having ice-cream at this very very very minute,’ said Tom, pulling his father towards the deer. Zac, who thought that the concept of time zones might be just beyond his son’s grasp, assured him that they most certainly were. The deer were Disney delightful; the goats, however, were pungent enough to make their ice-cream unpalatable so they meandered back towards the rolling lawns.

‘Good God,’ Zac said under his breath at the very same moment that Tom declared ‘A clown! A clown!’ The child stopped. ‘It’s the clown!’ He looked at Zac and beamed. ‘Quick! Let’s go! Come on, Dad.’

Shit. It’s only bloody Her. Clowngirl. She’ll think I’m stalking her. It’s not like I have a pair of sunglasses to hide behind. I’ll keep an eye on Tom from a discreet distance and bury my nose in the paper. But that’ll make me look like a comedy spy, of course. Anyway, Tom’s not even six years old. He has ice-cream dribbling down his wrist in high wasp season. I must accompany him, I’m his father.

‘Daddy, look!’ Tom went charging back to Zac, standing on the periphery of parents near the stage. ‘It’s Dr Pippity, isn’t it – but she’s got funny clothes on, and much more stuff on her face than at St Bea’s.’ He scampered back to the throng of children and heckled with the best of them.

Oh dear, what have we here? Pip said to herself whilst she made an expert mess of bendy balloons. It’s that bloke with the dandruff. Looks like I have my own personal stalker. Look at him, loitering behind his paper. I can’t see the wife anywhere. Well, he can look – but I hope he doesn’t linger.

‘See! Spaghetti!’ Merry Martha declared, holding aloft a scramble of balloons to much laughter from her young audience. ‘Blast and bootlaces! I’ve forgotten the magic words – does anyone know any?’ From the audience came shrieks of ‘abracadabra’ and ‘open sesame’. A girl at the front in an immaculate dress with matching hair ribbons was sitting patiently, cross-legged, with her hand held aloft.

‘Magic word?’ Martha asked her gently.

‘Please,’ the girl revealed.

Martha performed a cartwheel to signify her approval. ‘The best magic word of all,’ she declared with a nod to the cordon of parents, ‘a very pretty please from a very pretty young lady.’ Her hands worked this way and that, whilst her face contorted into a display of entertaining grimaces and pouts. ‘Voilà! No more spaghetti – a sausage dog instead! Oh! And another. Ah! And one more!’ She distributed the balloons carefully to the quieter children in her audience, thanked everyone for coming and gave a genuflection of prodigious proportions. ‘Time for you all to have a drink or a wee-wee,’ she proclaimed, crossing her legs as if that was what she needed to do, ‘before the puppet show. Ta-ta, ta-ra, toot-toot.’ Two flic-flacs and she was off the stage.

Tom made his way back to his father. ‘Did you see? Dr Pippity?’ Zac nodded and suggested they return to the goats now that there was no ice-cream to spoil. ‘No,’ said Tom firmly, ‘I want to go and say “hullo” to Dr Pippity.’ Zac tried to say she was going home, that she was only half Dr Pippity today. ‘No!’ Tom declared. ‘You can’t be a half. Let’s go and say “hullo”. She’s better than stinky goats. Come on, Dad, please?’

Why can’t she just bugger off quickly instead of meandering her way through the park, chatting and jesting with every child she passes?

‘We don’t have time,’ Zac tried to reason with Tom.

‘We only just got here,’ Tom protested.

‘She’s busy,’ Zac said, not looking at her, not looking at Tom.

‘She snot,’ Tom sulked. ‘All the other children get to talk to her – look. It’s not fair, it snot.’

You’re right. And why do I even care what she thinks of me? And why do I appear to care about it more than I care about Tom?

‘Go on, then,’ Zac said, ‘run. I’ll tell you how fast you are. Just say a quick “hullo”. I’ll catch up with you.’ Tom belted off. Dutifully, Zac timed him, to the fraction of a second. He’d never fob his son off with an estimate.

Pip was trying to extricate herself from a thuggish nine-year-old boy and his sidekick who were trying to pickpocket her for balloons.

‘Dr Pippity?’ Tom greeted her shyly.

‘Shove off!’ snarled the larger boy, pushing him. But then as he stared at Tom a look of horror crept across his face. ‘Yuck, look at him!’ His friend did. ‘His skin’s coming off – and I touched him!’

‘Flaky boy!’ his friend joined in. ‘I could puke!’

The larger boy wiped his hands with desperation on the grass. Pip was appalled. She’d worked with children with all manner of disabilities and afflictions for so long, frequently she no longer saw the physical manifestation of their illnesses. The boys were haranguing Tom whose eyes were smarting.

Don’t cry, little guy, Pip thought, it’s what they want.

Tom’s bottom lip quivered. The older boy suddenly pushed his friend against Tom. ‘Ha, ha, you’ll catch his manky skin!’

The younger boy burst into tears, genuinely distressed, rubbing his arm furiously, as if his sleeve was contaminated with germs. He was no longer actively attempting to tease and hurt Tom. He was now fearful for his welfare. ‘Mummy!’ he sobbed, running off.

‘You horrible little boy,’ Pip said in her own voice, the sound of which completely took the bully aback. ‘Go away or I’ll phone the police.’

‘I’ll tell my dad on you,’ he said, backing off nevertheless.

‘And I’ll tell your dad on you,’ Pip threatened, ‘picking on littler boys, trying to steal balloons. Who do you think you are? Sod off right now or I’ll start yelling.’ Standing there, hands on hips, multicolourful and made up to the nines, Pip still cut an imposing figure to the child who sauntered off, kicking turf and grumbling. ‘Horrible child,’ Pip reiterated. She turned back to Tom who was trying to wipe his tears away before she saw. With her thumb, Pip stroked the last of the wet off his cheek. And then she licked her thumb and smacked her lips. ‘Yum, yum!’ she cooed, in her clown persona once again. ‘You have the most delicious tears in London The World The Universe.’

Tom managed a smile. ‘You are Dr Pippity,’ he declared.

‘Sort of – I’m actually also Merry Martha today. Are you all right?’ Tom nodded. ‘Boys like him,’ Pip said, in a gentler voice, with a cursory nod of her head in the direction of the other children, ‘they’re just silly bullies. I bet he wets his pants and has no proper friends.’ Tom’s smile broadened. Pip glanced towards the entrance to the park. She had a party to do in a couple of hours. She really should be on her way. But then she glanced at Tom.

God. I can’t just leave him. Little mite.

‘Where are your parents?’ Pip asked.

‘My mum’s in the St Lucy Jalousie,’ Tom said, wondering if he had the word order correct, ‘in the Caribbean. But my dad’s over there.’

‘Come on, let’s go over there, then,’ Pip said – though giving her stalker the wrong idea, or the slightest encouragement for his perversion, was something she’d really rather not do. ‘I hope you don’t let idiots like that stupid boy upset you,’ Pip said as they walked.

‘I try not to,’ said Tom with a weariness Pip felt no child his age should know. ‘I just say “sticks and stones” to myself.’

‘“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me”,’ Pip quoted back to him.

‘That’s right!’ Tom said, feeling he had a true ally. ‘My dad says it’s what’s on the inside that counts.’

‘Beauty comes from within,’ said Pip. Tom loved her even more.

‘And anyway, the doctor says I will grow out of my eczema when I’m older. And it isn’t catching at all,’ he continued, almost pleadingly.

‘Of course not,’ said Pip, taking his hand and walking on. ‘Why aren’t you and your dad in St Lucia, too, in the Caribbean?’ she asked conversationally, on their way over to the trees. Aware of the yarns children could spin, Pip had presumed the boy’s mother wasn’t truly away.

Mummy’s probably making all sorts of North London organic stuff for the kid’s tea. In a kitchen more suited to a Cotswold cottage, no doubt – Aga and gingham and scrubbed wood units.

‘My mum’s on honeymoon,’ Tom explained, ‘with Rob-Dad.’

Pip decided it was time to give the child’s imagination a break so she changed the subject to balloons instead. ‘If you could have a balloon that looked like anything you wanted it to, what would it be?’

And please God choose a cat, dog, parrot or tortoise.

Luckily, Tom procrastinated for so long that Pip had blown a balloon and twisted it into a parrot by the time he said ‘Giant anteater, actually’.

‘Will a parrot do?’

‘It’s brill! Thanks, Dr Pippity.’

‘Martha.’

‘Martha, then.’

‘Actually, you can call me Pip.’

‘Who?’

Zac, unaware of his son’s altercation with the bully, did not know where to look, let alone what to expect, on observing the clown and his son making their way towards him. So he pretended he was engrossed in his newspaper. But that seemed rude. So he watched them approach. But that seemed ruder. So he decided to meet them halfway.

‘Look at my parrot, Daddy.’

‘It’s lovely,’ Zac told Tom, thanking the clown without looking at her. Pip thought the man spent an inordinate amount of time displaying a bizarre level of interest in her balloon sculpture but it gave her a chance, however fleetingly, and however quickly she dismissed it, to see that, in the sunlight, away from the hospital, no matter how peculiar he was on the inside, he was clad in a most appealing exterior. Eyes the colour of slate. Handsome face with neat features. Dark hair, short and neat. Trim physique clad in nicely cut clothes. Though a slight preponderance of navy, Pip felt, considering the balmy weather.

I don’t know why I’m even noticing. He’s not my type.

Oh? What’s your type, then, Pip?

Don’t have one.

So how do you know this chap isn’t for you?

Because he’s not. He’s nuts, for starters, plus he has a kid. A child, for heaven’s sake. Anyway, there’s Caleb to consider.

I thought you weren’t considering Caleb at all?

‘She’s got lots of tricks,’ Tom was telling his father, ‘and lots of names, too.’

‘I have,’ said Pip in Martha’s voice. ‘It means never a dull moment for me. If I’m boring myself, I just become Martha. If Martha’s getting on my nerves, I summon up Dr Pippity. If Dr Pippity is tired, then I’m just plain old me.’

See! Zac thought, with a degree of relief. She is an utter weirdo. With what is probably a sectionable personality disorder, too.

Yet he couldn’t help but think that she wasn’t ‘plain’ in the slightest, whatever she might protest to the contrary. And however lurid her clothing and daft her make-up.

‘Most people are locked up if they have as many personalities as me!’ Pip said, right on cue, but to Tom and not Zac.

See, Zac thought, vindicated, she’s barking.

‘I must be off,’ said Pip. Then she looked at Tom and took a sniff at her arm. She wrinkled her nose: ‘Yeuch, I am off – past my sell-by date!’ Tom giggled, Zac tried not to. She stopped herself from saying ‘not really’ to the bloke lest he thought she actually did smell, though why she cared what he thought she didn’t know.

‘Watch how fast I can run!’ Tom boasted. Watching him belt off towards the deer enclosure, Pip marvelled how quickly children could bounce back from a knock. She was also quite charmed to see how his father timed him.

‘Two revolting kids were picking on him,’ Pip told his father when Tom was out of earshot, ‘little sods.’

Zac nodded gravely, keeping an eye on the second hand of his watch. ‘I bet he bore up OK,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Pip confirmed, ‘but they were vile.’

‘Poor old Tom,’ said Zac. ‘It’s awful to say he’s used to it – but he is. And for the most part, it doesn’t happen often.’

‘Well, I’m off,’ said Pip, despite a perceptible loiter to the contrary which infuriated her.

‘Yeah, good idea,’ Zac said, with a derisory sniff in her direction, ‘you do whiff a bit.’

Why did you say that?

Why did he say that?

Why the fuck did I say that?

Your sense of humour is so dry it’s positively parched, Zac. Backtrack.

But he’s standing there, an unfortunate and involuntary smirk stuck to his face while he racks his brain for a way to minimize the insult without drawing more attention to it. It’s taking him too long. See, Pip is smiling cursorily but she’s backing off.

She must think I am an absolute arse, now. I was only trying to pick up on her own joke.

Pip didn’t see it that way. Why should she? After all, look what she’s had to go by from Zac before.

What a dick. And whether it’s a lack of manners or a warped sense of humour on his part, I can’t say I really care.

‘How fast?’ said Tom, panting.

‘There and back?’ Zac asked. ‘Two minutes forty in all.’

‘Where’s my clown?’

‘Gone home, little ’un.’

Tom wasn’t too upset. He now felt sure he’d see her again. Dr Pippity. Or the Martha one with more make-up and fewer clothes. Zac reckoned so, too. And didn’t quite know how he felt about it, now that he’d made a prat of himself for the second, even third, time. Hastily, he reminded himself she was a clown, and wasn’t that an odd thing to choose to be? And hadn’t clowns frightened him when he was young? He thought of Juliana; her long legs and no holds barred. Then he considered Clowngirl with her stripy tights and daft voices.

Well, not that he’s to know, but the next time Zac sees Pip, he simply won’t recognize her at all.

NINE

‘How was your visit today?’

‘It was good, thanks – tiring as ever, but rewarding.’

Bloody hell! Caleb’s managed it! Pip has granted him – or, rather, allowed herself – a couple of drinks after work. She’s chosen a Sea Breeze and she’s sipping it demurely. Ironically, today’s one Tuesday when Pip needn’t have worried about being on her own – the messages left on her mobile during her hospital rounds had Cat clamouring for Pip to cook dinner (and she’d provide plenty of wine), Fen imploring her to come and see the new Julia Roberts film (and she’d buy the popcorn) and Megan begging her to come and meet Dominic (and thus advise her whether to proceed). All three presumed Pip would be free for them.

sorry, already have plans she texts back to each of them, adding a few more kisses for Cat than the others. They’d just have to manage without her – now there was a novel notion! Cat was depressed about this, Fen was slightly pissed off and Megan was downright devastated, but Pip turned her phone off. Good job, really. One call taken from a friend or sibling in need and she’d have left the pub and Caleb without a second thought. But she’s happily ensconced in an old Windsor chair, sitting by the window with the slow sun of the early evening drifting in and bestowing aesthetic merit on all it glances off. Pip watches Caleb as he returns from the bar with peanuts and crisps. The light is catching his features, accentuating his cheek-bones and strong jaw line, spinning a little gold from his chocolate eyes. Pip feels content with her decision to have him for company.

‘Anything to forgo rush hour on the Misery line,’ she had said nonchalantly half an hour ago in answer to his suggestion of a quick drink. He’d been ready and keen to head off right there and then. Pip had laughed. ‘Would you mind awfully if I changed and took my slap off? We might not get served otherwise.’ Caleb had regarded her with the sober contemplation he bestowed on his patients. ‘Nah,’ he said dismissively, at length, ‘you look fab and funky as you are. Let’s go.’ And with that, he had forcibly marched her down the stairs to the ground floor, out through the foyer, past the ambulance bay, through the courtyard where the more able-bodied patients took fresh air, beyond the hospital perimeters and out into the world. She did, however, manage to remove her false nose and slip it, sleight of hand, up her sleeve and then into her pocket.

And now she’s sitting in the Windsor chair, across from Dr Caleb Simmons who is straddling a stool and presenting her with peanuts and crisps to accompany her Sea Breeze. He’s drinking down a pint of lager. She can see that paediatrics is thirsty work. He’s tucking into the snacks, too. ‘I hardly ever find the time to even grab a sandwich on the hoof,’ he explains, almost apologetically. Because for the next few minutes his mouth is full of peanuts, all that’s possible is small talk – but it relaxes Pip and she’s pleased to find out minutiae like his age (thirty-four), how long he’s worked at St Bea’s (three years), where he lives (Hoxton) and that he’s going on holiday in a month to Belize (with a friend). He doesn’t like to speak with his mouth full so he answers Pip economically and doesn’t ask her anything. Much to her relief.

‘Would you like another drink?’ Pip asks, because she would certainly like another Sea Breeze. When she returns to the table, the snacks are finished and the packets have been meticulously folded into compact triangular pockets. A finicky process that strikes her as being at odds with Caleb’s easygoing personality. She doesn’t dwell on it. Actually, she is rather enjoying his company and would be happy for them to make an entire evening of it.

Caleb buys the next round.

‘Here’s to the clown doctors,’ he toasts, ‘and all that you do for the hospital.’

Pip is touched. She raises her glass and chinks his. ‘Do you feel we make a difference – truly?’ she asks. ‘We’ve only been at St Bea’s six months.’

‘Absolutely,’ Caleb replies. ‘You have to remember that though the kids know we are here to make them better, they also associate us with discomfort and pain what with the procedures and operations and drugs we administer. You lot provide fun and relief – you’re the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down.’

‘That’s great to hear,’ says Pip, chinking glasses. ‘The Renee Foundation is placing clown doctors in Manchester and Glasgow this autumn – that’ll be seven hospitals in the UK.’

‘How did you get into it?’ Caleb asked, because he’d never really thought about it and it now struck him as rather intriguing.

‘I was working as a clown already,’ Pip explained.

‘Odd,’ Caleb mused, ‘but interesting. How did you get into clowning?’

‘Oh,’ said Pip breezily, ‘I think I was possibly born one. No,’ she corrected, ‘necessity dictated I become one very early on – family traumas and all that, so creating laughter and distractions became my responsibility and, soon enough, my forte.’

There wasn’t a lot Caleb could say to that, so he nodded in what he hoped, by virtue of his bedside-manner physiognomy, was an understanding way.

‘Plus,’ Pip continued, quite proud of her c.v., ‘when I was little, a retired clown lived nearby and he used to paint my face for me. I’ve barely modified it since then.’

They were suddenly aware that Pip was still in her slap and that the other drinkers were casting inquisitive glances in her direction. Pip didn’t mind that she was the centre of some quiet attention; for once, she quite liked it. ‘I have my own egg, you know,’ she announced proudly. ‘Clowns register their clown faces by painting the design on an egg shell,’ she explained, ‘so if you want to check whether I’m kosher, you can visit the Clowns Gallery in Hackney where my egg is displayed alongside hundreds of others.’

‘So there’s a whole clown community?’ Caleb asked.

‘There’s even a clowns’ church,’ Pip informed him, ‘with a service of thanksgiving for the gift of laughter and the life of Joseph Grimaldi on the first Sunday of February. If I was more God-fearing, I’d go,’ she added almost apologetically.

‘I had no idea,’ Caleb mused. ‘I guess I just thought of clowns nowadays as being slightly dodgy entertainers – perhaps comics who aren’t funny enough or acrobats who aren’t accomplished enough or actors who aren’t skilled enough. I imagined you all worked in isolation, leading odd lives, generally hiding behind your masks.’

‘I’m a very capable acrobat,’ Pip proclaimed, ‘and I turned down drama college for circus school. I trained under a brilliant French clown called Manouche. I’m also pretty good at trapeze. Clowning is an art, you know,’ she continued earnestly. ‘It requires physical skill, dramatic ability, imagination with a sense of the comic and, perhaps most importantly, an understanding of human nature.’

‘Did you run away to the circus?’ Caleb asked.

‘No.’

‘Have you seen Cirque du Soleil?’

‘A billion times.’

‘Do you smoke?’ Caleb asked, offering her a cigarette and lighting one for himself.

‘Not if I’m sober,’ Pip replied, feeling on the way to woozy but thankfully still at the stage of refusing cigarettes. ‘Look at you, Doctor!’ she remarked. ‘Don’t you know fags’ll kill you?’

‘Totally,’ Caleb said darkly, ‘that’s why I do it.’

Pip took a sip of her drink and thought that she really shouldn’t think he looked sexy the way he drew on the cigarette.

‘Ever eaten fire?’ Caleb asked, taking a deep drag.

‘No,’ said Pip, ‘but I’ve played with it.’ She was rather pleased with that answer.

‘So have I,’ Caleb said somewhat gravely. ‘Do you juggle?’

‘Yes.’

‘So do I,’ said Caleb, rather darkly. Pip decided swiftly not to read into this so she suggested they go for food.

‘What do you like?’ Caleb wondered.

‘I don’t know,’ Pip said. ‘What do you fancy?’

He drew on his cigarette and regarded her levelly. ‘I fancy you,’ he said, with intense eye contact. Pip giggled though she cursed herself immediately for doing so. She felt nervous – and it irked her.

‘I want to get out of these clothes,’ she said, not intending innuendo but quite enjoying Caleb’s raised eyebrow and sly smile.

Back at St Bea’s, Pip changed and then they had sushi in a place off Liverpool Street. It probably wasn’t a good idea to mix sake with the Sea Breezes she’d had earlier. Certainly not a good idea for it to lead to her happily accepting cigarettes from her date. Though the second made her feel quite queasy, being in the company of a doctor put her at ease. So she had a few puffs of a third but politely declined the suggestion of a nightcap.

‘I’m doing face painting in Brent Cross shopping centre tomorrow – I’ll need a steady hand,’ she justified, ‘and then I have a birthday party to do in Hampstead Garden Suburb at tea-time – and I’ll need a clear head if I’m going to do a handstand and God knows what else.’

‘Another time?’ Dr Simmons proposed.

‘Sure,’ Pip heard herself saying with no pause for thought, ‘why not?’

What a gent – hailing a black cab and escorting her halfway across London, telling the cabby to wait, please, as he took Pip to her front door.

‘Great evening,’ Pip thanked him, wondering in her somewhat boozy and brazen state if he might kiss her; hoping that he would, thinking she really ought to maintain eye contact to encourage this to happen. She looked up from her bag, from pretending to fumble for keys. Lovely eyes, she thought, hers darting away from his; at first shyly, soon enough coquettishly.

‘Good-night, then,’ he said, luring her eyes back to his as his face came close to hers. He kissed her gently on the cheek, his lips lightly brushing the corner of her mouth.

‘Night,’ Pip all but whispered, keys in her hand, her eyes locked on to his. She lifted her chin and parted her lips and immediately, Caleb’s mouth was on hers and swiftly, his tongue was flickering at her lips. And suddenly, her tongue was in his mouth. The kiss slowed and intensified. He tasted of soy sauce and lager. He tasted of being a man, a doctor called Caleb Simmons. When their mouths separated, suddenly the sound of the taxi’s chuntering diesel engine seemed very loud, very near, somewhat impatient.

‘Shall I send the cab away?’ Caleb murmured, using his little finger to lift a lick of hair from the corner of her mouth, using his thumb to smooth it behind her ear. ‘Shall I come in?’

Pip wanted more kissing. In fact, she wanted a lot more. All of him. All over her. Rude sex would be very nice, thank you very much. They could begin in the cramped porch, start ripping at each other’s clothing in the sitting-room, be down to underwear, dry humping against the wall of the corridor, then arrive at her bed buck naked and raring, even roaring, to go. She had the desire. She had the imagination. Thanks to the Sea Breezes and sake, she had the confidence. And in her bedside drawer, she even had the condoms. The sex would be tantalizingly urgent and over quickly. A fuck. But they’d rest up a little and then do it again, more languid, lasting longer, going further, going deeper, coming to the same conclusion (simultaneously, if they could synchronize).

Caleb was fondling her breasts through her clothing and Pip, with his thigh between hers, was rubbing herself rhythmically against his leg as they continued to kiss. The cab’s engine was clicketing, the meter running. Sex was an imminent possibility. A pricey one, thought Caleb, estimating the cab fare whilst continuing to tongue Pip. Perhaps too costly, thought Pip, pulling away though it took some strength, mental and physical.

Pip sent Caleb on his way. ‘Another time,’ she said, placing her finger on the tip of his nose, then kissing him softly there.

‘Sure,’ said Caleb with his easy smile. ‘Good-night, Pip.’

‘Night, Dr Simmons,’ Pip said, waiting till he’d climbed the basement stairwell and was up on the street, smiling down at her, before she opened her front door and let herself in.

Of course she wasn’t going to let him in – not physically, certainly not metaphysically. And it didn’t really have much to do with her busy schedule the following day. There hadn’t been a man in her house, let alone her bed, to say nothing of her life, for months. And even then, she didn’t truly let that one in. While Caleb’s osculation had made her horny as hell, her pride and her privacy had kept him at bay. Anyway, as she often proclaimed to her friends and sisters, there were always vibrators. So, as Caleb headed for Hoxton in the cab, his hand lolling over his hard-on, Pip went to bed with a rather peculiar-looking contraption which made strange whirring sounds at inopportune moments. It did do, however, exactly what it said on the packaging.

The only thing about having an orgasm with a battery-operated device is that post-coitally one is hugely aware of one’s solitude. I guess sometimes having a bloke in your bed is preferable, even if he does roll over, fart and fall dead asleep.

But Pip makes light of this. Even to herself. She sits up in bed and takes two Nurofen with three glasses of water. She cannot afford to be remotely hungover when she awakes. Tomorrow is a very full day but one when she’ll see off most of this month’s mortgage payment. She switches off the light but stays sitting up. She’s spared no thought for Fen or Cat or Megan, hasn’t a clue how their evenings turned out. Though she tries to conjure up an image of Caleb, strangely enough it is that odd stalker bloke who slopes across her mind’s eye. Vividly. She’s slightly taken aback that he should accost her so.

But there again, she thinks to herself, he is my stalker.

Nevertheless, she wonders why she’s conjured him up.

I guess his presence serves to emphasize just what a nice chap, by contrast, Caleb appears to be. Well-adjusted. Quite conventional. Nice manners. No kids. Little baggage. Friendly.

‘Pretty normal, really,’ Pip whispers into the darkness, slipping down under her duvet. And, of course, Pip is very earnest about the importance of being normal.

TEN

When Pip isn’t working hard earning her wage by making people laugh, she spends much of her spare time looking after her sisters and caring for her friends. Invariably, this requires making them laugh, too. For free. Regardless of overtime and weekends. And then there’s Django; Pip feels compelled to lighten his load. He’s worried about Cat and it is to Pip whom he turns for updates and reassurances. Her phone bill is huge. As is her supermarket bill on account of all the soup she makes for Cat’s freezer and the luxurious treats she buys to cajole her youngest sister’s appetite.

Pip has grown up believing that she is her sisters’ keeper. For one who spends an inordinate amount of her day falling about and fooling about, her duties as clown and eldest sister are responsibilities she takes very seriously. She’s the Great Looker-After. It’s not that her friends and family forget that sometimes perhaps she, too, would benefit from some TLC, actually it wouldn’t cross their minds that she’d ever need any. Good Lord, Philippa McCabe is never blue! She’s never had a crisis in her life! She’s so capable, so happy-go-lucky, she orders her life beautifully, she’s totally in control! However, there is small print to such compliments and it reads that actually Pip McCabe is never allowed to be anything other than happy herself, therefore available for others unconditionally whensoever she’s needed. The world would stop turning if Pip cried ‘help’. What would Cat do? Or Fen? Or Django? They wouldn’t know what to do and, quite frankly, they wouldn’t like it. Pip’s needs would be their loss. They’d be at a loss; utterly.

For the most part, Pip doesn’t feel used or hard done by. Quietly, we can surmise that her eagerness to be the Great Looker-After and Dispenser of Laughter in some way guards against any enquiries into her own welfare. Pip wants everyone to be safe and happy, but she is also aware that, for as long as they are the ones in need, they won’t have the wherewithal to probe or pry into her well-being.

Consequently, she hasn’t told anyone about Caleb. She’ll argue that there’s nothing to tell. Perhaps, though, it’s to avoid being questioned. Pip doesn’t have any answers. And she doesn’t like to be questioned. Nor has she told them about Zac – what on earth is there to tell? After all, she doesn’t yet know even his name – and she can’t very well refer to him as Stalker Bloke. Anyway, quietly she’s aware that she’s elaborated to herself, for her own amusement, the extent of his interest in her. Deep down she knows he’s not a stalker, just a bloke who keeps bumping into her, whose social graces are clumsy. Pip believes it is preferable to keep Caleb and Zac to herself, so she can indulge in imaginative tangents whilst she’s having a bath or travelling to work; sneak in a little day-dream whilst Megan or Cat or Fen discuss this grave matter or that. Fundamentally, though, Pip knows that to expose the bare facts surrounding either man would reveal that there’s not much there at all, really.

There’s been little development between Caleb and Pip since their late-night doorstep embrace. Dr Pippity’s visits to St Bea’s don’t always coincide with Dr Simmons’s ward rounds and when they are on the same ward at the same time, both clown and doctor are too focused on their patients and their jobs to sneak away for even a quick hi-how’s-it-going, let alone consult diaries and arrange dates or steal a kiss, for goodness’ sake. Yesterday, he pinched her bottom just before she changed wards. She was quite taken aback. She felt compromised – believed his behaviour to be unprofessional. Fortunately, she was just about to go into the washroom to disinfect her props and wash her hands, so the symbolic wiping of a paper towel against her posterior restored her composure and enabled her to continue with her ward rounds in fine style.

‘I’d rather you didn’t pinch my bottom again,’ she warned, somewhat prissily, when she came across him having a cigarette in the ambulance bay as she made her way to the tube.

He looked crestfallen. ‘What, never ever again? But it’s so damn pinchable, Pip.’ He stood up and came close. ‘In fact, I’m glad I have a fag in one hand and the Telegraph in the other or I’d be in full fondle of your buttocks right now.’

Don’t bloody laugh at his lousy rubbish joke. He’s incorrigible. Don’t even bloody smile.

‘You’re incorrigible!’ Pip protested, frustrated that she was so easily flattered and praying she wasn’t blushing.

‘You’re blushing,’ Caleb said. ‘And I’ll be happy to bet dinner that you’re not blushing on those cheeks alone,’ he remarked, kissing them for emphasis, ‘or that it’s merely these lips that are moist right now,’ he whispered, kissing her mouth.

Pip McCabe was truly stuck for words. His blatancy, his lewdness, was an unexpected turn-on. What was she meant to say? Should she admit that, yes, she really did want to go to bed with him, and judging by the state of her knickers, why didn’t they just forget the whole dinner-wager thing and cab it back to one of their flats right now? Or should she act all demure? Or should she play hard to get but flirtatious with it?

For Christ’s bloody sake, this is the kind of advice I dispense to my sisters and friends the whole time. I’m forever helping them to compose fabulous soliloquies. And now I’m standing here like a lemon, gawping and speechless, flushed, drooling and damp. I can’t practise what I preach because I can’t remember what on earth it is I advocate.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ Caleb asked slyly, raising one side of his mouth into a sly smile.

Pip McCabe regarded him. Momentarily, her thoughts wandered to her sister, Cat. She ought to call her. She really ought. Later.

Now, however, she tilted her head and placed her hands on her hips. ‘Actually,’ she heard herself say, ‘there’s a pussy who’ll have your tongue in a flash.’

Jesus, Pip! Was that you? You minx!

God knows where that came from! How can I switch from pissed off with him for pinching my bum to suggesting cunnilingus? I should go. I really should. I have no idea whether this is a good idea – and that is the point precisely. I’ll go. I’ll go and see Cat.

‘Dinner, then?’ said Caleb. Now it was his turn to hope that his excitement wasn’t too obvious and he nonchalantly held his Telegraph against his bulging groin as a precaution.

She’s speaking my language. And it’s an invitation beyond my expectations at this stage.

Though Pip’s mind was flooded with half-sentences of ‘I should …’ and ‘I’ll phone Cat to …’ and ‘For God’s sake, I really …’ and ‘Django won’t be …’, her voice had a mind of its own. ‘Your place or mine?’ Pip asked. ‘And let’s not bother with dinner.’

Time will tell whether it was a good thing or bad that a seamless, Hollywoodesque scene-change straight to the bedroom – to humping, writhing, sighing, happy, glistening bodies – was denied them. Caleb was on a late shift that night. And the next night, Pip had promised to accompany Fen to the birthday party of the editor at her work who she was furtively starting to see. So Caleb suggested Saturday night and Pip accepted as demurely as she could.

However, the verbal acceptance of carnal relations between the two of them – the acknowledgement of the imminence of this – took Pip a good few strides on from her senseless celibacy. Her attitude changed and with it, her demeanour. Quite possibly, the subtle but significant shift altered the potency of her pheromones. Or at the least, simply bestowed an allure of availability and willingness.

Little did she know that before Caleb would get her into bed, she’d have been bought drinks by Zac and would have accepted a date from him.

ELEVEN

When Pip saw Zac across a crowded bar, she was hardly going to tell her sisters ‘Oh look, there’s my stalker, yes, I suppose he is quite handsome but don’t be fooled by good looks because actually he’s rude and odd, to say nothing of the baggage he lugs around, brimming with an ex-wife and sick son.’

There again, nor was Pip likely to reveal that, in the next twenty-four hours, there was a strong possibility that she’d be in bed with a doctor from St Bea’s with whom she’d already had great aural sex.

But Zac was there that night and Pip was quite taken aback that she should be amused rather than disconcerted, perhaps just a little excited rather than unnerved, that she had a certain pride rather than horror that the man over there, yes, the good-looking one in the navy jeans and navy shirt and spectacles that used to be free on the NHS but no doubt now cost a small fortune, was her own personal stalker.

Perhaps there was a part of her that would quite like to say ‘See that bloke? I can’t get away from him.’ Not because she sought her sisters’ protection – because she didn’t really fear him at all and of course she could look after herself well enough, thank you very much – but because actually, she was rather proud that her so-called stalker was so easy on the eye. However, duty called and decreed that the only blokes who warranted her focus were the one Fen was considering sleeping with, and the one Cat was deludedly desperate to have back. Tonight was about encouraging Fen to go for it and persuading Cat to leave well alone.

No. Pip wouldn’t be saying a word to her sisters. She couldn’t possibly. What – have the focus on Pip McCabe? Put herself in the hot seat and under the spotlight? Good God, no. No, thank you. Pip’s a great believer in there being a Time and a Place; frequently she uses the unsuitability of one or the other as a prophetic sign or else a perfect excuse. Soho, in the hurl of her sister’s potential boyfriend’s birthday party, provided her with neither the time for Zac nor the place to mention him to anyone. Ah, but there again, Pip, nor would a quiet night at your flat, or Fen’s or Cat’s. And a weekend up in Derbyshire wouldn’t be the right forum either, would it? Over the phone wouldn’t do. Nor would the grapevine. The time and place are rarely aligned in Pip’s eye.

So, Pip sipped champagne in Soho, providing morale support for one sister (Fen’s morals were, for the most part, in good shape) and utter support for the other (Cat had had a bad day after quite a good week, and the champagne was making her slightly unsteady on her feet). It had taken all manner of cajoling – including Pip walking on her hands at Cat’s flat earlier – to persuade the youngest McCabe to come out with them. And now look at her, bedecked in Whistles, partaking of champagne and eliciting a few appreciative glances from present company. Pip was well aware that champagne could be a dangerous thing. A little was a very good idea, too much could be disastrous, the distinction between the two could be perilously indistinct.

‘What do you think of the Holden guy then?’ Cat whispered, nudging Pip and giving a surreptitious nod in Fen’s direction.

‘Well, he’s well-spoken,’ Pip analysed, ‘charming, too. Obviously fairly well-to-do, not that it should count for a jot. I’ve been watching him and he gazes at Fen at any opportunity. That’s good. She’s not one to waste time on someone who feels anything less than absolutely smitten by her. I think he could well be worth her while. Good luck to her.’

‘I like champagne,’ giggled Cat, who simply thought Matt hunky, Fen lucky and that they should go for it, ‘and I like those dingle-dangle things.’

‘Looks like Fen’s on her way to Matt’s dingle-dangle thing,’ said Pip.

Cat whooped with laughter. ‘I meant the lights here!’ Pip knew perfectly well what her sister had been alluding to, but she also knew that her misinterpretation would cause merriment. Which it did. Pip raised her glass to the lighting – interestingly constructed multifaceted cubes of coloured Perspex floating with no visible means of support, diffusing light into colour and mood. Cat chinked glasses with Pip, her very own visible means of support.

‘I like the padded walls,’ Pip remarked and, to test her theory, Cat gently nodded her body against them. Pip sat down and patted the space next to her: ‘But Jesus, these seats are uncomfortable.’

Cat snuggled against her sister. ‘Is there any more champagne?’ she wondered out loud. ‘I love champagne.’ She paused, looking temporarily alarmed. ‘I think I might be having fun.’ She looked at Pip with her brow concertinaed. ‘Am I? Is that OK?’

‘Why don’t we discuss it over more champers – I’ll go and find some,’ said Pip, delighted that her sister had found something that she loved and was halfway on the road to having fun.

‘What do you think?’ Fen hissed, catching Pip’s arm as she embarked on her champagne quest.

‘I think free champagne is a fabulous idea but I think it’s all gone,’ Pip said. ‘Certainly it’s gone to Cat’s head.’

‘I mean about him. About Matt?’ Fen asked wide-eyed and close to, eagerly awaiting her sister’s response.

‘I think any man who has a party in a room with padded walls is very considerate indeed,’ Pip colluded, ‘and any man who stands all those bottles of champagne must be worth keeping.’ She observed her sister. ‘And I think any man who sets his attentions on my sister has impeccable taste. And he’d better treat you very nicely or the dingle-dangles will get it.’ Pip winked at Fen and wandered off in search of champagne.

‘Dingle-dangles?’ Fen murmured to herself.

There is no more free champagne. Pip decides, though, that champagne is what Cat must drink. Not because Cat loves the stuff, but because Pip won’t have her mix her drinks; she’s mixed up enough as it is. If it’s champagne that’s giving her joy, champagne she shall have. To the bar she goes.

And that’s when she comes across Zac.

She takes her place along the counter right next to him. Their elbows touch. But it is only when the barman allows her to queue-jump that she’s aware of him. Zac stares at her, irritated. Pip glowers back. Then she quickly looks away.

Fuck! It’s my stalker.

It is indeed. And he’s pissed off. He’s been brandishing a twenty-pound note in the direction of the barman for ages without success.

‘What’s a guy gotta do to get a drink round here? Sport a cleavage?’ he grumbles with a touch of wit that the noise of the bar renders inaudible.

Grumpy sod, Pip thinks. ‘Sorry,’ she says, establishing eye contact, ‘you were here first.’

‘Whatever,’ he says brusquely, ‘go ahead.’

He doesn’t recognize me. He hasn’t a clue who I am.

Pip can’t order and pay quickly enough and she weaves and shimmies her way back to Cat who is chatting amiably to Fen and Matt. A side of her wants to go, wants to avoid confrontation, doesn’t want Zac to suddenly recognize her, to approach, let alone converse. A side of her, however, newly unleashed thanks in no small part to Caleb, wants to play, wants to rile Zac and surprise him. A side to her is amused that he doesn’t recognize her and a side to her is slightly irked. So she stays, with half an eye on Fen, half an ear for Cat who is now drunkenly verbose, and half a mind to search Zac out and perform a magic trick on him.

Luck puts Zac directly in her path a short while later when she returns to the bar for yet more champagne for Cat. This time Pip smiles directly at him and he smiles back. That pretty girl who audaciously pushed in at the bar, he observes. The one who looks vaguely familiar.

At the heaving bar Pip waits an indecently short while to be served.

I haven’t a clue how I can feel insulted by him in Holloway, offended by him at the hospital, disconcerted by him on Hampstead Heath – and yet now rather taken with him in Soho.

Especially as you have Caleb keen and he comes with no added complications of children and stalking tendencies.

‘Champagne, please.’

Ask yourself which bloke your sisters would deem the more suitable.

‘Two glasses, thanks.’

I’m not telling Cat and Fen a thing – much less asking them anything of the sort.

When Pip turns from the bar, drinks in hand, she tries to catch Zac’s eye but he appears to look straight through her. She feels oddly rejected. Rejecting her feelings, however, she returns to the other side of the club where Cat is actually allowing herself to be chatted up by one of Matt’s mates and barely senses her sister’s return. Fen, meanwhile, has her lips a centimetre from Matt’s and she plants the first of many birthday kisses. Pip averts her gaze and busies herself tracing the rim of the wineglass. It feels as though her work is done. She feels like a spare part. She feels she is no longer needed. She wonders if she could just slip away.

‘Look, I know this sounds corny – and I swear it really isn’t my style – but maybe I could buy you a drink?’

Stalker Bloke!

She hadn’t seen him approach. She hadn’t expected him to. She’s unprepared. It’s not a state she is familiar with or one that she likes.

Shit.

For God’s sake, why not just say ‘yes’, Pip, with a ‘please’. Flicker your eyelashes and have a flirt. He’s only offering to buy you a drink and you don’t currently have one, Cat having just swiped it. Nor do you have anyone to talk to. This might pass the time. This might be amusing.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Pip all but cautions, ‘I’m here with my sisters.’

‘Well, I’ll get them drinks, too, if they’d like?’ he suggests. ‘Or is it more that you need their seal of approval?’ He’s ingenuous but momentarily, Pip wonders whether he’s mocking. Then, however, she observes that his face is open and his eyes are soft and he’s tilting his head in an acquiescent way. He shrugs: ‘I don’t have sisters,’ he explains, ‘I wouldn’t know.’ He redeems himself with that.

He still doesn’t recognize me. I don’t know whether to be offended or entertained.

He’s tired, Pip. A little pissed, too. And the bar is atmospherically lit or downright dim. And you look pretty different out of slap and motley.

‘Look,’ says Zac, ‘can I buy you a drink, or shall I just dig a hole right here and dive headfirst into it?’ He’s never before resorted to chatting women up in bars but he’s elicited a laugh from the girl and he rather feels he’s done quite well. Friendly without being smarmy, witty not corny, self-deprecating not self-satisfied.

‘Sure,’ says Pip, ‘why not.’ Her sisters are occupied. Their glasses are full. They won’t need her for the time being.

‘What’ll you have?’

Pip licks her lips and appears to think about it, her index finger raised for emphasis. ‘May I have,’ she ponders and pauses and then regards him with direct eye contact and a lascivious twitch of her mouth, ‘may I have orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash?’ Zac stares at her because, what with the pervasive chatter, the ambient music playing a little too loudly and the good few beers in his system already, combined with the trippy dingle-dangle lighting, he thinks Pip has asked for a cocktail he hasn’t heard of but that he probably should know. ‘Orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash.’ she repeats.

‘Right,’ he says, trying to remember the precise order.

Pip repeats her request, once more, in Dr Pippity’s voice. And she raises her eyebrow and gives him a sly grin. And it is then that the penny drops.

‘Bloody Jesus bloody Christ,’ he murmurs. Pip can’t hear him but she can certainly lip-read. ‘Clowngirl?’ Zac exclaims. ‘Dr Whatsit or Merry Thingy?’

‘Pip McCabe,’ Pip says cordially, extending her hand most demurely, slightly concerned that he looks just a little alarmed.

‘Crikey,’ he says, and is immediately concerned that his vocabulary and the fact that he’s ruffling his hair excessively is all a bit too Hugh Grant.

I won’t say ‘I didn’t recognize you with your clothes on’, then.

‘What’s a nice clown like you doing in a circus like this?’ Zac asks instead.

There’s a pause but fortunately Pip breaks it with a laugh.

‘We have to slip out of our slap and motley sometimes,’ she explains.

‘Is that what it’s called?’ Zac asks, vaguely interested, eyeing the queue at the bar.

‘Sometimes, it’s more slop and mutley,’ Pip says.

‘Now, tell me slowly what it is you drink,’ he says, quite wanting a trip to the bar to restore his composure.

Pip laughs: ‘They wouldn’t mix it correctly here, I fear,’ she says, ‘so make mine a glass of red.’

‘Coming up,’ he says, relieved. ‘My name’s Zac Holmes, by the way.’

‘Good to put a name to the face,’ says Pip drily, ‘after all this time.’

Zac sets off for the bar but returns almost immediately. ‘I’d just like you to know,’ he shouts above the music, ‘that I’m not some crazy bloody stalker.’

‘I know,’ Pip says to him, ‘you’re Zac Bloody Holmes.’ He nods, relieved, and heads for the bar. Pip watches him.

He has a pretty winning smile – for a stalker. But he also looks a little like my friend Susie’s ex. And God, did that guy screw her up by screwing her over and screwing her sister.

Don’t tar him with the same brush. Don’t tar him, full stop. You hardly know him.

But I ought to remember that he’s been insolent to me before. And he started chatting me up – In A Bar. And didn’t realize it was me. He’s probably on the pull. This is probably his style. If so, it clashes with mine.

And of course you mustn’t forget that you have your big date with Caleb tomorrow night.

Exactly.

‘Wait till I tell Tom,’ Zac says, returning with drinks. ‘You know – my little boy?’ His face lights up. ‘Of course you do.’

‘How is he?’ Pip asks, and is told he’s doing OK. Zac starts talking about him, the usual anecdotes laced with paternal pride, which of course run on and on. After a while, with her drink almost empty, Pip wishes the subject would change.

And I also wish I didn’t find him attractive. I mustn’t. It must be the alcohol. After all, this is the bloke who has stalked me in hospitals, been rude to me at children’s parties, behaved oddly in public parks and has been making passes at me in a bar. And he has a kid and an ex and he’s odd. So what if he’s good-looking? Distortion by drink!

‘We’re not talking baggage as in a small backpack,’ Pip says into her wineglass a little later when Zac has gone to the bar to replenish their drinks, ‘we’re talking excess baggage – on such a scale that he’d be fined heavily if he tried to check it in at the airport.’

Zac returns and confirms Pip’s misgivings when he starts regaling her with Tom’s Harry Potter obsession. He’s just about to ask her what sort of a name Pip is and what sort of a career clowning is, when two girls approach. They flank her like bodyguards and eye him with some suspicion.

‘Zac,’ Pip interrupts, glad for a chance to move on from Tom and J.K. Rowling but bemused that it is the arrival of her sisters expediting it, ‘these are my sisters, Cat and Fen.’ Privately, Zac is almost irritated by their eccentric names, but he greets them politely and hopes they’ll go away.

The sisters don’t go away. Cat and Fen hang around because they are unused to seeing their sister in male company, a stranger’s company. So they loiter.

Oddly, Pip wishes they’d go away. Of course, she blames the wine.

Why else would I quite like this Zac Holmes odd sod to myself for a little longer?

Fen whispers to Pip that Cat is pretty pissed and should they all go? Pip can see that Cat really should leave now but should not return home unescorted. Fen, with sudden nerves over Matt, wants them all to leave together. Go back to hers and make popcorn, she suggests. Have a chat, she proposes. For a split second, Pip is exasperated and just wishes her sisters could take some initiative and take care of themselves. Even if just for half an hour longer. However, she says nothing of the sort. She tells Fen not to be stupid, she’ll take Cat home, Matt will no doubt take her home. ‘It’s his birthday,’ she spells out. ‘You’re his number one present.’

Pip returns her attention to Zac who is being stared at by Cat, not for any reason other than that she’s at that stage of inebriation when whatever her gaze falls upon is fixed. Fen kisses Cat and nods at Zac. Then Pip nods at Cat and gives Zac a quick peck on the cheek. ‘Ta for the drink, Zac,’ she says, ‘but I have to go. My sister here is lovelorn and pissed. It’s a fatal combination.’

‘Sure,’ Zac says almost eagerly, because the sad drunk sister looks as though she may well burst into tears or throw up. Or do both, in whichever order, rather soon. Pip guides her out. Zac watches her go. She has a nice bottom.

Let her go. Odd sisters with stupid names. Come on! Not my type. To say nothing of the fact that she’s a frigging clown, for Christ’s sake.

However, when Pip returned unexpectedly a few minutes later, he was surprised how pleased he was to see her. Her drunk sister was looking ominously green around the gills and Pip gave him an apologetic raise of her eyebrows as she guided Cat towards the toilets.

‘My sisterly duties do have limits,’ she said, standing by his side moments later. ‘Accompanying Cat right into the loo goes beyond them.’

‘Look, can I perhaps buy you a drink sometime when you’re not surrounded by sisters and we don’t have to yell above dippy-trippy music and the bar staff aren’t fascists?’ Zac felt uncharacteristically nervous but the beer in his system encouraged him to ramble on. ‘I mean, I know it appears I’ve been rude to you in parks and hospitals and kids’ parties but it’s been unintentional – just unfortunate. I’m not rude by nature, honestly. Nor do I chat up girls in bars, or anywhere really, for that matter. And I’ve never met a clown who isn’t male and elderly and scary.’ He paused for breath, wondering how to follow that. ‘And I’d like to buy you a drink because you seem interesting and you’ve meant a lot to my son.’ He stopped and scratched his head. ‘But I don’t want to buy you a drink as a grateful parent-type,’ he rattled on, ‘but actually simply because you. Are. Really. Quite. Pretty.’

Oh, fuck. What am I saying?

God – what is he saying?

Pip hadn’t yet said a word in response. And the lighting had been momentarily dimmed to such a level that Zac could barely make out her features, let alone judge her expression.

‘Well, Pip, I’ve made a fool of myself.’

However, just the slightest shake of her head, just the glimmer of a smile, bolstered Zac. ‘Look,’ he said, laying a hand lightly on her shoulder, ‘I just think maybe it might be a laugh to get together for a quick drink sometime.’

‘Sure,’ Pip shrugged. Though she had the time, she suddenly found she did not have the inclination to give accepting his offer a second thought. ‘Why not!’

‘Cool,’ he nodded, so surprised at her equanimity that all he could do was say ‘cool’ again into his beer glass.

‘I’m in the Thomson’s directory,’ she said, extending her hand to shake his. ‘Well, Merry Martha is.’

‘Cool,’ Zac said one final time.

Then there was a Cat amongst them, looking grey and sheepish. Pip started to guide her out. She turned around and nodded at Zac. He made a telephone motion with his hand. She nodded again. He watched her put her arm protectively around her sister and then they were gone.

Zac hadn’t spared a thought for Juliana. He didn’t mind in the least that she wasn’t with him that night. She had prior arrangements. Not that he’d invited her, anyway. After all, they were only simply seeing each other – fairly regularly, yes, but with no stipulation of exclusivity. They weren’t an ‘item’ and this was underlined by the fact that when they went to bed – which was the purpose of each time they met – they did so to have sex, not to make love to each other or sleep together.

Zac rejoined his friends in the club and brushed off their questions about who was the girl he’d been chatting to as ‘just someone I’ve bumped into a couple of times’.

I’m not sure why I want to pursue this Pip McCabe, he mused as he headed home by cab a couple of hours later. But I do know I’d like to pursue her – so I guess I’ll find out why when I do.

I haven’t spared a thought for Caleb.

Pip considers this fact as she tucks up Cat in bed, bucket at the ready, before making a bed for herself on her sister’s sofa.

Does that mean I’m an old slapper? Or is it like having two job offers and initiating second interviews before deciding which one to plump for?

‘Hang on,’ she says quietly into the darkness, ‘I already have two jobs.’

For a girl who has proclaimed that she isn’t remotely in need of one man, let alone two, she nevertheless goes to sleep wondering whether Stalker Bloke will call, and how her date with Dashing Doc will turn out tomorrow. She hopes to see the former again soon. And she’s looking forward to seeing the latter sooner than that.

TWELVE

She’d never admit to it, but Pip was actually quite looking forward to not spending a Saturday night on her own. (Though she has oft proclaimed that Saturday nights are overrated and are a great opportunity to catch up on ironing.) And she was looking forward to not having sex on her own, too. (Though, as we well know, she is a great advocator of the merits of vibrators.) She was hopeful that, this time tomorrow, she wouldn’t be reading the Sunday papers on her own, either. (Though she has never revealed to family or friends that it is only ever on Sunday mornings that she is prone to feeling just on the lonely side of alone rather than happy to be on her own.) She felt it was fair to suppose that this time tomorrow, she might be snuggled up in Caleb’s bed (which she’d envisaged to be a mahogany bateau lit, billowing extravagantly with white Egyptian cotton); papers and croissants and fresh fruit all in a scatter around them. She could almost smell the coffee. Perhaps they’d wander off to Petticoat Lane or Spitalfields or buy bagels in Brick Lane for brunch.

Just then, waking on Cat’s uncomfortable sofa at the crack of Saturday dawn in noisy Camden, the notion of East London on a Sunday seemed romantic, even exotic. Pip felt as though she was off on a mini-break. For a tryst. Breakfast in bed. Hand in hand, strolling around places she’d never been. Silently and quickly, she dressed, tidied away the bedding and popped her head round Cat’s bedroom door. Her sister was sleeping very deeply. Pip wrote her a note saying she hoped the hangover wouldn’t be too tenacious – recommended Nurofen and regular Coca-Cola stirred to flatten the fizz – and then left to stroll, a spring to her step, back to her own flat a mile away.

Once home, she ironed. She ironed because, of course, she would be otherwise occupied that Saturday night. She ironed whilst trying not to wait for Caleb to call and to distract herself from checking the time too frequently. She allowed herself to check the time only after ironing every four items. She ironed everything that needed it, as well as a fair few items that didn’t.

She sat down, bemused and unnerved. Not because Caleb hadn’t yet called, but in acknowledgement of her own anxiety. It was this which perturbed her. She read into it. She was anxious as to when exactly he would call, and she was anxious that there again, he mightn’t. It unnerved her that actually, she did care one way or the other; that what Caleb did or didn’t do, might or might not do, was affecting her mood. He had control and he didn’t know it but she knew that he had; it worried her that she seemed unable to redress the balance. She couldn’t do the mind-over-matter thing which she had so frequently extolled, and which she had exhorted her friends to do – and she minded because it mattered.

She told herself that if Caleb hadn’t called by 11.30, he wasn’t worth it; but it was approaching that time now and it made her anxious. Ten minutes later, she told herself that if he didn’t call by noon, it meant he wouldn’t be calling at all. She told herself that the fact that he hadn’t yet called must mean he wasn’t that keen. She asked herself if he was worth being bothered about. Why did she care? Why couldn’t she just take it or leave it? Have him or have not? Happy-go-lucky – that was what she was famous for. Instead, alone, she was angry with herself. Silly stupid cow. All it had taken was one snog in her stairwell, and one flirtatious conversation in the ambulance bay, to turn her into any one of the number of her girlfriends who’d turned to her frequently over the years fretting whilst waiting for phone calls.

Of course he’ll phone, she’d say to them. Don’t read anything into it, she’d say. And when those phone calls never came, Pip would successfully reassure her girlfriends that he wasn’t worth it anyway, he wasn’t worthy of them. It appalled Pip that today she was unable to practise what she preached.

Her phone rang at 11.52. Before she answered it, she tried to recall the deep meaning she’d allocated to post-11.30, pre 12.00. He hadn’t called by 11.30 so, oh yes, that’s right, of course, it meant he wasn’t worth it. She felt the ball was in her court when she picked up the receiver. She lost the serve, however, when she heard Cat’s voice at the other end, thanking her for looking after her. Pip felt deflated. And irritated with Cat, to whom she gave short shrift.

Bugger. If Caleb bloody calls now, I’ll just pretend I’ve completely forgotten and I have other plans and I’m terribly busy and I had such a late night in Soho last night so maybe another time, Dr Simmons.

The phone rang. Pip refused to acknowledge the shot of adrenalin, the hit of hope, as she answered it.

‘Hiya, Pip, Caleb here.’

She said ‘hullo’ demurely, whilst inside her head, the voices of the London Philharmonic Chorus were belting out a triumphant ‘Hallelujah!’. It was 12.05. What had that meant? Well, it didn’t matter any more, did it, because here he was, chatty as you like, phoning her and arranging their date.

‘Still free?’ he asked. ‘What shall we do?’

Well, Pip, aren’t you going to have completely forgotten? Aren’t you going to enforce a rain check in your pursuit of the hard-to-get line?

‘Well,’ said Pip, pretending to think about it.

‘I could come over – I know where you live,’ Caleb suggested lightly.

‘Or I could come to you – because I don’t know where you live,’ Pip riposted. ‘We could browse Petticoat Lane and Spitalfields and buy bagels from Brick Lane. It’s all new territory to me.’

Yes, Pip – why not divulge your Egyptian cotton fantasy too and, while you’re at it, go ahead and order your Sunday papers as well?

There was a pause at the other end. ‘It’s just – well, sorry – but I’m needed. I’m on call tonight,’ Caleb apologized.

Do not sound disappointed, Philippa.

‘Oh,’ said Pip, sounding disappointed.

There was another pause.

Why not implement your rain-check theorem? If there isn’t going to be a Sunday morning, is a Saturday afternoon really worth it?

‘Hey, I don’t have to leave till 7.00-ish,’ Caleb was saying with detectable eagerness. ‘It’s only noon now.’

It was settled. He gave Pip his address and though he gave her directions from Old Street underground station, she called for a cab instead and dismissed the fifteen-pound fare.

This was the stage that her friends would text her. In cab – wish me luck! Or perhaps hot date – think of me! Or even off 4 rampant sex. Call u l8r! Though Pip would text them back a mixture of enthusiasm and advice, she’d also chide them for jumping into cabs, at some man’s command, with such haste and eagerness. But of course, as she headed east by cab, there was no one for her to text because no one knew of her plans. Indeed, no one even knew of a Dr Caleb Simmons.

Caleb’s flat was smaller than she’d imagined and she had to be stern with herself not to be disappointed. She hadn’t considered that it might be in a modern block. She’d been thinking loft apartment in quite some detail. And there was no bateau lit. Just a smallish divan without a headboard and with a navy blue duvet set. She checked it out on a surreptitious snoop after asking for the toilet. The bathroom was too cramped for a bath. She noted the Psycho shower curtain with the silhouette of Norman Bates’s mother brandishing the knife. She swiftly decided it must have been a Christmas present from some younger brother. She observed that the lid was on the toothpaste, the soap was not soggy in the dish and the toilet seat had been down when she entered. The flat was clean, uncluttered and tidy, the walls were white and the flooring was wood laminate throughout. She’d have decorated pretty similarly if she had lived here, she thought, and quietly congratulated herself and Caleb on their compatibility when it came to décor. However, the apartment was not remotely soundproofed from downstairs’s television or the blazing row being conducted upstairs in a mixture of Anglo-Saxon expletives and patois.

‘I’ve had to tend to a broken nose in the past,’ Caleb told her, motioning to the flat upstairs. ‘She whacked him.’

‘Well,’ Pip said lightly, pleasantly surprised by cornflowers in a vase, ‘I suppose it means you don’t have to resort to the telly for soap opera.’

I’m sure Cosmo would say a vase of flowers shows a strong man at ease with his feminine side! Good.

‘What are your neighbours like?’ Caleb asked with genuine interest and slightly wistfully.

‘Elderly,’ Pip said. ‘The one directly above me makes the best apple crumble in the world.’

I bet his cooking skills are quite good, too – I bet he sits at that table over there and eats properly, not propping a ready-meal on his lap in front of the TV.

‘Lucky!’ said Caleb (who often ate ready-meals, occasionally at the table but usually while watching TV). ‘Talking of apple crumble, I’m hungry – shall we go out and grab lunch?’

They ate Greek, ordering every meze on the menu and a couple of items off it, too. The staff greeted Caleb with familiarity and warmth and Pip was delighted. Mr Popular. Mr House Proud. Mr Flower-arranger. Mr Normal. Dr Simmons.

Mr Psycho Shower Curtain, Pip?

I told you, I reckon that was a gift from some dodgy brother.

Does he have a brother – dodgy or otherwise?

I don’t know. I haven’t yet asked. And if he doesn’t, so what – Mr Post-modern Sense of Humour it is!

Pip made sure that she matched Caleb in the garlic stakes and she also made sure that she surreptitiously limited how much pitta she ate. She’d read in one women’s glossy or other that Bread Brings Bloat. Garlic breath was one thing, a pot belly quite another. She couldn’t believe that a dodgy diet tip was dictating her lunch. The pitta was lovely – slightly charred – and she was only allowing herself one slice. Ridiculous. She would surely direct such a word to any of her friends who eschewed pitta for the same reason.

After lunch, they strolled around and looked at the buildings and chatted idly about what they usually did at weekends. Pip didn’t say ‘ironing’ – she said, ever so casually, ‘I tend just to hang out – if I’m not working.’ Caleb said he was on call more often than not. Pip told herself she ought to lodge this fact for future musing. She could well have Caleb and continue her routine of Saturday night ironing. She even thought about the following weekend, hoping Caleb wasn’t on call, hopeful that he’d try to change shifts if he was.

‘I love shops like these,’ Pip enthused in front of an All A Quid emporium. ‘I buy lots of stuff for Dr Pippity in such places.’

‘Let’s go in then,’ Caleb suggested, holding the door for Pip and earning points by doing so. (Mr Manners, she added to her list.) They spent a happy and lucrative half hour there, Caleb insisting on paying for the treasure that filled Pip’s basket. ‘See it as a twenty-quid donation to the Renee Foundation,’ he said, brushing away her effusive thanks. She kissed him with gratitude. And he kissed her back. With lust. And then they kissed each other desirously though they were blocking the doorway. Only the shopkeeper clearing his throat, and an elderly passer-by tut-tutting, decided them to walk briskly back to his flat and continue their kissing there. It was late afternoon, after all. And, after all, he was on call that evening.

The fact that his flat was even more noisy than before lunch put Pip at her ease. It lent a certain ambiguity to her sudden giggling – because the woman upstairs yelled ‘You’re a fucking pathetic bastard cunt!’ at much the same time as Caleb grunted involuntarily on lifting her T-shirt to feast his gaze on her breasts presented pertly in a broderie anglaise bra. And for similar reasons, Caleb hummed the theme of Grandstand drifting up from the flat below when Pip unbuttoned his jeans and eased them down his legs. Pip could bite her lip and raise her eyebrows as much for catching sight of the impressive bulge in his Calvins, as for hearing the woman upstairs yell ‘Fuck off and get out of my fucking life, you twatting tosser!’ By the time that Caleb and Pip were naked, the television had been turned off and the twatting tosser had obviously fucked off. Yet they stood, in stillness and silence on a Saturday tea-time, admiring each other’s nudity and their very good fortune. They were relaxed and raring to go.

It had been a long time since Pip’s last sexual encounter. And that had been a nondescript and slightly perfunctory session with Mike, the sweet bloke she’d never been in love with, many months ago. She’d known Mike for quite a while. He had treated her to many dates before asking, with great reverence, if he might take her to bed. Caleb, by comparison, she hardly knew, yet she was happy for him to do all manner of things to her that afternoon. And she found she genuinely wanted to reciprocate. Not so much you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours; but more, you do that flickery thing with your tongue tip on my clit and I’ll do something feathery with my lips against your balls. And look, we can do so simultaneously! Pip and Caleb silently congratulated themselves on bedding such capable, imaginative and exciting partners. Caleb attributed Pip’s athleticism and inventiveness to her grounding in acrobatics and skill as a performer. Pip credited Caleb’s consummate knowledge of her body and his gentle but confident handiness and finger work to his demanding medical training. He seemed to her to be an intelligent, considerate and mature person. Coupled with the fact that she found him immensely attractive, she was utterly at ease and their coupling was intense and enjoyable.

Of course he used a condom.

Pip was home by 7.30. She was physically tired and emotionally exhausted and wouldn’t have had the inclination to do the ironing anyway, had there been any. She watched whatever was on the television, smiling to herself that, in all probability, Caleb’s downstairs neighbour was watching the same programmes.

‘Ruth?’

‘Hi, Zac! What are you doing in on a Saturday night?’

‘Just catching up on stuff – making a few calls, paying a few bills, watching a few vids I’ve recorded recently,’ Zac said nonchalantly, if a little defensively.

‘I thought you’d be wining and dining and sixty-nining.’

‘Well, you have a dirty mind and my brother can only have married you for that, not for your looks,’ he sparred back.

‘Fuck off!’ Ruth laughed. ‘Well, it’s good to hear from you – do you want to speak to your bro? He’s burping pleasantly, having polished off a take-away curry.’

‘Jim always was the one with manners – I’ll have him in a mo’. I just wondered if you have the phone number of that clown girl who did Billy’s party?’

‘Merry Martha? Sure, hold on. Hang on. Ah. Here. She’s good – quite pricey, but the kids love her. Are you planning for Tom?’

‘Perhaps. Maybe. I just thought I’d give her a call and find out what’s what.’

Zac never lied though he did Ambiguity and Issue-skirting very well. He thanked his sister-in-law, had a brief conversation with his brother who burped down the phone at him, and then ended the call to phone Pip.

I said I would. It’s just I didn’t want to obtain her number from the Thomson’s directory.

However, her answering machine was on. It wasn’t even her voice but a slightly computerized polite recording from BT. Zac was undeterred.

‘This is Zac Holmes – from last night. Just phoning about that drink and wondering if you fancied a civilized cup of tea tomorrow? At some posh hotel, perhaps? Crumpet and cream? Innuendo unintentional. Anyway, I’ll try again later. Bye.’

Pip’s hand had hovered over the receiver throughout. She told herself she’d talk to him later when he called back. If she felt like chatting. But no one phoned Pip that Saturday night. She instructed herself to savour a Saturday evening all to herself, musing that if things progressed with Caleb, they might soon be in short supply – depending on whether he was on call, of course.

No chores outstanding. She wasn’t hungry. There was nothing to watch on TV. She’d recently finished an Anne Tyler novel and would pick up a new paperback in a day or two. Neither Fen, Cat nor Megan needed her. There were no more household chores. So she could just settle back in her sofa, hugging the cushions she’d made the covers for, sipping a Rioja she’d been saving for a special occasion. She could just relax and indulge in recalling her afternoon with Caleb.

And yet she replayed Zac’s message, too.

I want to contemplate how it is that suddenly I have two men on my trail. I want to wonder why it is I’m finding it rather amusing rather than faintly irritating or remotely unnerving. It’s weird, I feel somewhat brazen – attractive – the centre of attention. What’s weirder is that I actually like it! Could I develop a taste for it? Where would that take me? Should I look before I leap?

‘I don’t need a man,’ she says, switching off the television having absent-mindedly channel-hopped for the last hour because there really is nothing worth watching, ‘of that I’m sure.’ She takes her tray of picked-at supper things through to the kitchen, washes and dries everything. ‘I don’t need one man let alone two, but you know what – and I can’t believe I’m thinking this, let alone saying it out loud – it just might be fun, for a little while, to be wooed and pursued.’

THIRTEEN

Well, it’s lucky that neither the accountant nor the clown is superstitious – if they were, they wouldn’t be agreeing to meet in this chapter. Mind you, does it say much about their morality, or lack of it, that they are meeting without the knowledge of the people they’re sleeping with? No doubt they can justify that they have no immoral intent – no intent whatsoever – other than plain curiosity and having something to eat, something to do on a Sunday afternoon.

Pip’s mobile phone beeped a text message while her land-line was ringing. She had the ‘Style’ section of the Sunday Times in her hand and was looking forward to skimming it before settling down to the broadsheet itself. She presumed her phones would be Cat and Fen – with news to tell and advice to ask. Pip had temporarily forgotten that it was much more likely to be the two men.

u tired me out! i’ll b struck off … cs x

‘Hullo? Is that Pip? Well, it’s Zac here – morning.’

Is this what they mean by double dating? Pip wondered as she read the text message from one man and said ‘good morning’ to the other.

‘Do you fancy fruit cake and tea later, then?’ Zac asked. Pip thought for a moment and wondered if she oughtn’t to keep her day free, in case Caleb should be around. But she was appalled at herself – knowing how she’d give any of her girlfriends short shrift for dithering in such a way. Zac wasn’t asking if she fancied a fuck, just fruit cake.

I don’t like raisins.

For God’s sake, Pip, there’ll probably be Victoria sponge, too.

‘Sure,’ Pip heard herself say, before she’d truly considered whether it was a good idea or not.

‘Good.’ Zac was both pleased and surprised. ‘Be sure to skip lunch!’

Pip was testing out texts to return to Caleb while Zac was asking her whether she’d like him to pick her up or meet him there. She agreed to meet Zac at Green Park underground later that afternoon. ‘God, I hope he’s not taking me to the Ritz,’ she muttered whilst texting Caleb to say that she was walking like John Wayne thanks to him.

However, when it was time to start getting ready, she considered at length what to wear, trying on three or four combinations before settling for a pistachio linen shift dress she bought in last summer’s sales and a vanilla-coloured cardigan from Agnès B she’d paid full price for. (When Zac saw her, he’d think she looked good enough to lick.) She thought kitten heels would be overkill, but she was pleased with the way that soft blue suede Adidas pumps completed the ensemble in an informal but quirky way. She took care with her make-up and decided to leave her hair loose.

Zac noticed. ‘You’ve let your hair down, Miss McCabe,’ he said, greeting her with a kiss which both flattered and surprised her. He didn’t, however, go on to tell her that in her soft colours she looked as lickable as ice-cream. He bit his tongue instead and guided her down Piccadilly.

Zac is not taking Pip to the Ritz for tea. She presumes they’re headed for Fortnum’s. No. He’s keeping her on the opposite side of the road. The Royal Academy, then? But he guides her left, well before those hallowed portals. Albemarle Street. Brown’s Hotel. If there are two things that Pip will learn very quickly about this man, they are that he is not flash, nor is he predictable. She’s never been to Brown’s before; actually, she’s never even heard of the place. But immediately, she wishes she was staying for a night or two.

Well, I’m not sure what it says about Caleb’s effect on Pip and I’m not sure what it says about Zac’s effect on her and I’m not sure what it says about Pip herself, but for all her abstemiousness when it came to the pitta bread yesterday, she’s gorging herself to the gills today. She doesn’t leave one crumb of delightful finger sandwich; in fact, she even dabs up a stray strand of cress from the plate. She tells Zac she couldn’t choose which variety was the nicest – egg and cress, cucumber or salmon – but that she could eat them all again.

‘Save yourself,’ he says, delighted that he’s going to get his money’s worth. Juliana, by comparison, insists on expensive restaurants where she reads the menu as if it’s an exam paper for which her revision is lacking, invariably prodding the food around the plate into interesting configurations but ingesting only a sparrow’s portion in the process. So it’s refreshing for Zac, therefore, to tuck into tea with the clown – even if she picks out every sultana from her scone. She does this so daintily, however, that it can almost be seen as a vagary of tea-taking etiquette.

And she’s sucking great globs of crusty clotted cream direct from a teaspoon now that the scone’s gone.

Pip, however, has both room and desire for the gorgeous miniature gateaux and selects a millefeuille and a coffee éclair and a strawberry tart. She takes rapid sips of her Lapsang and leans across to Zac. ‘If I wasn’t in such genteel surroundings,’ she confides in a sprightly whisper, ‘I’d do a great big belch.’ It’s the first thing she’s said since talking about the sandwiches and Zac snorts involuntarily into his tea, splattering himself. He’s wearing navy from top to toe so it doesn’t show. ‘Mr Holmes!’ she chastises. ‘Manners maketh man! Please respect your genteel surroundings.’

God, I think I’m in love with her.

Don’t be daft, you hardly know her.

Zac sweetly enquires after Cat, and whether the other sister (he can’t remember her name, he thinks it’s Finty or Ffion or something) bedded the birthday boy. Pip realizes that the particulars of Cat’s chronic hangover are as inappropriate over such a fine tea, as the details of what Fen and Matt got up to after the party. She says her sisters are fine and she asks about Tom. She’d like to hear that he’s well, but she doesn’t want minutiae.

I mean, he’s a sweet little boy – but he is this man’s little boy. The chap with whom I’m taking tea and having a laugh has a young son and ex-wife. Remember, I really, truly, cannot be doing single-parent baggage handling.

Not that you have any intentions towards this man, of course.

Of course.

Just as well, because Zac could chirp on for hours about Tom and their visit to HMS Belfast yesterday.

‘What do you do,’ Pip interrupts, ‘for a living?’

Zac sips his tea and tips his head. ‘I’m an accountant,’ he says without apology or embarrassment, ‘actually.’

Pip thinks he must be joking. He’d apologize or be embarrassed if it were true, surely? Then she wonders if he’s lying – and if so, what a strange fib and what a peculiar job to choose. She hopes he’s not a liar, but she also hopes he’s joking. She knows she mustn’t exclaim ‘You’re joking!’

I suppose an accountant is better than an estate agent or bailiff or undertaker. Slightly.

She nods and thinks another change of subject would be good. But not back to children.

Look at me. Out to tea with an accountant who’s a single parent. I think I’d rather be in Hoxton with Dr Simmons. Anyway, I ought not to be here, even if I’m not there.

Come on, Pip, you’re having fun. Tea is delicious and conversation flows.

But he’s an accountant.

So what, you’re a sodding clown.

‘I’ve never met an accountant before,’ Pip says, as if he’s from a planet far beyond our solar system. ‘I’d never have guessed it.’

‘I’ve never met a clown before,’ Zac shrugs, as if he’s pleased that he has, anyway. ‘How about a stroll through the park?’

They took a leisurely walk through Green Park and over into St James’s Park. Pip realized how full she was and was grateful to walk off some of her indulgence.

‘Did you know the Queen owns all the swans in the UK?’ Zac told her. ‘And that if you kill one, you can be put to death?’

Pip regarded him. She stopped walking and looked at her feet, shuffling them a little (and observing a little jam on her right pump). ‘Damn,’ she said, all forlorn, ‘I’m just so partial to killing swans. Whenever I have the chance, really.’ Zac gave her a nudge and told her to piss off. She laughed.

‘How did you get into clowning, then?’ he asked with genuine interest. ‘I mean, it’s not the most usual of careers, is it? Is it lucrative?’

‘God,’ Pip raised her eyes heavenwards, ‘you’re not going to suggest doing my tax, are you?’ Privately, she thought that might be a very useful thing and she should develop this friendship. After all, Django had impressed upon each niece when they left home the importance of befriending a doctor, a dentist, a lawyer and an accountant in their lives. Fen had managed all four at university. Ten years on, this weekend Pip could finally count a doctor and an accountant. Which meant poor Cat was the only sister with no useful friends. ‘Well, I make what I call a tidy living. I’ve been a clown for as long as I can remember,’ she told Zac. ‘I doubt whether I’d be much good at anything else.’

‘But why clowning?’ Zac probed. ‘Are you hiding behind some mask? Is there some tragedy in your life that you are overcompensating for?’

Pip laughed so effusively that she started coughing. It gave her a chance to collect herself. It gave Zac the chance to pat her on the back. And give her shoulder a quick squeeze. And a gentle rub. She surprised herself by not flinching, though she feared she blushed a little. ‘Simply put, I love making people laugh,’ she declared, breezily as you like to contradict her blush, ‘and I discovered very early on that not only did I enjoy it, I’m pretty good at it, too.’

‘It must be quite an art,’ Zac said thoughtfully, ‘and hard work, too, I imagine.’ Pip was flattered. ‘I mean, your hospital work must take it out of you.’

‘It does,’ Pip confirmed, ‘which is why the Renee Foundation who fund me regulate our hours carefully. And trained us rigorously. But, basically, by Tuesday and Thursday evenings I’m spent.’

‘I bet,’ said Zac quietly. ‘You must see things you hope you’ll never see again.’

Pip nodded. ‘I’ve seen children who don’t look like children. I’ve seen children die. I’ve seen parents of children who have died. It haunts me.’

Zac didn’t know what to say. ‘God, we’re lucky with our Tom,’ he said to himself as much as to her, ‘it could be so much worse.’

Suddenly, Pip felt a little tired. Instead of talking about tax with her accountant, she was talking about the taxing side to her job. She’d rather not. It was the weekend, after all, a pretty momentous one at that.

‘Let’s change the subject, hey,’ Zac suggested, taking a seat beside her on a bench dedicated to Elsie Who Loved This Spot. They watched the swans. Pip was still glad to have eaten every crumb of her tea, though it meant they had nothing to feed to the birds.

‘They can be vicious buggers, swans,’ Pip remarked. ‘Say one attacked you and, in self-defence, you killed it, would you still be sent to the Tower?’

Zac thought about it. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said with great deliberation, ‘but I’ll be sure to ask Her Majesty next time I see her.’

Pip stifled a laugh and continued very earnestly: ‘Oh, and do you see her often?’

‘Three or four times a year,’ Zac shrugged, ‘you know, when she needs help with her VAT and tax returns.’

Pip gave him such a hearty shove that he nearly fell off Elsie’s bench.

‘I met her once,’ Pip recalled, ‘no doubt it’s etched in her memory.’ She looked to Zac to see if he was remotely interested. It appeared, from his penetrating gaze, that he was. She hadn’t noticed until then that behind his trendy specs, his eyes were such an unusual slate-grey. ‘I gave her a posy when she visited Bakewell. I was seven. My uncle Django told me I’d forgotten to curtsy. I told him in no uncertain terms how actually, thank you very much, I’d “lowered myself” instead – as if it were a far more deferential genuflection.’

‘What were you doing up in Bakewell?’ Zac asked, enjoying a very clear picture of a young Pip lowering herself to her Queen, posy at the ready.

‘Oh,’ said Pip, surprised. They’d been chatting so easily that she’d forgotten how little he knew about her. ‘It’s where I grew up.’

‘Do your parents still live there? In Bakewell?’ Zac asked, building a very different picture from the free-love family, chickens-in-the-garden image he’d had before.

‘My father died,’ Pip told him, ‘and my mum has since moved away,’ she continued, omitting Denver and the cowboy and abandonment in general, ‘but my uncle Django still lives in Farleymoor, at the house where I spent my childhood.’

‘Are you close as a family?’ Zac asked.

‘God, yes, very,’ Pip enthused. ‘Mum’s like an older sister. Django – my late father’s brother – is wonderful. We’re a great family. Christmas and birthdays are just the best.’

Pip?

Pip!

Philippa McCabe?

What on earth made you say all that?

‘Sounds blissful,’ Zac said wistfully. ‘My folks are definitive expats – I hardly see them. I think they’re currently in Dubai. Or there again, perhaps it’s Hong Kong. I honestly would have to consult my address book to verify. I have a brother, though,’ he added, in case she was remotely interested, ‘we’re quite close. You did his son’s birthday party – Billy, in Holloway. The first time we met.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Pip said, hastily adding ‘dysfunctional childhood’ to her list of negatives regarding Zac.

Pot. Kettle. Black. Pip?

She can’t hear me. She’s on a roll with her imaginary family.

‘Mummy always says if I had been a boy, I’d’ve been called Billy.’

Is that true?

Whatever.

I mean, not just the ‘Billy’ bit. Did you ever call her Mummy?

‘Tom,’ Zac declared, ‘is just Tom – not Thomas or anything. Little blighter doesn’t even have a middle name. He just seemed so complete when he was born – and Tom seemed to be the name he came with.’

‘I really ought to be going,’ Pip said, because she wanted to change the subject but didn’t know what to.

‘Sure,’ said Zac, ‘me too. Share my cab?’

‘Oh, that’s OK,’ said Pip, ‘I’ll hop on the tube.’

‘You sure?’ Zac asked. ‘It’s no problem.’

‘Honestly,’ Pip assured him. He walked her to Green Park underground. ‘I had a really lovely afternoon,’ Pip told him, touching his arm. ‘Tea was gorgeous. It was fun. Thank you.’

‘Any time,’ Zac said. And he meant it.

Pip smiled a little shyly. Looked at her pumps, the jam splodge. Shuffled a little.

‘How about it?’ said Zac, biting the bullet. ‘Another time? We could dine on roasted swan or something.’

Pip laughed. ‘Perhaps,’ she said.

‘Can I call you?’ Zac asked.

‘If you like,’ Pip answered, with some more soft shoe shuffling.

‘Good,’ said Zac, ‘good.’

And it does seem good to him. He would like to see her again. She’s far more normal than he’d previously thought. She’s really rather sweet. Pretty. And sexy, somehow. And her sense of humour is close to his own.

FOURTEEN

Zac has called Pip a few times. Though his offer of roasted swan still stands, a second date has yet to materialize. It’s not that Pip has actively avoided setting a day and time; she’s just had other things to prioritize. She’s been busy at work and play and, as usual, doing a lot of looking-after. Cat worries Will he or won’t he, Megan wonders Should I or shouldn’t I and Fen is thinking Does he or doesn’t he.

However, though the premise of Zac’s calls is invariably to try and find a time and place to meet again (‘If it’s treason you’re worrying about,’ he said recently, ‘we can always eat curry instead – I don’t think there’s such a thing as swan jalfrezi’), he and Pip chat easily for a good twenty minutes each time. She’s always pleased to hear from him. And she will get around to seeing him again – it just might not be soon.

Caleb, by contrast, seems only ever to call her on the spur of the moment. Or, as Pip interprets it, he calls the moment he knows he’s free. And though Pip is a fine one for telling her girlfriends and sisters never to be readily available for dates, she herself has so far indulged Caleb by coming at the click of his fingers. In a cab, by tube, and in bed with him, too – such is his manual dexterity. So, when she heads to his flat fifteen minutes after a summons by text or phone, she reminds herself to understand that his heavy shift-work means it is difficult for him to operate within a relationship any other way. He’s a gentleman, she says to herself, he doesn’t want to make arrangements he can’t keep. ‘And remember,’ she tells herself sternly, ‘as soon as he knows he’s free, he calls me.’ She feels quite flattered, really. And the time when she was halfway to Hoxton but he called to say he was needed, she didn’t mind. She felt proud that her doctor was in demand. And he’d apologized with a saucy little text message very late that night. And he’d sent flowers the next day.

It’s something about the very urgency of her dates with Caleb which Pip finds so intoxicating. He wants her to come as quickly as she is able. Directly to his flat, straight into his bed. Once there, however, coming quickly is the furthest thing from his mind. He explores her body with intense relish, bringing her teetering to the edge of orgasm but demanding that she holds it, controls it, lets it subside. Then he takes her there again. And again. Finally, her climax is explosive. The sex is very good. She’s never slept with anyone for whom sex is so carnal and rude.

Her previous boyfriends had been courteous to the point of being bland in bed. ‘Let me make love to you,’ Rupert used to murmur with a soft transatlantic twang utterly at odds with his regular Edinburgh accent, thus turning Pip quite cold in the process. ‘That was beautiful,’ Mike would always say gently after their ten-minute couplings; Pip stifled giggles at first, but was soon biting down yells of annoyance. Harry, with whom she had but a short dalliance, actually used to ask ‘How was it for you?’ and Pip found that however nice it had been, such a question diminished it immediately.

‘Nice fuck,’ Caleb tends to say, withdrawing from her almost as soon as he’s come. His baseness turns Pip on so much that she’s ready and keen to fuck again, however exhausted the first bout has left her.

It’s refreshing, she thinks.

I’ve never been one for small talk, for love and all its panoply. It’s a massive ego boost that this man desires me so. I love it that having sex with me absorbs him so totally, that he keeps his eyes shut tight throughout – savouring every thrust, in every position – rather than gazing into my eyes in a cringingly deep and pseudo-meaningful way.

So, you are having fun?

You bet.

But what do you do when you’re not in bed together?

Why waste time on not being in bed together!

But do you chat?

We talk dirty.

But does he make you laugh?

He certainly knows how to tickle my fancy. He’s the first man I haven’t had to show where it is!

But does he make you feel cared for?

He desires me. Ravenously. And for God’s sake, I can take care of myself.

No one at St Bea’s knows that there’s anything going on between them. And the secrecy of it all is titillating for them both. Anyway, it would be unprofessional, they justify. It is unnecessary, they decide. What’s the point of broadcasting it, they agree. St Bea’s is business and their time there is busy; the patients are their priority and nothing must distract or detract from the fact.

And what of Zac and Juliana? Same as before, really. Zac is nothing if not consistent. So, they meet fairly often and have pretty good sex. Not unlike Caleb and Pip. However, Zac usually treats Juliana to a post-coital meal in Hampstead, or some courteous foreplay by taking her to a movie or for a few drinks first. It’s a very balanced arrangement, both people are gaining the same degree of satisfaction. Neither wants for more. Both are sated sexually and intellectually. It’s perfect. Juliana has a handsome, amusing and considerate escort for the duration of her stay in London. Zac has little need to wank or turn up to friends’ parties on his own.

Where does Pip fit in? Does he think of Pip? What does he think of Pip? What does he think of, when he thinks of Pip? Has he told Juliana that he calls her, that he’s trying to see her again? If he pursued Pip, could it be construed as infidelity? Would he give up the one if the other was even a possibility? Zac Holmes is pretty au fait with his morality, though he sees keeping a couple of irons in the fire as a wise precaution. Zac is in no hurry to do anything about either woman. Time will tell, he tells himself.

He does look forward to speaking to Pip – the calls in themselves are energetic and fun and it’s become irrelevant that a date has yet to be set. There’s always laughter between them, and they’ve started teasing each other, with wit and a touch of familiarity. Zac likes it when Pip insults him. Like when she told him to fuck off and go play with his calculator. He had the last word, though. Much to Pip’s delight, he told her to ensure she put on plenty of slap or else she’d frighten the children.

Things don’t have to be going on for things to be going on. And yet, Zac and Pip have said nothing to their nearest and dearest. ‘What’s there to tell?’ they tell themselves.

Honestly, Philippa, you’re sleeping with one man and taking tea and long phone calls with another, yet the very existence of both is not known by anyone who knows you. You justify that Caleb is just casual fun and frolics, but if that’s the case then longevity won’t play a part. So, what will happen when it ends? You tell yourself Zac is just a friendly bloke but you feel yourself come alive during your conversations with him. He’s hardly of no consequence. He’s someone new in your life as much as Caleb is. You may not need people, you may feel you are totally self-sufficient, you may tell yourself there’s nothing to tell, but wouldn’t you quite like to be able to confide, discuss, reminisce, work through? Simply have the fun of a good girlie gossip?

And you, Zac – you are sleeping with a glamorous woman who doesn’t make you laugh and who is hardly value for money at the Orrery or whichever fancy restaurant you take her to. Yet you chuckle like a teenager over the phone with a girl who’s a clown and who has a penchant for cream teas. You can justify that you have plenty of platonic friendships with women and Pip is a welcome addition to this list. That she’s not your type if you care to compare dress sense and general deportment with a woman like Juliana. But you look forward to your phone calls with Pip more than you do to actually seeing Juliana. And admit it, it’s not often that you haven’t managed to take a girl out on a date. So, nothing is going on with Pip, that’s true. But it’s not for want of trying, is it?

It’s a Thursday in mid-June. Pip has been sleeping with Caleb for almost a month and so it’s also been nearly a month since she last saw Zac. Though they spoke last night, Zac hasn’t told Pip that he’ll be accompanying his son to St Bea’s today. He’s decided to surprise her, to relive his stalking days of old. He’s happy for Dr Pippity to be a surprise for Tom, too, because his son hasn’t needed treatment for over a month and is miserable about having to return.

‘Dr Pippity!’ Tom’s face lit up and despite it being sore to smile, he displayed a grin of prodigious proportions. Dr Pippity bounded over and ruffled Tom’s hair, and his father’s hair, too. ‘Young man!’ she declared in her funny voice, winking at the boy and winking at his father, ‘you’ve made my day! I was feeling poorly and grumpy and now you’re here I feel better!’ Tom felt most proud. He was so glad he’d come to hospital to make the clown doctor feel better. Another child ambled over, legs in callipers and tongue going this way and that. ‘Hullo,’ Dr Pippity said to her, ‘you’ve made my day too! What a lucky clown am I to be surrounded by such silly sausages. See, you’re making me laugh till my sides split and there are tears in my eyes.’ On cue and unseen, Dr Pippity ripped a small piece of material for a gruesome sound effect, then squeezed a bulb attached to a thin pipe tucked behind her ears which sent water dribbling down her cheeks. Tom and the girl were wet and delighted – only a clown doctor could get away with calling them funny or silly and yet still make them feel normal and altogether better.

Pip performed her dandruff joke on the girl’s mother who joined in admirably. Then she shook and shook Zac’s hand with squeaks and parps and toots going off every second. More children in Out-patients gathered round and Dr Pippity liberally dispersed stickers and colouring-in drawings and lousy jokes. She teased parents, tweaking their hair with a giant red comb into various unflattering configurations. She mimicked the nurses as they passed. She appeared to sneeze all over a consultant, sonorously blowing her nose on his white coat-tails. She took sips of patients’ water and ran off with a packet of crisps that belonged to a very scrawny-looking boy. She returned them untouched, of course, but the child still held out the packet to her.

‘Crisps?’ Dr Simmons proclaimed. ‘Can I have one?’

It took but a moment for Zac to realize that something was going on between Clowngirl and the fantastically handsome doctor. Merely glimpsing the glance that shot between them was enough.

He felt numb. He felt stupid.

She was skipping away. Off to her ward rounds. Her operatic ‘bye-bye, ta-ra, ta-ta, toot-toot’ was general, she made eye contact with no one. She was going and Zac was just going to have to let her go.

Tom was called.

Forget it, Zac said to himself, holding his son’s hand and following the nurse, just fucking forget her.

There’d be no second date, let alone roasted swan. Not even a curry. Zac was struck by a wave of disappointment. And a surge of some other emotion he hadn’t the time or inclination to analyse now.

FIFTEEN

Zac really screwed Juliana that night. He’d been uncharacteristically monosyllabic when she’d phoned earlier and had been resistant to her suggestion of meeting for Thai first. At his flat, Zac fixed her a drink and poured himself a large brandy on ice. Watching her sip her Semillon, he thought how little they knew each other. He swirled the liquor around the glass, spun himself a half revolution this way, then that, in the Eames. He regarded her levelly; he wasn’t sure just then if he wanted her to stay or go. But then she slipped her beautifully pedicured feet out of her Gina sandals and padded across the lounge to the banana chair. To straddle it necessitated hitching up her straight skirt a little. She could have managed this with her hands alone but he was well aware that for good measure and maximum impact, she undulated her hips from side to side as well. It was choreographed, contrived, not that it bothered him.

She licked her lips, sucked her fingertip, then used it to trace the rim of her glass. ‘I’m going back to South Africa,’ she announced, now flicking her tongue around the rim. She scrutinized Zac for a reaction. He didn’t appear to have one. ‘A few debriefings,’ she elaborated, ‘but I’ll return to the UK for a short while before going home for good.’

Zac wondered whether Juliana was expecting him to respond in a certain way and whether sex tonight would depend on that response. Going to bed with this woman was suddenly very important to him. He wanted to be naked, eyes closed, humping hard. He wanted to fuck her so that the image of Pip and the dry feeling in his throat would fuck off. He looked at Juliana and nodded and shrugged. His erection was caught at an odd angle behind his trousers. He shifted his position. He felt pent up but horny, too. Being aware of his basic desire had actually given him what he believed to be definitive insight.

Juliana is so much more my type than that other one. Sassy and long-legged and beautifully turned out. She makes good money, she’s independent and sussed. She doesn’t just look her age, she acts it, too. She’s experienced – in bed, in business. I like that. I mean, look at her legs – lean and tanned. Not clad in stupid stripy tights. Her hair is scraped back into a neat fold – whatever it’s called – and her face is without blemish. Gorgeous haughty eyebrows, expensive but subtle make-up, teeth courtesy of three thousand pounds’ worth of re-enamelling. She’s so not Pip – thank God. She’s so much more what I like, what I’m after, what I’m used to.

‘Bon voyage,’ Zac raised his glass to Juliana who sipped sultrily at her wine. He downed his brandy and poured himself another measure; the bottle was to hand at the side of his chair. He couldn’t be bothered to fetch ice. He’d have it straight. Neat. It scorched. He could handle it. He stared over to Juliana. Her glass was nearly empty. He couldn’t be bothered to replenish it. She knew where the fridge was. He was in a dark mood. As beautiful as she was, this woman irritated him tonight. He’d fuck her, certainly, but not from direct desire; more from an oblique need to get something out of his system – and not merely an ejaculation of sperm. ‘Did you want to go out and eat?’ Zac asked out of politeness alone.

‘No, babe,’ Juliana said, ‘got to watch my weight.’ She’d made similar remarks for as long as Zac had known her, fishing for compliments, but today for the first time he couldn’t be bothered to flatter her.

‘A top-up?’ he offered, hoping she’d go to the fridge herself, if so. She gave a lascivious smirk. She walked over to him, her sinuous body slinking towards him like a Siamese cat on the prowl. She was silent. She sat on her heels at the foot of his Eames lounger and slowly travelled her fingers up his legs, massaging his musculature through Gap cotton twill. She took her eyes away from his only temporarily, to admire the twitching bulge behind his flies. She traced her fingers along the length of his shaft. The buttons were practically popping themselves open and his cock sprang to attention through the gap in his boxers. Zac caught his breath as Juliana slowly, lightly, drew her hands over the length of him. There was something incredibly titillating about seeing long manicured fingernails, varnished the colour of damson, trace the dimensions of his cock. She could just as well dig in and hurt him as be gentle and feather light in her fondle. Just like when she took him in her mouth (and she had this great way of taking all of him all the way down), she could so easily bite him. When he was in her mouth, he could gently stroke her head, or he could enmesh his fingers in her hair and thrust her head down deep. Spearing her throat. Making her gag. Making him gasp. God, her blow-jobs were good. She was either a natural or she’d watched a glut of porn movies and learned the moves brilliantly.

Usually he’d ask. Usually, Zac would wait to be invited. Not tonight. Tonight, he went ahead and came in Juliana’s mouth with no warning, no words, not even an anticipatory quickening of his breathing. Just one long exhalation. Usually she’d swallow. Follow it up with some seductive lip licking and a sated glaze to her eyes. Tonight, she spat out his spunk into her wineglass. He wasn’t offended. It wasn’t as if she’d wasted good wine – her glass was empty – and it wasn’t as if he’d offered to refill it for her.

Pip phoned Zac a couple of days later and left a message on his answering machine. ‘Hullo, Zac, it’s Pip here. Just to say it was great to see you and Tom last Thursday – sorry I couldn’t spend more time with you both but a clown doctor’s duties come first. Anyway, speak to you soon, hey? Ta-ra.’

He listened to it once more, decided there was nothing to pick up on between the lines, nothing to listen to again, nothing to reply to. So he didn’t. He deleted it. It seemed to him to be an appropriate reaction. Not least because it counteracted the ridiculous softening effect that her voice alone appeared to spin through him.

Pip hadn’t phoned Zac for any other reason than to say ‘hullo’. She didn’t expect him to reply – there was nothing to respond to. Simply, she had thought of him, Tom too, as she headed east to Caleb’s on a Saturday afternoon. And that was the only reason for her call.

God – life is really quite sussed at the moment! she mused, showering at Caleb’s an hour or so later; her cab already waiting outside his apartment block.

Molly phoned Zac. He picked up the call midway through her message. She wanted to arrange farewell drinks for Juliana – or did he have something special planned just for the two of them? No, nothing, he said, giving her the go-ahead to organize an evening.

Zac phoned his brother. Not that he needed to or even really wanted to. They’d had beers last week which had been good and lively. Actually, though he wouldn’t admit it, Zac was hoping that his sister-in-law Ruth would answer the phone. His wish was granted, yet he was stuck for words. What on earth was he going to say? Why had he phoned? What was it, exactly, that he wanted to say?

‘Hiya!’

That’ll do for starters, Zac.

‘Zac, how are you? Thank you for returning your brother in such a sorry state the other night. I slept in the spare room. He slept with a bucket. Which, I hasten to add, he forgot about the next morning – but which I found. Though of course he’d already left for work.’

‘Never could take his drink,’ Zac laughed.

‘Grounds for divorce,’ Ruth muttered, ‘or a trip to Emporio at the very least.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Zac said with heart.

‘Actually,’ said his sister-in-law, ‘any time – if it happens again, sod Emporio, it’s Prada here I come.’

‘My dear,’ Zac joshed in passable plummy tones, ‘if you want to do Prada, you’ll have to change postcodes.’

‘Perhaps changing husbands would be less hassle,’ Ruth mused.

‘There’s always that,’ Zac agreed, having often thought this woman was actually too good for his errant brother. ‘Listen, I was phoning because Tom’s been a bit down and I thought it’s been ages since he and Billy hung out.’

‘Great idea,’ Ruth enthused. ‘How about tomorrow – for once it’s a Sunday with no parties to go to. But Jim is playing in some golf tournament with the blokes.’

‘How about kite flying on Parliament Hill, weather permitting?’ suggested Zac who, though fond of his brother and ‘the blokes’, was useless at golf.

‘Only if I can have a 99 ice-cream,’ Ruth said, ‘weather permitting.’

‘Permission dependent on whether you behave yourself,’ Zac laughed.

Zac’s kite wasn’t the only thing he tied in knots the next day. Ruth rather enjoyed the spectacle of her brother-in-law tripping over his words as much as over the twine. She had never entertained the notion of Zac Holmes becoming tongue-tied. She was tempted to tease, but actually his vulnerability was really quite touching and she was flattered it was to her that he was turning.

‘It’s just – I don’t know – whatever,’ said Zac, forcing the words out whilst tugging at the line as Billy and Tom craned their gaze skywards. ‘You know?’

‘Of course,’ Ruth responded, ‘you’re making perfect sense, dearest.’ She spied the ice-cream van and wondered if it was unseemly to head for it less than fifteen minutes after arriving at the park, less than an hour since a hearty lunch at Giraffe in Hampstead. She’d wait, she decided, until Zac had got off his chest whatever was currently clogging it.

The kite was airborne and momentarily steady so Zac gave one section of string to Billy to hold, the other to Tom. The children stood as still as the kite would let them, tugging gently every now and then on their respective ends, grinning at each other and their parents. Zac came close to Ruth. ‘I think I’m interested in someone,’ he announced, ‘and it pisses me off.’

Ruth tried not to grin, or look surprised, or make it obvious that she was racking her brains wondering who. ‘Blimey, Zachary,’ she grinned, ‘I’d never have guessed!’ Her irony was lost on him. ‘Who who who?’ This seemed a more conducive approach. Zac grinned in a slightly embarrassed way, unable to maintain his pissed-off demeanour. The kite remained helpfully aloft and Zac was quite encouraged by Ruth’s enthusiasm. ‘Actually, you know her,’ he said rather portentously. Still Ruth racked and grinned and asked who, who, who. ‘It’s just,’ Zac almost whines, not answering, ‘I don’t know what to do. Truly I don’t. Me, of all people. I don’t bloody know what to bloody do.’

Because Ruth had such scant information, she couldn’t comment, so she nodded sagely and waited. Despite being desperate for details, she knew better than to press her brother-in-law for the woman’s identity. ‘I mean,’ Zac continued, bolstered by Ruth being all ears and much nodding, ‘what would you do? If you were me?’ They watched the boys concentrating on the kite. ‘The thing is,’ Zac pushed on, ‘it’s all a bit odd for a number of reasons.’

‘I’ll say,’ Ruth agreed vigorously, thinking that all of this really was a bit odd for a number of reasons. Zac Holmes! In a tangle over a woman! Uncharted territory! What on earth could she advise? Who on earth was the woman?

‘I don’t even think she’s my type,’ Zac confided forlornly, ‘and it all started off badly anyway – with it appearing I was stalking her or being rude to her,’ he continued. He paused. Then smiled. ‘But then we went out for tea and had fun. And ate loads. And chatted easily, about swans and stuff. And she looked pretty and I wanted her to share my cab. I’d really have liked that.’

‘And?’ Ruth prompted, when Zac broke off to apologize to a father and son whose rather plain kite had just been dive-bombed by Billy and Tom’s.

‘We speak on the phone a fair bit,’ Zac shrugged, ‘but I don’t know if I’m flogging a dead horse, barking up the wrong tree, putting my eggs into one basket, getting the wrong end of the stick – and any other cliché along those lines you care to come up with.’ He flopped down on the grass. Ruth didn’t know whether to laugh or pinch him or embrace him.

‘What you mean is,’ she said in tactfully hushed tones, ‘you’re interested in her but you don’t know if it’s reciprocated and you are therefore unsure – perhaps apprehensive – about attempting to pursue her?’

Zac shrugged.

‘Fear of rejection?’ Ruth suggested. Zac snorted in a somewhat derisory manner, though Ruth was spot on.

‘She already has a sodding boyfriend,’ he grumbled, offering the essential missing link.

‘Aha,’ said Ruth, who had to bite back the urge to comment on how many fish there were in the sea, ‘the desirability of unavailability.’

‘Anyway, to be frank, she’s so not my type!’ he declared to Ruth and looked at her imploringly, as if wanting her to agree and thus release him from even thinking about her ever again; or, better, disagree and come up with a plan.

‘If she didn’t have the boyfriend,’ Ruth pondered, ‘would you be more forthright?’

Zac thought for a while and then shrugged. ‘If I buy you an ice-cream, will you tell me what to do?’ he said.

‘Sounds like a fair trade to me,’ said Ruth.

Zac returned with 99 cones all round and the four of them sat on Parliament Hill, licking and cooing. Ruth and Billy wolfed down their Flakes before touching the ice-cream and then tried to steal Zac and Tom’s. They failed. Zac had no idea Tom knew such vocabulary and was far too shocked and much too amused to reprimand him. The kite was hoisted aloft once more, steadied and handed to the children. Zac returned Ruth to his conundrum.

‘At the end of the day,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t know what to do. She’s involved with someone so I don’t know why I’m wasting my time even thinking about her. As I’ve said, she’s not really my type anyway, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Your type?’ Ruth posed, not as a genuine question but with a tone of incredulity instead. It was lost on Zac who just nodded sulkily. ‘Your type,’ Ruth said astutely, ‘is women you don’t have much in common with. Women you don’t need to get involved with.’ Zac lifted his shoulders to insinuate that wasn’t that the best way? ‘Now you’ve gone and met someone different,’ she defined, ‘who happens to be spoken for,’ she continued, ‘and you’re pissed off.’

‘S’pose,’ Zac admitted, slightly petulantly.

‘I think you’ll just have to be disappointed,’ said Ruth. ‘Sounds like it’s no go. It’s probably due to the fact that she is fun and chatty and all the other stuff, that counts for you liking her and that she has a boyfriend already.’

‘I guess,’ said Zac.

‘Who is she, then?’ Ruth asked softly. ‘You say I know her?’

‘That clown,’ Zac replied.

Ruth didn’t realize he was talking of the girl’s actual vocation. She thought perhaps he was insulting her boyfriend. ‘Who, though?’ she persisted.

‘That clown,’ Zac stressed, ‘the one at Billy’s party.’

Ruth had been stunned into silence three times in her life: when she passed all her A levels with top grades after minimal revision and glandular fever; when Jim proposed midway through a curry; and when the pregnancy test went blue with Billy. Now she was silent for the fourth time – the day when Zac said he’d fallen for the clown she’d found in the Ham and High. ‘You know,’ said Zac, ‘she calls herself Merry Bloody Martha though her name is, in fact, Philippa McCabe – only ever known as Pip. She also clowns for sick children in hospitals. She’s pretty intelligent. She’s pretty, full stop. And lively. And funny. And eats like a horse. Fuck it all.’

‘Mum, why’s your mouth open like that?’ Billy interrupted, having come over to ask for a drink of juice.

‘I’m fine, darling,’ Ruth replied, sending him off with a carton and one for Tom, too. ‘Zac, I had no idea,’ she marvelled, turning to her brother-in-law who raised his eyebrows and plucked at snatches of grass. ‘Have you seen much of her? Have you slept together? Bloody hell – am I the matchmaker? Am I to blame? To credit? Do you pay me? Does she? How much?’

‘I told you, we went out for tea – and I haven’t kissed her, let alone shagged her,’ Zac informed his sister-in-law, feeling finally at ease. ‘It’s just we seem to get on well – laugh and tease and chat. Easily.’

‘But she has a boyf, you think?’

‘Yes. I saw him, some bloody doctor at the frigging hospital.’

‘She wasn’t just having an innocent flirt, like one tends to, with colleagues? Like one does, with dishy docs?’

‘That,’ Zac proclaimed, ‘was the give-away. She caught his gaze, looked away and didn’t say a word. That’s how I knew. She was chatty and tactile with everyone else.’

‘Maybe she hates his guts?’ Ruth suggested feebly. Zac raised his eyebrows, faintly annoyed. ‘You weren’t there,’ he said, almost resentfully. ‘When she said “hullo” to him, she did so in her own voice, not Dr Pippity’s.’

‘Oh,’ Ruth said quietly, not fully aware of the significance.

‘Her nose didn’t light up when he said something,’ Zac sighed, ‘nor did she mimic him in any way.’

‘Ah,’ said Ruth in what she hoped was the appropriate tone.

‘Instead, she simply took one of the little boys’ crisps,’ Zac said, ‘and then she turned away from the doctor as if she hadn’t even noticed he was there.’

‘Well,’ Ruth declared though she now had no idea what to advise. She wanted to encourage her brother-in-law because it was the first time she’d seen him interested, let alone smitten; but how could she when the facts of the situation seemed clear and the situation seemed futile indeed? ‘Maybe just nurture your friendship with her,’ she suggested feebly, ‘and perhaps it’ll finish with Dr Kildare?’

‘That’s what’s so strange,’ said Zac. ‘I adore having friends who are female – but with Pip, it won’t do.’

Ruth couldn’t add anything to that. All or nothing. Zac would just have to continue dating gorgeous women who meant nothing emotionally.

‘Shame really,’ Ruth said later that night. Her husband looked up briefly and supposed she was talking to herself again so buried his nose in the dregs of the Sunday papers. ‘There’s a lot to Zac, and it would be quite nice, really, to have him settled.’ Jim just made affirmative noises in his throat, having not heard a word.

Later, Ruth couldn’t sleep. She crept out of her bedroom and phoned Zac. It was almost one in the morning.

‘It’s me,’ she whispered.

‘Hullo,’ he whispered back; Tom was staying over and had insisted on sharing his bed.

‘I think you should tell her how you feel,’ Ruth imparted. ‘You have nothing to lose in doing so. If she’s really into this guy, then you’re no further away from where you are right now. If she isn’t, then you’re paving the way.’

‘Yes?’ said Zac. ‘Maybe.’

Ruth’s plan of action sounded quite good at such an ungodly hour.

In the cold light of the next day, however, Zac rejected it as totally unfeasible.

SIXTEEN

It wasn’t long before Zac was wondering whether to loiter. He decided against it, but only because Kentish Town tube, which was Pip’s nearest station, really was not a particularly pleasant location to frequent unless he was to develop a taste for Special Brew in earnest. Furthermore, he couldn’t very well traipse Tom down to St Bea’s in the City without an appointment; that was unthinkable. He did momentarily consider shoving his arm into a sling or casually hobbling around the ambulance bay evincing a limp, before reminding himself that St Bea’s was a hospital for children. He then wondered about phone tag – phoning until it was Pip, not the voice mail, who answered the call. However, both these approaches – by foot or by phone – seemed to him to be those a stalker would make. No. Neither would do. And letter writing was far too Jane Austen, totally un-him, very un-twenty-first-century and anyway, it would hardly be taken seriously. E-mail? Did a clown have much use for e-mail? Text message? Too teenage. Telepathy? As if. Messenger? Who – like Cupid? Yeah, right.

But Zac simply couldn’t banish the image of Pip from his mind’s eye and he felt his impotence was twofold. There was nothing he could do. So nothing was going to happen. He was incapable of forcing his mind over the matter.

Whether it was Cupid or Puck or Fate or Coincidence, Zac didn’t have time to ponder or care. All he knew, midway through the next week, was that he was queuing for the same movie with Juliana as Pip was with one of her sisters. The lovelorn one. Kit. Cat. Something like that. Good job Pip was taking her to see the new Austin Powers and not the weepie with Helen Hunt.

What a daft question, of course Juliana didn’t want popcorn or ice-cream or family-size bags of confectionery. Nor did Zac really, but he could see Pip procrastinating over the various foodstuffs and he took it as a golden opportunity to approach. As much as he wanted to talk to her, he was also quite content just to look (her bottom appeared very pert in lightweight cargo pants) and to listen (she was ordering large nachos with extra everything, plus Maltesers, a small sweet popcorn and a Pepsi). He was also keen to touch (her hair was loose and she was wearing a flattering white vest top) but of course he didn’t.

The sales assistant, apparently incapable of speech per se, slightly modified a gormless expression by raising an eyebrow and widening an already gawping mouth to encourage Zac to place his order.

‘I’ll have orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash, please. A big ’un. Ta.’

Zac was staggered that the sales assistant lolloped away, no questions asked. And he was delighted that Pip spun on her heels and greeted him.

‘You!’

‘You.’

‘Are you here to see a movie?’ Pip asked. Zac noticed she was wearing mascara. She didn’t need to, but it suited her anyway.

‘Nah,’ Zac replied, ‘I like hanging out here. It’s my favourite bar for a gourmet snack and a delicious drink.’

Pip laughed. ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ she pleaded, ‘my mascara will run. I thought we were going to see the Helen Hunt weepie – hence the eye make-up as a precaution against crying.’

‘Ain’t got the drink what you wanted,’ the sales assistant announced robotically and resumed the gawp to await Zac’s alternative.

‘Mineral water and Minstrels. No! M&Ms. Wait! I’ve changed my mind – Revels,’ Zac ordered, earning Brownie points from Pip in the process. The sales person trudged away. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ said Pip, trying to balance the nachos and the popcorn whilst tucking the chocolate into her bag. ‘And you? I left a message last week. Would you like a nacho?’

‘No, thanks,’ Zac smiled.

How shall I just drop the boyfriend into the conversation? How the fuck do I do that? Ruth! What would you suggest? Something like ‘Are you here with your bloke?’

‘Popcorn?’ Pip offered.

‘Thanks, but no,’ Zac declined.

How about ‘Does your bloke like weepie movies, too?’ God, that’s rubbish. Shall I just shoot straight and ask her on a date? ‘I say, Pip – fancy a drink tomorrow night?’ Or should it be ‘I say, Pip, fancy a drink some time – if your chap doesn’t object’?

‘Sip of coke?’

‘No, ta,’ said Zac.

Or perhaps ‘Look, Pip, we get on pretty well – why don’t we give it a go?’ I mean, I’d get full marks for directness with that one. My honesty might just sway her.

‘Malteser?’

Zac shook his head.

Fuck it. Who am I trying to kid? No point.

‘Are you on a diet?’ Pip accused. ‘Was the cream tea too much for you?’

Zac laughed.

It wasn’t enough, Philippa McCabe, it merely whetted my appetite and has had me salivating for more.

The Revels were unceremoniously plonked down before him and, to solicit further approval from Pip, Zac added a high-class choc-ice, encrusted with almonds and stuffed with cookie dough, to his order.

‘That’s my boy!’ Pip proclaimed, who was tempted to order one of those for herself.

I wish, thought Zac.

‘I’d better go,’ Pip said, ‘I want to make an inroad into these nachos and I can’t possibly miss the trailers.’

‘Enjoy the movie,’ Zac said, ‘and the nosh.’

‘Anyway,’ smiled Pip, backing away, ‘your girlfriend is probably dying for a Revel.’

Fuck fuck fuck

She’s not my girlfriend!

Zac was horrified that Pip had even noticed Juliana, let alone come to the conclusion that they were an item.

‘See you soon,’ said Pip, walking off, bending her head to lick up a popcorn or two as she went. Cat hadn’t noticed Zac, she hadn’t really noticed how long her sister had been gone. She was in a world of her own, wondering whether she really felt like seeing a film that would make her laugh and forget about her woes for ninety minutes. Was that the right thing to do? She was unsure. Feeling miserable had become almost the norm to her, cathartic even; wouldn’t the Helen Hunt weepie thus be more appropriate? She could really have a good cry; unlike her eldest sister, she purposefully hadn’t put mascara on that evening.

Pip linked arms with Cat, having given her the popcorn to hold. ‘Tuck in!’ she said. ‘I bought it all to share. I could never scoff the lot by myself.’ Actually, Pip could very well demolish every last mouthful. But it was a pleasure to share. ‘Austin Powers!’ she marvelled to Cat who was gingerly picking at the popcorn and was secretly quite tempted by the synthetic aroma of the nachos. The lights dimmed and the trailers began.

Zac didn’t really give the movie his full attention as he was powerless not to surreptitiously scour the forest of heads in front of him. He couldn’t find Pip. If Zac knew that Pip liked to remain in her seat, waiting for the credits for Best Boy, Key Grip and Gaffer, sitting there right until the disclaimer about no animals being ill-treated during filming, he’d have asked her then and there to marry him. Unfortunately but significantly, Juliana liked to go just as soon as the end credits started to roll. So he left as soon as Juliana decreed and they went back to her serviced apartment in Marble Arch where she serviced Zac very well indeed. There was little point abstaining because there was no point pursuing Pip. Not with her having a boyfriend already and now presuming that he had a girlfriend.

However, taking a cab home at midnight, Zac decides to text Pip. However teenagery this approach had seemed previously, text messaging now seems to be the most concise, even intimate, method to approach Pip and broach the subject of her boyfriend. He justifies that Ruth insisted he be upfront and forthright so he is merely obeying orders.

mike myers = total fucking genius.

He may not have given the film the appropriate attention, but instinct tells him that such a proclamation will strike a chord with Pip.

yup!! he brill!!!

The reply is almost immediate. He’s pleased. But what should he write next? What’s the best way to incorporate his girlfriendless status into a text? How can he verify the status of Pip’s doctor, too? And, most importantly, do as Ruth told him and actually tell her how he feels?

‘Christ,’ he fulminates, not caring that the cab driver glances back at him, ‘why should any of this bloody matter?’

u free 2moro?

Should he send that? He does.

sorry nope.

Damn. Aha! Here’s an opening, though.

hot date? Zac sends back.

praps!!! Pip replies, the ambiguity frustrating Zac, the excessive use of exclamation marks simultaneously charming, irritating and demoralizing.

lucky dr kildare? Zac texts brazenly, telling himself that putting ‘lucky’ will also serve to reveal, albeit indirectly, how he feels.

dr who? Pip responds.

Shit. What to write now?

st b’s. Zac pauses. He looks at the screen till the illumination switches off. What the hell. your boyf, methinks he adds and he sends it without a question mark. The wait seems interminable. Finally, his phone beeps. He accesses Pip’s reply.

yup – dr caleb simmons.

‘I didn’t ask his stupid fucking name!’ Zac shouts. The cab driver does not look around. He’s near the punter’s destination anyway. The midnight hour, in his twenty years’ experience, always brings out the emotional, the irrational, the deluded.

‘Ta,’ Zac mumbles, thrusting a tenner at the driver. ‘Keep the change.’

‘Thirteen forty, mate,’ the cab driver says diplomatically. Zac hands him an extra fiver and mumbles for him to keep the change. He goes into his flat. Shuts the door, presses his back against it and shuts his eyes, banging his head gently; two three four.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

It suddenly seems strategically crucial to phone Ruth.

‘I just saw her at the cinema. She thinks Juliana is my girlfriend. Then I texted her and asked her outright about the boyfriend. I was right. He is. Not only that, Ruth, he’s called fucking Caleb.’

It took the first two sentences for Ruth to realize who it was talking hoarsely down the phone at her so late at night.

‘Bad luck,’ she says, trying to sound sympathetic. She feels that tonight isn’t the time to talk about all the fish in the sea. ‘If it makes you feel better,’ she adds, ‘she obviously has a penchant for biblical boys.’

‘It doesn’t,’ Zac says morosely, ‘but ta anyway. Good-night.’

‘Zac?’ Ruth interrupts. ‘Did you tell her how you feel? Not just ascertain the doctor’s status? Did you tell her?’

Zac thinks about it, knowing well how the female opinion and standard on this matter probably differ from the male. ‘Sort of,’ he says, ‘I mean, not by poetry or full-on serenading, of course.’

‘Good,’ says Ruth, ‘glad you did. It’s important.’

He tries to go to sleep. He chants ‘fuck fuck fuck’ to himself, though fucking is far from his mind. And the possibility of fucking Pip is so far off that it doesn’t register even beyond the foreseeable horizon. He sends one final text an hour later.

‘Blimey,’ Pip says aloud softly, about to brush her teeth and turn in for the night. She slips between the sheets. ‘I referred to Caleb as my boyfriend!’ This certainly requires the exclamation mark. It’s a statement that Pip finds extraordinary. ‘I guess I do have a boyfriend. I suppose Caleb and I, a good six weeks down the line, are beyond the stage of just “seeing” one another.’ She tries a couple of sentences out loud to see how they sound, to see if they roll off her tongue in a natural way.

‘Caleb? Oh, he’s my boyfriend.’

That was easy enough.

‘I was just saying the guy I’m going out with is a doctor.’

That sounds quite good, too.

Pip giggles. Is it really time to go public?

Sure.

Why not?

What has she to hide? And, with Caleb, doesn’t she have rather a lot to be proud of and actually show off?

Just before she falls asleep, she wonders to herself if Caleb himself has been referring to her as his girlfriend. If so, it must follow that he thinks of himself as her boyfriend, too. She wonders about this. And then she drifts off.

Pip doesn’t retrieve Zac’s last text until the next morning.

lucky bugger.

She doesn’t get it. She hasn’t saved his texts of the previous night and she can’t really remember them anyway.

‘Lucky bugger?’ She presumes it’s something to do with Austin Powers but she can’t think what. She locks her front door and heads for the bus.

So Juliana returned to South Africa, temporarily at least and, for the time being, Zac felt Pip might as well be in Timbuktu, so remote was the possibility of anything developing there. The accountant threw himself into his work and immersed himself in socializing with his friends, devoting his weekends to being the best father in the world. He invested as much energy into his free time as into his work so that he simply didn’t have any spare time to become thinking time. He didn’t have time to think of Pip. Therefore he didn’t. And it was easy enough. He was thus at an utter loss about what to do, how to react, what exactly to feel, when he came across her crying her eyes out a week later, and when the reason for her tears became clear.

SEVENTEEN

Pip was toying with inviting Fen and Matt, Megan and Dominic over for dinner. She’d been pontificating for some time. Not so much because she was miserly with her personal space, possessive of her spare time and somewhat obsessive about spills and stains, but because she was considering inviting Caleb, too. How cosy would that be? How frighteningly grown-up? Moreover, Caleb would actually be the point of the gathering. How significant was that? How bloody symbolic? After all, she hadn’t yet told anyone of his existence. Apart from Zac, of course. But no one knew of Zac’s existence either. And yet dinner for six seemed somehow presumptuous. Though she’d been with Caleb two months now, she’d let him in to her flat on just a couple of occasions and that was only because he’d all but begged. One time he said he’d been spending too much time in the East End and that he craved a change of scene; on another, he said the neighbours were madder than ever and he needed refuge. Oddly, Pip didn’t enjoy sex as much in her own bed as at Caleb’s flat. Both times, she had hoped he would not presume to stay the night and yet when he didn’t even ask to, calling a cab ten minutes post-coitally, she was a little taken aback.

If I organize a dinner thing, would he want to stay over afterwards? Will I want that? Whether he does or doesn’t, can you imagine how often my phone will go the following day with Megan and Fen desperate for details? Then, of course, Cat will be told and will want to hear it all anew.

She looked at her calendar. Cat would be going off to the Tour de France soon enough.

‘It’s not like I actively want to keep information away from her,’ Pip muttered, ‘but that’s how it will seem because I doubt I can fix something up before she leaves. But to do so once she’s gone won’t seem right, either.’

So, no dinner party?

No.

No opportunity for friends and relations to meet your boyfriend?

No. Not at the moment. Anyway, it’s not as if he’s been brandishing me around his own social circle.

Hasn’t he?

No, thank God!

No one at all?

Not a soul.

Anyway, isn’t Caleb going away himself fairly soon? It might well seem affected to organize a meet and greet before he leaves.

I’d forgotten about that! But of course. That settles it, then, and what a relief!

It was a Thursday. Caleb was aware that Pip liked company and specific things to do in the evening and it was his pleasure to assist.

‘Why don’t I come home with you?’ he suggested, having nipped in to the glorified cupboard at the hospital where she was mid-metamorphosis between Dr Pippity and Pip. ‘Can you hang around half an hour? Or shall I meet you later?’

Pip looked at him in the mirror, then glanced at herself with half her make-up off, the remainder smeared grotesquely. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘but don’t rush. Come later. I want my well-earned luxuriate in the bath first, anyway.’

‘Lovely,’ he said softly, coming close behind her and sliding his hands gently along her collar-bones to the base of her throat. ‘The sternoclavicular dip,’ he marvelled, using his fingertips to touch her there. ‘For me, it’s the most feminine, alluring part of a woman.’ He slipped his hands lower until they cupped her breasts. ‘Not that these aren’t your finest assets,’ he said. Coquettishly, Pip spread her legs a little and led his hand down to the gusset of her spotty tights, while she looked up at him, all wide-eyed and winsome. Caleb swallowed. ‘I stand corrected,’ he said, kneading his fingers gently but insistently at her crotch. ‘This is perhaps my favourite part of you.’

‘Dr Simmons,’ Pip remonstrated, though she moved her pelvis to rub herself against his hand, ‘are you actually off duty?’

‘Fuck,’ he sighed, though he intensified his touch.

‘When you’re off duty,’ Pip said with glee, picking his hand up and flinging it away theatrically, ‘I’ll consider whether to grant you entry. Now sod off.’

Caleb smiled and gazed and saw beyond the smear of face paint and the hair tied back any old how. He would have been happy for Pip to have rubbed off all her remaining make-up over his bare body. He wanted to ravish her right now. But, as she said, he was on duty. Later. Later.

‘You clowns,’ he sulked in jest, ‘you’re no bloody fun, you’re all mouth and no trousers.’

Pip regarded him squarely. ‘I assure you,’ she said, ‘a smile isn’t the only thing I’ll raise in you later on. I’ll be all mouth and you’ll be no trousers.’

She walked to the tube with a spring to her step. Caleb. He was such an attractive mix of manners and mischief. Maybe a dinner party would be a laugh. She knew that Megan and her sisters – anyone, really – would like him very much. Being with him made her feel feisty. She was truly enjoying the fun of it all. It was lovely to be involved with someone she respected, but who she could be so playful with, too. She was quite surprised how, quite early on, she was turned on and flattered that he referred to her genitalia as her ‘gorgeous cunt’. Previously, she’d hated the word and would never have countenanced a man who used it – whether as expletive or anatomically. Pip didn’t really have a word for her nether regions. Mike had called it her ‘fanny’ which she’d hated as soppy and childish. Rupert had referred to it only the once as her ‘privates’ and she’d ended the relationship soon after. Harry had been most reverential towards her ‘vagina’ which made Pip think of her doctor and smear tests. But Caleb tells her that her cunt is gorgeous and Pip is happy to share its mysteries with him.

The following Tuesday, she was back at St Bea’s, spinning laughs and weaving smiles, distributing respite and little gifts, lifting the mood by lowering the tone. It was a good session. One of the nurses told her she had brought into the ward the glorious sunshine and warmth of the high June day. Pip was full of energy and decided to stay an extra hour to tell some lousy jokes and perform skilfully clumsy acrobatics in Out-patients. She’d take a quick break first. She paged Caleb. He joined her in the ambulance bay. It was nearing tea-time but still hot. He looked harassed. He looked as though he felt the opposite of Pip. It appeared his day was as bad as hers had been good. The sunshine had no positive effect on him. What could she do to help? She touched his brow and ran her hand down his cheek, over his neck to his arm. She squeezed him fondly. ‘You OK?’

‘Sure,’ he said, lighting a cigarette and sucking on it as if he was starving, ‘just a few hassles.’ He looked at her and frowned. ‘You know,’ he clarified, ‘the stuff of headaches.’

Pip nodded. ‘Sometimes this place can be like that – and I’m only here a few hours a week,’ she said sympathetically, giving him a supportive rub between the shoulder-blades.

‘You’re a sweet, sweet thing,’ he said affectionately, ruffling her hair. Momentarily, she didn’t like it. She wanted him to only ever think of her as the vamp with the gorgeous cunt, not a sweet thing he could pet. But she let it pass. Those were her own self-doubts surfacing, she chastised, nothing to do with Caleb. She should feel flattered and heartened that he appeared to be so fond of her, that she seemed to be all things to him.

‘You know I’m away next week,’ he stated, out of context but with emphasis.

‘That’s right,’ Pip said. ‘Shame – I was going to suggest dinner at mine, or a weekend away, perhaps. Maybe when you’re back.’

Caleb didn’t say anything but he looked down at her fondly. ‘You’ll come back all tanned and gorgeous and I won’t be able to keep my hands off you!’ she said, hoping to lift his mood. ‘I’ll bet you can’t wait to go – just steer clear of the local dusky maidens, if you please!’ He looked down further, engrossed in his shoes. ‘Shiny,’ Pip said, looking too, thinking it sounded a bit daft but so what. ‘Is your friend looking forward to it?’ she asked.

‘Friend?’

‘The mate you’re going on holiday with?’ Pip said.

‘Sure,’ said Caleb, lighting another cigarette immediately.

‘Which mate?’ she asked. ‘The one you play squash with? I haven’t even asked you!’

‘Jo,’ said Caleb.

‘Joe,’ Pip repeated, it didn’t ring a bell.

‘Correct,’ said Caleb.

‘I don’t know if you’ve mentioned Joe?’ she said, trying to remember if he had.

‘No,’ said Caleb, ‘I haven’t. Andy’s the bloke I play squash with.’

‘Of course. Andy – that’s right!’ she nodded as if she knew Andy well. ‘So which one’s Joe?’

‘Jo,’ said Caleb, ‘is my girlfriend.’

EIGHTEEN

Oh, how you kick yourself when, months later, you think of the perfect retaliatory quip for a situation which so desperately warranted one at the time. Would you not endure the torment of the whole event again if it meant you could deliver that definitive killer rejoinder? No matter how eloquent a person, it is rare, unless you are a reincarnation of Oscar Wilde, to have the perfect retort at your disposal. A coup de grâce on the tip of your tongue. Unless you have a brilliant scribe working on your behalf, you are unlikely to deliver a soliloquy worthy of an Oscar, let alone Oscar W himself. The ultimate means to reassert your dignity and walk away, head high, with the satisfaction of the moral high ground and the last word is, unfortunately, a talent which eludes most.

Our heroine is not related to Oscar Wilde, nor does she have any Hollywood connections. Anyway, this isn’t fiction. It’s the here and now and she’s a clown and she’s just standing there. It’s a glorious summer day but a chill has coursed through her making her shudder quite violently. Her heart is thudding, her mouth is agape, her brain is short-circuiting. Disbelief churning with nausea and mixed with a sickening quota of humiliation renders her utterly incapable of any sound, never mind an air-punching speech with a rousing soundtrack and spontaneous audience ovation.

‘Shit!’ Caleb is saying, on account of her expression. ‘Pip – I honestly thought you realized.’

Hit him, Pip!

‘Fuck!’ he’s continuing. ‘I feel so bad! You must think I’ve led you on?’

Don’t you let him talk himself out of his guilt!

‘I truly thought you were cool about things,’ he’s saying with a look of deep concern. Actually, it’s more of a mask than Pip can ever paint. Caleb’s expression – a beguiling blend of care, sympathy, sensitivity – is not natural to his personality, nor is it spontaneous to the situation in hand. It’s not an honest reflection of how he feels, it’s not sincere in the slightest. But it is pretty convincing. He learned how to manipulate his face during his medical training. At the same time as studying physiology and swotting up on anatomy. When he was also practising illegible handwriting for prescriptions and the most meaningful way to say ‘hmmm’.

‘God, I’m so sorry, Pip. I so didn’t mean to hurt you.’

This isn’t remorse, it’s contrived and it’s bullshit, Pip. If you still can’t speak, belt him!

‘Are you OK?’ he asks. ‘Hmmm?’

The clown with the gorgeous cunt nods her head meekly and prays a tear won’t splash on the doctor’s shiny sodding shoes. Go on! Stamp on them!

‘I feel dreadful,’ says the doctor who doesn’t, ‘I really thought you were on my wavelength.’

Pip looks up sharply, as if he’s accusing her. Kick him on the shin, Pip!

‘I mean,’ Caleb continues, feeling slightly appeased, ‘I really thought you were into the whole no-strings-sex thing? You know, friends who fuck?’

Is Pip clearing her throat? Or is she swallowing down tears? Or is she about to throw up?

‘I got you wrong and I’m mortified,’ Caleb says with fairly credible solemnity. ‘Damn!’

Pip clears her throat. ‘No, Dr Simmons,’ she says quietly. She stares at his stethoscope because she just can’t drag her eyes up to his and she doesn’t want to look at his stupid shiny shoes any longer. ‘I had you wrong.’

Away she walks. Beyond the ambulances, past the patients taking fresh air, past the visitors steadying themselves with cigarettes, past the staff on breaks chatting on their mobiles or wolfing down snacks. Pip strides out beyond the hospital perimeter. In her slap and motley, her braided hair sticking out at jaunty angles, her pockets aflap with the toy tools of her trade.

She’s not looking where she’s going, she doesn’t know where she’s headed, but she doesn’t look back, not even a glance. Her eyes are smarting, her vision is impaired, but she doesn’t slow up. Forward. Onward. It’s as if the further she can be from the hospital, the further she will be from the past. She needs to keep walking in the opposite direction and, logically, into the future.

Dr Caleb Simmons is still in the ambulance bay. He stubs out his cigarette and returns to the wards. He thinks that didn’t go too badly. At least there hadn’t been a scene. He does like Pip and she’s great in bed. But he’s fond of Jo, too, who isn’t that exciting in the sack. And he very much likes Alice, the nurse on Hogarth ward; she comes as a pair (sometimes literally) with her friend the dental nurse from Dalston.

It isn’t about open-mindedness versus being prudish, modern versus old-fashioned. It isn’t about strength of feeling or depth of love. It certainly isn’t about what is right or what isn’t. It is not a question of ethics. Caleb, actually, doesn’t believe he has done anything wrong. Pip is upset and he is sorry that she is. That was never his intention. He reasons how morality is a highly subjective issue. Sure, Pip is hurting but, he justifies, he didn’t wilfully cause it. Far from it. If only he had known. Anyway, he’s said sorry, after all.

Still Pip walked. She went through Liverpool Street station, circumnavigated Broadgate Circle twice (completely oblivious to the flamenco group providing complimentary entertainment in the ring), meandered until she found herself on Moorgate and then walked aimlessly around every floor in M&S. Outside, she window-shopped all the ‘3 for 2’ books on offer in Books Etc. and almost felt like crying when she saw Pret A Manger was closed though she was incapable of eating a thing. Finally, she found comfort in the Edwardian grace and greenery of Finsbury Circus. She walked around it a couple of times, steering clear of the City bucks already drinking at the Pavilions bar. Suddenly, gazing at the perfectly manicured bowling green, Pip realized how tired she was, how sore her feet were and how she desperately needed to sit down and take stock. She chose a bench and sat on pigeon shit without caring. A litter bin nearby smelt unpleasant with a lunch-hour’s worth of leftovers fermenting in the sun.

She sat there for some time, feeling confused more than sorry for herself, though sorry for herself she certainly soon felt. ‘I thought he was normal,’ she whispered out loud. God, she felt such a fool. She cried. Then she felt even more of a fool. But she couldn’t help sobbing afresh when she thought how she’d never have sex with Caleb again, and that was certainly something to mourn. The rampant fling had been flung away. And not by her choosing. And that didn’t seem fair.

People were starting to stream out of their offices for the day. Pip didn’t notice. She wasn’t aware of what the time was, nor did she care how she looked, sitting there. A splash of colour amidst all the navy and grey sensible work suits. Actually, not so much a splash, more a splodge – her make-up was smeared and streaked from her tears. People stared; some slowed down, others hurried past. Some wondered initially if the clown was providing some form of street entertainment. But there was no begging bowl. And there was nothing particularly funny about her. Just odd.

Only one person actually stopped. Sat down right next to the clown, on some pigeon shit, too. Sat beside her and put a comforting arm gently across her shoulders.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked. He was on his way to the pub for a swift half or two with a couple of colleagues. They loitered. He motioned for them to go on ahead.

Her face was striated with rivulets of murky green, streaks of inky blue and smudges of red. Most of her clown white was now a miserable grey. Most of her lipstick had smeared around her mouth, like someone who’d gorged at Pick Your Own berries. Or had been in a fight. Well, in a way, Pip has been in a fight with a pick your own. She picked on someone not of her own calibre. And just then, she believed, she’d lost.

‘Are you OK?’ the good Samaritan asked again.

She wiped her nose sonorously against the back of her hand, transferring a bruise-like welt of make-up in the process.

‘Pip?’

She looked up. Bloody hell, it was Zac Holmes. She stared at him. His face was creased with an expression of utter concern and he was doing the caring shoulder squeezing and ‘hey hey’ing with great commitment. He was so solemn that, momentarily, Pip wanted to giggle. However, the abiding emotion was one of gratitude and a feeling of safety and, accordingly, she laid her head against his arm and let her tears subside. Zac didn’t intrude. He allowed there to be silence. And if the passers-by wanted to speculate as to his relationship with the crying clown, let them. And if his colleagues took the piss later, or didn’t bother to wait for him at the pub, then so what. They were only work associates, merely the least dull amongst those he worked with.

For Pip, sitting in the middle of an area of London alien to her; sitting on bird shit in her clown doctor’s uniform, her face a disaster area that could frighten children, her life a far cry from the control she so arrogantly assumed she’d instilled; it all seemed suddenly to make perfect sense. She hadn’t told a soul about Dr Simmons. But one person knew of his existence. That person, Zac Holmes, was the very person sitting next to her, in pigeon poo, too, being liberal with his maternal clucking and sympathetic back rubbing. The back rubbing was soothing. Rhythmic, steady; just the right amount of pressure. She felt lulled and her breathing regulated.

‘Oh dear,’ she sighed, ‘bollocks.’

‘Are you all right?’ Zac asked. Pip looked up at him and nodded. ‘Look, my office is that building just over there – why not go in and take five. Or rip up a newspaper. Or make a phone call. Or have a good yell. Or just wash your face?’ Pip nodded and let Zac lead her away.

‘Welcome to Hell-hole,’ Zac said of his office with a hint of embarrassment. ‘They’re mostly the same around here – beautiful buildings buggered up by hanging ceilings and truly diabolical lighting, space subdivided into as many work pods as possible. If it’s not liquid lunches giving me a headache, it’s the sodding ambience here. I have a headache most days. See?’ He pulled out a packet of Nurofen from his pocket to verify. ‘Anyway, Clowngirl, second left for the ladies’ loo. Off you go. Shall I get you a drink? Would you like the strange liquid from our machine which might be tea, or there again coffee? Or a plastic cup of plasticky water? It’s from that world-renowned well of purity – the Dell Valley Spring. Not that I can find Dell Valley on the map. Or the Internet. Not that I’m a sad bastard for researching it. Anyway, what’ll it be?’

‘I’m OK,’ said Pip croakily. Zac felt that was a matter for some conjecture but diplomatically, he said nothing. She went to the ladies’, he looked around his floor. There was no one around. Just as well, really. The company was threatening a batch of redundancies soon and Zac’s derisory comments concerning their vending machines and office ergonomics could surely amount to something sackable.

It is not an easy task to remove stage paint with water alone. In fact, water alone actually is not recommended. Cold cream is the best antidote; Simple Soap will do, but it’s a lengthier process. Water doesn’t really work. Pip, however, had more sense and respect for her skin’s sensitivity, than to resort to the industrial pink liquid soap in the wall-mounted dispenser. She’d winced on seeing her reflection and had momentarily cringed at the thought of the spectacle she must have provided to everyone she passed from St Bea’s to the bench. Oddly, though, she wasn’t mortified that Zac had seen her so; when she saw the state of her face, she was extremely glad he had come across her and laid his company’s facilities at her disposal. When Pip emerged, she looked something akin to an art teacher at the end of the school day. If it wasn’t for her clothing, she might not attract even a second glance.

She approached Zac a little shyly. ‘Thanks,’ she said, with a coy dip of her head against her shoulder, which wasn’t wholly unintentional.

‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘I wouldn’t take you to meet the Queen looking like that, but I will escort you wherever it was you were headed.’

‘That’s precisely it,’ Pip confessed. ‘I had no idea where I was going – just where I was coming from.’

Zac nodded sagely, slightly confused at the solemnity of Pip’s tone but feeling it was rude to pry. ‘Hot liquid?’ he offered. ‘Plastic water from the Dell Valley?’

‘Perhaps the plastic water,’ Pip said gratefully, ‘and a couple of painkillers.’ She looked around her. How could people work productively in such an oppressive and cramped environment? ‘Which is your desk?’ she asked Zac when he returned, surveying Pod-land.

He looked a little embarrassed. ‘Well, it’s over there actually.’ Pip looked ‘over there’ and to a side of the floor where there were three or four single offices with smoked glass doors and not a pod in sight. ‘In one of them.’

‘One of those,’ Pip corrected automatically. ‘Are you the boss?’ she asked, almost accusatorily.

‘No no!’ Zac denied breezily.

‘But you are a bit of a hot shot?’ Pip pressed. ‘You’re not one of the proletariat working in Pod-land with no natural light?’

‘I do have an office to myself,’ Zac conceded, ‘and a window.’

‘May I see?’ Pip asked. It seemed preferable to stay here than to be outside, having to decide which direction to take. It was much better to be with Zac than to be on her own. It was good not to have the time to think about Caleb. She was going to change the subject in her mind and soul. Forget all about it. About him. For a while, at least.

‘If you really want to,’ Zac said with a perceptible shuffle. ‘It’s just a boring old office, though.’

Pip had to nudge him to lead on. ‘You lucky sod!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have two sash windows, a high ceiling, ornamental coving, corporate art and a coffee percolator!’

‘I work hard,’ Zac shrugged, thinking that Pip probably didn’t know a Herman Miller Aeron chair even when she was swivelling on it; certainly not that it cost a thousand pounds.

Pip noted the photos of Tom at various ages on the window-sills and Zac’s desk. And then she noticed the clock above the door. It was nearing 7.00. She’d left the hospital almost three hours ago. And her stuff was still there. It was one thing taking the tube home looking like an art teacher at the end of the day, albeit one dressed as a clown; it was quite another to have to break into one’s flat because the house keys had been voluntarily left at work. And, of course, there was no way she could turn up at either of her sisters’, or Megan’s, because they would want to know why. And who.

‘Are you all right, Pip?’ Zac asked, discerning that she wasn’t actually looking at his magnetic paper-clip pyramid but was simply staring, deep in thought, probably to the nub of the matter – whatever the matter was.

‘Yes,’ she said, unconvincingly. She was as unlikely to tell Zac all that had happened that afternoon, as she was to ask him if she could perhaps take refuge in his flat for the night so that she didn’t have to return to St Bea’s.

‘Finished snooping?’ he asked, thinking he’d quite like a pint now, either with dull colleagues or the paint-stained clown. The pint was the point and he was thirsting for one. It had been a long day. Awkward clients with complex accounts. And then Clowngirl turning up, quite literally on his doorstep, sobbing as if she couldn’t stop. Well, she had stopped now. In fact, she’d brightened up discernibly. ‘You can rummage through my drawers, if you like,’ he said, ‘or join me for a pint? Or that lemony-blackcurranty stuff.’

‘That sounds like a fine idea,’ Pip said. Zac opened his drawers. Pip laughed. ‘I meant the pint,’ she explained. Zac had hoped that’s what she’d meant – but hadn’t wanted to tempt fate. Having a drink with Zac, thought Pip, would give her more time not to have to think about keys and St Bea’s and the bloody doc and his roving cock.

Zac took her to a pub near Leadenhall Market – not because it was a good stroll away and therefore unlikely to be frequented by his colleagues, but because it was historical with a great atmosphere and he thought Pip might like it. Drinking on a system that had churned so violently with adrenalin was akin to drinking on an empty stomach. Two glasses of Rioja and Pip was burying her head in her hands, wailing. She looked up at Zac, tears prickling her eyes, and whispered ‘Bastard!’

‘Me?’ Zac whispered back.

‘Of course not you,’ said Pip. She wouldn’t be drawn further until another glass of Rioja had lubricated her vocal cords.

‘Boyfriend giving you gyp?’ Zac asked, on chinking empty glasses.

‘Gyp!’ Pip smiled. ‘You’re funny, you are. Bit old-fashioned, aren’t you?’ He noticed she was starting to slur her words slightly. She noticed that, occasionally, there appeared to be two of him.

‘I also say “crikey”, sometimes,’ Zac confessed.

‘My boyfriend,’ Pip said, banging her fist on the table for emphasis, though it landed in a puddle of Rioja that subsequently splashed on her white coat and Zac’s shirt (it was navy, it didn’t show), ‘my so-called boyfriend has a girlfriend, I learn today. And she’s not me.’

‘Bloody hell, Pip,’ said Zac, ‘how ghastly for you.’

‘Ghastly,’ Pip repeated, holding her index finger aloft for emphasis, ‘is an understatement. It’s a downright fucking nightmare.’

‘You had no idea?’ Zac said, his concern etched across a very furrowed brow. How on earth could she have had no idea? Momentarily, they both pondered this. Then Pip shook her head. ‘No clues in his flat?’ Pip thought of the Psycho shower curtain. No matter how much she wanted to hate Jo and presume her to be a complete cow, she just couldn’t credit any woman with buying that comedy shower curtain. So she shook her head. What about the fresh flowers, Pip?

I took those as an indication of Caleb being in touch with his feminine side.

‘I was a bit on the side,’ she shrugged, looking up at Zac, humiliated and hurt.

‘Poor Pip,’ said Zac.

‘Fucking bastard wanker,’ Pip proclaimed, histrionically.

Zac wanted to laugh but of course didn’t. Pip was deadly serious. ‘You found out today and left the hospital on the double?’ he asked.

‘On the double,’ Pip mimicked, Zac’s occasional, trademark quaintness making her smile. ‘Yes,’ she confirmed, looking tearful, ‘he told me today. Then made this big thing about how he thought I knew. How he thought that I was a friend who fucked. How he thought I was cool about that.’

Zac registered the hurt on Pip’s face and decided now was not the time to say that he had fucked a fair few of his friends, too. And in this day and age, perhaps it was a genuine misunderstanding for the doctor to have made. He didn’t tell her because it would have been tactless, but also because there was something about her wide-eyed hurt that in an instant made him review his own behaviour. Though he didn’t think his lax sexual predilections immoral, certainly not reprehensible; but he thought he had perhaps been a little louche of late. More then than now, though. Pip’s outrage made her seem all the more artless and it made him smile and soften.

‘Thing is, my keys, my bag – everything is at St Bea’s,’ she said, starting to sob.

‘It’s no problem,’ Zac said, squeezing her arm, ‘we’ll go together – I’ll go in, if you like. I’m good at bullshit – I have to deal with Customs and Excise the whole time, remember!’

Zac left Pip lurking in the taxi outside St Bea’s. He went into the hospital, smiled charmingly at the women behind the Reception desk and explained that his good friend Philippa McCabe, one of their clown doctors, had left suddenly that afternoon – family emergency – and he’d come with her authority to collect her belongings. One of the women accompanied Zac to the small cupboard-room. He then escorted her back to the front desk. He thanked both women profusely.

‘Family emergency?’ smirked one to the other.

‘Another casualty on Dr Simmons’s ward,’ the other sniggered back.

NINETEEN

‘Look, you’re sharing my cab and that’s that,’ Zac informs Pip. ‘It’s too late and too hot for public transport.’ Zac observes her: though she’s pouting intentionally, she’s swaying without meaning to. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘I’m a gentleman and you’re pissed. So I’ll escort you home and not hear another word.’ Pip giggles. Zac’s right. She is drunk and he is a gent. Fine. Whatever. Taxi. There’s one. Let’s go.

She hugs her bag and gazes out of the window.

‘What do you have tomorrow?’ Zac asks. ‘Can you take some time off? Treat yourself to a massage or have a swim or meet a girlfriend for lunch?’ Pip is vaguely aware that the concern and common sense he is bestowing on her are similar to those which she’d dispense to any of her girlfriends in a comparable situation. ‘A splurge of retail therapy?’ Zac suggests.

‘Are you gay?’ she asks artlessly, tactlessly, but with no malice.

‘What?’ Zac, however, is visibly disturbed. ‘Fuck off.’

‘It’s a compliment,’ Pip says, head nodding sincerely.

‘No, I’m bloody not gay,’ Zac chides defensively. Far from homophobic, he is nevertheless somewhat offended. ‘What the fuck made you think that?’ He’s starting to regret the cab, the mercy dash to St Bea’s, the loan of his office. He reminds himself he always thought Pip was weird.

‘It’s a compliment,’ Pip hurries yet again, embarrassed that she’s obviously hurt him. ‘I only meant because you’re such a good listener and the advice you give is like a girl would give a girl.’

Zac looks out of the window. God, Camden is grim. Someone is puking by a lamppost. A mangy mongrel with three legs lollops across the road, followed by its equally dishevelled and limping owner. A disturbingly respectable-looking middle-aged man emerges from the sex shop, adjusts his spectacles and hails a cab. The smell of kebab and pizza seep into the taxi though the windows are shut.

‘A strong feminine side is a gift,’ Pip is tapping his arm. ‘Gays and women have it – men rarely do.’ Zac looks at her and glances away. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I meant no offence, I just meant that for a hetero boy you are –’ she pauses, ‘nice.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Zac says with equanimity though he’s still smarting a little.

‘Your girlfriend,’ Pip tells him, ‘is a lucky, lucky girlfriend.’

‘I don’t have a girlfriend,’ Zac says.

‘The cinema,’ Pip frowns.

‘She’s just a friend,’ Zac says nonchalantly.

‘Friends who fuck,’ Pip says sadly with a heavy sigh. Zac doesn’t correct her; they’ve passed Kentish Town tube, which she’s told him is her nearest, there seems little point in initiating a heart-to-heart or an in-depth analysis at this point. ‘Right,’ Pip directs the cabby, ‘left! Left again! Second lamppost on the left.’

She gets out, a little unsteadily. Zac remains seated.

‘Can I use your loo?’ Zac asks. ‘I’m bursting.’

‘Of course you can,’ Pip says without a second thought. It’s only Zac, after all. The boy so nice and so sensitive he might as well be gay. She pays the cabby, though Zac protests.

Because Pip has always been at the helm of previous relationships, because her previous boyfriends were all keener on her than she was on them, she has no concept of what the rebound is. She understands the theory and she’s warned many a girlfriend about it. But the signs and urges are unintelligible to her. By the same token, Zac has no ulterior motive on entering her flat. The girl is drunk; he’s been told he’s as good as gay; it’s been a long day. Hardly the ingredients for a frisson to simmer. He’s asked to come in to her flat because he’s desperate for a pee, that’s all. Pip has let him in because he’s desperate for a pee, that’s all.

The sound of a man taking a pee in her bathroom, combined with the effect of a long drink of chilled mineral water in the familiar and comforting environment of her home, sobers Pip up quite markedly. Zac emerges and she smiles a little sheepishly at him.

‘I feel better now,’ she says, brandishing the Badoit bottle.

‘So do I,’ says Zac. ‘Great bathroom – the mosaic is divine.’ He winces. ‘You’re right, I do sound gay.’

‘Don’t!’ Pip pleads as if the mistaken notion now pains her far more than it can possibly irk him. ‘The mosaic is actually an easy-to-follow kit from Homebase,’ she confides, hoping that to put herself down might make Zac feel better, ‘it wasn’t expensive.’

‘Very industrious,’ he praises.

‘Would you like some water?’ Pip offers.

‘Sure,’ he shrugs. She passes him the bottle of Badoit and he takes a good swig. He looks around her sitting-room. It’s very similar to what he saw of her bedroom. ‘Have you recently moved in?’ he asks, noting the ubiquitous calico blinds, the lack of personal trinkets, undercoat everywhere, the total absence of colour.

‘No no,’ Pip says, taking it as a compliment that it all must appear so pristine, ‘I’ve been here years.’

‘Are you redecorating, then?’ he asks. She frowns. ‘The undercoat,’ he waves his hand around, ‘and, I mean, all your furniture is without covers.’ She glowers. ‘You seem to have hidden all your stuff away,’ he continues.

‘Actually,’ she says, quite icily, ‘this is how I choose to live.’ Zac falls silent. He looks around again, perhaps he’s drunker than he thought, perhaps he needs to blink. He blinks. He’s relatively sober. And it all looks as he thought it had. ‘But there’s no colour,’ he says quietly.

‘You’re too much of a bloke to discern the subtle gradations of tone,’ Pip says primly, despite the contradiction to her previous supposition of homosexuality, ‘too much of a lad to appreciate the fullness of minimal clutter.’

Zac the pacifist pulls on a guilty face though he’d still maintain that Pip’s flat is lonely rather than peaceful, sad rather than serene and cold rather than calm. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he says, ‘I’m a bit of a philistine.’ He takes another thirsty pull at the Badoit bottle. And observing him do so – the way he slants and then closes his eyes, the fullness of his lips, his neck pulsating with every gulp, his physical presence in her space – does something unexpected but intense to Pip McCabe.

Her heartbeat quickens and her mouth goes dry. She’s gone all light-headed and knows it isn’t from alcohol. It’s due to desire. She feels damn horny. Her body is buzzing and her mind is whirring. She’s always appreciated that Zac is easy on the eye but, right now, she actively fancies him.

Genius! The ultimate way to close her ghastly day and put distance between her and the reprehensible Caleb Simmons, is standing a few feet in front of her! She holds out her hand for the bottle. She makes sure her fingers brush his when she takes it. The touch sends an electric impulse surging through her. She keeps her eyes on him as she drinks. She licks her lips when she’s finished.

‘I’d better make a move,’ Zac says because, for a split second, he’s just felt a rush of lust for Pip but he warns himself that, despite weeks of desire, tonight is not the right time for consummation. Or even a snog.

Now, I know Zac is our hero and he really is a hero – gentlemanly, sensitive, amusing, handsome. And Caleb, by comparison, is a downright cad. And our heroine has been wronged today and is hurt and confused. And although she is a clown and he is an accountant and one would have thought that never the twain would meet let alone mix, there is something nicely compatible about these two. But not yet, surely? Tonight wouldn’t be right. Though Pip is sobering up, there’s still enough alcohol and adrenalin in her system both to dictate and skew her inclination. And though Zac is relatively sober, he’s still had a knock, however slight, to his masculinity. They’d have sex for all the wrong reasons and would very probably jeopardize sex for the right reasons in the future. No. They oughtn’t to come together – in any sense – tonight. The timing would be awry. There’s half a book to go, anyway.

‘Mind if I call a cab?’ Zac asks.

‘Sure,’ says Pip, ‘I’ll call one for you.’ She dials. ‘Kentish Town to Hampstead, please. Soon as you like. Forty-five minutes? Jesus!’ She turns to Zac, the receiver cupped under her chin. ‘Forty-five minutes,’ she repeats though of course he’s already heard that.

‘Jesus,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll find a black cab – there’ll be plenty.’

‘Shall I try another cab company?’ Pip suggests, hovering her hand over the phone.

‘It’s OK,’ Zac says, ‘as I said, I’ll catch a black cab, no problem.’

But Zac doesn’t move.

Pip offers him the bottle of water and he takes it. He isn’t thirsty. But he drinks. He offers it back. She takes it. She drinks.

‘You’re still in your uniform,’ Zac observes. She does look daft, pigtails jutting out, face grimy, wearing a doctor’s coat emblazoned with patterns and pockets dripping with fantastic plastic. Spotty tights. She’s taken off her shoes. He notices how neat her feet seem.

‘You’re right,’ Pip says, ‘I’d better go and change.’ But she doesn’t. She flops next to him on her sofa. Zac doesn’t leave to take a taxi home and Pip doesn’t change out of her work gear. They both just sit there, wondering how they’re going to do what they know they’re going to do. She knows if he makes a move to leave, she’ll grab him. He knows if she goes next door to change, he’ll follow. So they sit in stillness and silence, wondering who’s going to do what to whom and when.

Pip sighs and stretches her legs out. ‘Do you like my tights?’

Now, in all the come-ons that Zac has had in his sexually active life, no one has coquettishly presented him with a pair of spotty tights for his delectation. The tights are horrendous. But the legs beneath are shapely.

‘They’re awful,’ he says.

She laughs and jiggles her legs. ‘Tools of the trade,’ she says.

‘Nice pair of pins, though,’ Zac says. His hand automatically hovers above her knee. He must make a move – a move to leave, catch a cab, not to touch her. Lightly, Pip places her hand over his and guides it to rest on her knee. She must get out of her tights. Go to sleep. Their breathing is audible and quickening.

‘I must go to sleep,’ she whispers, glancing at his eyes, suddenly unable to look anywhere else. They’re slate-grey. They’re gorgeous and they’re swallowing her whole.

‘I must catch a cab,’ says Zac. He can’t keep his gaze still. It darts from her eyes to her lips to her legs and back again. To her lips once more. They’re moist. Her knee fits into the palm of his hand. It turns him on as much as if he was cupping her breast.

‘Would you like another drink of water?’ she whispers.

‘No, thanks,’ he murmurs back, ‘I must be going.’ He stands up and walks to the door. Pip follows him. ‘Night, Pip,’ he says.

‘Night, Zac,’ she says. He opens the door and steps outside. She closes the door and goes back into her flat. They both breathe a sigh of relief yet kick themselves, too.

Zac easily hails a black cab on Kentish Town Road. He settles himself inside and gives his address. But he tells himself if the next set of lights is red he’ll jump out. It’s green. ‘Stop the cab,’ he says. He gives the driver a tenner. And jogs back to Pip’s.

She’s half-expecting the bell when it rings. She wonders whether it’s advisable to answer the door in spotty tights, her hands providing an impromptu bra. But that’s precisely what she does.

They don’t bother with chit-chat about a dearth of cabs or a drink of water or needing the loo or having to get out of one’s work clothes. Zac steps inside, scoops Pip in his arms and starts kissing her on the lips. The cheeks. Her left eye. Her right ear. That gorgeous dip at the base of her neck between her collar-bones, whatever it’s called. Pip is weaving his hair through her fingers, tickling his neck up and down, running her hands over his shoulders, grasping his biceps, unable to hush her desirous gasping. They’re kissing deeply, tonguing each other, exploring each other’s mouth for taste and sensation.

Lips are bitten and sucked, necks are grazed by teeth, ear lobes are nibbled, tongues dance. They haven’t made it beyond the living-room. Pip has pulled Zac against her and he has her up against the wall; she’s pressing her body so insistently against his that he hasn’t had the chance to see her bare breasts, to admire them, let alone fondle them, though he’s sure they must be gorgeous. He pulls away, with some effort. And feasts his eyes on her torso. Fabulous. He grunts and stoops so he can take her nipple in his mouth, his fingers kneading, his hands cupping. Pip walks to her bedroom and he follows. She peels off her tights, slips out of her knickers, opens her bedside drawer and passes him a condom. He unbuttons his trousers and he pulls down his boxers. His cock springs to attention and attention is precisely what Pip lavishes on it. He’s so hard, his cock seems to be straining within the skin, his balls tight in their sack, twitching. She kisses each in turn. Kisses the tip of his cock and then lays back on the bed, spreads her legs and watches him roll on the condom.

After such a lengthy prelude, they dispense with further foreplay and head straight for hasty, straightforward penetration. Missionary position all the way. He comes before she’s quite ready but for her, an orgasm wasn’t the point. Her satisfaction is complete – she was desired and she desired.

Caleb, you can fuck off. I’ll be fine. No damage done. I am unscathed.

Zac withdraws and they lie there, panting. Pip is exhausted. He’s at that delicious post-coital state of physical depletion and heady drowsiness. With her eyes closed, Pip reaches for the bedside light and switches it off. She can’t remember drifting off to sleep. But she is certainly aware of waking up.

TWENTY

Pip knew something was amiss when an itchiness woke her. Something was prickling her cheek and spiking at the corner of her mouth. Though drowsy, she brushed the back of her hand against her face with panic, assuming it was a spider or an earwig or some other creature from a dream, come to life. It wasn’t. it was her hair. It was her hair braided into a pigtail. Her clown’s hair. What on earth! Slowly, she opened an eye and tried to focus and define a strange configuration on the floor by her bedroom door. What was that? Was there something under it? The fog of reverie and fug of hangover began to lift and her gaze alighted on Dr Pippity’s white coat. First the plaits, now the coat. Honestly! Over there, her knickers. What’s this under the sheets? Tights? Pip McCabe never ever leaves clothing strewn around her room like this. Pip McCabe always puts her clown away as soon as she’s home from work. Someone, it seems, took the clown to bed.

Oh

bloody

bloody

hell.

Pip turned over very very slowly. The man in her bed was sleeping soundly. Turned away from her. His breathing was as rhythmic and un-intrusive as the steady phut-phutting of her quartz clock. In her head, however, alarm bells were ringing cacophonously. Not only had she had sex, she’d let the man sleep with her the whole night through. In her bed. She didn’t remember him asking. She didn’t remember offering. But here he was. It struck her – how on earth could she have slept so well? A man in her bed the whole night through. How could that have happened? Yet she’d slept fine. Undisturbed. That in itself was disturbing enough. And he was still there. She had a slight headache. Not too bad.

Badoit.

Bottles of it.

She remembered.

He turned over, yawned. Pip was somewhat surprised that she wasn’t repulsed by the sight of him. He looked quite nice, actually, in a cosy, crumpled, morningish sort of way. A tiny speck of spittle had collected in the corner of his mouth and stripes and furrows from the pillow’s creases were indented on his cheek. She had no idea what on earth she was meant to do next. She lay as still as she could without actually holding her breath. She wanted nothing to rouse him until she had a plan of action. She contemplated the best way forward, staring hard at a spidery crack in the ceiling for focus.

Zac watched her for a good few minutes. Her face was still smudged here and there with blurs of slap. Her hair was bristling out of the pigtails and, having been slept on, they were twisted this way and that like broken ribs. She looked like a discarded doll. She was almost motionless, staring with great intensity at her ceiling. The sheets nearly covered her. She obviously didn’t realize that the areola of her left nipple was just visible. Zac, though, was very aware of it; he would really rather like to kiss it. The thought of a lazy morning hump was very appealing. For Zac, there was something fantastically slovenly and decadent about sex in the morning before showering, coming just hours after sex at night without showering. His cock was certainly wide awake. But a part of him, the softer side – the gay side, as Pip had so guilessly defined it – was actually happy just to observe the girl; to think how pretty she was, how peaceful he felt in her bed, how nice it was to wake up to her make-up-stained face and starched fuzzy hairdo. Yin and yang. His cock appreciated her for the one, his head and heart for the other. He closed his eyes and with a hastily contrived sleepy sigh, rolled over so he was nearer to her. She didn’t seem to react, she was still scrutinizing her ceiling. If he puckered his lips, he could reach her bare shoulder to kiss it. So he did.

‘Morning,’ Zac said.

‘Oh, hi,’ Pip replied as if she’d been so deep in thought that she’d been completely unaware of his presence, and that his presence was no big deal.

Actually, Pip wanted the day to be well under way. She wanted to leap out of bed with a clichéd cry of ‘Goodness, is that the time?’ For the first time ever, Pip McCabe wanted the excuse of a proper job – an office, a commute, a contractual 9.00 to 5.00 – to rush off to. She wanted a long hot shower, to use classic Nivea to cleanse and treat her face, Neutrogena products for her neglected hair and itchy scalp. Now, most of all, she wanted to curl up on her sofa with a cup of camomile tea. All on her own.

But she just lay there. She couldn’t leave the bed because she was acutely aware that she was naked. Laid bare. She didn’t want to be observed. Though Pip actually has commendably few self-indulgent body complexes, that morning she felt intensely shy about revealing her nudity. She was aware of her niggling headache, but was unsure whether this was a hangover or the pressure of her anxieties. She’d rather not think about it. It was difficult to think of much else. And she hadn’t even let her mind venture to Caleb.

Zac stretched his arms above his head, exposing a swatch of dark underarm hair and a good line of muscle along his torso. He turned to her again, kissed her shoulder a second time.

‘God,’ he murmured, ‘is that the time?’ He scrambled out of bed, his bum and balls and semi-stiff cock all on display, and padded naked across her bedroom, turning to face her at the door to the bathroom. ‘Have you a towel?’ She nodded, not quite knowing where to look, slightly startled that he seemed so at ease while she felt somewhat out of her depth – in her own home. ‘Mind if I borrow your toothbrush?’ She shrugged and focused her gaze on the door handle to the bathroom, just left of Zac’s groin. ‘Are you a tea or coffee person? Either’ll do me,’ he said cheerfully with a grin and a wink and disappeared into the bathroom. She glanced at his bottom before he closed the door. Shapely. She wanted to giggle. Of course, she didn’t. There was something about his ease – though it startled her, she wasn’t actually taken aback. She had the feeling that if the venue had been his home, he’d have offered her toothbrush and tea – without her having to ask.

She listened to him pee. Heard him fart. Again, she wanted to giggle. Of course, she didn’t. She heard the taps being turned on, blasting at first, then quickly moderated. She listened to him brushing his teeth. With her toothbrush. Then the shower started. Should she tell him how temperamental the hot tap was? No, he could figure it out. She could hear the shower curtain being adjusted and the change of the watercourse as it hit his body.

‘Ouch! Fuck!’

He can figure it out, Pip thought, leaving her bed. He’d started to whistle. She knew the tune but couldn’t place it. Damn. What was it? She hummed it softly as she went through to the kitchen to boil the kettle. It was a song from the sixties but the version she knew best was a cover in the early eighties. Bugger – what was it?

Zac had appeared, dripping water in her kitchen, his modesty concealed by a towel secured sarong-style around his waist. Pip was too full of thought to fancy him though she did take note, somewhere in her subconscious, that physically he was what she’d acknowledge appreciatively as ‘buff’.

‘Great,’ he said when she handed him a mug of herbal tea. He took a sip and looked as if he was going to cry or throw up. ‘Jesus, what is that?’

‘Morning Refresher,’ she said with a faint frown, ‘orange and lemon zest, ginger, green tea and meadow herbs.’

‘It’s –’ Zac took another sip as if he were at a wine-tasting. He spat into her sink. ‘It’s utterly vile. Meadow herbs? More like motorway grass verge or farmyard dung heap. Haven’t you any Darjeeling?’

‘It’s in the cupboard,’ said Pip, pointing. ‘Help yourself. I’m going to have a shower.’ Off she went, our house-proud, personal-space-protective, secrecy-guarding girl – leaving a half-naked, damp man with the run of her flat.

She locked herself in her bathroom. Pip was as ill at ease in her own home as Zac was comfortable, mooching around and helping himself. She wished she was miles away. Anywhere. Just not here. Somewhere else. Just alone. Zac wished she’d hurry up. It would be nice to have breakfast together before he left for work.

Zac discovered she was out of Darjeeling, but there was some Earl Grey and English Breakfast. ‘Please God let there be more than soya milk in her fridge,’ he murmured, stooping low to see inside. Marks & Spencer organic semi-skimmed. And a packet, already opened, of Dairylea processed cheese triangles. He laughed. He had a little search of her cupboard when he put the tea bags back and was comforted by the presence of KitKats and salt-and-vinegar Hula Hoops nestling furtively behind all the biodegradable organic herbal righteousness at the front.

He took his tea and a KitKat through to her sitting-room. He sat but momentarily, soon enough wandering over to the shelves and looking at the few framed photos. There were the sisters. And some old chap – possibly the cranky uncle or the late father. A Derbyshire stone farmhouse. A small dog with a ragged ear. He couldn’t see any of the mother – there were probably volumes of photo albums in those low, flush cupboards though. He spied a copy of Heat magazine tucked into the beechwood newspaper rack alongside Vanity Fair and Traveller. He flipped through it and was soon engrossed in a double-page spread of particularly scurrilous goings-on in the celebrity world. Much as he’d like to continue nosing, much as he fancied intruding on Pip’s shower and having sex with her again – perhaps up against her bathroom wall or dripping wet on her bedroom floor – he really needed to head off. Meetings and spreadsheets and office politics all awaited him. He gathered his clothes, sniffed each item briefly, and dressed. He hovered by the bathroom door. The shower was finished. He knocked politely and waited. ‘Pip?’ he called. ‘I’m off to work now.’

‘OK,’ she called back politely, sparsely. He was slightly taken aback.

‘Have fun,’ he said to the door, gently.

‘You too,’ she replied, with contrived lightness, through the wall.

‘Bye,’ he called a final time, her front door open.

She didn’t reply, she assumed he wouldn’t be able to hear her from there, with her still barricading herself in her bathroom. And Pip McCabe doesn’t raise her voice.

Pip emerged from the bathroom, somewhat tentatively, once she was sure he had gone for good. She was struck immediately by the state of her bedroom. Her bed had been made. The decorative cushions had been arranged almost exactly to her very precise specifications. Dr Pippity’s coat and tights were draped neatly over the back of the bedroom chair. Last night’s knickers were placed discreetly beneath them. Pip dried herself and dressed. Her initial reaction was praise; that here was a man as anal as herself. Her second thought played upon the anal: ‘He must be gay,’ she decided. ‘How many straight men can there be with innate design savvy for cushion display?’ She thought of Caleb. Though he might obsessively fold his crisp packets into neat triangles, his pillows were always annoyingly unplumped. Lumpy. He merely straightened the edges of his duvet. ‘Well, that was all about surface appearance,’ she concluded stroppily and started humming the tune Zac had been whistling but which she still couldn’t place.

In lieu of a conventional job and bustling office to rush off to, she turned to that camomile tea and meditative snuggle on her sofa that she’d been craving since waking. Oddly, Zac’s derision of ‘farmyard dung heap’ did make her laugh and think fleetingly of grubby grass verges on motorways. So she had coffee instead. Instant. With sugar. And a KitKat to dunk. She noted that the photo frames had been moved, however fractionally. She saw the copy of Heat magazine. Though she had a brimming conscience to unravel and analyse, she found herself flipping through the magazine instead, gladly switching off her mind and putting her soul on hold. How on earth would she know where to start with her scampering thoughts? Much better to put a pause on the lot for half an hour and look instead at pictures of young actresses-models-whatevers falling out of a succession of London bars.

She read the magazine from cover to cover. She wished she didn’t have a day off. She was desperate to be Merry Martha, even Dr Pippity, so that she had a reason not just to sit there and be Pip McCabe with all this thinking time on her hands and all this weighty contemplation to undertake.

Zac’s day was so busy it really should have precluded even a couple of seconds’ focusing on anything other than planning meetings, dealing with office politics and checking spreadsheets. His mind, however, kept darting back to Pip, swivelling in his chair, commenting on the Scottish Colourist lithograph, marvelling at his coffee percolator. He could still sense her presence. If he closed his eyes, he could conjure her scent. If he listened carefully, beyond the phones and the clatter of the office, he could hear her voice. He opened his eyes and could see her so vividly, staring at her bedroom ceiling with her grubby face and ridiculous hairstyle. He felt good and yet just a little uneasy, too. There had been no open arms that morning, just a closed bathroom door. There had been no gentle joking or affectionate ‘see-you-later’s. Just a brief instruction to have a good day. In fact, she’d merely been politely replying to him. She’d instigated nothing. Zac refused to countenance that maybe he’d been no more than a one-night stand to her.

He left work on the dot of 6.00. The tube was there for him and he was home within forty minutes. He took a chilled Budvar from the fridge, picked up his cordless Bang & Olufsen phone, and settled into his banana chair. No. Not right. He tried the Eames. Oddly, it really wasn’t as comfortable as it usually was. He went through to the bedroom and sipped his lager whilst looking out over downstairs’s garden. He put the beer bottle on the window-sill and dialled Pip. He was nervous. It both amused and baffled him.

The phone’s ringing, Pip. Aren’t you going to answer it?

‘Hey,’ says Zac.

‘Hullo,’ says Pip because it’s too late to turn her voice into a hastily disguised answering machine message.

‘Good day?’ he asks. ‘Did you have some me-time?’

‘I did,’ Pip says. She’s hardly used her voice all day. It sounds odd and feels strange.

‘And your hangover?’ he enquires.

‘Nothing one of your Nurofen couldn’t fix,’ she says.

They both sigh into an awkward silence.

‘Good day?’ Pip asks.

‘Great but manic,’ Zac says, racking his mind for what it was he was phoning to say and how he was going to phrase it.

‘Cool,’ says Pip, ‘well,’ she says, ‘yep – great.’ She notes how quickly the conversation has become so stilted.

‘Anyway,’ Zac says, ‘I’d better go. Just thought I’d give you a quick call, you know?’

‘Ta,’ says Pip, ‘good.’

‘Bye then,’ says Zac, at once regretting the entire call.

‘Ta-ta,’ says Pip.

‘Bye then. How do you feel today?’ Zac suddenly launches, ‘About – stuff?’ Could he really have been just a drunken one-night stand to her? What about the cream tea? And daft conversations about swans?

Pip is flummoxed. She has no idea how to answer because she’s spent the entire day trying to avoid wondering how on earth she feels about ‘stuff’.

‘Pip?’ Zac interjects into her silence. ‘It’s just – well – I was wondering if you wanted to do something tomorrow night – it being a Thursday.’

‘I’ll get back to you,’ she says, after a lengthy pause. ‘I think I’m seeing my sisters, you see,’ she adds slowly after some time.

‘Sure,’ says Zac with an easygoing vocal shrug that belies the discomfort he feels. However, perhaps it’s his attuned feminine side that tells him to give her the kind of space a bloke would need. Not to push, not to pry. ‘No probs.’

‘How was your day? In your fancy chair presiding over Pod-land?’ Pip hurries because, although she doesn’t think she wants to see Zac tomorrow night, she also doesn’t want to be on her own just yet.

‘Fine,’ Zac replies, ‘as I say, rather manic.’

It’s all gone cringingly stilted. Both Zac and Pip are aware that the awkwardness is really quite inappropriate for two people who have traded bodily fluids and shared the sanctity of a deep sleep together, but it is probably symptomatic of it all anyway.

‘Um,’ Pip murmurs, ‘well, I ought to let you go now. Thanks, though, for calling. And thanks for the offer – you know, about tomorrow.’

‘Sure,’ says Zac with his trademark equanimity, ‘pleasure. Thanks for last night.’

‘Yes,’ says Pip.

‘If not tomorrow,’ Zac presses courageously, though he tells himself to shut up, ‘perhaps soon enough?’

Pip makes a noise in her throat that, for five minutes after the call, Zac thinks was mostly affirmative. Soon enough, though, he’s convinced he was merely a shag for a pissed girl on the rebound.

Pip had managed to pass the entire day without interruption from her inner thoughts. Whether this is a commendable achievement, is open to debate. However, once she had soaked the day away in the bath with new fizzing bath tablets from Space NK, hung out the washing and triple-checked that all was spic and span in her flat, it really was time to tidy below the surface.

She wanted to go to bed and fall straight asleep. However, when she slipped between her sheets, she could vividly sense the man who’d been in her bed, in her body. His sleep-crumpled face, funny specks of spittle, his peaceful soft breathing. The smell of him. She remembered, with a pronounced twitch of desire, how he’d stretched across her to see her clock. His armpit. How she’d felt his skin, sensed his strength and drawn in his scent, and been turned on by his masculinity. She looked over to her bathroom door and could conjure him facing her, buck naked and full frontal, asking about towels and toothbrushes.

What is it about Zac? Is it that he’s so at ease with everything: himself, me, my world? I mean, I had him to stay the night with no second thought, without even being asked, with no shadow of doubt. He’s seen me looking my worst. I can’t even remember much about the sex per se, but I am well aware of the desire that drove it.

You’ve never met anyone quite like him.

Perhaps not.

Many people never will.

Perhaps.

Think of your friends, your sisters, who fall for men with none of his qualities.

Exactly.

But?

For Christ’s sake, think about it! Zac’s plus points are that he’s mild-mannered, handsome and makes me laugh. But remember, my first impression was one of mistrust. Not to mention the fact that he’s an accountant. He’s mid-thirties and single. To top it all, he has a kid. Can you imagine the weight of his bloody baggage?

I’d like to tell her that the baggage she thinks Zac shoulders is far more weighty to her than it is to him. But there’s no way she’ll hear that just yet.

‘I like him,’ she murmurs out loud, ‘I really do. But deep down I think I oughtn’t to go further.’

And Caleb? Just a day ago you were planning dinner parties and to reveal your coupledom to family and friends. You almost loved him, or at least you felt very strongly for him on account of him being so ‘normal’.

‘Is that why I slept with Zac?’ she asks out loud. ‘To get back at Caleb? To get over him? Was it simply just the drink influencing me? Or that I was feeling vulnerable? Perhaps vindictive – wanting to even the score?’

That’s what we’d like to know.

‘Perhaps a little of all those things,’ she decides, but now in a whisper. ‘Whatever the reason and however comforting and timely, Zac Holmes is not relationship material. And neither am I.’

Pip isn’t going to think about Caleb or consider his ‘normality’, or lack of it, just now. She’s humming, instead. Suddenly, she has remembered the tune Zac was whistling in her shower that morning.

‘Smokey Robinson,’ she says, relieved, ‘“Tears of a Clown”.’

She can only remember one line and she falls asleep, singing it over and again, feeling blank and refusing to think about Caleb or Zac.

But in my lonely room I cry

the tears of a clown

when there’s no one around

It was past midnight. Without considering the time, Zac phones his sister-in-law Ruth.

‘Yes?’ she answered the phone, hushed tones not concealing alarm.

‘Shit,’ Zac whispered back, ‘it’s only Zac. Is it too late?’

‘Zac,’ Ruth said, dropping the whisper for a quiet voice, ‘these late-night calls are becoming a habit!’

‘I shagged Clowngirl,’ he said, hating himself for dumbing it down, wishing he’d been brave enough, truthful enough, to say, ‘Pip and I had sex last night but I don’t think I was more than a one-night stand to her.’

Ruth, however, could hear very clearly between the lines. Fundamentally, if it had just been a shag, why was Zac phoning at this hour? After all, if it had been just a shag, why confide in her rather than brag to his brother? No, Ruth realized, it had been more than a shag; Zac and Pip had slept together.

‘Hold on,’ she said, ‘your brother is sleeping. I’ll take the call in the other room.’

If only Pip could have eavesdropped on what Zac said, how he phrased it and the tone of voice he used.

‘I found her crying her eyes out,’ Zac said. ‘Appears that her dashing doc was actually a bit of a wanker with a steady girlfriend. Anyway, I cheered her up – as did a bottle of Rioja. And I took her home and one thing led to another.’

‘You shagged.’

‘It was passionate,’ Zac qualified almost defensively, to Ruth’s silent approval, ‘but it felt like it had been a long time coming. Like there’s been some unspoken build-up. An inevitability.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Ruth, wondering why Zac sounded less than triumphant.

‘I don’t know where to go from here,’ he confessed. ‘I really like her – as more than a potential fling. But you know what – I can’t believe I’m going to say this – I’m a bit anxious.’

‘Why?’ Ruth asked, knowing she could easily fill in Zac’s gaps but knowing, too, that it was better for him to voice them out loud.

‘Two things, really,’ he said after a pause. ‘One: what am I about to get myself into? Is it worth it? Am I really ready for romance now, over and above simply sex which has been so simple over the last few years?’

‘Number two?’ Ruth pressed.

‘Two,’ Zac obliged, ‘nervousness. Are my feelings reciprocated? Or is she just on the rebound? I think I may be nothing but a one-nighter to her.’

‘There’s only one way to ascertain both,’ Ruth defined. ‘Broach number two first and then, if the answer is favourable, just relax into number one and see where it takes you.’ Ruth could sense Zac nodding. She could almost hear his brain charging over his concerns. ‘You could be pleasantly surprised,’ she said sweetly, ‘you might have found a very good thing indeed.’ Still he was quiet. ‘Zac?’

‘She’s on the rebound,’ he suddenly announced, with a complete change of tone, ‘and anyway, she was drunk, too.’

‘Zac Holmes,’ Ruth said, ‘I think you’re only going with that strand so that you don’t have to actually ask the girl how she feels. You’re plonking the onus on her so you don’t have to take risks.’ Zac didn’t reply.

‘God, for a beefy bloke you’re a bloody wimp,’ said Ruth, knowing it sounded harsh but confident it was the right thing to say. ‘Good-night, Zac. Good luck.’

Zac hung up and hummed softly the tune that had been on his brain all day. It was almost getting on his nerves.

Now there’s some sad things known to man

but ain’t too much sadder than

the tears of a clown

There was something about Pip, behind her slap and motley, her carefree zest and energy. Zac didn’t want to give too much credit to clichés of hiding behind a mask. But the truth was that he’d seen her in despair; vulnerable and hurt. The truth was, he felt for her. He really felt for her. But the truth was also that though the notion was certainly intriguing, the encumbrance of it was not. It was all starting to get on his nerves as much as Smokey’s tune. It would be better to get both out of his mind.

Think of a different song.

How about Marvin Gaye, ‘Sexual Healing’? How about focusing on the fact that Juliana would be back from South Africa in a week or so?

TWENTY-ONE

Conveniently, if deludedly, Pip reckoned she could levy against Fen the way she decided to feel about and deal with Zac. She wouldn’t have been able to have seen Zac that Thursday night anyway, even if she’d wanted to. A phone call from a distressed Django revealed that the middle McCabe girl, whom everyone thought so sensible and soft and centred, had actually been seeing two men at the same time. Lovely Matthew Holden, the urbane and generous young magazine editor with his own flat in Islington, who already had Pip and Cat’s seals of approval. And now, it seemed, some other chap as well, a bloke called Someone or Other Caulfield, twenty years Fen’s senior. An impoverished landscape gardener in Derbyshire, apparently. That’s how Django knew. When Fen was allegedly assessing sculpture in a private collection in Derbyshire. They’d been seen. In broad daylight. In a local pub, good God.

Pip and Cat were horrified, not just at the perceived wantonness of it all, but more at Fen’s secrecy. They’d had no idea and that, to them, was far more shocking, much more insulting and hurtful, than the notion that their middle sister was a morally inept slapper. Fen, upset but not defensive, went to great lengths to attempt to explain to Cat and Pip that she wasn’t playing one man off against the other. She tried to reveal how each man satisfied the two strongest strands in her life – town and country – and the myriad associations of each. She implored her sisters to believe how deeply she felt for both men, that she herself felt both fine and capable about keeping them apart. That, quite simply, at this juncture, she couldn’t choose between them, nor even see that she had to or ought to. No one was going to be hurt, she proclaimed, she would ensure that personally. She had never been in love but now she was, and twice over. She felt privileged. She wanted her sisters’ support, even if she had to bide her time for their approval.

However, Fen’s situation is a whole different story. Suffice it to say, that night, alone in her flat and believing herself to be at her most level-headed, Pip took Fen’s situation and manipulated it to her own ends. Thus Pip now stacked upon the baggage she presumed Zac to be burdened by, a clump of her own negative theories about love itself. Her hastily contrived conclusion was that love was not worth the effort. In her eyes, neither her sisters, nor her friends, were better off for the presence of a man (or men) in their lives. She reasoned that she’d been happy enough when single – indeed, considerably happier than at present – and that all her current worries and insecurities and her tears had come only when men had been involved or, rather, when she’d been involved with men.

It was thus with a liberating sense of relief that Pip concluded Zac to be a great bloke she’d had sex with the once, and Caleb simply a bloke she’d had great sex with for a couple of months. Swiftly and decisively, she relegated both men to her past and put both down to experience, because for her present and her future, she decided that neither was a good idea. Neither provided the answer because, actually, she had no questions. She’d tried them both out. One naughty. One nice. Neither necessary. After all, she had already decided that she needed to keep herself stable and available for her two sisters: Cat was heading off to the Tour de France in little over a week and Fen was no doubt going to spin out of control pretty soon, too. Thank goodness June was fast heading for July and soon she’d be able to think in terms of ‘That was a month ago’. Thank goodness for the approaching weekend in Derbyshire. The sisters were to travel up together tomorrow evening, once Fen had finished work, Cat had filed copy, and Merry Martha had done a seven-year-old’s birthday party in Maida Vale.

Of course I’m going to give Pip something other than her sisters to think about up in Derbyshire! The conclusions she’s sketchily drawn in her bid to tidy her life are far too hasty, poorly composed and irritatingly nebulous. So, guess who’s going to seven-year-old Benji’s birthday party in Maida Vale? Billy is. With his cousin, Tom Holmes. And though Tom’s Auntie Ruthie is taking them and is due to collect them, too, once she’s seen who the entertainer is, she’ll phone Tom’s father and ask him to pick the children up instead.

‘Would you mind, Zac?’ Ruth says softly with a very passable impression of someone with a chronic headache. ‘My head is killing me.’

‘Let me call June,’ Zac says, ‘I have a stack of bollocks to wade through before I can leave.’

‘June’s away with Rob,’ Ruth reminds him in a flimsy voice, ‘that’s why Tom’s staying with us tonight.’

‘Bugger,’ says Zac, ‘I forgot.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Ruth says with a wince worthy of a medal for martyrdom, ‘I’ll take a couple of painkillers and try to nap in the car for a few hours. I’ll be fine. Honestly. Don’t worry. Please.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Zac says gently with an edge of guilt, ‘it’s no problem – I’ll just bring the work home and do it over the weekend. You go home directly. It’s no big deal. Not at all.’

‘No, honestly,’ Ruth says meekly, knowing it’s important for Zac to actively want to collect the boys, not just do it as a favour to her, ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘Stop it,’ he chides. ‘I won’t hear another word, there’s no issue. Nothing comes before my son. Go home, Ruth, rest.’

‘Oh Zac,’ she all but whispers, ‘thanks so much.’

‘Are you OK to drive?’ he asks. ‘Why not leave your keys and take a cab?’

‘I think so,’ she replies with a credible quiver to her voice. ‘I should be OK. If I head off now. If I take it slowly.’

Ruth revs her engine with some triumph. She embarks on the mother of all detours: from Maida Vale to Holloway via Westbourne Grove. The circuitous route is totally unnecessary but a sublime pleasure. Two hours’ quality shopping time is a luxury Ruth seldom has nowadays. She can’t remember when she last browsed around Agnès B and Paul Smith and APC without Billy tugging her sleeve, whining to go. It must be even longer since she treated herself to tea and cake at Tom’s Deli rather than burger and coke in McDonald’s. Momentarily, she feels just slightly wicked about her white lie. Will she be tempting fate by faking it? Might a monster migraine tomorrow be her comeuppance? No. Rubbish. She is doing a very good deed indeed, matchmaking the clown and the accountant. She is well deserving of the wodge of cake, plus the Hepburnesque A-line dress. Oh, and the Diptique candles and the armful of cornflowers and delphiniums. After all, she had resisted the divine bag at Paul Smith.

Initially, Zac was irritated to turn up in Maida Vale so early when he’d left work harassed and in such a rush. Soon enough, though, he couldn’t believe his eyes, his luck or how fantastic it was that Ruth should have a migraine on a day when the traffic was so light. For a split second, he felt guilty at the degree of his pleasure in Ruth’s malady. But his sister-in-law’s headache was an absolute blessing. In fact, he was downright delighted that she felt too poorly to collect the kids, that he’d turned up so damn early. Because – well, what do you know! – three guesses who’s entertaining the children at Benji’s seventh birthday party! Just then, despite being one of life’s most down-to-earth non-believers, Zac worshipped the gods of fate and fortune for having smitten Ruth with the headache. He even took a moment to send vibes of thanksgiving heavenwards.

Because there was his clown. Over there. Doing a precarious handstand as proficiently as Les Dawson used to play the piano in an expertly bad way. Her shapely legs akimbo, one clad in red and green stripes, the other in blue and yellow spots. Her body swaying this way and that, threatening to topple at any moment. She was yodelling ‘Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ at breakneck speed. Oh, the skill of it!

There was Pip, mid-handstand, mid-song when, from her upside-down vantage point, she spied at the back of the room a pair of legs in chinos, feet in suede slip-ons, that could only belong to one person.

She forgot the words.

She forgot how to maintain a handstand.

She forgot what she was meant to feel about Zac.

She was acutely aware that she was upside down with her legs splayed, her body tilted at a gravity-defying angle.

Silence.

‘Eyes-and-ears-and-mouth-and-nose,’ she suddenly sang shrilly, flic-flaccing herself upright and taking a deep bow. ‘Heads, shoulders, beans-on-toast, beans-on-toast.’

‘Knees-and-toes!’ the children shrieked back the correction. ‘Knees-and-toes!’

Merry Martha, looking flushed and very jolly, put her hands on her hips and frowned: ‘That’s what I said, diddle-eye?’ She sang again: ‘Heads, shoulders, beans-on-toast, beans-on-toast!’ Again, the children protested ‘knees-and-toes’ and again Merry Martha got the song wrong.

Zac was laughing. Not because she was Perrier Award-winningly funny, but because her antics and energy infused the room with infectious daft jollity. The skill of her magic was to weave such apparently simple and unconditional fun in and around the children. And by the looks on their faces, she was achieving this in abundance.

‘Where is Bendy?’ Merry Martha asked, though she now spied Tom for the first time and gave him a grin. ‘Where is Bendy?’

‘Who?’ the children chorused.

‘Bendy!’ the clown declared, as if they were stupid. ‘The Burp-day Boy – Bendy!’

‘Benji!’ Benji proclaimed, his hand held aloft. ‘It’s Benji and I’m him. It’s my birthday.’

‘Come here, Bendy Burp-day Boy,’ the clown ordered, to much mirth. ‘I am going to create for you – cos it be your Burp-day – a balloon in the shape of a, um, a, um – balloon!’

Benji looked vaguely disappointed when the clown blew a long thin balloon and presented it to him. ‘Thank you,’ he said anyway.

‘Can I have it back, if you please?’ Merry Martha asked, grabbing the balloon before the child had a chance to hand it over, let alone protest. ‘Thanking you kindly, Burp-day Boy.’ With a twist and a stretch and a knot and a mutter and a whistle and a daubing of marker pen, the clown returned the balloon as a sausage dog. There were appreciative gasps all around. She made more animal forms and distributed them amongst the throng. She established eye contact with Zac. ‘Dearie me, dearie me,’ she squawked, ‘there is a great big kid at the back with no balloon.’ Twenty pairs of eyes fixed on Zac. Followed by nineteen sniggers (Tom was the exception).

‘He’s not a kid,’ Tom protested with his hand up, ‘he’s my dad.’

‘Oh well, then,’ Merry Martha declared all sulkily, ‘if he’s only an old mad dad, no balloon for him!’

‘But I think he could have one,’ Tom said, suddenly concerned that he’d deprived his dad of Merry Martha’s highly collectible latex sculpture (Tom had kept Dr Pippity’s balloons until they’d wrinkled and deflated and stuck dustily to themselves). ‘Even if he is just an old mad dad. I think he might like one, anyway.’

‘Righty-ho,’ the clown trilled, wrestling with three long balloons and then wielding her marker with gay abandon. ‘Come on up, old mad dad.’ Zac approached, holding her eye contact and twitching his mouth, raising his eyebrows in an ‘I’m warning you, bitch!’ kind of way. ‘You’re right,’ the clown marvelled to Tom, ‘he’s too big to be one of you. He is an old mad dad.’ She turned to Zac, eyes a-sparkle. ‘Would you like this balloon? It is a balloon in the shape of a bunny rabbit. It is a delectable collectible.’

Zac grinned at her and said ‘Yes, please’ in an animated way.

‘Firstly, you must stand on one leg,’ the clown decreed. He did so. ‘Now you must place your hand in front of your mouth,’ she ordered. And he did so. ‘Now you must place your other hand behind your back, please, like this.’ She demonstrated. He did so. ‘Now,’ she said, winking at the children, ‘you must hop around the room like a Red Indian who has trodden on a wasp, making loud Red Indian-style noises to ward off evil spirits and praise the balloon gods.’

Zac looked at her as if she were mad and well on the way to a jolly good hiding. But, with an ‘I’ll get my own back later’ kind of smirk, he did as he was told. The children fell about laughing. Even Merry Martha momentarily laughed like Pip McCabe. ‘Well done, old mad dad,’ she said, ‘here is your prize.’ Zac collected his trophy and returned to the back of the room, with most of the children wishing their dads were even half as mad. While Merry Martha involved the children in a mass, tuneless rendition of ‘Happy Burp-day Dear Bendy’, Zac admired his balloon rabbit. On its belly she’d written ‘Bunny Girl xx’. It gave him as much of a sudden thrill as if she’d taken his cock and deep-throated him there and then. His conscience tried to remind him to focus on Marvin Gaye and Juliana. But he told himself to shut the fuck up. She didn’t think of him as a one-night stand. How could he have worried that she was merely on the rebound? She liked him. She wanted him. That was all that mattered.

As soon as Merry Martha took off her motley and Pip put on her clothes, her confidence evaporated. Every swipe of cold-cream-clotted cotton wool took off a layer of her effervescent self-confidence along with a layer of slap. She brushed her hair with the repetitive vigour of a sufferer from obsessive compulsive disorder, not because she wanted to comb out the kinks from the pigtails, but because she needed more thinking time. Actually, she just needed to think. The trouble was, she couldn’t focus. The trouble was, she really would have to emerge from Benji Richardson’s bathroom sooner rather than later. Why had she written on the balloon? Why was she still standing in the bathroom in W9 when she should be hurrying home, wolfing down a bowl of soup and heading out of London to the Peak District with her sisters? Fundamentally, why was she excited to see Zac, wilfully flirting with him, when until she’d seen him upside down half an hour ago she’d successfully convinced herself that he was unsuitable and that she had no interest in him? Why did she think that closing Benji’s bathroom door behind her as quietly as possible, that tiptoeing along the corridor, would make any difference to the inevitable posse awaiting her downstairs?

Tom threw his arms around her waist. Benji’s mother shook her hand with gratitude. The birthday boy himself looked sorely disappointed that in real life, she was not particularly exotic nor appeared to have anything in her pockets. Zac simply winked at her and smiled in his inimitable, attractively lopsided way.

‘Cash OK?’ Benji’s mum asked, handing her an envelope addressed to Ms Martha. ‘There’s a little extra for you. Marvellous! Thanks so much.’

‘Thank you,’ Pip said. ‘I must dash.’

A couple of meters to the front door. A quick walk to the tube. You can do it! You can do it because you must. Go on! Go.

‘Can we give you a lift?’ Zac offered, holding the front door open for her. ‘We’re headed north as it is.’

Pip told herself, implored herself, to decline.

You’re meant to be heading north yourself, you silly cow. True north. North as in Derbyshire. In the next hour or so. Cat! Fen! Django! Do your duty! Go north.

‘Thanks,’ Pip was horrified to hear herself accept, ‘that would be great.’

Zac held the car door open for her and in she climbed. Billy and Tom fired questions at her, non-stop, from the back seat. It meant nothing to them that Kentish Town was on the way to Holloway. Thus, they didn’t notice that Zac made no effort to drop her off there, nor that Pip made no request to be dropped off there, or even thereabouts, either.

Ruth was well aware that Zac’s passenger seat was occupied despite his commendable efforts to distract her on the doorstep by blocking her view and asking about the state of her headache. The boys had scampered into the house, manic in the final throes of hyperactivity due in part to the additives in the luridly iced birthday cake.

‘Do come in for a drink,’ Ruth said, with a scheming glint to her eye which Zac mistook as a symptom of her headache.

‘No no,’ he declined, ‘I ought to head home.’

‘Of course – you have work to do,’ Ruth reasoned, with a nod of her head towards his car which Zac misread as a headachy twitch.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, thinking that his sister-in-law was really bearing her headache bravely to be so chatty and attentive.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Ruth said, smiling commendably for one suffering so. ‘We’ll expect you around lunch-time.’

‘Sure,’ said Zac. ‘Bye, Tom. See you.’ He waited for Ruth to close the front door before he headed back to his car. Ruth, however, darted to the study and peeked through the venetian blinds.

Zac and Pip sat there for a while, looking directly ahead. ‘Your place or mine?’ Pip asked.

‘My turn to play host,’ Zac replied. He started the car and they headed off.

While he drove, Pip made a call from her mobile phone. ‘Fen? Hiya, it’s me. Listen, I think I’ll come home tomorrow. That kids’ party has given me a sodding headache. I’m going to go directly to bed.’

They snogged like teenagers, did Zac and Pip. Though how many teenagers own an Audi Quattro and have a residents’ permit bay outside a beautifully maintained conversion in Hampstead is open to question. They snogged like teenagers who had snuck into a parent’s car. Zac had nosed into his parking space and the ensuing silence in the car was louder and more loaded than when the engine had been running and the radio on. Zac cleared his throat in a bid not to voice ‘Home sweet home!’ which was on the tip of his tongue. Pip turned to him as if she was about to say something, too. Nothing. So they stared intensely at one another momentarily before instinctively grappling each other close and thrusting tongues into each other’s mouths.

They necked with the voracious hunger of adolescents; none of the fancy lip work, the refined nibbling and sensuous tongue-flickering they’d perfected over the years. They simply gorged on each other, slurping and sucking and gobbling each other’s gobs. Like a lust-soaked youngster, Zac pawed at Pip’s breasts through her shirt. He wasn’t so much fondling as grabbing and kneading. On her part, Pip had one hand locked around the belt-loops of Zac’s trousers while the other scuttled up and down his torso. If Pip’s jeans hadn’t been so tight and if the pitch of the car’s seat hadn’t been just so, Pip and Zac would have delved down to Base 3. As a somewhat poor second, Pip travelled her hand over the bulge surging sideways and twitching behind Zac’s trousers. It was nearing 7.00 and people heading for the Well’s Tavern enjoyed the spectacle in the Audi.

I’m that age, some thought enviously, and I haven’t snogged like that since I was a teenager!

God, thought others, when was the last time I made out like that – let alone in a car!

‘Not much more we can do in here,’ Zac panted.

‘Let’s go inside,’ Pip panted back.

‘Not much I can do about that for a few minutes,’ Zac rued, looking reflectively at the lopsided marquee his straining cock had made of his trousers.

‘Well, if I don’t get out soon,’ Pip parried, ‘I won’t be able to move – I’m starting to stick to my knickers as it is.’

They giggled, felt as flushed as they looked.

‘Come on,’ Zac said once his trousers were hanging more decorously, ‘let’s go inside and get squelching.’

Pip didn’t know whether to giggle or gasp on entering Zac’s apartment. She didn’t know whether she was in the midst of some post-modernist joke or merely standing in a flat that had been disastrously decorated by a previous and colour-blind tenant.

‘Home sweet home,’ said Zac; Pip stifled a chuckle.

‘It’s very, um –’ she faltered, not wanting to make a fool of herself nor offend him, ‘zany.’

Zac regarded her. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘God, no!’ Pip protested. ‘But it’s certainly a blaze, a bombardment of colour in here,’ she defined.

‘Compared to your place, sure,’ Zac said tartly. ‘Remember – I’m an accountant. I have to have some colour in my life or else the greyness of it all would consume me.’

Pip looked around quietly and considered the surroundings.

It’s certainly different.

It’s quite good.

It could grow on me.

Mind you, I don’t think I could live with it myself.

‘Drink?’ Zac suggested.

‘Whatever you’re having,’ said Pip.

He handed her a Budvar. ‘Doritos?’ he offered.

‘If you’re having,’ Pip said. Zac opened a bumper-sized packet and they stood in the middle of his sitting-room, sipping lager, munching corn chips and contemplating an intensity of colour that would have had Matisse rapturous.

‘It’s very neat and tidy,’ Pip said, looking further afield.

‘God!’ Zac exclaimed, clutching his brow. ‘Not another sign of my latent gayness? I have a cleaner twice a week – there!’

Pip laughed and slapped his arm, leaving salty finger marks. ‘I rather think I have it on good authority,’ she said with a lick of her lips and some coy eye contact, ‘that you’re rampantly heterosexual.’

‘Actually, Pip,’ Zac said gravely, quite startling her momentarily, ‘I’m rampant, full stop, just now.’ He came close and took her ear lobe into his mouth. ‘Sex first,’ he murmured, ‘we can do the guided tour later.’ With that, he took the Dorito which was approaching her mouth, took her beer bottle, and placed both on the window-sill. He then led the way through to his bedroom. Pip was so focused on satisfying her lust, she didn’t even notice the bright orange rug.

They stripped each other of clothing and inhibitions; the curtains remained wide open, the sash window up. And when they took to Zac’s bed, after a lengthy prelude of vertical foreplay, they fell on top of the covers, their feet at the pillow end. Pip was aware of her nakedness and his. The light, the lightness; the breeze and breeziness. It excited her. It was very different from Caleb’s flat. That had been more of a den – enclosed and darkened and secret. In contrast to Hoxton, Pip was aware of fresh air and height in Hampstead. It was filtering in through the open window, licking at her body. It was light outside and in. She felt comfortable, all topsy-turvy on Zac’s bed, just three days after first having sex with him.

The foreplay had been good but the snogging in the car had been better and, similar to the sex at Pip’s flat, the penetrative element was more the end of the means than the point of it all.

‘A good fit,’ Zac had murmured on pushing up deep into her. He didn’t so much desire to make love to her just then, more he had a basic need to release the pent-up orgasm that had been looming since their frolicking in the car.

‘Feels good,’ Pip whispered back, thinking that if Zac kept that angle and pace, she could come quite easily, quite soon.

‘Are you close?’ he whispered, his skin prickling with sweat, his breathing pacy.

‘Yes,’ she gasped, placing open lips against his shoulders and tasting salt.

Fuck! Not that close, Zac. Slow down! Wait up a little longer! Damn.

Zac bucked against her, groaning; pinned himself as high up as he could penetrate and closed his eyes to appreciate every spasm. Finally, he gave a long, appreciative soft whistle. ‘Fuck!’ he marvelled, looking at her with triumph and gratitude.

Though it turned her on greatly to feel his orgasm so precisely, because this was only the second time they’d had sex, Pip didn’t feel comfortable enough to continue to hump and grind against Zac’s spent cock to reach her own climax. However, as her body calmed down, she found her mind drifting back over the whole afternoon. Back to the party, the charged atmosphere after dropping off Tom and Billy, the frantic nooky in the car, having sex on top of the covers in a room with the windows and curtains open. Here she was, lying diagonally on a bed, as sweaty as the man next to her, a man who made her laugh and made her gasp and made her a day late for a visit home to Derbyshire.

What price an orgasm, she pondered? In some ways, sex with Zac had begun on spying his legs upside down through her handstand. It had continued in Benji’s hallway, they were still at it in traffic on Junction Road, even with Billy and Tom in the back of the car; there was a momentary pause to drop the boys off in Holloway, resuming it when driving back to Hampstead and, of course, at it like rabbits when stationary outside Zac’s flat. Perhaps they were still having the same sex from two days ago, when her hair was in plaits and her make-up was smudged. Maybe that’s what it’s about, Pip. Perhaps you shouldn’t see sex as unique, distinct encounters, with a beginning, a middle and an orgasm. Maybe the best sex is a continuous session, sometimes lasting a lifetime, replete with interruptions and variations, friendliness and franticness, coming, going, hot passages and cold, colourful moments and noisy interjections amidst a pervasive sense of give-and-take pleasure. Maybe that’s what making love’s about. Is that how you make love? How love is made?

Pip looked over to Zac. He looked sleepy.

‘It was fun,’ she confirmed, ‘a good fit. God, I’m hungry.’

After a sushi dinner and a stroll around Hampstead, they returned to Zac’s and chatted about personal trivia into the early hours. Pip curled up in his Eames chair, he sat relaxed on the ample matching footstool. They talked about school and college and losing their virginity and what drugs they’d tried and how if it wasn’t for the Stone Roses there could have been no Oasis. Zac had been to Reading Festival a couple of times and Pip had juggled at Glastonbury. However, neither fancied doing the tent-and-mud-and-spliff thing again. Pip confided that she didn’t even much enjoy gigs any more, too much heaving, too noisy to hear, the floor too sticky with spilt beer.

‘I’m a bit of a limbo lad, I guess,’ Zac defined. ‘I’ve grown out of it, too – but I’m simply not a classical-concert type of bloke. If truth be told,’ he whispered as if deep in confession, ‘I actively dislike opera. It’s not that I don’t “get” it. I just don’t like it at all.’

‘As for me,’ Pip declared in low tones, ‘I don’t care for the theatre – I prefer the movies.’ Her voice became stronger on seeing Zac nod. ‘Theatre is bloody expensive, uncomfortable, too, and I simply don’t like the artifice of it all. Curtain calls infuriate me – I feel ripped off, like I’ve been had. I thought I was meant to believe in the character, not applaud some actress smugly taking a bow for faking it. No, for me, film is far more compelling.’

‘You can’t beat a good John Grisham,’ Zac proclaimed.

‘Nor a classic Jilly Cooper,’ Pip laughed.

‘Do you remember a band called China Crisis?’ Zac suddenly asked, sure that she would.

‘Oh God!’ Pip exclaimed. ‘Bloody marvellous song they had, “African and White” – tell me you have a copy!’

He did. Zac had an awesome collection of vinyl and a sleek, state-of-the-art Linn hi-fi system appropriately and amusingly called the Klimax 500. After China Crisis, they played A Flock of Seagulls, and then they pranced around the sitting-room to ‘The Safety Dance’ and sang along to the Go-Gos and Pip did a passable impression of Clare Grogan on whom, Zac revealed, he still had something of a crush. Then, as they chilled out to Pink Floyd, they reminisced their way through all the Watch with Mother programmes they could remember, often impersonating the characters, too. Pip could do the mice from Bagpuss perfectly. Zac could remember practically every plot line from Mr Benn. All at three in the morning. Maybe it was all part of the same thing. Pip confessed to having had a penchant for, and a sizeable collection of, puff-ball skirts; Zac admitted to a mullet hairstyle with extravagant highlights and even had a photo to prove it. If sex earlier had been fun, all of this was too, maybe even more so.

Eventually, they shuffled back into the bedroom and folded into one another in Zac’s bed, sleeping soundly with inner smiles coating their dreams. As she drifted off, Pip knew she wouldn’t have forsaken this for Derbyshire, in fact she wouldn’t have missed this for anything.

When she awoke the next morning, however, Pip McCabe had a complete change of heart and mind. As soon as her slumber had lifted and she was aware of the here and now – the orange rug, Budvar on the window-sill, the fact that it was Saturday morning – she modified her attitude drastically. She disregarded all the qualities of the situation, overlooked the many merits of the man and disparaged the glow of contentment she’d experienced so positively the previous night.

She swiftly decided to be appalled at waking up in Hampstead, in Zac’s bed, bombarded by garish walls, furniture shaped like giant fruit and rugs the colour of kids’ poster paint. The flock of seagulls had flown off and she was desperate to go-go.

Jesus, she concluded to herself, as if closing the deal on the whole disastrous idea of it all, even sex with my vibrator is better – at least I climax.

She was desperate for Derbyshire. She’d shower there. She’d buy breakfast at St Pancras. It would do – she wasn’t that hungry. Her priority wasn’t food or personal hygiene or even, truthfully, to get to Derbyshire. The most pressing need in Pip’s life that Saturday morning was to get out of Zac’s flat as fast as she could and flee the memories altogether.

Unfortunately, creeping away was not going to be possible. Zac wasn’t in bed; he could be heard humming Soul II Soul from the kitchen whilst operating a noisy gadget. The scent of warm croissants drifted through. Pip chanted to herself that she wasn’t hungry, she rebuked herself for already missing the first train to Chesterfield. She hurled back the duvet and at that moment, Zac entered his bedroom, proffering a tray of breakfast.

‘Oh, I do like to start the morning with split beaver,’ he remarked deadpan, while Pip lay there stark naked, spread-eagled, horrified. She whipped the duvet back over herself.

‘I’m late,’ she said, ‘I really need to go.’

‘Sure,’ Zac shrugged amiably. He’d woken charmed by the presence of Pip and the memories of the previous night. ‘Breakfast?’

‘Not hungry,’ Pip all but barked, though she eyed the croissants and the jug of whatever it was that Zac had been so sonorously juicing. Zac wafted the basket of pastries beneath her nose and she found herself unable to resist. She was famished. Sushi is all very well in that one never goes to bed afterwards feeling bloated or stuffed, but it hardly tides a person over for very long. So Pip had a croissant. And a long drink of juice (pink grapefruit, passion fruit, kiwi and banana).

‘Wake up and smell the coffee?’ Zac joshed, pouring Jamaican Blue Mountain from a gorgeous Alessi cafetière. Pip sipped. She felt physically revived but emotionally still in free fall.

‘I have to go,’ she told Zac.

‘When are you back?’ he asked.

‘Tomorrow evening or Monday morning, I’m not sure yet.’

‘Shall we do things next week, then?’ he asked. Pip looked nonplussed. ‘You know, things,’ Zac said, ‘heavy petting, break-dancing, go to the movies, not listen to any opera?’

Pip couldn’t answer. She was out of her depth utterly. She observed a twitch of bemusement flicker across his face. Somewhere, lurking deep inside her, a very quiet voice that she couldn’t quite hear, asked her if she wasn’t slightly mad.

Look at him!

Remember it all!

Kind and lovely and fun and compatible!

Zac filled her coffee cup again. She didn’t want to be charmed by the fact that he’d decanted the milk into a ceramic jug. ‘Nothing heavy,’ he attempted. ‘You know – just hang out together a bit. A bit more. A bit more often.’

‘I can’t,’ she suddenly declared. ‘Timing – everything. I just can’t, Zac. Please understand.’

Zac regarded her directly. Her brow was twitching this way and that in a rather unbecoming manner. Her gaze seemed shifty but dulled. She was all closed off and her body seemed spiky and hard – a far cry from the soft and welcoming haven it had been just hours before.

Not again, he thought.

‘Understand what?’ he asked.

‘You’re great, sex was good,’ Pip said in a rather patronizing tone she didn’t really mean but simply couldn’t help, ‘but I was in love with Caleb.’ Zac analysed his fingernails while she spoke. Pip couldn’t begin to analyse her bizarre declaration. Zac hadn’t expected the twinge of jealousy, the pang of insecurity. He hoped it didn’t register on his face. Fingernails. Keep looking. ‘I mean, maybe we should just be friends.’ Pip was staggered that she should use a clichéd phrase she had always loathed. Zac had stretched out his fingers and was tracing the veins on his left hand. ‘Friends who fucked,’ Pip dared, demonstratively using the past tense. ‘No hard feelings, hey?’ She put her hand on his arm.

He knew her words well, he’d used them himself on a fair few occasions. They didn’t have a very nice ring to them. There was an ugliness to the sound of it all, a pervasive ugliness smearing grubbiness over last night, over waking this morning; a sudden and surprising ugliness to Pip which contradicted all he’d believed her to be.

‘You know what,’ Zac said, standing suddenly though it caused juice to splash over the linen and the milk to spill over the tray, ‘that’s just cool with me.’ Pip was still beneath the duvet and wondered whether she should make a move to clear up the mess. After all, directly or otherwise, the mess was of her making. ‘In fact, I should be the one to apologize. I guess I took advantage of you,’ Zac declared, hands on hips, eyes dark, ‘when I found you in tears and then got you hammered the other night.’ Pip glanced up at him. This she wasn’t expecting. ‘And I guess it’s only logical that you’d be on the rebound yourself,’ he persisted, his voice and gaze cool. Her lips parted. She’d really quite like to defend herself. ‘So sure, let’s be friends – whatever,’ Zac shrugged. ‘It’s great that you’re cool about the sex thing,’ he reasoned, his slate-grey eyes flat but penetrating. ‘As you say, no big deal.’

Pip nodded, feeling she might well burst into tears with the weight of it all; instead, she swallowed and quickly declared to herself, ‘Well! What a bastard!’

It felt as though there was a tangle of cold, wet spaghetti muddling her mind and clogging her conscience. Her intestines felt knotted and twisted and seething, like a can of worms. ‘May I take a shower?’ she asked.

‘Sure,’ Zac shrugged, already making his way out of the bedroom.

No Psycho shower curtain. Just a scarlet and violet striped panel protecting the sunshine yellow lino flooring from the oversized, ceiling-mounted shower rose. It was gorgeous, like being in a tropical downpour. Aveda body cleanser and a loofah. Thick towels the colour of lemon meringue pie. It seemed a travesty to put on her knickers from last night, despite turning them inside out in a bid for added freshness. Momentarily, Pip was saddened by the symmetry of using Zac’s toothbrush. The bristles were hard and her gums bled.

Fully dressed, she hovered in Zac’s bathroom. She wanted to go. She wished none of this had happened – not the fun nor the frolics, nor her misgivings, nor her stupid declaration of indifference, certainly not her feelings otherwise. She felt rooted to the spot, scared to face him again, dreading returning to the outside world; to her beloved Derbyshire where she’d be helpless not to confront the meaning of her actions and, of course, the neuroses that instigated them. To say nothing of the energy required to sort out Cat, sort out Fen, sort out Django.

She had to go. It must be appearing odd that she’d spent so much time in the bathroom long after she’d had a shower and cleaned her teeth. Gingerly, she opened the door. Zac’s linen had been changed. There wasn’t a crumb to be seen. She walked softly through to his living-room. Immaculate. No sign of the beer bottles or scrunched-up Doritos packets or the stacks of 45s and piles of 33s. In fact, no sign of Zac either. She glanced over to the galley kitchen. Clean and sparkling. No one there.

‘Zac?’ she called quietly. Silence. Then she saw a note on the footstool of the Eames.

Gone to pick up Tom

Have fun with your mum

See you around. ZH

It was the worst confrontation of all. Far worse than if Zac had still been there. She didn’t reread it. She hurried from the flat. Rushed to the tube, and belted home. Packed. Hurtled back to the tube and headed for King’s Cross St Pancras. The train was at the platform. She jumped on and ran through the carriages. She felt sick from the physical exertion, but at least it took her mind off feeling sick from all the bullshit. All the while, racketing round her head she was yelling at herself.

‘My mum? My fucking mum?’

TWENTY-TWO

Zac was really quite taken aback. Bloody offended, actually. If truth be told, it hurt. He felt a fool. He had been taken advantage of. There was no denying it. He stopped momentarily to contemplate whether this was how those four or five girls (How many had there been? How awful not to quite remember) had felt who’d been no more than one-night stands to him. Well, he wasn’t going to compromise his self-respect. It wasn’t as if he actually needed Pip in his life, anyway. And right from the start, if he was honest, hadn’t he thought her a little on the odd side of eccentric? Sure, all was fun and feisty at the moment, but the likelihood was that if anything had developed beyond a fling, she’d soon have irritated him supremely. Wouldn’t she? She and he were hardly the stuff of a worthwhile relationship or potential long-term couple.

Anyway, he had so much else in his life, he really had no need of Pip McCabe; he’d hardly notice her absence. No question about it. Nothing more to discuss. Nothing to rue or misconstrue. Certainly nothing to regret. Nor even much to remember, actually, come to think of it. Not that he was going to expend any further time or energy thinking of it. Nothing to think about.

When Zac saw his little boy, he hugged him very close and breathed in the incomparable scent emanating from the top of his head. Zac believed it to be a secret bar-code of sorts, a gift to a parent.

‘Legoland?’ Tom whispered, expectation dancing across his eyes.

‘Yes, please!’ Zac responded.

‘Bye, Billy,’ Tom waved from the pavement, ‘bye, Auntie Ruthie – thanks for having me.’

Billy and his mum waved. Tom and Zac waved back.

Ruth went through to the kitchen and rustled up lunch for her son and husband.

‘Zac not coming in?’ his brother asked, putting his hands at his wife’s waist and nuzzling her neck.

‘Off to Legoland,’ Ruth said.

‘Wonder how his hot date went,’ Jim mused, not that he was particularly interested in his wife’s in-depth analysis on such subjects, nor really in his brother’s love life itself.

‘I wonder,’ was all Ruth said. Jim wandered off to play PlayStation with Billy.

Ruth dried her hands and folded and re-folded the tea towel. It had been odd. Zac certainly hadn’t emanated the glow of a well-laid man. No sparkle, no depth to his surface smile.

He might as well have painted it on, Ruth thought.

TWENTY-THREE

‘I know that your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver,’ Django McCabe reasons with his youngest niece, ‘but you chasing through France after a bunch of boys on bikes – well, isn’t that taking the family tradition to new extremes?’

The McCabe sisters are back home in Derbyshire once more. Though they don’t mean to undermine their uncle, Pip and Fen are persuading Cat, for the umpteenth time, that a coveted position in the press corps of the Tour de France will provide a fantastic chance both to heal her broken heart and further her budding career as a sports journalist. The girls and their uncle are in the garden, a haven of neat lawn, mature shrubbery and a veritable arboretum on the edge of untamed Farleymoor. They are lolling about being a family – an unconventional one, perhaps, but solid, close and open. Fen is lounging under the cedar tree, day-dreaming, as is her wont. A tyre on a rope still dangles from the sturdy old branches, though it is only ever Pip who swings from it now. Cat prefers her tyres by the pair and nicely balanced on a titanium bike. Usually, she’s hurling her mountain bike over the moors, but today, she’s opting for a sedentary afternoon in the garden. While Fen prefers to use the garden to sit and think, or lounge and listen, Pip is usually flic-flaccing its breadth, cartwheeling its length or scaling its heights by squirming up the rope and dangling upside down by just one limb before leaping effortlessly to the ground, landing with a somersault, then righting herself to hold a pose, motionless and triumphant. Just as her training on the trapeze had taught her. Just as watching Olga Korbut when she was young had inspired her.

Today, though, with Fen reclining peacefully under the boughs, Pip allows her sister safety and space and perfects a run of flic-flacs across the lawn instead.

‘I don’t know, Django,’ she protests in Cat’s defence, slightly breathless. ‘Think of all that Lycra,’ she says, as if it is a concept universally appealing, ‘lashings of it! And a squadron of shiny thighs!’ It is an image that does little for Pip but she knows that her lovelorn sister needs all possible bolstering if she is going to cope in France for a month, fighting for scoops in the press corps. Pip is happy to provide support. She does it so well. It’s her self-imposed duty. It’s her role. It takes her mind off things. She has responsibilities, thank God. After all, their mother did run off with a cowboy from Denver when they were small.

Django and Pip stay up after Fen and Cat have gone to bed. They’re sipping Cointreau and eating After Eights which have passed their sell-by date but still taste good enough. They are happily ensconced in the main sitting-room – a room whose name the family changes according to time of day or season. This afternoon, they would have referred to it as the Library. Once the weather is cold enough for a fire to be lit, it becomes the Snug. On summer afternoons, it is the Quiet Room. In mornings, it is the Morning Room. When the girls were young and naughty, it was Downstairs. At the moment, it is the Drawing-room, on account of it serving as an excellent backdrop to conversation, After Eights and Cointreau.

‘I’m worried about Fenella and Catriona,’ Django confides, using their names in full for emphasis, though the twitching of his eyebrows and lowering of his voice would have sufficed.

‘Oh, you needn’t be,’ Pip says breezily, both to mask her own concerns for both sisters and to hide the fact that her personal life, too, is in a state of chaos. She doesn’t want Django to worry. In stature and personality he may well appear robust, and his demeanour is as colourful as his original Pucci print shirts and paisley neckerchiefs, but Pip is also aware that he is approaching his sixty-ninth birthday, after all, and feels it her duty to allay his fears. She seeks to reassure him by making light of it all. ‘You leave it to me, old man,’ she laughs. ‘I’ll make sure there’s laughter in their lives and food in their fridges.’

‘Of course, Cat is better off without him,’ Django reasons, instantly comforted by Pip’s assurances, ‘but she is just so miserable. It pains me to see her hurting so. Can she truly cope in France?’

‘She’ll bounce back,’ Pip says, nudging her shoulder against Django’s. ‘France is a good idea.’

Django raises his eyes heavenwards. ‘If anything, I’m slightly more concerned about Fen.’ He strokes his sideburns, thinking quietly to himself that he must remember to dye them to match his hair, which he did himself last week with a preparation appetizingly called ‘Fingerlickin’ Fudge’. ‘Cat rids herself of one knave, and Fen takes on two at once,’ he ponders, silently reminding himself to tint his eyebrows, too. ‘Where’s the sense in that? The logic?’ He glugs his Cointreau. ‘The morality?’ He’s suddenly aware how his consternation might seem hypocritical in the light of his well-publicized and colourful past.

‘You can talk!’ Pip protests, right on cue. ‘O Squire of the Swinging Sixties and High Priest of Hippydom!’

‘But you see,’ Django says, because the liqueur has suddenly made him lucid and alert to the situation, ‘although I did most certainly gad about during the 1960s – and a fair part of the 1970s, too – it was all conducted in context. It was what people did. We had no hindsight to guide us. It was, we thought, the way to go – burn the bras, ban the bomb, smoke the weed, take the trip, share the love. But you see, our mistakes, the diseases we contracted, the brain cells we damaged, the emotional price we paid – and some are still paying off – this is the legacy we hand down to you.’

‘You mean the “been there, seen it, done it” mentality?’ Pip interjects. ‘That we should learn from your findings?’

‘Yes,’ says Django. ‘Fenella oughtn’t to fiddle with two chaps at the same time. It’ll end in tears. It’s just not wholesome.’ Django looks forlorn.

‘Django, you misunderstand – we’re not talking gang-bangs here,’ Pip says, trying to lighten the tone by lowering it. Django gives her a disparaging look but replenishes her Cointreau anyway. ‘Fen simply can’t decide between two men – one’s rich, one’s poor; one’s town, one’s country; one’s young and one’s old.’

‘Old?’ Django barks, as if he’ll challenge the cad to a duel.

Pip says she thinks he’s fiftyish. She can see that her uncle is relieved to retain ultimate seniority – that if needs be, Fen’s older beau is still young enough for Django to scold.

Though Pip feels it wise to reserve her judgement in front of Django, deep down she finds Fen’s situation somewhat distasteful and Cat’s circumstance truly upsetting.

I fear that it won’t be long before I see Fen in the kind of state Cat is in now.

‘If Fenella isn’t careful,’ Django warns, ‘she’ll be in Cat’s current pickle.’

Pip just sips her liqueur. She doesn’t want to respond.

The whole thing is giving me a headache. Though I think I understand their situations, it doesn’t mean I have to empathize. Yet it’s not like either sister is particularly wayward or morally inept. Cat is sweet and kind and had the terrible misfortune to pick a bad card – none of us saw it coming. Fen is quite refined and reserved in many ways, hadn’t had a boyfriend in years and – I don’t know – two came along at once. She has high standards; I guess she wants to make sure she chooses the very best.

‘And you, Philippa, anyone on your horizon?’ Django enquires, offering After Eights to facilitate revelations.

Pip settles back into the sofa. It seems to have an innate recollection of her shape and weight, appearing to both suck her in and support her. She sips her Cointreau and fixes a demure half-smile across her lips; pretending, relatively convincingly, that she’s relaxed and content and happy to savour another chocolate, thank you very much, before answering.

Anyone on my horizon? A shit who took me for a ride – and a great bloke who I’ve treated shittily. I guess you could say Cat doesn’t have the monopoly on shits. And it isn’t just Fen who’s been juggling two blokes. I oughtn’t to be quite so quick to judge if I haven’t practised what I preach.

‘God, no!’ Pip responds casually instead, having licked her lips and neatly folded the After Eight wrappers. ‘You know how I don’t need a man in my life,’ she waves her hands as if wafting away the issue. ‘Everything’s cool. Hunky-dory. Fine and dandy. A-OK. All is well.’ In the light of Django’s reaction to her sisters’ state of affairs, she’s quite unnerved to see by his brow rubbing that her answer isn’t satisfactory. ‘You needn’t worry about me!’ she perseveres, a little too keenly. Still he looks perplexed. ‘There’s no way I’ll give you and my sisters any cause for concern, any excuse for gossip over too much Cointreau and half a box of After Eights late at night! I’m perfectly happy and very healthy – I don’t need a man and I don’t need money.’

‘But Philippa, my dear, it’s not what you need that is the issue. Wouldn’t you rather like a little of each?’

It’s on the tip of Pip’s tongue to tell her uncle in no uncertain terms of her pension and savings plan and her vibrator, so as to silence him. She’d quite like to stomp from the room muttering ‘Give me a fucking break.’ But of course she does nothing of the sort, nor says anything that comes close. Far too risky to reveal even a glimpse of her recent past. No point anyway, it is her past, after all.

‘I’m not bothered,’ Pip says instead, very lightly.

‘Beware complacency!’ Django warns.

‘I’m not complacent,’ Pip assures him, ‘I’m happy as I am. Honestly. Anyway, I’m far too busy. Life is good.’ She doesn’t want to talk any more. She’s gone from defending her sisters, so her uncle doesn’t worry, to justifying her own choices so her uncle doesn’t worry. She pretends the drink has gone to her head and she tells Django she’ll take some fresh air before turning in. He lets her go. He has no choice, really.

‘There’s more to that girl than meets the eye,’ he says to himself as he polishes off the After Eights. ‘I’ll have to wait for her to introduce me to her inner quirks – and qualms.’ He creaks himself out of the sofa, with which he has a love-hate relationship because, though he thinks it looks the part, he’s always found it so damned uncomfortable. He pads over to the window and spies Pip kicking at the turf and slumping down beneath the cedar. Her preoccupation makes him acutely aware that she craves space, peace and privacy. Even if he’s unseen, he’s still fundamentally intruding, and as he respects his niece he turns away. One thing is for sure, the inner calm he depends on her exuding, that he’s always been so proud of, is missing.

Pip knows it’s both churlish and childish to boot the poor lawn. But it’s quite satisfying and she’s doing it nimble-footedly and half-heartedly enough so that no clods are actually despatched. She’s softly chanting her mantra, ‘Don’t need a man, don’t need money’, kicking the grass for emphasis on ‘man’ and ‘money’. The rhythm of the words is satisfying. But deep down she knows that the fact that they roll off the tongue so gratifyingly is irrelevant. In all honesty, she admits that her phrase would be far better suited to the soulful voice of some jazz diva, than declared histrionically by a young clown to friends, family and herself. Tonight, Pip can hear how stupid it sounds. The stillness of the Derbyshire air, the darkness of the night, the ageless calm of the landscape, the familiarity of her childhood home, cause her words to reverberate and force her to listen to them. She can kid herself in London, but she can’t do so here.

What on earth does her mantra mean? What does it mean that she has held so steadfastly on to it all these years? Though she may not want to listen, if she is honest – and up in Derbyshire, alone and outdoors, she cannot be otherwise – she’ll have to admit that a little more money would be pretty useful. She may be a great advocate of calico and raw cotton, but she did see a skein of linen and silk the colour of a labrador puppy. She touched it with her fingertips, let it brush against her cheek, wafted it around. But she was already in the red that month and the council tax, water rates and final demand for gas and electricity had yet to be paid.

So a little more money wouldn’t go amiss.

And might not a man be quite nice, Pip? Especially if he was quite a nice man?

Unfortunately, her long-held position as mentor and therapist to the womenfolk around her has given her indirect exposure to all manner of unsuitable men. Those who have toyed with her friends, and the ones who’ve dared screw with her sisters. To say nothing of Dr Caleb Simmons. Pip’s loyalty to her sex and siblings will not permit acknowledgement that, just sometimes, those men might not be quite as bad as they are mercilessly made out to be. That, perhaps, innocent issues of simple incompatibility or love having run its course may have been at the root of her friends’ and sisters’ traumas. Plus, her friends and sisters themselves were hardly blameless – feisty can also be demanding; loyalty can sometimes be claustrophobic; possessiveness can be a by-product of a passionate personality.

The fact that Pip has been single for some time, along with the fact that she’s never been in love, have resulted in her demands becoming more stringent and her expectations being more unrealistic. She has set her bizarre standard concerning baggage, against which no human who has lived a little can ever really measure up. Therefore, in Pip’s eyes, all men do fall short and must be avoided. And, therefore, she can declare with a sense of relief that of course life is easier without them. It is far simpler to be dismissive of all men than even to hint that sometimes, occasionally, she might want just the one.

She’s still kicking the ground in time to her chant. But now her foot makes impact on the word ‘need’.

I don’t. I really don’t. I don’t need more money. I don’t need a bloke. I don’t need the hassle.

She’s caught up in generalizations because if she referred to specifics, she’d have to turn her mind to Zac Holmes. She knows she hasn’t treated him very well, that she hasn’t been honest. Not only has she been rude, she’s also lied to him. What on earth was all that bullshit about being a friend happy to fuck? About being in love with Caleb? And, most unfathomable of all, about a close mummy–daughter relationship?

Surely, the truth will out, as it always does. And then won’t it be Pip herself who appears as one utterly weighed down by baggage accumulated from many provenances? Her behaviour could quite turn a man off. For all you know, Pip, he’s chanting himself to sleep thinking, ‘I don’t need Pip McCabe. I don’t even want to see her again.’ He probably thinks you’re more hassle than you’re worth. Anyway, you don’t need him or want him, do you? And the way you’ve treated him will certainly have made reconciliation so burdensome that it will be more trouble than it’s worth. Is that why you did it? Break something before it had the chance to break you? Are you that fragile?

She can’t hear me. Would she even listen if she could? See, she’s swinging on the tyre-rope, like an ape on acid. It’s nearing one in the morning. She’s hanging from one foot, her arms outstretched. She is saying something. But I can’t quite hear. She’s moving too fast, slicing the air, she’s upside down. She’s slightly breathless – acrobatics uses much adrenalin, hanging upside down, travelling at speed, takes the breath away. What is it that she’s saying?

‘I’ve fucked up.’

She whooshes through the air.

‘Sure – now he’ll never fuck me up. But would he ever have? He wasn’t the type to. He was lovely. But I’ve fucked up.’

Swing. Swoosh back and forth. Over and over and over again.

‘I’ve fucked up. I’ve fucked up. I’ve fucked up.’

Even when she’s upside down; even when her life is topsy-turvy; she knows herself inside out, does Miss McCabe.

TWENTY-FOUR

So the accountant and the clown set about forgetting each other. Juliana had come back from South Africa and was once more amusing Zac after hours – and often for hours. Once or twice he told himself how good it was to have a woman who made his body feel absolutely spent but in no way taxed his mind. Soon enough, he stopped theorizing altogether and just lay back and enjoyed himself.

Work for Merry Martha picked up now that the school summer holidays were under way. There was face painting to be done, and open-air shows at Golders Hill and Parliament Hill. A friend even set up a weekend’s work in Brighton. Pip was far too busy balancing things on her head, or balancing on her head, to wonder if little Tom might ever be in her audience, his father, too.

Dr Pippity continued to dispense her therapeutic skills at St Bea’s. She was relieved and happy that she never saw Tom – it must mean that his eczema was doing well. Dr Simmons had returned from his holiday and Pip was pleasantly surprised to see how a tan did not become him. He looked a little broiled and somewhat leathery. She also found it quite satisfying that he seemed much more ill at ease in her company than she was in his. She didn’t see him that often anyway, and outside the hospital grounds, she never gave him a second thought. That was the power of her mind over matter; she no longer minded and had swiftly decided that he didn’t matter at all. She’d managed to delete all memories when she deleted his text messages.

Fen continued to dither between her two men and maintained her parallel lives in town and country. She didn’t ask Pip for advice or support, nor did she offer details or anecdotes. Megan and Dominic were at that sickly stage of courtship where verbal and physical declarations of love are far too frequent and cloying for public consumption. Soon enough, they were spending their time together alone together. Even on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

Cat had made it to the Tour de France and was now heading for the Alps. Pip and Fen often watched the TV highlights together; soon enough they could recognize specific riders in the peloton, understand certain aspects of strategy and even master the correct pronunciation of cyclists’ names and bike components. Cat revealed that she had fallen for a doctor on an American team. Her older sisters had only to read between the lines of her race reports for the Guardian newspaper, to detect the enormous uplift in her spirits.

Pip and Fen were, however, realistically cautious on Cat’s behalf. Both felt an overwhelming urge to verify her welfare and authenticate the intentions of this doctor, firsthand. It seemed like a very sensible idea to journey to France for a surprise visit that weekend. Django provided funds and a blessing.

‘Believe me,’ Pip had murmured ominously to Fen, ‘doctors can be perilously seductive.’ Fen didn’t think to pry. It would never have crossed her mind that her sister spoke from anything other than encyclopedic knowledge, certainly not from personal experience, on such matters.

Pip was trying to pack. Fen was sitting on her sofa, flicking through a copy of Procycling magazine.

‘Listen, I’ll take a couple of fleeces,’ Pip was calling from the bedroom. ‘I’m sure it’ll be chilly on the mountains and I’ll bet you’ve only packed flimsy stuff.’

‘’Kay,’ Fen said, somewhat preoccupied by a photograph of the thighs of an Italian sprinter called Stefano Sassetta.

‘And I’ve bought some bumper packs of Mars Bars and KitKats for Cat. It sounds like her diet thus far has consisted of baguette, garlic and complimentary portions of stuff on offer from the sponsors each morning,’ Pip called through, this time from the bathroom.

‘’Kay,’ Fen replied, now distracted by the bulging, Lycraclad crotch of a rider called Fabian Ducasse.

‘And there’s only so many freebie sweets or chunks of cheese that a journalist can eat, surely,’ Pip remarked, coming into the lounge to set the video, ‘or that are good for one’s health.’

‘’Kay,’ said Fen. Pip went over to see what was absorbing her so. And she spent a reflective moment or two appreciating the dimensions and supreme glossiness of a Spanish rider’s physique.

‘I’ll pack her some Colgate, too,’ Pip said, and returned to the bathroom to fetch a new tube of toothpaste. She reappeared with a rucksack packed perfectly and hoisted on to her shoulders. ‘Vive le Tour! Allez!’

Fen laughed. The phone started to ring. Pip checked her watch. They were in good time and their cab hadn’t yet arrived. ‘I’d better take it,’ she said, ‘it could be Django with a last-minute worry, I suppose.’ She answered the phone, her rucksack still aloft.

‘Hullo?’ said a woman. ‘I’m after Merry Martha?’

‘Speaking,’ said Pip, changing her voice and demeanour for professional purposes.

‘Oh! Great! I wanted to book you for a birthday party.’

‘Hold on,’ said Pip, ‘I’ll just check the diary.’

‘The first Sunday in August is the date my husband and I are hoping for.’

Pip checked. She was free. And the Tour de France would have finished the previous week so she wouldn’t be bound to the television. ‘Yup,’ she confirmed, ‘I’ll just take your details today and nearer the time, we’ll discuss what kind of a show would be appropriate. So we have the date. What sort of time?’

‘Mid-afternoon?’

‘Perfect. Now,’ said Pip, ‘name?’

‘June Price,’ the woman replied.

‘And how old will June be?’ Pip asked.

The woman laughed. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘between you and me, thirty-four next birthday. Actually, the party is for my son, he’ll be six,’ June Price elaborated.

‘His name?’ Pip asked, nodding to Fen that she’d be wrapping the call up imminently.

‘Tom,’ Mrs Price replied.

‘It’s in the book,’ Pip told her new client. ‘We’ll speak nearer the time.’

‘Wonderful!’

‘Goodbye now.’

The cab had arrived. Fen was heading out for the street. Pip unfurled the blinds and checked that certain lights were on, others off. She double-locked the door and she and Fen headed for Waterloo and the Eurostar to France. Her baggage was starting to nag.

I’ll redress the load, shift the balance, when I have the chance.

TWENTY-FIVE

Pip certainly shifted the balance whilst she was away, though it might take some time to see whether she added to her baggage or lightened her load. Far from home, she did something she’d never done, something she thought she’d never want to do, something she certainly wasn’t setting out to do, something she probably wouldn’t do again. If anyone had told her she would have a one-night stand even once in her life, let alone on the lumpy mattress of a bunk bed in a hostel on a French mountain top, she’d probably laugh in their face and privately feel somewhat disturbed. The thought of it wasn’t remotely titillating to Pip. After all, if she wasn’t bothered about having a man in her life, then a quick one-off shag, devoid of home comforts, must be far down on her list of priorities. Nevertheless, she found herself sneaking away from the bed she was sharing with Fen, for a fumble with a lanky lad called Alex. In a bunk bed. In a hostel. At the summit of a French Alp.

Of course, Pip didn’t leap straight from train to bunk bed. On arrival in Grenoble, her priority was to locate Cat and assess the doctor. Tracking down Cat was not easy – even glimpsing a flash of the race was tough, with the huge crowds lining the route and many areas permitting no access whatsoever without some laminated pass or other. Pip and Fen eventually found Cat and they found her in fine form, too. She was staggered and delighted by their surprise visit, and supremely grateful for the chocolate and toothpaste. She introduced her sisters to her colleagues in the press corps and, of course, to her doctor. Though both older sisters attempted to maintain a certain circumspect aloofness from him, they found Ben York to be genuine and exuding all-important wholesome affection for Cat. The girls were relieved and pleased, not least because they were also secretly hoping for an introduction (though they’d settle for an autograph) to any of his glorious Team Megapac cyclists.

For three weeks in July, the French are obsessed with the thrills, spills, scandal and skulduggery that underscore the Tour de France. If the Tour de France is a soap opera of sorts, the landscape for the race is as much a colourful character as any of the cyclists themselves. Fortuitously, Pip and Fen’s impromptu visit coincided with the race’s high point of theatre, the stage to L’Alpe D’Huez, cycling’s Mecca – twenty-one hairpin bends and gruesome gradients. It is a mountain that most sensible folk ski down rather than cycle up; the riders having tackled a staircase of mountains immediately beforehand. As they did yesterday, and will do again tomorrow. Not to mention having ridden up and over the Pyrenees last week. Oh, and with well over 1,000 km left to ride to Paris.

Pip and Fen’s first full day in France started at 5.00 a.m., with their seasoned hack of a sister driving them to the awesome mountain so they could stake a good vantage point for the race which would reach them late that afternoon. The stage Pip and Fen were to witness was 189 km long, would take the winner just under six hours but would see ten riders quit the race and four others ignominiously disqualified for limping over the line outside the time-limit. With no pause for rest, no chance for mistakes, the cyclists might have to piss, eat, even shit and puke, whilst in the saddle. There were 200,000 fans on L’Alpe D’Huez. Some had camped there days in advance in relative luxury in RVs, others had slept a couple of nights under the stars in sleeping-bags that did little to combat the surprising cold. Some fans had simply partied last night away and would continue to do so until well after the race had finished and the riders were having their massages in the hotels in the next valley.

The atmosphere was of a carnival; Pip and Fen were delighted. They’d only come to France to check up on their sister; now they felt as though they were enjoying a mini-break with entertainment thrown in for free. Spectators had their countries’ flags painted on their faces, some wore ludicrous wigs, others dressed in costumes ranging from angels to the devil. Euro-pop of questionable quality blared from boomboxes. Some people had guitars. A group of six, clad in cycling gear, formed a veritable brass band. Regardless of the ungodly hour, booze flowed and spirits soared. Pip wished she’d brought Merry Martha’s outfits, something to juggle with, a little slap at the very least. Still, she was glad she’d thought to bring fleeces. It may have been July, but up the Alp, at that hour, it was freezing. However, a friendly Dutch crowd brewed the sisters tea and topped it off with schnapps. And some Belgian blokes with alarming moustaches gave them brushes and whitewash so Pip and Fen could partake of the tradition of painting riders’ names along the tarmac for encouragement.

The rain came well before the riders. Fen and Pip were drenched but kept warm by the atmosphere and a considerable amount of schnapps. Though the action of the race and the drama of its cast is a whole other story, suffice it to say that the McCabe girls witnessed the most gut-wrenching but also uplifting sights of sporting prowess, of man against mountain, of triumph over adversity. The riders’ tortured pace as they passed by – still stunning despite the severity of the climb – meant their pain-scorched faces were wincingly visible, their laboured breathing horribly audible, as their lactic-acid-addled muscles struggled to make sense of the final mountain of the day. One rider even slogged past with the added humiliation of an upset stomach coursing down his legs in rivulets mixed with sweat and rain. All the heroes Pip and Fen had come to know from television coverage and magazine photos were within touching distance. It was awe-inspiring. The girls were soon hoarse from cheering. Their brief sojourn in France was turning out to be humbling, entertaining and memorable in equal measures. England seemed far away. That was no bad thing for each of the McCabe sisters.

Pip and Fen were able to see Cat and witness firsthand her change in spirits, her growing confidence, the certain glint that Dr York had sparked.

Fen was afforded time out from the two loves of her life and all the incumbent contemplation and management that this required.

Pip grasped the opportunity for a one-night stand to provide distance and a diversion from the perceived mess of the previous weeks.

Pip would like us to believe that it had a lot to do with altitude. The air being thin. Being so high. She’d rather not level too much responsibility against the many swigs of schnapps followed by a boozy fondue, for blurring her vision or influencing her actions. Would she have found Cat’s colleague Alex attractive if she hadn’t been wearing rose-tinted beer goggles? Or if her day hadn’t been so multicoloured by the dramas of the race and the high spirits (and bottled spirits) of all those around her? Would she have found Alex attractive enough to accept even a second date if she’d met him back home? In the mundane light of everyday life, would she have had a one-night stand with him in London? Would she even want to see him again?

However, up there, back then, on top of a mountain, thawing out over a steaming cauldron of kirsch-drenched fondue, Pip thought Alex charming and attractive and a pleasure to match, flirt for flirt. She justified the fact that he smelt rather strongly of garlic as a pitfall of the limitations of the press buffets. Not his fault. Not a reflection of his personality. It wasn’t as if it was something he couldn’t help, like smelly feet. Garlic was simply an occupational hazard for the journalists, she decided.

‘You don’t half stink of garlic!’ Pip said to him with a glint in her eye, nevertheless, as they were strolling back from the restaurant.

‘The Alps,’ he shrugged his broad shoulders, ‘a breeding ground for vampires. With my hot blood, I need to take every precaution to keep them at bay.’ His retort made Pip laugh and even like the garlicky wafts seeping from his skin and breath. ‘Have you any vampire tendencies?’ he asked her. ‘Any links with Transylvania, however tenuous?’

‘Derbyshire,’ Pip told him, ‘via Sutton Coldfield, originally,’ she elaborated, pulling her hands into the sleeves of her fleece. It was cold up there in the thin air of the mountain top. ‘And I can’t say blood is among my favourite tipples.’ Momentarily, Alex looked crestfallen. Pip couldn’t think what she’d said that could have upset him so. ‘Sutton Coldfield’s not that bad – there are some quite nice parts,’ she rushed, hoping to soften whatever blow it was she had unwittingly delivered, ‘and Derbyshire is divine.’ She unfurled the fingers of one hand from the fleece and touched his elbow.

‘Huh?’ Alex said. ‘Oh. No. I was just sad that you are not even a fraction vampire.’ He rubbed his brow and looked thoroughly perplexed. ‘How am I going to get you to suck anything of mine now?’

Fen, Cat, Ben and the gang kept walking. Pip stopped dead in her tracks, gobsmacked and motionless in the theatrical throes of a long, silent, outraged laugh. Alex stopped too, all wide-eyed and winsome, or as much so as his lumbering six-foot-two-inch frame would allow. Once she was breathing again, clasping her chest for dramatic emphasis, Pip regarded Alex with mock shock horror delineating her features, sending added sparkle to her eyes, her mouth agape. Before she knew what was happening, but long before her sisters turned around to see where she was, Alex had plugged Pip’s mouth with his tongue and given her right buttock an enthusiastic squeeze.

‘My bed – bottom bunk – 2.00 a.m.,’ he whispered, licking his lips and winking at her.

‘Dream on!’ Pip remonstrated. Though the fleece sleeves covered her fingers, she put her hands on her hips and held her head high in mock outrage. Alex’s plan was, of course, one she planned to carry out, but she wasn’t going to pamper his ego with even a quick ‘OK’. She stomped past Alex in contrived indignation, but with a concerted wiggle nevertheless. She linked arms with her two sisters and the three McCabe girls walked jauntily to the apartment. Each had a spring to her step. Each felt a growing sense of liberation and joie de vivre that none had felt for some time. Too much altitude? Too little oxygen? Too much alcohol? Too little sleep? So what! Who cares! The combination was obviously a rather good one. The three McCabe girls went to bed that night with smiles on their faces and minds full of larky memories.

Pip wakes with a start. It’s 4.00 a.m. How can that be? She’s two hours late for her bunk bonk. How and when did she fall asleep in the first place? Never mind that she’s only had three hours’ sleep in almost twenty-four hours. She’s bemused – she went to bed wide awake, willing Fen to fall asleep, watching the clock and imagining Alex yards away preparing a boudoir of debauchery for her. Instead, somehow, she fell dead asleep. Damn!

She lies in the bed she’s sharing with Fen and listens to the lulled, rhythmic breathing of her sister sound asleep. Her heart is thuddering excitedly. The walls are thin. She can detect snoring from another room. Is it Alex? If so, isn’t that a turn-off? And if it is him, doesn’t it mean he’s fast asleep? And if so, should she not wake him? After all, he has to go to work tomorrow. Say he wasn’t serious in the first place? About 2.00 a.m.? About a bonk in his bunk? Dare she verify?

Which would benefit her more, sleep or sex? Pip pontificates at length until she wonders why on earth she’s wasting time. It’s now almost 4.15 a.m. Fen is still sound asleep. And whoever it is, is still snoring. Pip sidles from the bed and slips out of the bedroom. She’s relieved to deduce that the snoring is not Alex’s. His door is ajar. She eases it open, a breath of light coursing into the room and catching on his shoulders. He’s in the bottom bunk. Facing away from her. His shoulders are masculine. He looks too big for the bed. The duvet is half on the floor, managing to cover his modesty whilst presenting a muscled back tapering to a neat waist.

Pip fights to suppress a giggle and a snort. She feels extremely naughty, all this tiptoeing and lip biting in the silent watches of the night. Will the floor creak? Will someone hear? Will someone catch them at it? She is holding her breath because she doesn’t know if she wants to wake Alex or not, or whether or not he wants to be woken. She’s well inside his room now; so far, so silent. She eases the door to almost closed. The room is plunged into darkness. Her eyes aren’t adjusting but she knows the vague direction and distance to Alex. She pads across the floor. It’s disturbingly gritty under her bare feet. Never mind. It’s irrelevant. Really, all of this is somehow irrelevant – being so far from home, in a world as surreal as the entourage of the Tour de France.

For such a big bloke, Alex sleeps very delicately, his breathing less audible even than Fen’s. Pip is chewing her lip, clenching and unclenching her fists, swallowing giggles, telling her heart to hush up – surely people in the valley below can hear it pounding excitedly against her chest. She can make out Alex’s form without actually seeing him. She can sense the body heat emanating from the bunk. She thinks she can detect garlic. She bends down over him. The pattern of his breathing remains unchanged. Yes, she can smell garlic. She’s so fired up she refuses to think of it as an unpleasant aroma. She stays motionless, trying to compose a rhyme or pun on ‘vamp and vampire’, on ‘bunks and bonks’, on ‘better late than never’.

‘Psst,’ she hisses instead. ‘Oi!’ she whispers. ‘Alex?’

He rolls over and reaches a sleep-hot hand up to her cheek. He shunts over and holds the sheets open. She can smell man – all pheromones and sweat and garlic. It’s heady and thick and intoxicating and she’s keen to be skin close. She slips between the sheets. The bed is narrow and though they manoeuvre themselves this way and that, no matter how they entwine their limbs, lying side by side is simply not possible. By the time they have found a comfortable configuration, Pip is actually lying on top of Alex, and they are snogging with such intensity that the position seems entirely appropriate anyway.

He’s wearing pants – she knows they’re not boxer shorts because in the dark her hands have figured out a great deal about his body. He appears to be clad in rather scanty briefs. She fleetingly thinks how, if the light was on, such a sight would surely be a turn-off. They may even be patterned! God forbid they were brown. Didn’t all blokes do the boxer thing nowadays? At that ungodly hour, however, in the dark, on the top of L’Alpe D’Huez, it really didn’t matter and Pip wouldn’t have cared if Alex was wearing a lacy G-string. In brown.

They dry hump while they kiss. Alex’s hands travel and explore her body energetically and hungrily. Pip uses her fingertips to determine him – the quality of his skin, the tone of his muscles, the hair on his stomach, the length and thickness of his cock straining against the elastic of his underwear. She eases his pants down, trying to banish the term ‘posing pouch’ which keeps goading her.

He’s already done away with her T-shirt, and she wasn’t wearing knickers, anyway. His hands sweep up and down over her outer thighs and then fondle her inner thighs more slowly. Grasping and feeling and kneading. She bucks her body and spreads her legs. She knows she is wet and ready and she rather wants his hands and his fingers to cut the courteous detours and head straight for the playground. Alex obliges and his manual dexterity makes Pip gasp. Do that again! It’s still too dark to see, though as he touches her (God, do that again), she marvels at his long fingers. Longer than she remembers. Actually, she can’t remember how his hands look in reality. She can’t conjure a picture of them. She knows he doesn’t bite his nails but she can’t recollect any specific details. Just that his hands weren’t really worth noticing, for one reason or another. Anyway, they’re making a great impact on her now and surely that’s the point of them.

She’s thinking she ought to return the favour and pay his cock some attention. She’d be happy to. A tantalizing blow-job perhaps, with her body swung round so that he can feast on her simultaneously. A position she’s never been hugely comfortable with, on account of it leaving everything open to the elements and to scrutiny. But that’s with the light on. Or curtains open. On the bottom bunk on the top of the mountain, it’s pitch black, remember. So Pip straddles him, facing his feet. She sucks his cock down deep until she’s at risk of gagging. She thrusts her sex against his mouth, her bottom against his nose. He’s groaning. She sucks and licks and tongues him with energy and imagination. He groans and pants. She feels rather proud. She rotates her pelvis and pushes against his face. He’s moving vigorously, flinching, moaning, jerking. She all but suctions her nether regions against his face. He places his hands on her buttocks and shoves her away. ‘Can’t breathe!’ he gasps, with an audible exclamation mark. ‘Let’s just shag, hey?’

Alex stumbles from the bed, muttering ‘condoms’ under his breath, heading off into the dark void of the room to try and locate them. Pip lies stock-still and silent. Alex bumps into something. ‘Fuck!’ He trips over something else. ‘Wank!’ He makes a terrible noise as he rummages around in some bag or other. ‘Bugger, where are the sodding bloody things?’ Pip is on the bottom bunk. Suddenly, she’s all but blinded. Alex has switched the light on. It’s a moment of blaring reality. He squints at her, she blinks back. His hair is all over the place. The neon light is brash and it buzzes. The room is horrible. Alex’s stuff is everywhere. His bottom is hairy. His feet are huge. Pip sees it all in an instant and swiftly stares instead at the springs of the upper-level bunk. She’s concentrating on not letting the moment go. She wants to come. He’s searching through his bags, tossing out a fortnight’s worth of dirty laundry.

‘Bingo!’ he mutters on retrieving a bashed packet of prophylactics of a brand Pip doesn’t recognize.

Get on with it, Pip thinks. ‘Switch the light off,’ she whispers instead, as if it’s a kinky idea, rather than absolutely crucial. Alex does so and clomps his way back to the bunk.

‘Ouch! Wank!’ he exclaims hoarsely, having first bumped his head, then scraped his shoulder, on the cold metal frame of the upper bunk. For Pip, the moment has now all but gone. She could so easily give him a peck on the cheek and crawl back to bed with Fen and fall asleep for a welcome few hours. But suddenly it’s supremely important to bring to fruition what she set out to do. She wants to finish it with a full stop, not a comma. She’ll just come. Then she’ll go.

With a rustle and a jiggle and a snap or two, plus further fulminations, Alex is covered and ready for action. Penetration takes but one attempt and because of the height and width restrictions of the bed, they adopt a position that is deep and intense. They buck and hump. The mattress is lumpy but mercifully, the bed doesn’t creak. Both Alex and Pip opt to keep as quiet as they can. It adds to the intensity. It’s furtive and desperate and he drills into her while she grinds against him. She feels as though she’s sucking him up high, he feels as though he’s spearing her deep. Why is it called ‘missionary’? There’s nothing remotely pious about what they’re doing.

‘I’m close,’ Pip murmurs, ‘oh God!’ Despite his uncouthness, the garlic, the swearing, the clumsiness, right at the right moment Alex reveals expert knowledge and sensitivity on how to intensify Pip’s orgasm. He slows his pace right down and subtly changes the angle of thrust. As he senses her spasms subside, he picks up his own pace, rams into her and spurts. The fact that his cock jumps wildly, causes Pip’s orgasm to reprise. The feeling is fantastic and intense. She’s forgotten that the lights were ever on. That there’s grit on the floor. That Alex is messy and scruffy and has huge ungainly feet and a hairy backside. What she can’t deny is that he really does reek of garlic. She’s suddenly very tired, aware that it’s been a long day and there’s another to follow. She kisses Alex on the cheek. ‘That was rather nice!’ she whispers.

‘Night, Pip,’ he replies sleepily, with gratitude. He’s happy that she’s off. The bed is far too small to accommodate two, even for the briefest post-coital cuddle.

‘Goodbye, Alex,’ Pip says quietly, with intent.

TWENTY-SIX

So far, we’ve seen Pip with three very different men. In the East End. In her own bed. On top of a mountain. Although she would say that Caleb probably leads purely in terms of consistent erotic value, the orgasm with Alex actually ranks the highest. Though she’d currently dispute the final analysis, we can see that there is no contest with whom she has the best overall fit. Though she and Zac might just about recognize this, even if it is lurking in some far-flung region of their subconscious at present, the point is whether the accountant and the clown can digest humble pie and come together again to walk hand in hand into the sunset for us. Unfortunately, at this juncture, both have convinced themselves that they’re not remotely bothered about seeing each other again. Neither actually thinks that there’s even a future for a friendship now, let alone the potential for a relationship in the offing.

Currently, there’s no way they’d even have a one-off, no-strings shag again. Pip has quite put Zac off her. And she’s made her mountain-top shenanigans with Alex pale Zac into an insignificant slot in her past. Sexual sorbet. She had a bad taste in her mouth. She tells herself that the shag with Alex has cleared it and shoved Zac unceremoniously to the back of her mind. Or so she likes to think. If she thought otherwise, as indeed she did all too briefly in Derbyshire, she’d have to admit that the mess is of her own making – as are the amends. No. It’s much easier to put the baggage into storage. And that’s what she thinks she’s done.

‘Oh, hullo, is that Merry Martha the clown?’

‘Speaking!’

‘Hi there, this is June Price – we spoke a couple of weeks ago about my son’s party?’

‘Hold on a tick, I’ll just fetch my diary.’

‘This coming Sunday?’

‘Sunday, Sunday. Ah yes! Tom.’

‘Yup. Smashing – just to confirm a few details.’

‘Absolutely – fire away!’

Pip has always enjoyed August for work. It might not be the most lucrative month, but it’s certainly the most civilized. She detests December though she can easily double her normal wage. In August, there’s as much outdoor work for a clown as indoor. Plus, by then the children are well relaxed into the pace of their summer holiday from school. Behaviour is usually very good. Energy levels have been managed by plenty of exercise and fresh air. Parks and clubs lay on special activities that are godsends for parents and treats for children. Being with friends becomes special and something to look forward to, rather than run-of-the-mill as in term-time. The beginning of August is a time long before boredom. Parents are usually revitalized by the proximity of a gorgeous vacation abroad. Moods are generally good throughout the households.

Pip has every reason to look forward to working on the first Sunday in August. The party is local. Swiss Cottage. She’s not even needed till 3.30 p.m. There’ll be only fifteen children. Thus she needn’t be abstemious at the party Megan’s throwing the night before. She can have a good lie-in and a leisurely time with the Sunday papers. She’ll go to Covent Garden on Wednesday – she has no other appointments that day. She’ll buy something frivolous to wear (so what if it’s just the once) to Megan’s party. And she needs to replenish her supplies of slap. She’s working Tuesday and Thursday as Dr Pippity, of course. Friday morning she’ll be at Brent Cross shopping centre, hired by a children’s boutique to pull in the punters. No problem.

‘Oh, hi, this is a message for Merry Martha. Hullo, it’s June Price here – about the party on Sunday. Can you give me a quick ring at some point? Just want to discuss a few more details. Thanks so much. Oh, it’s now Thursday. Tea-time. Thanks. Bye.’

Pip returned Mrs Price’s call on Friday afternoon. Brent Cross had been frantic but fun and she’d been paid cash there and then.

‘Mrs Price? Merry Martha here.’ Pip had the telephone tucked under her chin whilst she wound tissues between her toes. She was giving herself a pedicure. After she’d finished clowning in Brent Cross, she’d popped into the branch of Fenwick’s there. With all that cash in hand, she’d treated herself to some Chanel nail polish. Rouge Noir. Reassuringly expensive. Now, with phone secured between ear and shoulder, Pip was gliding the varnish on in slicks the consistency of crude oil and the luscious hue of aubergine.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Price, who envisaged Merry Martha taking the call dressed as Merry Martha, ‘thanks for getting back to me.’

‘Is everything OK for Sunday?’ Pip asked, neatening up her little toenail by removing a tiny fleck of stray nail polish with her thumbnail. ‘I’ve bought new batteries for my light-up nose!’

‘Wonderful!’ Mrs Price laughed. ‘My son – Tom, the birthday boy, of course – wanted me to ask you if you’d be doing balloons.’

‘Of course! No birthday is complete without balloons.’

Mrs Price sighed with relief. ‘He always keeps them – even when they’re flat and squidgy. Your parrot is his favourite. He’s had a couple of them.’

‘Oh?’ Pip said. ‘Has he seen me before, then?’

‘Gosh, yes!’ Mrs Price enthused. ‘You’re his best birthday wish come true!’

‘How lovely,’ Pip smiled, three toes done, seven to go. Maybe she’d do her fingernails, too. ‘I’ll make sure it’s a party to remember.’

‘On a personal level,’ Mrs Price confided, ‘I’m so looking forward to him having a clown at home rather than hospital.’

Pip paused, varnish brush loaded, hovering. ‘Hospital?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Price, ‘Tom knows you foremost as Dr Pippity.’

‘Tom?’

‘I mean, I doubt whether you’d know him – you must see so many kids,’ Mrs Price continued almost apologetically. ‘My son Tom has treatment at St Bea’s,’ she explained, ‘for eczema.’

A glob of nail polish fell in slow motion from the brush. It hit the sofa. It was followed by another drip. Which fell on the carpet. Two drops. Darker and thicker than blood. As a stain, even more difficult to remove.

‘Tom,’ Pip repeated, unable to make sense of the spilt polish, or the identity of the child; the word ‘eczema’ echoing cacophonously around her head.

‘As I said,’ Mrs Price repeated warmly, ‘you must see so many children, I doubt whether you’d remember him. Though you might when you see him. He’s so gorgeous, even if I do say so myself. Proud mum and all that!’

‘Actually, I do know Tom,’ Pip said distractedly, absent-mindedly coating an expanse of toe, almost down to the joint, with nail varnish. ‘Hermione from Harry Potter. He like Hermione.’

‘Yes!’ Mrs Price exclaimed, exuding gratitude. ‘Hermione! That’ll be Tom. He’s so excited about his party – I can’t tell you.’

‘Tell him I’ll see him on his birthday,’ Pip said in a monotone voice she couldn’t help. ‘Tell Tom I’m looking forward to it, too.’

No, she wasn’t. Pip wasn’t looking forward to the party at all. If there was any way she could get out of it, she would. She regarded her six painted toes, three of which were horrendously smudged and messy. She stared at the spilt polish. She didn’t have the energy or inclination to finish her pedicure or set to work on the stains on her sofa and carpet. She sat there, the brush out of the bottle, drying out, wondering if there was any way she could cancel her Sunday booking. In fact, there were plenty of ways – she simply had to choose one, and quickly. She could phone in with fictitious flu or a made-up migraine or an imaginary sprained ankle. She could call Fizzie Lizzie and ask her if she’d like the job instead. And if Fizzie Lizzie, ever busy and popular, couldn’t help, Pip could try Bo Jingles – she was local. As was Betty Brown Clumsy Clown. She was great with balloons. There were many possibilities. But Pip knew that none would do. If she hadn’t heard firsthand that Tom himself was so excited, if she hadn’t been asked on Tom’s behalf about the sodding balloons, cancelling would have been no problem. But the boy was looking forward to Merry Martha making his day. So how on earth could Pip McCabe refuse?

Pip observed the entry for Sunday in her diary: ‘Price Party, 3.30 p.m. Swiss Cott. (Tom / 6 yrs).’

Was there any way she really could have put two and two together? No. No clues at all. The surname Holmes hadn’t been mentioned; the location was Swiss Cottage, not Hampstead. It was Tom’s mother who was organizing it. Mrs Price had mentioned her husband; however, the father of her child had not come up in conversation by name or status. There had been no opportunity for Pip to have even an inkling of anything untoward or unconventional. Let alone that this woman had borne the child of the man Pip herself had bedded.

Momentarily, Pip harboured a faint hope that maybe Tom’s broken home was just that – dysfunctional parents divvying up alternate birthdays, alternate Christmases, weekends, bank holidays, whatevers. That this year it was the mother’s turn. Hopefully, Zac was persona non grata and had no invitation, let alone access, to his son’s sixth birthday party. But Pip swiftly cursed herself. That wasn’t wishful thinking, it was utterly unpleasant and cruel. She was ashamed. Even if they weren’t together, Tom’s parents provided him with a stable and loving childhood, surely.

Pip thought back to that time in the hospital – the first time when Zac had asked her out, having stalked her through Out-patients and up to the renal ward. Asked her out for a drink. Orangey-lemony-blackcurranty squash. Hadn’t both parents been with Tom then? She’d had no idea they were anything other than a conventional happy family. Which was precisely why Zac’s approach and overture back then had appeared so unsavoury to Pip. Pip let her gaze fall on the sorry state of her half-varnished toes. What a bloody mess. The simplest fact was the most logical – June Price, with whom the child lived, had organized his sixth birthday party at home. You wouldn’t fit fifteen children in Zac’s sitting-room, after all. The Eames lounger wouldn’t cope. It wouldn’t be fair on the banana chair. Parking was a nightmare. There was only the one bay and that was for his Audi.

Pip replaced the brush in the bottle of nail polish. She placed it in the waste-paper basket. Again, she scrutinized the booking as it was written in her appointments diary. It was glaringly obvious from the phone calls that Tom’s mother had no idea that the clown she’d hired for her son’s sixth birthday, the very clown who had brought him so much pleasure and comfort, had in fact had sex with her ex-partner, Tom’s father. Twice. Pip realized that June Price, therefore, wouldn’t have a clue that now the clown and the ex-partner were both harbouring a strong desire never to see each other again. Mrs Price would never have given Merry Martha the gig, had she known.

And, had she known, she certainly wouldn’t have told Zac to bring his South African ‘friend’ along with him.

Fuck fuck fuck. I can’t cancel now. Bugger bollocks. Of course Zac will be there. Shit shit shit. There’s nail varnish everywhere.

TWENTY-SEVEN

And what does Zac know of the birthday festivities for his son? Nothing at all. Just that June has devoted her life, or the past month at the very least, to organizing everything. What luxury to leave it all in his ex-partner’s capable hands. Trips to Waitrose, Tesco, Asda, M&S and Sainsbury’s. Cake ordering. Entertainment organizing. Goody-bag stuffing. Invites and chase-ups. Bulk purchasing of wet wipes. Not to mention the post-party-fallout clean-up operation. June has seen to it all, and done so with aplomb, good grace, boundless energy and great results.

‘Just turn up, Zac,’ she’s told him, ‘and bring that new one – Julietta-ana – by all means.’

Juliana is happy to attend the party – she had nothing else planned and, with London in August being so dead, it seemed unlikely that any viable alternatives would materialize. Anyway, she could check out Zac’s ex-partner and wish his son a happy birthday in one fell swoop. However, she had no desire to traipse around Toys “R” Us. That was well beyond the call of duty. She’ll meet Zac later on. She’ll go and have a massage first. La Stone therapy.

Zac is spending his Sunday morning alone in the toy superstore wondering how many automated model dumper trucks a six-year-old can have. Wouldn’t he like Lego? A jigsaw? No, Tom wants dumper trucks. He already has a veritable fleet.

‘Maybe he’s going into business,’ Zac laughs out loud. ‘My son Tom, the Eddie Stobart of model trucks and tractors!’

Actually, Zac is standing in the middle of the dolls aisle, staring absent-mindedly at a doll that the packaging proclaims ‘Makes pee pee. Cries. Says Mamma. Realistically. Requires 2 AA batteries’. The doll isn’t remotely realistic. It’s quite frightening, really, with a pug-ugly face, staring eyes and a granny’s hairdo. But Zac is preoccupied with the image of Tom as a truckie and he’s enjoying another hearty chuckle. A mother standing nearby fixes him with a look of mistrust and ushers her young daughter away. Zac doesn’t notice. He heads for the model cars and finds a smorgasbord crammed with them. After great deliberation, he chooses a green machine. He’s fairly sure there’s not one similar – in hue, form or multifunctions – in his son’s collection. It requires four AA batteries, which can only be a good thing. Zac feels he’s found the ultimate present and he’s proud. He heads for Hampstead, spending ages in a variety of shops en route in pursuit of the perfect birthday card. It’s almost lunch-time. He told June he’d arrive just after lunch. So he could have some quality one-to-one time with his son, the brand new six-year-old, before the party begins.

June Price’s front doorbell goes.

‘Can someone get that?’ she shouts through from her kitchen. ‘I’m having an icing crisis!’

‘I’ll go,’ Zac offers, leaving Tom enthralled with his shiny green dumper truck while his stepfather Rob-Dad is engrossed in constructing impressive garaging from empty present boxes. Zac goes to the front door.

There stands Juliana.

There stands Pip.

Pip and Juliana are stood on the doorstep.

Pip and Juliana are standing there, side by side, right in front of Zac. Though he blinks hard, it doesn’t make a blind bit of sense.

Where are you going to look, Zac? What are you going to say?

Fuck me.

Luckily, he says that to himself.

Pip and Juliana. Juliana and Pip. Pip in jeans and a T-shirt. Juliana in Joseph.

‘Hi,’ he says, not looking at either woman, staring over both their heads instead, ‘come on in.’

The three of them hovered in the hallway until June came through from the kitchen. For a woman emerging from the midst of intricate icing issues, she looked remarkably composed – and clean. Mahogany hair swishing around her face in a meticulous bob, radiant skin, eyes sparkling behind fashionably frameless spectacles, a genuine smile subtly enhanced by just a lick of lipstick.

‘Hullo,’ June greeted them cordially, ‘hullo.’ She shook Juliana’s hand first, then Pip’s. ‘Nice to meet you,’ she told the former, ‘fantastic to see you,’ she told the latter. ‘Zac, you settle Juliana – I’ll take Martha up to change.’

‘Pip,’ Zac said. June didn’t say ‘pardon’ because she was used to Zac’s quirky expressions and presumed that to be one.

‘My name is Pip when I’m like this,’ said Pip, patting her T-shirt. Zac stared at her, June regarded her thoughtfully, Juliana wasn’t remotely interested. ‘Merry Martha, like Dr Pippity, is my clown,’ Pip explained, holding up her bag, brimming with props and costume, for emphasis.

June nodded. ‘What’s your real name, then?’ she asked, because she didn’t think that ‘Pip’ could be a real name. Actually, she’s right, in a way.

‘Philippa,’ Pip said with a weary sigh. She suddenly felt too fuddled to explain or justify. She was acutely aware of Zac’s proximity. How deluded must she have been, she wondered, to presume that she’d never have to see him again? She might well be allowed to disappear and change and reappear in her wacky alter ego, but she’d still have to share the same orbit for the rest of the afternoon. She felt as tired as if she’d just performed and done an encore for forty children. ‘Philippa McCabe,’ she said to June, hoping that would be enough.

It satisfied June. ‘Come on, Ms McCabe, let’s get you settled.’

As Zac led Juliana through to the sitting-room, he thought how he had never heard Pip refer to herself by her full name. It sounded odd. Too many syllables or something. Too mature or sophisticated, somehow. Out of sorts with the girl he knew. Philippa. It sounded so rounded, feminine. But Pip suited her better. It was punchy and bright and complemented her personality, rhyming with ‘zip’ and ‘flip’ and ‘hip’ – all of which defined her. As well as ‘blip’, which Zac tells himself sternly is all she’d been.

Now, take Juliana – there, even more syllables. And undeniably more mature, indisputably more sophisticated, ultimately less complex. Who cared that nothing seemed to rhyme with her name – neither she nor he had any delusions of poetry between them. Zac took Juliana through to see the birthday boy, whom she greeted in the same demure manner she’d employ to greet a forty-year-old. Friend, colleague, stranger, lover, child – she gave each her beautifully manicured hand to hold. Zac was slightly disappointed that she chose to sit by the window and flip through one of June’s glossy magazines. She expressed no interest in the truck, the day, the garaging. Rob-Dad seemed to catch her eye temporarily, though he remained far more engrossed in his cardboard architecture. Tom, however, didn’t seem to notice, let alone care – and that, thought Zac, was the main thing, surely.

June was so open and friendly towards Pip, taking her to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, nattering away as she led her up to the spare room, that Pip felt almost obliged to inform her of the history with Zac to save any future embarrassment. Of course, she did no such thing. But she immediately warmed to June and half wondered why Zac and she were not together. To Pip, they seemed to have all the attributes of a very good couple.

It’s a bit sad, isn’t it – but something of a phenomenon, too, I think – that you often see a couple who seem so well suited but who just can’t keep it together.

Yes, Pip, or even get it together in the first place.

‘This is the spare room,’ June announced, ‘though it’s hardly spare – it is an essential rather than surplus space where we unceremoniously dump all our stuff.’ She took Pip into the room almost proudly. ‘Actually, it’s one of my favourite places in the house. It’s the contents that make it so. I spend hours in here, mooching and reminiscing. I can’t work out whether it’s cathartic or a bit pathetic.’ She gestured to a wall stacked to the ceiling with boxes. ‘Books, photo albums, baby clothes, all my university English files and essays, Rob’s collection of model cars, mine of wooden ducks.’ June rubbed her brow. ‘My grandmother’s wedding dress is in that trunk. Moiré taffeta and stunning. I suppose I should be ruthless and unsentimental and chuck the lot. But would you?’

Pip shook her head vehemently. ‘Luckily, I have my childhood home in Derbyshire to amass all the stuff I wouldn’t dream of chucking out – which is basically everything I’ve ever owned.’

June laughed. ‘I mean, I’ll put money on my husband never using that sodding windsurf board again – he has no sense of balance, let alone sea legs, or much affinity with the water at all!’ Pip leant her back against something – a cot. ‘I guarantee you, that will never be used again!’ June proclaimed. Pip looked a little startled until June made a scissors-snipping gesture with her fingers and winked at her. ‘Do you have children?’ she asked Pip.

‘No,’ Pip confirmed, a pregnant pause causing her to wonder whether she ought to justify or explain.

‘I just have the one,’ June said, ‘but not with my husband – with the bloke who let you in. My ex.’

Pip nodded as if she was only vaguely interested and far more concerned with slurping her tea. Suddenly, though, she wondered how June and Zac’s relationship did work; logistically, emotionally. Also, why it hadn’t worked. And the fact that they weren’t together – but obviously remained fond of each other and in constant contact – how on earth did that work? How was so little visible damage possible? Pip knew this was probably a perfect time to probe – before any details were revealed about herself and Zac. Yet there seemed little point. There was nothing between them. And that, she had to concede, was the point. Just a coincidence that she was there today. That Zac was the father of the kid. Yet still Pip felt awkward.

‘It’s cool,’ shrugged June, who had warmed immediately to Philippa far more than she had to the willowy South African. ‘Zac – Tom’s dad – and my husband get along fine and always have. I think I’m lucky that the only two men I’ve ever been serious about are so well-balanced and sorted within themselves. Plus that my son has two fantastic fathers – the lucky little bugger!’

Please don’t ask me if I’m involved with anyone.

Pip desperately searched the room in a glance for some interesting possession or other that would serve to change the topic of conversation. And distract her from considering the words ‘well-balanced’ and ‘sorted’ being used in conjunction with Zac.

‘Are you involved with anyone?’ June asked.

‘No, no,’ Pip said breezily, physically brushing the question away with a swipe of her hand, ‘haven’t really had the time or the inclination recently.’

‘Mind you,’ June said, wistful, even gently jealous, ‘I half envy you all that peace and quiet. The fact that you need answer to no one but yourself – you need think of no one but yourself. Just the thought of luxuriating in a bath every single bloody day! It’s an in-and-out job for me,’ she bemoaned. ‘Rather like sex once you’re married,’ she continued, with good comic timing and a facial expression to match. ‘I ought to let you transform yourself into Merry Martha,’ June apologized. ‘The bathroom’s next door along. Are you sure you have everything? There’s loads of cotton wool and all manner of potions and lotions – just help yourself.’

Pip assured her she was well stocked. She liked June instantly; she could well imagine her easily fitting into girls’ nights with her sisters and pals. Pip swiftly decided to blame Zac for spoiling this potential.

‘Thanks,’ Pip said, ‘thanks for the coffee. And the chat. Sometimes, I’m ignored – shoved into a broom cupboard and just as soon shoved out the front door.’

‘Nightmare,’ June murmured with genuine concern. ‘You can stay for tea, if you like. Now I’m going down to scrutinize Juliana – that woman you came in with? She’s my ex – Zac’s – new squeeze and I’m intrigued. Gorgeous shoes and amazing legs – the cow. But that’s all I’ve clocked so far. I’m hoping she has unfortunate teeth. Or no personality.’ With that, she grinned at Pip and turned for the door. ‘It’s odd, isn’t it – I mean, I have no desires, latent or otherwise, for Zac. No way! Not in the slightest. In fact, I’d love to see him happily settled.’ June was then momentarily distracted by some forgotten possession or other peeking out of a storage box. She shook her head to restore her to the present. Pip would have shaken her otherwise for the same effect – she was hanging on her every word. ‘Yes, I’d love Zac to find – or at least embrace – the kind of stability and life I’ve found,’ June theorized, ‘and yet there will always be something just a little galling about him having glamorous girlfriends.’ She bit her lip as if she’d revealed some deplorable side of her personality. ‘Actually,’ she continued, ‘it probably comes down to me being a bitch. I’m sure Aesop has a suitable fable! Dog in a manger? I don’t know – more like, I’m happy for him to feast all he likes, as long as it’s bland!’

Pip McCabe feels horribly, disastrously, helplessly bland. She wants to slump herself down in a self-pitying heap. Unfortunately, she chooses an old Space Hopper and thus has to do a fair bit of precarious balancing which makes her feel all the more ungainly. Lovely, attractive, bubbly June. A child. A fulfilling marriage. A mature relationship with an ex. A three-bedroom house. A spare room with memories she’s not embarrassed by. A skill with cake icing. Suddenly, Pip wants to be June.

Juli-bloody-ana. Pip had no idea. She’d’ve analysed her painstakingly had she known. She had assumed the slightly aloof, fabulously coutured slender woman was a mother of a party-goer. It hadn’t crossed Pip’s mind that she was in any way attached to Zac. She didn’t recognize Juliana as the woman Zac was with at the cinema that time. Not that she’d taken much notice. She hadn’t once stopped to wonder if Zac was seeing someone else more recently. Since they’d slept together. She hadn’t actually stopped to wonder what he was up to. If he was even happy or in good health. She’d confined him to a closed moment in time, locked him in a dim part of her mind – and hadn’t presumed reality to treat him any differently. She hadn’t bothered to consider that he might not be at the party on his own. That his life might well be a party. She hadn’t stopped to think that he’d be utterly capable of moving on, of inviting other women into his bed. Of forgetting all about Pip. Had Juliana been treated to cream tea and A Flock of Seagulls? A rather private teenagery side of Pip suddenly wondered petulantly whether Zac actually liked Juliana more than he’d ever liked her.

Sitting up there, she tried to stabilize herself on the Space Hopper whilst trying to kid herself she was stable in herself. To maintain a brooding melancholy was no mean feat, but her acrobatic abilities helped. Somehow, she felt diminished; in her mind’s eye she elongated, elevated and further beautified Juliana. She was sure, if she ventured downstairs, she’d confront a vamp of proportions to rival Elle MacPherson. No doubt embroiled with Zac in erotic kissing imbued with a healthy, rare mix of tenderness and desire. Pip even looked out of the window to see if there was a flat roof to jump on to, or a fire-escape to make her exit by. But she could hear the doorbell ringing, and the squawks and falsetto chattering of a growing number of six-year-olds.

I feel horribly uneasy. Like a child who does not want to perform. I feel very alone and rather small, by myself in this room, in this house. With all of them downstairs. I don’t want to be here! I want to go home! I want to do a disappearing act, not clown around in front of Zac. June. And Juli-bloody-ana.

If you weren’t so fiercely private, you could be on the phone now, to any of your friends and sisters. For comfort and support. Advice and a game plan. But they have no idea of your situation because you’ve fastidiously locked them out.

Zac and I ended badly. Things like that happen. All the time. But we can’t change that.

Yes, you can.

Whatever. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Look at the time. This is work. And with a bit of slap and a change of clothes, I can let Merry Martha take over for the afternoon and give myself a break.

Actually, Pip, you need to give yourself a hard time before you’ve earned a break.

Pip prevaricated over walking downstairs, finally making a very slow passage indeed towards her audience. She walked with the deliberation of someone trying not to damage eggshells, or of someone trying not to be damaged by a carpet of broken glass; as if every step had the potential to turn into a stumble, as if she was wearing incredibly high heels with a restrictive gown. Pip, however, was in motley and clumpy shoes. Every step, however slow or tiny, was bringing her nearer to a place she’d rather be far from, closer to a man she didn’t want to see again, to his new girlfriend who highlighted all her own inadequacies, to his ex-partner who symbolized all that she didn’t have and most likely never would have. For the first time in her professional life, Pip was dreading taking centre stage. She felt sure she was to be the laughing stock. It felt as though she was falling, falling flat and flailing and fast.

She’d applied her slap as meticulously as ever. Dressed herself carefully and festooned herself with the tricks of her trade. But for the first time in her career, Pip knew she had merely painted on a clown mask. She was simply wearing fancy dress. The notion was appalling.

Merry Martha hadn’t come through that afternoon. Pip was on her own. Surely, everyone would be able to see behind the painted smile. June wouldn’t have her money’s worth. Tom’s expectations and memories would be dashed. Only Juli-bloody-ana would be satisfied. This, however, was on the assumption that Pip had been important enough to Zac to be known of by his new girlfriend. Pip then supposed Zac probably didn’t give a shit. That she hadn’t been important enough for him to mention to his current girlfriend. Please God, then, let him not even care to watch her act. Pip was resigned to feeling lousy. For the next hour or so in a full house. As well as home alone later. And for God knows how long after that.

It’s interesting how one party, in one location, can mean so many different things to those who are there.

Without exception (apart from perhaps a small boy who threw up after one marshmallow too many), the children had a ball that afternoon; a stupendous, overexcited time of it.

Pip, though, loathed every moment. Pretending to be Merry Martha was as difficult as if she had chosen any other existing clown to impersonate. Usually, Martha simply took over Pip and the act tumbled along naturally. This afternoon, every joke, each trick, the lilt of her voice, every song and whistle, required immense strength of character combined with ten years of experience to pull off.

Zac felt supremely irritated – he felt denied the chance just to enjoy the festivities for Tom’s sake and on Tom’s level. He resented the fact that he had to consciously think about where he was looking. He really didn’t want to catch Pip’s eye. But he felt obliged to catch Juliana’s though he had no desire to do so. He didn’t want to answer when his ex-partner sidled up to him and said, ‘Cool clown – look how delighted Tom is!’ Ruth’s wink-wink-nudge-nudging was near-unbearable. When she elbowed him during an elaborate part of Pip’s act, he felt like shoving her back. Halfway across the room and out into the hallway. He hated himself for frequently checking his watch. He shouldn’t be wishing his son’s sixth birthday party would be over.

Juliana was plain bored. She found the noise level intolerable and the food stomach-turning. She found June disappointingly mumsy and her new husband good-looking but gormless. These people were not her type. Their life was not one she coveted. She was slightly put off Zac because of his inextricable links here. Tom didn’t interest her at all. She felt nothing towards him, really. He was a kid. What could you add to that?

June was exhausted and delighted – her happiness directly proportionate to the breadth and longevity of the youngsters’ smiles. She craved no acknowledgement for her organizational skills. She just wanted to witness their smiles and the excitable yacking. She wanted Tom to proclaim this day the best in his life.

Rob-Dad simply thought it was all rather jolly. He even managed to sneak off unnoticed every now and then to catch up on some lap or other of the Grand Prix.

Tom was in seventh heaven. Or sixth, rather. It was his special day and everyone was ensuring he didn’t forget it for a moment. The presents were fantastic! And look at all this stuff Mum’s done to eat! And almost best of all, the clown – his clown – in his own front room, with balloons and songs and brilliantly stupid tricks. Tom threw himself into the vortex of his party, letting the action and the affection revolve around him. It was the best day of his life. No, the very best day was the one when the bandages came off. This, then, was the second-best day of his life. And anyway, he was six now, near enough a big boy, he’d be growing out of his eczema soon, wouldn’t he.

Out of all the guests, of any age, it was perhaps Ruth who was enjoying the party the most because it delighted her on so many different levels. She adored her nephew, Tom, and it was wonderful to see him so bright-eyed and his skin so good. She adored his father – her brother-in-law. And loved the house. And June’s cooking. And June. And what icing on the cake Juliana provided! Ample fodder for Ruth and June to nip off to the kitchen later for furtive bouts of analysis and general deconstruction. And if there was a cherry on the top, then the clown girl was it. Ruth didn’t know whether to watch Merry Martha perform, or to observe Billy and Tom’s pleasure in her act, or to scrutinize Zac’s reaction to her, or assess how much Juliana knew. Or should she just grab June’s elbow, haul her out to the kitchen and reveal all? Once she’d seen Billy and Tom’s jaw-dropped delight in the entertainer and had observed Zac shuffle uneasily, checking his watch for the umpteenth time; once she’d seen Juliana stifle yet another yawn and smirk at some of the soft furnishings in the house, Ruth grabbed June and mouthed, ‘Kitchen! Now!’

June couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

‘Backtrack, backtrack!’ she demanded, rooting through a drawer for a bottle opener while tearing off the collar on a bottle of Semillon with her teeth. ‘You’re telling me that the clown and Zac have had some kind of fling?’

Ruth nodded.

‘Like, with dates?’ June tried to make sense.

Ruth nodded vigorously, grateful for a good glug of wine.

‘And sex?’ June asked, taking a swig direct from the bottle before filling a glass.

Ruth was wide-eyed, her head bobbing as though she was utterly drunk already.

‘My ex? Tom’s clown?’ June tried to fathom, downing wine as if it were juice. ‘Have had sex?’

Ruth grinned. ‘Yup, a couple of times, I think.’

‘How?’ June marvelled.

Ruth cocked an eyebrow. ‘I guess he put his willy in her—’

‘Yes, yes!’ June laughed. ‘But how on earth did my ex get it together with a clown? This clown. Or how in hell’s name did the clown come by my ex?’

Ruth shrugged. ‘I think it’s been quite some story,’ she said reflectively.

June paused for a moment. ‘Sounds like it.’ She took a contemplative sip. ‘Actually, I instinctively really like the clown,’ she said, ‘even more so now I’ve met Juliana. The Willowy One seems to me to be on the patronizing side of aloof – I can’t imagine sharing chocolate, wine and gossip with her. But I have a hunch Pip is much more on our wavelength.’

‘Snap,’ said Ruth. ‘Actually, I’ve watched Juliana cast all sorts of withering looks over your fixtures and fittings. Like she disapproves.’

‘There again,’ said June, ever the diplomat, ‘maybe she just has an awkward manner. Maybe she’s just shy? I mean, perhaps Zac really likes her. Though I can’t see what he sees in her – apart from the obvious!’

The two women looked at each other and then laughed.

‘But,’ June continued, ‘unfortunately, it seems that Pip is in Zac’s past tense.’

‘And he does seem incredibly tense,’ Ruth mused.

‘Right, thinking hats on,’ June said. ‘God, poor Philippa – she’ll be mortified when she finds out that I know. I was giving her all sorts of gory details upstairs.’

‘A clown and an accountant,’ Ruth declared. ‘Doesn’t look particularly promising on paper, does it?’

June considered this. ‘Agreed. Plus the fact that something has obviously gone awry,’ she reasoned. ‘Any ideas or info?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ruth replied, ‘I mean, Zac doesn’t really “do” details, does he?’

June chinked glasses with Ruth and they sipped their wine while they set their minds to scheming.

‘Well, for starters,’ June said with a sly lick of her lips, ‘we need to throw them together – I could always pretend not to have any cash and could my ex possibly pay the clown for services rendered?’

‘But wouldn’t they both be mortified?’ Ruth gasped.

June meant no malice. ‘My thinking is that if it’s an outside party making them feel awkward, then they’ll seek some kind of solace in each other,’ June revealed. ‘Perhaps. Sort of. I hope. You never know.’

‘Well, it’s worth a try,’ Ruth conceded, ‘it’ll get them alone and talking at any rate.’ They returned to the mêlée. Merry Martha was doing a handstand. June and Ruth looked at each other in triumph. They were on the right track. It wasn’t just the children who were trying to look up her skirt. Or was it down, from that angle? Ruth and June observed that the father of the birthday boy, whether subconsciously or otherwise, appeared to be gazing at her gusset, too.

‘Zac,’ June whispered, sidling up to him, ‘would you mind awfully paying the clown? Rob and I are out of cash – we spent it all at Sainsbury’s.’ Zac regarded June. Utter horror zigzagged across his brow and made a gaping aperture of his mouth. ‘Thanks so much,’ June said artlessly, squeezing his arm, ‘much appreciated.’ Still Zac looked appalled. ‘You do have cash, don’t you?’ June asked with contrived innocence. Zac baulked and frowned and couldn’t say a word but he checked his wallet and there were obviously enough twenty-pound notes for the fee. ‘You’re a star,’ June said. ‘I’ll pay you back. I’ve asked the clown to stay for tea, too.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

Please please please don’t let her stay for tea.

Zac was practically choking on birthday cake.

Please please please let me be able to leave without bumping into him.

Pip was taking her make-up off as quickly, if not as thoroughly, as she could. Stay for tea? Not likely!

She descended the stairs to the hallway as noiselessly as possible. Which was a stupid thing to do, really, as it meant that no one heard her and therefore no one knew she wanted to go and needed to be paid. She gave a little cough. But the racket coming from the kitchen was such that even a fully voiced ‘hullo’ from the hallway would have gone unheard. Pip felt down and defeated.

If I had less pride and more dignity, maybe I’d just go without being paid. Fuck it, they can send a cheque in the post.

But wouldn’t you be more noticeable by your disappearance? Wouldn’t they wonder why?

Oh great. Just great. Fucking marvellous. This is all I need.

‘Hi,’ says the Willowy One, emerging from the guest WC in the hall.

The One in Jeans, with hair jutting this way and that, traces of make-up clinging here and there, simply raises her hand in a humble wave.

Juliana looks a little puzzled. ‘You OK?’

‘Just dandy,’ Pip replies flatly, trying not to notice the extraordinary length of the woman’s legs, nor how flawless her complexion or fine her bust, trying to turn deaf ears to the description ‘sultry vamp’ which is in her mind. ‘Just getting ready to go home,’ Pip says. This is good enough for Juliana who returns to the party. It is of some consolation to Pip, however puerile, that Juliana has left a noticeable smell in the guest cloakroom.

‘That clown is hovering by the front door,’ Juliana tells June.

‘Tell Zac, will you?’ June asks Juliana.

‘That clown is hovering by the front door,’ Juliana tells Zac.

Zac tries to catch June’s eye but his ex-partner is deep in conversation with Ruth. He looks at Juliana. She looks bored. Suddenly, he feels strongly that even if she is bored, she shouldn’t show it. It is Tom’s birthday, for Christ’s sake. His son, after all. Zac leaves the kitchen.

Pip is standing by the front door, taking an inordinate interest in a fairly nondescript brass finger-plate. Zac clears his throat. She turns and stares before her eyes dart this way and that. He looks pissed off and she feels uncomfortable.

‘You all right?’ he asks perfunctorily. ‘Juliana said you looked like you were loitering.’

‘I’m fine!’ Pip says. ‘Juliana was coming out of the loo as I came downstairs.’

An awkward silence ensues. It saddens Pip who suddenly remembers vividly the daft phone calls she’s shared with this man. The ease at which they’ve bantered late at night or over tea. How kind he was when she was sobbing on the bench near his office. The delight he’s taken in her work. Snogging in his car. The fact that he does breakfast in bed. Of his own accord. With excellent coffee. That he decants milk from carton to china. She glances across at him, a sensation welling inside her that could very well spill into an audible apology if only she’d let it. But she sees that he’s fidgeting and so she finds it easier to tell herself that he’d rather she bugger off than do declarations.

‘I’m just going,’ she says, tipping her head and trying to smile in a gentle way. ‘Please say “goodbye” to Tom. He looks so well – his skin has improved dramatically since I last saw him. And thank June – she’s great.’

Zac nods – his son and ex-partner are great. He leans against the wall, hands in pockets, one leg bent nonchalantly. But his easy posture belies his discomfort. He hasn’t made eye contact with Pip. He’s spoken to the top of her head, the middle of her T-shirt, her shoes, a dent in the front door just to the right of her. He takes out his wallet. ‘June’s out of cash,’ he says quietly.

‘A cheque will do!’ Pip declares, not wanting Zac to pay her, cash or otherwise. The concept is horrendous. It’s not just that she feels suddenly dirty, or cheap – but more that she believes if she accepts money from Zac a formality will then exist which will supersede any vestige of friendship. They’ll become little more than business acquaintances.

‘It’s cool,’ Zac shrugs, thumbing through the notes.

‘Honestly! Please!’ Pip pleads, though an image of that month’s red bills looms large in her mind’s eye. ‘Tell June to pop a cheque in the post.’

‘She likes to honour her debts,’ Zac explains.

‘I trust her!’ Pip cries.

‘She’s insisting,’ Zac says firmly, approaching Pip with the money. Pip can’t back away because she’s pressed against the door as it is. ‘Here,’ says Zac, ‘take it. Tom’s had a brilliant party. Thank you.’

Reluctantly, Pip takes the money and shoves it in her back pocket. ‘Pleasure,’ she says quietly.

Zac backs away. He passes the guest WC and wrinkles his nose, shutting the door firmly. Temporarily, Pip experiences an odd sense of satisfaction, of one-upmanship over Juliana. But it’s only fleeting. Why should it be otherwise – Juliana is with Zac and Pip is heading home on her own. ‘See you around, then,’ Zac says, turning.

‘Bye,’ Pip mumbles because there’s no opening for small talk, let alone a chat. She tries to open the door but she’s all thumbs. Zac does it for her. The afternoon sunlight hits them, rendering them momentarily blind. Pip descends the short flight of steps to the street jerkily, blinking. She glances back at Zac. He’s hovering at the door. Good, she thinks, good. Hovering could well be the first step to wavering. She raises her hand to wave and puts a smile on her face. ‘Ta-ta,’ she says.

‘Cheerio,’ he replies, hands in pockets but shoulders relaxed. She feels her spirits lift.

That’s such a Zac thing to say – ‘cheerio’.

She turns back to say something else. She’s not sure what. Anything. Whatever. But the door has been closed and Zac has gone.

TWENTY-NINE

Pip is back at her flat again. Slumped down on her sofa, emotionally and physically exhausted; grateful for the tranquillity and thankful for solitude. She sits and stares at nothing in particular, unable to prevent a barrage of images from her recent past from rampaging across her mind’s eye. Caleb, Zac, Alex. London, Derbyshire, France. Fen, Cat, Django. Megan, Dominic. Dr Pippity, Merry Martha. Tom, Billy. Hoxton, Hampstead. Lights off, curtains open. Hospital wards, accountancy offices. Text messages, tea for two. Cheesy music and cheesy Doritos. Laughing, crying. Shower curtains, bunk beds. It’s been a funny few months; colourful, for sure. The look and feel. The smells and sounds. The different tastes. A matter of taste. What matters. What is it that matters? What’s the matter?

Dragging her gaze outwards, Pip is suddenly struck by the monotony and bland beigeness of her surroundings. She is aware of a bad taste now, lingering in her mouth. Over the years, she could have gone for colour but she has obsessively settled for neutrality. She’s kidded herself it’s classy and mature, won’t date and will camouflage flaws. But now she thinks it’s all a bit bloody boring. And slightly drab around the edges.

‘True enough, it echoes my life.’

How on earth had she not made the connection before? That she doesn’t date, specifically to camouflage flaws.

‘Of course it echoes – because all is hollow and silent.’

She regards the blobs of nail varnish on the carpet and the sofa. Gradually, it is dawning on her that her long-held philosophy, and strictly adhered-to coda, are not just inherently flawed but somewhat deluded, too. She rummages around in the waste-paper basket. If only she could find the nail polish, she’d happily spatter it around the furnishings. But of course, as soon as Pip McCabe decides something is rubbish, she won’t tolerate it being anywhere near her. So that nail polish isn’t in the wastepaper basket, it’s outside somewhere in the communal bins.

‘Me being so bloody hasty,’ she admits to herself with regret. ‘It cost a small fortune. It was Chanel, after all. What a waste.’

What were you going to do with it if you still had it? Add a few more blobs on the sofa as a symbolic act of defiance against yourself? The thing is, Pip, a token splattering of nail polish here and there might not be quite enough. Nail varnish is not appropriate, anyway. It would indeed be hasty. It’s time for something much more considered.

Apart from her commitment to St Bea’s, Pip McCabe cancelled all appointments, though she could barely afford to, and laid low for the next five days. She tried not to check her mobile phone for the text messages Zac had no intention of sending. She tried not to hope that the answering machine would flash up a message that, in fact, it never crossed his mind to leave. She found it easy to ignore the messages and invitations left by her friends and sisters. One thing she did do, which dramatically broke with her self-protection insurance policy of old, was to think about her recent past, of Zac and Caleb and even Alex. Though she maintained affection for only one of the three, she knew they were all worth thinking about.

How different my life would have been, would be now, if I’d thought more about them at the time – even if such a process necessitated me confiding in my nearest and dearest.

It slowly dawned on her that Cat, Fen and Megan – even Django – could have altered the course of her life for the better, had she let them. She reckoned they would have seen through Caleb far more quickly than she had – because, of course, she’d have let them meet him. And they’d have seen Zac bedecked in his true colours much faster. Thus Alex’s flirtations would have amounted to little more than flattery – perhaps a tinge of temptation – which they’d have ensured she quashed. And, very probably, she wouldn’t be on her own now, avoiding their phone calls and wishing for calls that will never come.

And who can blame him? I fucked up. It’s such a shame.

It’s such a shame Pip hasn’t quite reached that stage of awareness and courage that would have her lift the receiver, dial the number and say ‘hullo’.

It’s Friday evening. She’s on her own. She lifts the receiver, dials the number, waits for an answer and then says ‘hullo’.

‘Hullo,’ Fen replies, ‘I’ve been trying you all week!’

‘I know,’ says Pip, ‘sorry.’

‘How’s tricks?’ Fen asks.

Pip pauses. ‘Tricky,’ she replies.

‘You OK?’ Fen asks, a note of concern discernible in her voice.

‘Ish,’ Pip confides. ‘I’ve been better,’ she says quietly, ‘I could do better.’ There’s the truth! ‘Listen, I was wondering if you and Cat might come round to mine tomorrow?’ Pip pauses. ‘I’d like your advice.’ She pauses again. ‘I need your help.’

Fen is taken aback. ‘Would you like me to phone Cat?’ she asks, wanting to be of some practical assistance.

‘No, no,’ Pip says, ‘I’ll phone.’

‘Is everything OK?’ Fen pushes, worried for her. ‘Are you all right?’

‘I hope I will be,’ Pip reveals, having to clear her throat to strengthen her voice. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then?’

‘Night,’ says Fen softly, ‘see you tomorrow.’

‘Hi, Megan, it’s me. You’re probably out and about or in Dom’s den of iniquity. Um. It’s just. Fuck. Anyway, thanks for your messages – sorry I haven’t phoned. It’s just. God. Listen, might you come to mine tomorrow – I mean, if you’re not busy? It’s just. Shit. It’s just. I don’t know. I guess I’m a bit low. I’d love to see you. I need some advice, really. Can you come?’

Pip hopes her best friend can make it, too. She brushes her teeth and slips into bed. She looks around her bedroom. It would look fine as a photograph in Livingetc. But to live like this in reality is actually plain boring. Neat and tidy and bloody dull. It’s nothingy. All of it is nothingy. It’s been so for years.

‘This isn’t solitude. This is loneliness.’

THIRTY

On Saturday morning, Cat and Fen arrived at Pip’s at much the same time as Megan. They greeted each other on the doorstep with whispers of ‘What are you doing here, too?’ and ‘Did she say anything else?’ and ‘Do you know what’s wrong?’ and ‘When did you last see her?’ and ‘She’s seemed absolutely fine – what on earth can it be?’ and ‘I’ve brought loads of chocolate to facilitate a thorough heart to heart.’ Pip opened the door to them. They swept her through into her lounge on a tide of fond smiles and warm embraces and gifts of chocolate éclairs, Jaffa cakes and magazines. It was almost overwhelming for Pip. She had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from asking them all to leave so she could burrow back into bed, be on her own and forget that any of this ever seemed like a good idea.

Fen gestured to the sofa. ‘Isn’t that Django’s old bedspread?’ she exclaimed, privately thinking that using it as a throw was very un-Pip and really rather unpleasant, considering the stains and the holes and the indisputable fact that pea-green candlewick would simply never be in vogue.

‘What’s with the bin bags?’ Megan asked, regarding a few scattered over the floor.

‘Where’s your stuff?’ Cat asked, noticing that the shelves were utterly bare and that greasy outlines on the walls were all that was left of the mirror and the Rothko poster.

‘I wanted you to help me,’ Pip explained without actually answering any of their questions. They all regarded her expectantly. ‘Cup of tea, anyone?’

‘Coffee,’ Cat requested, looking at her eldest sister quizzically, ‘if you’re making.’

‘Tea,’ Fen said, scrutinizing her sister for further clues, ‘ta.’

‘Tea,’ Megan said quietly, glancing around her, ‘please.’

Pip went through to the kitchen and returned with a laden tray. Her sisters and her best friend sipped their drinks politely. And waited.

‘I thought you could help me,’ Pip said at length, only after she’d eaten an éclair and had licked her fingers thoughtfully. ‘It’s all so dull and boring,’ she said. ‘I want to introduce a little colour into my life.’ Three pairs of enquiring eyes burrowed into her. ‘I’ve always eschewed it without ever actually trying it,’ she continued with a shrug, ‘but I thought it was about time to take some risks.’

The three girls nodded though their eyes revealed that they were none the wiser. ‘And if it doesn’t work out,’ said Pip, ‘perhaps you could advise me on an alternative plan.’

Her posse continued to nod but regard her blankly. Them? Advise her? How? While they attempted to fathom it all, Pip went into her bedroom and reappeared with a selection of trial-sized tins of paint. These she opened and, without further ado, she went from wall to wall, daubing great globs of colour in large random patches. Cat, Fen and Megan watched, open-mouthed. ‘Help me,’ Pip implored. ‘Which do you think? What suits best?’

Why couldn’t she say on the phone that she just wants us to help decorate? Fen wondered to herself, rather bemused.

Is that it? All she wants is for us to help choose bloody paint colours, Cat remarked to herself, somewhat disappointed.

I could have just bought her a copy of Livingetc. and then spent the morning snuggled in bed with Dominic, Megan thought to herself, a little annoyed.

Their irritation and disbelief were but momentary because the sight of Pip splodging colour willy-nilly was at once peculiar and endearing. Putting their grievances to one side, Fen, Cat and Megan entered into the spirit of the case in hand. They were unanimous and enthusiastic that the deep ochre was a gorgeous colour and would suit the living-room very well. They were agreed that the yellow was too acidic, the scarlet too garish and the violet just a little too suggestive of witchcraft. The ochre would do very well, it was rich and positive, classic yet fresh; it would enliven the room without overwhelming the dimensions. They weren’t prepared for Pip to declare that the back wall ought to be a different shade altogether. And, though they didn’t necessarily agree with her on the terracotta hue she favoured, her eagerness was so beguiling that they encouraged her with her choice.

‘Tell me that Django’s old bedspread goes!’ Fen pleaded. ‘It doesn’t go with ochre or terracotta. It has to go!’

‘It’s only to protect the sofa whilst we redecorate,’ Pip assured her.

‘I’m not sure the carpet isn’t going to look a little grubby,’ Megan pointed out.

‘Nothing that a great big colourful rug can’t fix,’ Pip proclaimed.

‘Is Carol Smillie lurking in your bedroom?’ Cat asked, peering out into the corridor. ‘Or Lord Long Lacy Sleeves,’ she wondered, ‘that Llewelyn-Bowen bloke?’

‘Nope,’ Pip assured her, Fen and Megan. ‘Just me. Ringing the changes.’

With colours and finishes agreed upon, Pip left her gang with rolls of masking tape, more bin bags and a long list of what to do to prep the room while she went out to the local DIY shop to buy paint and rollers. Her sisters and her best friend admitted to one another that they were slightly baffled by the fact that the help Pip required was of a purely practical nature. They were slightly taken aback by her choice of colours. By her choosing colour, full stop.

‘It could work, though,’ Fen said, looking around the sitting-room.

‘It’s time for a change,’ Cat agreed, quite liking the deep claret colour but seeing Pip’s point about the chosen shade of terracotta.

‘It’ll take some getting used to,’ Megan remarked, ‘for her as well as us.’

The women brushed and dabbed and rollered the cream walls away. Radio 2 provided innocuous background entertainment and the Jaffa Cakes provided sustenance. Before long, they all thought to themselves that it was a refreshing way to spend a Saturday.

‘What about your bedroom, Pip?’ Megan asked, sponging an ochre skid off the skirting-board.

‘I think lilac’s a great bedroom colour,’ Fen said, ‘very soothing and dreamy.’

‘Your curtains and blinds,’ Cat said, ‘dye or die? Lord Long Lacy Sleeves did something very effective with a printing block made out of a potato.’

‘The thing is –’ said Pip. Then she paused. She put down her roller and regarded the three of them. Beloved Megan wearing a shower cap to protect her hair; dearest Cat with masking tape stuck to her elbow; cherished Fen with spatters of ochre freckling her face. Pip looked from one to the other and the next. She shrugged, sighed, picked up her roller and set at her patch of wall again. ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I’m sort of in love with this bloke called Zac. I think.’

Pip carried on painting, the sticky clicketing squelch of loaded roller against wet wall providing the only sound. Fen, Cat and Megan were motionless, their jaws dropped to the limit of their hinges, their minds whirring and wondering if they’d heard right. Eventually, a goop of paint, dripping from Fen’s brush noisily on to the plastic sheeting, caused Pip to look up from her task and the three of them to shut their mouths and swallow. Pedantically, Pip laid down her roller and turned to face them all.

‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘I am in love with this bloke called Zac.’ Her audience were hanging on her every word, not that the words ‘love’ and ‘Zac’ made much sense to them at all in the context of Pip’s life. ‘But the thing is,’ Pip carried on, regardless, ‘I’ve scuppered any chance of a relationship with him.’ Her younger sisters and her best friend continued to regard her with incredulity. ‘Not because of Caleb,’ Pip said casually, by way of explanation that of course meant little to them, ‘nor because of Alex,’ she added in a nonchalant way, leaving them none the wiser. ‘No,’ Pip proclaimed defiantly, ‘simply because of me.’

Pip had covered almost the entire wall before anyone spoke. Fen broke the silence. ‘Caleb?’ she asked, feeling almost virtuous that there was she with only two men on the go, while here was Pip suddenly revealing three.

‘Caleb,’ Pip confirmed, ‘Dr Caleb Simmons – a paediatrician at St Bea’s. I was sleeping with him for a couple of months, earlier in the summer.’

Fen, Cat and Megan tried not to gulp too noisily and attempted to retain some control over the extent to which their eyes ogled. Did they just hear that correctly? Pip? Philippa McCabe? Their friend and sister? Having casual sex with some doctor from work for a couple of months? How did that come about? When was this? Why hadn’t they known?

‘Alex?’ Cat asked, thinking of her colleague on the Tour de France and thinking ‘Surely not!’

‘I had a one-night stand with Alex in the bunk bed up on L’Alpe D’Huez three weeks ago,’ Pip confirmed. Megan wondered why on earth Pip hadn’t divulged such fantastic gossip. Momentarily, she was quite taken aback. Fen and Cat wondered how the hell she could have had sex right under their noses without them knowing. Though they both felt somewhat offended, they didn’t ask her. They didn’t know how to. This Pip was so new they had no idea how to break into her outer packaging, for starters, to say nothing of fathoming what made her tick inside. So the three of them just stared at her. And wondered how she could continue to paint walls whilst making revelations of such magnitude.

‘Zac?’ Megan asked.

Immediately, Pip stopped painting and looked crestfallen. ‘Zac Holmes,’ she said. She looked from best friend to sister to sister. ‘He’s a lovely bloke.’ She shrugged.

‘You’ve had a fling with him?’ Megan pushed. The abbreviated dialogue which sufficed between the sisters was not enough for her. ‘With this Zac Holmes person?’

‘I’ve slept with him twice,’ Pip said quietly, ‘but given him a hard time for much longer.’ No one quite knew if the double entendre was meant, let alone meant to lighten the tone or set the scene. ‘Look, shall we just paint the terracotta wall now?’ Pip was starting to feel out of her comfort zone, on the verge of regretting her disclosures. She was quietly asking herself what the fuck all the fuss was about, why on earth she had made public any of the three men. Caleb, Alex, Zac – they were simply part of her past, after all. Weren’t they? Furthermore, they had hardly been in her life long enough to have been a part of her life, anyway. What was the point of deconstruction and analysis, of regrets and hopes? It was all destined to come to nothing. It already had. There was no future. ‘Oh,’ Pip barked, ‘forget it all. I have. No point. Meant fuck all anyway. Let’s just paint.’

‘Sod the frigging terracotta,’ Fen said sternly.

‘Hear bloody hear,’ Cat muttered, glowering at Pip.

‘If you’re in love with this Zac bloke,’ Megan asked coolly, needing to temper the inflammatory tone between the sisters, ‘why isn’t he in love with you?’

If I’m in love with him, why isn’t he in love with me?

A very fair question – and if Pip answers it astutely, all the reasons why he isn’t will provide all the pointers to how he could be.

‘Because,’ said Pip, ‘I have not treated him particularly well. I guess you could say I’ve led him on – led him to believe that I was up for it when I wasn’t, that I was someone who I’m not, that I wanted something I don’t.’

‘“Up for it”?’ probed Megan. ‘Are you talking just sex?’

‘More,’ said Pip. ‘You know – seeing each other. Hanging out. Spending time together. As well as sex. You know – do things. Stuff.’

‘A relay-shun-ship,’ Megan spelt out as if to a child.

Pip shrugged and nodded. ‘I just didn’t think him suitable.’

‘Why not?’ asked Cat who’d calmed down. She was intrigued. After all, her eldest sister was full of theories as to why her ex was so unsuitable.

‘Because of his baggage,’ Pip said with a defiant shrug that deep down she knew did Zac a disservice.

‘Baggage?’ Fen enquired.

‘His life,’ Pip said, sighing. ‘So much to deal with.’

‘Like what?’ Fen asked, thinking of all the stuff she herself was dealing with in her life.

‘Like he has a child,’ Pip exclaimed as if that should be enough. There was silence. She dropped her head slightly, eventually looking up at the three women rather meekly. They were standing in a semicircle around her, brandishing their brushes and rollers like weapons. She wasn’t sure whether they were standing guard around her, or closing in threateningly.

‘Is that a problem for him?’ Megan asked. She repeated herself because Pip’s pause was too long. ‘Doesn’t he like his kid?’

Pip felt very bad. Zac adored Tom, loved being a father, he had no problem with it at all. He saw it as a blessing. ‘He loves his child,’ she practically whispered. ‘Little boy. Six. Tom.’

‘Has he an ex, then?’ Cat asked, keen for clues. Pip nodded after another lengthy pause. ‘Does she cause him grief?’ Cat probed. ‘Is he not over her? Is the split hideously acrimonious?’

Pip thought back to Tom’s party on Sunday. She thought back to Zac and June sitting together in Out-patients. How he spoke about her. How she spoke about him. How Tom spoke about them. She shook her head. ‘They get along brilliantly,’ she mumbled.

‘So what do you mean by “baggage”?’ Fen asked to mutters of approval from Megan and Cat.

‘He has a kid and an ex and a complex history!’ Pip protested, stamping her foot. ‘For fuck’s sake!’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Fen retaliated coolly, ‘it seems his history is your baggage, not his.’

Pip felt her eyes smart. Couldn’t they all just fuck off and leave her alone! Go on – sod off, the lot of you! No. She’d invited them here. She’d confided in them. She’d asked them to help imbue her life with colour. Painting walls was only one aspect of it. Cat, Fen and Megan were merely being honest. Covered in ochre emulsion. Doing as she requested. Helping her. Time for Pip to peel off the masking tape.

Pip was mortified. Fen, Cat and Megan considered the facts so far as if discussing a particularly good BBC drama. The only thing that didn’t make sense to them was why on earth the heroine hadn’t snapped the hero up and taken him off the market immediately.

‘He sounds a honey,’ Megan said.

‘He’s a sodding accountant!’ Pip remonstrated, as if brandishing the trump card. However, she was horrified that Megan, Cat and Fen should all nod approvingly rather than look dismayed.

‘Must be fairly solvent, then,’ Fen remarked.

‘I’m a clown!’ Pip cried, as if they were dense and missing the point altogether – though she no longer had any idea what the point was.

‘Too bloody right,’ Cat said firmly, ‘and you’ve lost the last laugh.’

‘Leave me alone,’ Pip sobbed. ‘Fuck off, the lot of you.’

‘No,’ said Fen, taking the paint roller from Pip’s hands.

‘No,’ said Cat, leading her eldest sister to the sofa.

‘No,’ said Megan, going to the kitchen to make cups of tea because her best friend certainly looked as though she could do with one.

They let her sulk. They let her slurp her tea and bolt her biscuits. They let her sob. They let her sniff snottily. They let her sigh. They let her rub her eyes and bury her head in her hands. They let her proclaim half-sentences like ‘and then of course’ and ‘but anyway, it’s all so’ and ‘also, the fact remains that’. They let her sit still for as long as she wanted to. And she sat there, in a world of her own, for quite some time. They let her mind whirr and ruminate without them probing into what she was thinking. Ultimately, they simply let Pip be. But they held her hands and stroked her hair and patted her knees as she did so.

Eventually, she blinked. The tension in her shoulders subsided, her face softened and she looked around her, as if some fog had lifted.

‘I like the colour,’ she said. ‘Good choice, girls.’

‘Did you like Caleb?’ Cat asked.

Pip looked for the answer in her lap, then at her socks, without success. She looked from Cat to the others, though she couldn’t maintain eye contact for long. She gave a shrug. And then a sigh. ‘In fact, you know what? I did,’ she revealed. ‘I tried to kid myself for ages that he was just a hot shag. But actually, I think I did like him – or the idea of winning him over. Maybe it was because he was a little enigmatic, slightly ambivalent, and that can be oddly seductive. I guess I had a fair few hopes pinned on him or on myself, rather. That he’d fall for me. Sounds a bit clichéd, deluded, arrogant even.’

‘What happened?’ Fen asked.

Pip smiled to herself. How differently she would have answered such a question in the past. ‘You know what?’ she said. ‘It turned out that it was me who was just a shag to him. He had a girlfriend I didn’t know about. He presumed I was up for some no-strings action. And the thing is, I thought I was – in theory. But in practice, I realized that I wasn’t.’

‘Bastard!’ Megan spat, rallying to Pip’s side.

‘No,’ Pip corrected her, ‘no. You know what, Caleb is simply someone with a different outlook on love and sex than me.’ Privately, Cat, Fen and Megan each wondered whether they could ever be as magnanimous in such a situation. ‘His morals are on a different plane. Not incorrigible or cruel – just different. He’s as at ease with his morality as I am with mine. Ultimately, I felt a fool – yet he never set out to make a fool of me.’ Privately, Fen, Cat and Megan all thought Caleb sounded like a cocky wanker. But they respected the peace Pip had found in the situation and so said nothing.

‘Alex?’ Cat asked. ‘What was all that about?’

Again, Pip smirked to herself. ‘I was drunk,’ she shrugged, ‘and I’d just slept with Zac for the second time and run away from him for the second time. I thought Alex would take my mind off things. Prove to me that Zac was just a shag. That he wasn’t worth pursuing, that relationships were too much like hard work and simply not preferable to a nice little gratuitous one-night stand.’

‘And?’ Cat asked.

‘I was wrong,’ Pip declared, ‘once more.’ She sighed. ‘God, I don’t mean to sound crude – but if pursuit of orgasm is what it boils down to, you’re better off with a vibrator. Believe me.’ How could such self-awareness and revelation make one feel as though a weight had been lifted and yet also so heavy with fatigue?

‘And Zac?’ Fen asked.

‘Every time he’s attempted closeness, I’ve fled,’ Pip revealed quietly. ‘He’s been friendly and flirtatious in his unique oddball way for months. Way before Caleb. I resisted him, telling myself he was a weirdo. And when I found my fondness growing I told myself he was too complex and burdened to be worth my while. And when I slept with him and woke up next to him I told myself it was a bad idea and I ought to scarper.’

‘Does he know about Caleb?’ Megan asked.

‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘and he came to the rescue when it all fell apart.’

‘Does he know about Alex?’ Megan asked.

‘No,’ said Pip, ‘no. We haven’t really spoken since I left for France.’

‘What do you mean “haven’t really spoken”?’ Fen asked.

‘Last Sunday,’ Pip informed them all, ‘his ex booked me to perform at their son’s sixth birthday.’ She fiddled with a KitKat wrapper. ‘Unbeknown to Zac, of course.’

‘Jeez,’ said Cat.

‘Fuck,’ said Megan.

‘God,’ said Fen.

‘He paid me,’ Pip said quietly. ‘For my services,’ she added. ‘In cash.’ It sounded as abhorrent as it had felt.

Cat, Megan and Fen repeated their expletives in hushed tones. They all sat on the pea-green candlewick bedspread, lulled by the soothing ochre surrounding them. They all wondered what to say. What could be done.

‘Could you woo him?’ Cat suggested.

‘No,’ said Pip, thinking of Juliana and ranking herself such a frumpy second place that even attempting a duel would be complete humiliation, and futile, anyway.

‘Confide?’ Fen said. ‘You know, divulge your own fear of intimacy and stuff.’

It was only now Pip realized that to reveal how her own mother had run off with a cowboy from Denver when she was a child could be quite persuasive. But of course, she had already made up that whopping lie about her kith and kin being paragons of closeness and the last word in conventional family values. ‘No,’ said Pip.

‘Could you just phone him to say “hullo”?’ Megan asked. ‘Text him to say how r u? E-mail? Snail mail? Simply say “sorry”, and ask for another try?’

‘Not much point,’ Pip said darkly. She flicked the scrunched KitKat wrapper carelessly into the centre of the room. ‘He now has a girlfriend six feet tall, glam and gorgeous. And he’s simply not interested in me.’

‘He has a girlfriend,’ Fen repeats.

Cat says, ‘Shit.’

Megan says, ‘Damn and blast.’

‘He has a girlfriend,’ Pip confirms, ‘and he’s simply not interested in me.’

THIRTY-ONE

Philippa McCabe feels as though she’s at journey’s end. Her baggage is heavy and uncomfortable. She needs to dump it, to move on. However, she has no idea in which direction she ought to travel next, or how to go about unpacking because it will mean choosing what she’s happy to forsake, what she wants to carry with her. She has spent most of her adult life firmly in the driving seat, resolutely behind the steering-wheel, deciding precisely where she will allow Fate to take her and what she will permit Future to hold for her. For the time being, though, she’ll just have to stand still awhile, surrounded by ochre and terracotta walls (and a fuchsia-coloured ceiling in the bedroom). For the time being, Fate and Future are simply not up to Pip. Though they could well be down to Ruth and June.

‘The thing is, we can’t tell him what to do,’ said June late at night to Ruth over the phone, ‘believe me! I tried it – and we split up, remember!’

‘You’re too right. Zac has to feel that he’s made the choice,’ Ruth said. ‘We can but sow the seeds of Suitability in his mind by planting the tiniest niggles in his conscience.’

‘Ultimately, he has to feel he’s made some ground-breaking, life-altering decision,’ June agreed wholeheartedly.

‘I mean, you and I are undoubtedly High Priestesses of Manipulative Malarkey,’ Ruth mused, ‘but we’ll have to use all our cunning to stay hidden in the wings while we pull the strings on this one.’

‘I rather think it shouldn’t come down to Zac making the choice between one and the other,’ June said. ‘He’d be so concerned about hurting the one or the other that he’d very probably decide to go without either.’

‘You’re right. First things first. We’ll have to assist in giving Juliana a subtle shove in the direction of the exit,’ Ruth said. ‘She goes back to South Africa soon,’ she elaborated, ‘ish.’

‘Agreed. But we’ll have to act fast – we can’t let geography provide an easy way out,’ June said. ‘Zac has to want to dump her.’

‘Not just want to – he has to,’ said Ruth.

‘How?’ June asked. ‘I mean, he seems perfectly content with the way things are going.’

‘I know,’ Ruth admitted reluctantly. ‘There must be a way. How indeed?’

June and Ruth barely knew Pip. And it wasn’t as if they really knew Juliana either. But they did know Zac inside out, being his ex and his sister-in-law, after all. They cared about him supremely, being his ex and his sister-in-law, after all. Yet they couldn’t truly say that Juliana was wrong for Zac. The point to Zac is his great consistency – his personality remains steady and untainted regardless of the woman he is with. Or women. Or lack of. You simply never know with Zac unless you ask, and sometimes he won’t say, anyway. He’s always good old Zac, whether he’s single or spoken for, or spoken for by three women at once, or two women together.

Some people positively shine under the direct influence of another person being part of their lives. Some wither. Some become worryingly remote. Or upsettingly out of sorts. Or downright disagreeable.

Cat and her ex would put on a very good impression of togetherness whenever they were in company. Lots of hand holding and declarations of future plans. Those around them cringed. It was depressing. It was so painfully transparent. Cat’s eyes were dulled and her smile, when it was seen, was far more painted than any Pip gave Dr Pippity or Merry Martha. Friends soon stopped inviting them out as a couple. That their nothingness could be so visible was upsetting. Their façade was flimsy. The show they put on was upsetting for all. It was horribly obvious that before they arrived, or as soon as they left, they would succumb to either aggressive silence or full-on warfare.

Since Megan and Dominic have been together, however, Megan’s bubbly personality has fizzed over into infectious effervescence. She’s herself but even more so; as if Dominic has provided a luscious glossy top coat over her already colourful disposition. And Dom’s friends give credit to Megan for the ease with which he now socializes. He was always part of the party, but invariably it depended on the number of pints. Now he chats and jests so energetically, he hasn’t the time – or the inclination – for the volume of liquor he once leant on.

Zac, though, simply never seems to change. Which is why he’s such a trustworthy and dependable mate. Which is why his friends often don’t know if he’s seeing someone or not. Which is why his friends feel confident in presenting their friends to him. He’s so nice, he’s so much fun, he’s so sorted. He has manners and values and strength of character. You’ll be safe with him.

However, Ruth and June weren’t really thinking of how Pip might benefit from Zac – of course she’d be happy and fulfilled and treated with respect. Like all the others. No. Ruth and June’s drive was Zac himself. Both women – and it surprised them – had an inkling, a drift, a hint, a taste, that Zac’s life could be surprisingly enhanced by the presence of that weird and wiry girl who paints herself peculiar, does things with balloons for cash on a Sunday and makes sick children feel just a tiny bit better on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

‘Juliana may well not be wrong for him,’ Ruth said over coffee in the O2 centre where Tom and Billy were rampaging around the soft-play gym, ‘though I’ll admit that her svelte limbs and general gorgeousness cause vile sensations of spite in me! It’s just that Pip might well be more right.’

June laughed. ‘I so totally agree!’ she said. She pondered, while she stirred and stirred the excessive foam on her coffee with the wooden stick given in lieu of a plastic spoon. ‘Our reasons are wholesome, aren’t they?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I have nothing against Juliana – apart from her aforementioned physical attributes which are more my problem than her achievement. It’s just – I don’t know – I do seem to have something for Pip.’

Ruth considered this whilst thinking to herself that recently Stardust’s cappuccino had become all froth and no substance. Where was the coffee? Blimey! All the way down there. A bit weak, lukewarm. But it would do. Whatever. She’d rather settle for it than have the hassle of taking it back and making a fuss. The parallel with Zac and Juliana struck her. Juliana looked the part, but was there that much to her? Below-the-surface details? Did it really bother Zac? Knowing him, he’d avoid hassle, reason that she was fine. Whatever.

Ruth picked out a couple of blueberries from their stodgy muffin cladding. It suddenly struck her. ‘Essentially, all we’re doing is food combining, June,’ she declared. ‘Great chefs know which ingredients will work even better when brought together, than when taken on their own merits, however high.’

‘Bagsy be Nigella Lawson, then,’ June laughed, ‘because you are so Gordon Ramsay!’

‘Fuck off!’

‘See!’

‘Strawberries and cream,’ mused Ruth.

‘Sherbet and a lollipop,’ June suggested.

‘Roast potatoes and gravy,’ Ruth added.

‘Rocket and parmesan,’ said June.

‘Better plan a menu, then,’ said Ruth. ‘Here’s to a recipe for success, and happy endings.’ They chinked their coffee mugs. ‘I’ll give him a call.’ She phoned Zac. ‘Hullo, it’s Ruth,’ she said. ‘Fine, fine. You? Great. Work? Cool, cool. Oh, he’s fine. I’m out with the girls Thursday so I’m sure he’d be happy for some company. Yes. Sure. Cool. Listen – Friday night – do you have plans? No? Would you like to meet for dinner, then? You and Juliana? Deal’s off, otherwise. No. Pardon? Not at all! Whatever gave you that impression? I think she seems really – nice. That’s why I’d love to see her again. Great. Just let me know. Ta-ra.’

Ruth felt that the timing promised to be very good. All would be cooked to perfection. And, just then, the timing in the O2 centre was pretty spot on, too.

‘Here she is,’ whispered June excitedly, able now to scrunch up the leaflet she’d picked up in the O2 centre a couple of days ago and had kept in her bag ever since.

‘Indeed she is,’ said Ruth.

Right on cue, Merry Martha came clumping into view, holding a bunch of helium-filled balloons emblazoned with advertising from a local company – not that the children would mind, or even take note. Free balloons? Fantastic! Writing on them? So what! Almost instantly, the clown was mobbed by children. She began to sing in a ghastly falsetto, falling silent every now and then to bestow a maniacal grin on her young audience or to pepper pregnant pauses with burps and squeaks and honks and farts.

Ruth and June regarded each other, eyes asparkle. They appeared to have all the raw ingredients at their fingertips. They just needed to start cooking up something spectacular. No time like the present.

So what if their boys would have supper late? Ruth and June felt that quality time with their sons’ favourite clown would beat any sticky, over-sweetened synthetic pudding they could rustle up, anyway, surpass even the treat of an extra half hour’s television. The clown was finishing her slot by dispersing all the balloons and dispensing raucous fart noises as well. Still the children swarmed around her. Not for freebies, but simply for attention. Play a joke on me! Cover my hair with the paper bits from a hole-punch! Make my hand squeak when you shake it! Squirt me with water! Say something silly about my name! Suddenly, all that could be seen of the clown was a pair of stripy legs and clodhopping orange shoes swaying over a sea of children’s awestruck faces. And that’s how Merry Martha took her leave of her audience – by walking away on her hands singing a dodgy version of Diana Ross’s ‘Upside Down’.

June picked her moment and then approached. Merry Martha had upended herself, slightly breathless and probably quite flushed under all the pan stick.

‘Hullo,’ June greeted, ‘remember me? June – Price? You gave Tom the party of his life.’

‘Hullo,’ said the clown, suddenly being poked, then hugged, by Tom and just poked by Billy. It was difficult for June to gauge her reaction because of the painted smile and ready-delineated eyes. But the clown was staying put and that was good. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’ June offered.

‘Thanks – but I really ought to make tracks.’

Cue Tom and Billy. ‘Please!’ implored the one. ‘Beg you!’ pleaded the other. They tugged at her starched skirt and reached up, hoping to pull her pigtails, too.

‘I really ought to go,’ the clown apologized. June panicked to herself. But the boys came to the rescue again. Though they physically twisted her arms, it was ultimately their crestfallen expressions which worked wonders. ‘Well,’ the clown faltered, ‘maybe just a very very quick one.’

‘You can swig an espresso if you haven’t got time to sip a cappuccino,’ June suggested. The clown laughed and said that in fact she could murder a cup of Earl Grey.

Pip was led off by Tom and Billy who held tight on to her hands and brandished smiles of triumph and ownership at all the children they passed. The ex-partner of the man she was in love with but was trying to forget, walked a few steps ahead. Pip felt simultaneously terribly uncomfortable and yet also strangely privileged. A direct link to Zac. Contact, however indirect. Perhaps there’d be news of him. Even a mention would do. Maybe news would get back to him. Even a mention would do. Suddenly, Pip’s walk slowed to a shuffle – the boys presumed this was purposeful and thought it hilarious. It now struck Pip that she was steps away from coffee with Zac’s ex and kid and what the fuck was the point of that? Nothing but an acetic reminder of what had been, what went wrong and what would never ensue. And anyway, how on earth was she going to feel when she returned home alone later on? Tom and Billy dragged her along.

The sister-in-law was also there.

‘Do we Martha you or are you Pip?’ Ruth asked reverentially, whilst shaking her hand and smiling warmly. Little did Ruth know how she’d just delivered magic words.

This Ruth woman understands that clowns are people, too.

Very well then, Pip would stay for Earl Grey – the last half-hour had been thirsty work, after all. Adult company would be quite nice, too.

‘Pip’ll do,’ Pip said.

June returned with tea and a slice of ginger cake. Gratefully, Pip partook of both.

They were thoroughly interested in her. Pip was flattered. They asked all about her training, about the highs and lows of such a unique career, what skin-care regime she used to combat all that slap, what fitness programme to maintain such impressive acrobatics. They marvelled at her answers and proclaimed themselves dowdy, unimaginative and unfit by comparison. They asked where she was from. How old was she? How long had she lived in London? And where did she live, did she own or rent? Alone? Pip found herself answering them in full, and soon enough slipping in details that hadn’t been required but were lapped up, anyway. The boys were bored and wandered off to stare at the tropical fish and the shooting water sculpture flanking the escalators.

‘Your sisters,’ June asked, ‘what do they do?’

‘Cat – she’s the youngest – she’s a sports journalist,’ said Pip. ‘Fen, the middle one, she’s an art historian.’

‘Are you close?’ June probed, while realizing how easily they were chatting – so easily that she had completely overlooked the fact that she was sitting with a grown woman dressed as a clown. Who’d slept with her ex. Fleetingly, she wondered whether Pip had been in costume. She couldn’t remember Zac having any kinks or quirks about dressing-up outfits.

‘We are very close,’ Pip said, with a smile that broadened the painstakingly painted one, ‘because –’ She paused. Was this a good idea? What was the point not telling the truth now? ‘We’re very close because there’s only us and our uncle.’

‘Django – in Derbyshire?’ Ruth recalled from five minutes earlier.

‘Yes,’ said Pip.

‘He sounds fabulous,’ said Ruth, while quite admiring the design of Pip’s clown face. Not garish. A white base. Rosy cheeks. Eyes delineated in black and embellished with a diamond shape here, a heart shape there. Nose tip neatly painted red. Ears, too. Pigtails meticulously zany. Clothing bright and bizarre but fitting and flattering.

‘No child – of whatever age – could wish for a better mother-father-friend,’ Pip proclaimed, missing Django and Derbyshire enormously and deciding right then to visit him that coming weekend.

‘Your father?’ Ruth asked.

‘He died when I was small,’ Pip revealed softly.

‘Your mum?’ June asked quietly.

Pip paused. Sipped her tea. Dabbed a crumb of cake and licked her finger thoughtfully. June and Ruth were lovely. Why shouldn’t she tell them? All her friends knew. What was so secret? ‘She ran off with a cowboy from Denver when I was even smaller,’ Pip shrugged.

Ruth and June gasped. The concept of an almost-orphan was so unbelievable it was almost theatrical. The concept of maternal defection was inconceivable. Actually, it was horrific. Criminal. Instinctively, both mothers looked over to their sons. If the boys had been nearer, they’d have hugged them close. But they were larking about, clambering on the fake rocks that really shouldn’t be clambered on. They were happy and safe.

‘It’s fine,’ Pip assured them, ‘it’s cool. I suppose we’ve never known any different, you see. I barely remember her. Certainly, I never think about her. Honestly – it’s just a concept to us. It seems it’s more upsetting for others!’ Ruth and June raised their eyebrows, sighed, stared at their laps, lifted their eyes to gaze at Pip benignly.

‘Are your sisters married?’ June pressed on, having glanced at her watch, dismayed by how much she and Ruth had yet to achieve and by how little time there was to do it in.

‘Fen is assessing the credentials of two rather different men – one town, one country; one rich, one poor; one young, one much older.’ June and Ruth looked most impressed. ‘And Cat has finally fallen in love with the right man, having been disastrously involved with the wrong one.’

June and Ruth nodded and hummed and stirred at the vestiges of froth clinging to the sides of their empty mugs. It’s coming, it’s coming.

‘And you?’ Ruth asked casually.

‘Me what?’ Pip replied ingenuously.

‘You married? Divorced? Living in sin? Just plain sinning? Celibate?’

Pip stared at the specks of Earl Grey clinging to the base of her cup like dirt. How should she answer them?

I’m in love with your brother-in-law. Your ex. The father of your child. Of your nephew. I behaved badly and I’m paying the price. I really like you both. But you’ll loathe me when you know more.

‘Nah,’ Pip said, nonchalant and dismissive, ‘no one in my life at the mo’ – not even on the horizon.’

June and Ruth tipped their heads this way and that. ‘By choice?’ Ruth pressed. Again Pip glanced away, looked deep into her teacup but way beyond the dregs of tea, finding much interest instead in the speckles of sugar grains left on the table by the previous customer.

‘No,’ she said, flicking the sugar with her finger, ‘not by choice, if I’m honest. By my own –’ She stopped.

Stop it, stop it! Stop it now. Shut up. Go home.

‘Sorry,’ she said breezily, standing up, ‘I really have to go home. I completely forgot, I have to –’ She arose from the table without finishing her sentence.

You have to what, Pip? Run away? Hide? What?

‘Must dash,’ she chirped. ‘Thanks so much for the tea! Tara! Say “bye” to the boys! Ta-ta!’ Merry Martha had suddenly taken the place of Pip, who had performed a disappearing act so fast, so seamless, that the Davids Blaine or Copperfield would pay top dollar for her method.

‘Shit!’ said Ruth, frowning at Pip’s teacup.

June raised her eyebrows in agreement. ‘I guess you could say that our sauce has curdled.’

Ruth thought for a moment and then disagreed. ‘A little more stirring might just rescue it. You pay and retrieve the boys. I’ll meet you at the car.’

Ruth comes across Pip walking through the car park.

‘Pip!’ she calls, because she refuses to let Merry Martha fool her. ‘Hey! Pip?’ Can she hear her? Is she feigning deafness? Ruth doesn’t care. She walks briskly, jogs a couple of steps, marches up behind her. ‘Pip?’

Pip turns. Rivulets of grey course down her white face like rain in a London gutter, like the messy smudge on a school book made by a bad eraser. ‘I’ve had a sneezing fit,’ Pip announces defensively. Ruth gives her a tissue and says ‘Bless you’. Pip blows her nose so noisily that momentarily, Ruth wonders if it’s an occupational hazard – that sound effects for bodily functions become unintentionally exaggerated even when the act is off. And then Ruth wonders if the act is off. If it’s all gone off.

The two women stand in the vast parking lot whilst the ubiquitous jeep-style vehicles of the North London mothers slalom around them.

‘That’s better,’ says Pip, dabbing her eyes, then honking her nose again, ‘ta. Must be delayed hay fever or something.’

‘Of course,’ says Ruth.

‘Better go,’ says Pip and she grins fleetingly before walking off.

‘Phone Zac,’ Ruth blurts out. Pip is rendered immobile. She can’t even turn to regard Ruth with horror and insult. She’s too gobsmacked to tell this woman to mind her own bloody business. Though, actually, Pip knows it is partly Ruth’s business. Ruth walks up to her and stands at her side, focusing on the same discarded crisp packet as Pip. ‘Just give him a call,’ Ruth suggests in a voice that is at once wise and caring. There’s silence. She wonders why this one manufacturer puts salt-and-vinegar crisps in a green packet, when most use blue. ‘Give him a call,’ she repeats, ‘for me, for June.’ She scans Pip’s face. ‘For Tom.’ It’s impossible to read her reaction, not just because of the make-up. ‘For Zac,’ Ruth shrugs. ‘Whenever. But do it. I mean, we could do it – June or I – but it wouldn’t be the same. He’d rather hear from you. Believe me. Trust us.’

‘I really, really have to go,’ Pip says firmly and she walks off. Ruth tells herself that it’s Pip’s cumbersome comedy shoes that make her stomp so.

After supper, June phones Zac to arrange Tom’s weekend. Courteously, she asks after Juliana, assuring her sceptical ex that no, she’s not taking the piss.

‘Of course I’m not being facetious,’ she remonstrates. ‘I’m being nice, you sod! She seems very, um, alluring. And she’s an absolute stunner, too! You must be the envy of your male friends.’

Zac doesn’t know how to respond. Weird that Ruth said pretty much the same earlier. He’d presumed that she and June had disliked Juliana for the very reasons he liked her – her beauty and her aloofness. For Zac, just now, surface details suffice. Burrowing beneath takes too much effort for too little reward. Like crème brûlée – crack through the glossy caramelized crown and it can be disappointingly bland underneath.

‘We saw your clown today,’ June says conversationally, anticipating the ensuing silence. ‘Zac?’ she chirps. ‘You there?’

‘What?’ Zac pretends he hasn’t heard. ‘My mobile phone is ringing,’ he fibs. Says he must go. Says ‘See you on Sunday’. June knows he’s been taken off his guard. Why wouldn’t she know? She’s his ex-partner. She knows what makes him tick. And what doesn’t. And if he was over the clown, he’d’ve just said ‘Oh, really?’ and if the clown had never meant much anyway, he’d’ve just said ‘Oh, really?’ He wouldn’t have been struck silent. He wouldn’t have lied about his mobile phone. June feels encouraged and of course she phones Ruth directly.

The next morning, Zac wakes to a slumber-hazy image of Pip lying next to him. Pigtails jutting this way and that. A little residue of face paint here and there. A glimpse of rosy nipple. Silken shoulder. The sound of her breathing softly. The sensation of the warmth from her body; the scent of it. He indulges himself and lets the apparition linger awhile. Then Juliana sighs from the other side of his bed and a sharp toenail catches his ankle. He’s wide awake now and Pip is banished. Or did she vanish? Hard to tell. But she’s certainly gone.

THIRTY-TWO

Django knew it was important to feign delighted surprise at Pip’s announcement of her impromptu visit. However, pre-emptive calls from both Cat and Fen had, of course, furnished him with the bare bones of his eldest niece’s situation almost as soon as they were known. He was rather stunned to hear that she who had so famously denounced love, sex and all the incumbent panoply, was now licking her wounds, racking her conscience and nursing her heart, having apparently fumbled with a few too many men in too few months. Django was pleased that Pip wanted to come home and rest up. Though he was confident that her sisters would offer limitless emotional comfort, he knew he could provide help of a practical nature that they could not. Django had always championed the necessity of distance from London, the merits of Derbyshire air, the importance of three large home-cooked meals a day, the refuge in the solid walls of one’s childhood home. Contemplation and game plans might well be achievable in the wine bars of London surrounded by one’s contemporaries, but true healing and intrinsic belief in the right way forward, were best done at home. And home, for the McCabe girls, would only ever be Derbyshire.

Down in London, so he’d heard, most young people would lunch on the go on prepacked sandwiches and grab a supper from a conveyor belt of uncooked fish and cold rice squashed into strange shapes. The thought made Django shudder. Meals should be three courses long (if the lemon soufflé was ready first, then have it first – the McCabes often did) and be eaten in a leisurely way at the table. Think of the indigestion otherwise! He’d be the first to concede that his recipes were unconventional, but they were undeniably wholesome. Just look at the health and vitality of his nieces; he could count on one hand the number of school days they had missed – the three of them combined – due to illness. And Django credits their closeness as a family in part to his rigorously adhered-to institution of eating together at the table. That’s why the girls have such becoming table manners. The McCabe household in Farleymoor, Derbyshire, has never done supper on laps with fork-loads shovelled absent-mindedly into mouths whilst the focus is on watching television. Instead, they’ve always sat at the kitchen table, chatted and argued, conversed and jested long after the meal is over. Even now, on their visits home, Django will unearth the old Top of the Form general knowledge quiz books at the girls’ request, grilling them on the capital city of such-and-such a country while they wait for the soup to heat up, or the casserole to cool down, or the ice-cream to melt a little so that it can be spooned out.

Django went to the vast chest freezer in the only outhouse with a weatherproof roof and rummaged around for the racks of lamb that the Merifields had given him. He’d been saving them for a Special Supper, wondering when that would be and now knowing without hesitation that it was tonight. He smacked his lips at the thought of gravy, his secret recipe which called for eye-watering quantities of Tabasco and a good dollop of Bovril. He’d have liked to do his celery and stilton soup for starters. But he’d forgotten the celery. And the stilton. So he was going to experiment with apple and cheddar instead. If ingredients went well together in the raw, he was confident that they’d cook up a treat when together in the pot. And anyway, it wasn’t as if a good slosh of Worcestershire Sauce couldn’t help where necessary. Maybe a dribble of sherry if he hadn’t drunk it all. He couldn’t remember. He had a feeling that he’d finished the Scotch but that the sherry was still half full. He could be mistaken, though. If that was the case, he knew there was an unopened bottle of Madeira wine that would do very nicely instead.

Whatever. Pip coming home was a very sensible plan of action. He was touched and encouraged that she obviously knew what was good for her. To catch her breath, catch up on sleep, have a think, eat hearty meals, decide what to do. To have her old bedroom, and her old uncle, all to herself. To be fed and cared for. To choose London over Derbyshire. To have the moors as her thinking space, the solidity of her childhood home to embrace her. To sit in the lap of the old cedar. To sit in the wind-breaks provided by the lichen-licked drystone walls. Solitude and space and comfort and company. She’d feel safe, enveloped by reminders of the enduring stability in her life even if her present was tense. Soon enough, she’d know where she’d been and where she’d be heading next.

Django checked her room. He’d frequently offered to replace her curling posters of Simon Le Bon and Nick Heyward with a framed Kandinsky or a watercolour from the gallery in Bakewell, or just to redecorate it in neutrals, but she’d consistently resisted. His girls never ran from their past. They embraced it. They were proud of it. The posters stayed put, greasy splodges creeping across the surface from each corner due to the ancient blobs of Blu-tack. Django glanced around the room. He’d made the bed instinctively, well over a week ago, just as soon as Fen had called to confide that her sister was having a spot of bother. This morning, he added the patchwork eiderdown. The nights were drawing in. Already, the moors were sending a slight shiver through the house morning and night.

Looking around him, he nodded at the wall Pip had painted orange with navy spots when she was sixteen. Cat had told him how Pip had recently added colour to her living-room and painted her bedroom ceiling hot pink. Django was pleased. Pip might be broken in her heart, but a cerise ceiling signified to him that she was on the mend. All that bland beigeness she espoused he would rate plain boring. From what he’d heard of her flat in the city, it seemed to contradict his eldest niece’s personality. Like someone forcing themselves to speak in dulcet tones when it was far more natural for them to sing and chortle at the top of their voice; like someone training themselves to walk demurely in high heels when trainers or pumps better suited the natural spring to their step. Time out in Derbyshire would put the colour back into her cheeks, too, and she’d stride back to London singing once more, of that Django was sure. He set off for Chesterfield to meet her train, leaving a vast vat of stew simmering on the stove for lunch.

The eldest of his nieces looked younger than he remembered, younger somehow than the other two. It was most peculiar. Though all three girls were slight in physique and with barely an inch or a pound’s difference between them, Pip’s deportment and demeanour had always given the illusion of stature. All that gaiety and bouncing around and daft make-up and larger-than-life liveliness. Just then, Django was quite shocked. Catching sight of Pip lugging her holdall along the platform, he could see that she looked wan and visibly thinner, her litheness and poise compromised. He concentrated on not letting his concern show. What he wanted to do was scoop her up in his arms, envelop her in his sheepskin coat and support her to the car and beyond. But he didn’t. He’d feel awkward and she’d worry that he was worried. She’d back off, fix a smile on her face, pretend that everything was just dandy.

They hugged, as always they did. But though he offered to carry her bags, when she said ‘No, no, not with your dodgy back, old man’, he respected her dignity and allowed her to manage them on her own, though this pained him far more than his rickety sacroiliac joint.

Pip chatted sociably for the first part of the half-hour journey home, but the closer they came to Farleymoor, the quieter she became, interspersing the odd comment or question with lengthy periods gazing out of the car window to the moors and way beyond. Django was aware that she swallowed hard as soon as home came into view, that she cleared her throat when they swung into the driveway, that she made much of blowing her nose and keeping her face in her handkerchief when they came to a standstill.

‘Delayed hay fever,’ she explained.

‘It’s a bugger,’ Django sympathized. He took her bags from the boot before she could object, asking Pip to open up the house for him.

All Django can smell is the stew. Chilli powder, specifically. He makes a mental note to dampen it down with oregano and plain yoghurt before serving. Pip, however, standing in the hallway, eyes closed, soaks up the scent of her entire home. It is an olfactory phenomenon. She knows well that it will only be detectable for a few minutes on arrival. After that, it will be so subtle as to go unnoticed. And though it is unique, unchanging and beautifully familiar, it is an aroma impossible to conjure up anywhere else. Back in Kentish Town, she will be unable to remember how her childhood home smells. She could close her eyes all she liked, flare her nostrils and concentrate very hard but it would be futile. And today, once she’s unpacked and gone downstairs to the kitchen for lunch, the house’s inimitable scent will be at once so familiar and usual that she will not think to notice it, nor be able to detect it.

Right now, though, her senses are filled with it. It’s so vivid that it’s a taste and a sound, too. She can smell stew, but it’s so obvious, so short-term, that it’s almost vulgar. Far more potent are the top notes and undertones of the aromas of the house itself. Oh, for a perfumer to blend them for her, bottle them for her to keep and call upon. Wood smoke. Old furniture. Coal tar soap. Django’s penchant for piquant condiments. The slightly damp downstairs cloakroom. The overflowing fruit trough in the Drawing-room, which, at this time of day, the McCabes call the Library. The stair carpet, threadbare in parts and revealing the warm, worn wooden planks beneath. Coffee that Django grinds fresh each morning. Pipes and cigars. The cat from the cottage over the way. More than all of these, though – the very fabric of the building itself. The blue-grey stone hewn from the local quarry almost three hundred years ago, the rafters still standing the tests of time, the flagstone floors, the earth way beneath, the cast-iron fireplaces, the ill-fitting doors, the window glass with the occasional cracked pane allowing the scent of pine and heather to filter in. All is deliciously salty, earthy and warm. Derbyshire and Django. Salt of the earth. Enveloping warmth.

‘I’ll just unpack,’ Pip says. ‘I’m absolutely starving. Something smells good.’

The stew for lunch was interesting. A little chewy but full of flavour – though not of the type usually associated with casseroles. Perhaps it was the addition of tuna, maybe the slosh of Madeira. Pip didn’t know, nor did she care. She ate all that Django placed in front of her and even requested a small portion of seconds. Django suggested fruit and coffee in the Library and Pip washed up while he prepared a tray.

‘The stew will be even better tomorrow,’ Pip said.

‘True enough,’ said Django, ‘though I was thinking of freezing it because I wanted to try a tortilla for lunch tomorrow.’

‘Either,’ Pip said enthusiastically, whisking a warm dry tea towel from the Aga rail.

Not even Django’s potent blend of Costa Rica and French Continental, freshly ground and brewed until utterly opaque, could keep Pip awake that afternoon. With a half-eaten apple lolling in her lap, she dozed off. Django drank his coffee down to the dregs and ate four satsumas, throwing the peel into the fireplace. He read the Racing Post, the Daily Telegraph and a magazine Fen had left on her last visit, Art Matters. He scrunched the newspapers up and placed them in the grate, too, in preparation for a fire later. He’d use the cherry logs he’d been given by the Sutcliffes. The fire would smell excellent. He ate another two satsumas and added their peel to the pyre for good measure. Every now and then, he glanced across to his niece, sound asleep. He wondered whether to remove the apple from her lap – it had rolled over and her trousers showed a growing splodge where the juice was blotting. Pip’s mouth was relaxed and ajar, a little drool collecting in the corners of her lips. She didn’t look so fragile now. There was colour already to her cheeks. She looked very peaceful and it seemed intrusive to gaze at her. So he left her to her nap and prepared the apple and cheddar soup. He resorted to a fair amount of cornflour and two tins of baked beans as well.

THIRTY-THREE

Apart from two visits to the Rag and Thistle pub – primarily so Django could show her off – and a couple of trips into Bakewell for provisions and newspapers, Pip happily confined herself to her home and was glad not to go above a walking pace for the duration of her stay. And walk she did. Either briskly up hill and down dale. Or just round and round the garden. Or in a leisurely way over to the folly on the other side of the valley. Or striding with purpose so as not to be late for tea and tart with Old Miss Sydnop. There again, she often merely meandered here and there because destination was irrelevant. Three or four times she raised the pace to a veritable jog when taking next door’s flat-coat retrievers for a walk. Her tally over the week was pretty impressive – but will pale into insignificance against the immense distance she’s got to accomplish on her personal journey.

Even though I’ve never had a conventional job – in that I’ve never done the Monday to Friday, 9.00 till 5.00, commute by tube, sit in an office, take coffee breaks, style of work – yet I find there’s something rather decadent about it now being Tuesday afternoon and I’m prancing across Farleymoor. It’s bizarre, I feel like I’m playing hooky, bunking off, doing a runner, skiving, taking a non-legit sickie!

What are you doing with your privileged time, Pip?

Thinking.

About?

Stuff.

Specifically?

I’m just taking stock.

A stocktake?

Perhaps.

And what do you find?

That there are things missing. And though I can account for them, they’re still missing. I miss them.

Can’t you retrieve them?

No. I can’t. But I suppose I can try to ensure that I’m not so careless with precious things in future. The thing is, I know when and where I lost them. And why. So I guess that’s a start to preventing such negligence from occurring again.

Soon enough, it was Thursday and she’d been back home for almost a week. Her sojourn had rested her and revived her, but she was acutely aware that though home was right here, reality resided, for the time being, back down in London. She felt homesick for Derbyshire though she hadn’t yet left.

‘You’re a bit quiet,’ Django probed gently, pouring her a little cherry brandy in the Snug (the Drawing-room had metamorphosed out of the Library that afternoon into the Snug that evening by Django lighting the fire) and offering her a jag of peanut brittle that she just about had room for after supper. ‘Didn’t the curry agree with you?’ He paused. ‘I admit I may have overdone it adding HP Sauce to the ensemble. Bloody faulty lid, being so loose.’

‘It was delicious,’ Pip assured him. She smiled over to her uncle. And smiled inwardly, too. What on earth was he wearing, she marvelled. Corduroy trousers the colour of maple syrup with a pleated waist; a shirt that was so Thomas Hardy, with its intricate smocking, that it might as well belong to Bakewell Amateur Dramatics; a neckerchief that he’d proudly tell you he wore as a bandanna when he was at Woodstock; mismatched socks; and, by the side of the sofa, tan leather boots with an alarming Cuban heel. God, she loved the man! How wonderful to be so charmingly eccentric, so steadfastly idiosyncratic, so utterly unselfconscious. Nothing for show, nothing so as to impress, no statement to make, no nasty quirks lurking.

‘I reckon my sisters have filled you in?’ she suddenly announced. Django just raised an eyebrow sagely. He didn’t want to implicate Cat or Fen, he didn’t want to change the subject, he certainly didn’t want Pip to feel defensive and thus retreat. So it had taken her almost a week to bring to him what she had no doubt shared with the moors and the cedar tree and next door’s flat-coat retrievers. So what? He believed it to have been her prerogative. Right now, he knew the most seemly and encouraging response he could give would be through physiognomic distortions. So he twitched his lips, lowered his eyes and raised them again, regarding her levelly. ‘I’d do the same,’ Pip admitted, ‘if they were in a dither. In fact, I often have, haven’t I?’ She paused. ‘That’s what families are for, aren’t they?’

Django nodded. ‘It’s not tittle-tattle,’ he said quietly, ‘when passed amongst us.’

‘You’re so right,’ Pip said gratefully.

‘So, Philippa, my dear,’ Django said, peering intently at the cherry brandy label – not that he was reading it, but just surreptitiously to shift attention away from Pip and her traumas, so as shrewdly to put her at her ease. ‘Can I top up your tipple?’ He reached over to her glass with the bottle.

‘I’ve done stupid things,’ she admitted with a grimace. ‘It’s only now that I don’t regret the fling with Caleb – he’s the—’

‘I know,’ nodded Django, ‘Fen explained.’

‘I don’t even regret the one-night stand with Alex,’ Pip admitted. ‘He’s the—’

‘Yes,’ Django interjected, ‘Cat explained.’ He peered briefly at Pip, then rose from his chair to fiddle with the fire; as if to say that the one-night stand with Alex really didn’t warrant further discussion.

‘The only regret I have is over Zac.’ She looked at Django. He settled himself back into the tub chair, sipped his brandy slowly and then returned her gaze. His expression was open. ‘Did Fen or Cat tell you about him?’

‘A little,’ Django said, actually knowing an awful lot but also knowing it was wise to encourage Pip to proclaim it all in the open to him.

‘He’s the one who –’ she paused. Django refused to assist her. She’d just have to think and finish her sentence on her own. And out loud. Pip glanced at the fire. Glanced down into her brandy balloon. ‘Well, he’s actually, simply, The One. Is Zac Holmes, Django. Actually.’

Django raised his glass. ‘To Zac,’ he toasted, ‘actually The One for our Pip.’

Pip shook her head forlornly. ‘He’s gone,’ she whispered, a tear so full, so brackish and heavy, that it splashed fast and noisily straight down into her glass. She took a gulp of liqueur as if to hide the evidence. The brandy tasted no different. ‘I’m not to him as he is to me,’ Pip said.

‘Why do you say that?’ Django asked with a tone of incredulity which he hoped would signify optimism. ‘If he’s the one for you, why on earth wouldn’t you be the one for him?’ He let the question hover in the room. As if the question itself provided the only answer. ‘Of course you are! Just look at you! You’re gorgeous! You’re a catch! You say you’ve lost him? Gracious, girl, out you go to find him again.’

Pip shook her head and tried to sip her liqueur. Her throat was so tight with the knot of tears she was holding at bay that she was unable to swallow. She swished the liquid around her mouth until it had anaesthetized her gums and numbed her tongue.

‘Communication communication communication,’ her uncle emphasized.

‘Won’t do any good!’ Pip remonstrated histrionically. ‘I’ve fucked up and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Language!’ said Django, though the McCabe swear jar was customarily full on account of his own ripe choice of expletives.

‘Pardon me,’ Pip said.

Django passed her a peeled satsuma. She picked at the pith and noticed how it made her fingertips scaly. She popped two segments in her mouth and bit down. The sour-sweet acidity zipped along her jaw, making her eyes water and yet helping her tears go away.

‘You know what,’ she said clearly, ‘I’ve made a mistake.’ The proclamation was immense for her, her eyes darting over Django’s face. ‘Me.’ She didn’t seek Django’s understanding of the situation, just approval of her declaration. He glanced at her and then seemed to find greater interest in Fen’s copy of Art Matters. Pip would have to elaborate. ‘I know that I don’t need a man,’ she said, ‘however, I now think I’d rather like one – but only this Zac one – in my life.’ Django regarded her intently. As she let her gaze drop, so, too, did the corners of her mouth. ‘However, my ridiculous behaviour and daft principles have made this impossible,’ she spat at herself. ‘I’ve forfeited Zac, Django. He’s not interested. He doesn’t want me. And I don’t blame him.’ Uncle and niece looked at each other. Keeping her focus steady, Pip continued. ‘I must move on and carry forward the hindsight of it all.’ She cupped her hands around the rest of the satsuma, as if it might emanate warmth. ‘It’s time for a change,’ she began to conclude, ‘so, Zac was my first love. And it’s my fault that I have to say “was”. But c’est la vie and all the other clichés out there. Me and my fucking stupid fear of commitment.’

‘Language!’

‘Pardon me.’

‘Not the word “fuck” this time,’ Django clarified, ‘the word “commitment”, Pip. I’ve never heard anything so flimsy and feeble!’

‘I have a fear of commitment!’ Pip protests in a chant-like way, as if she’s learned it off by heart from an article in Cosmo. As if it is a fact as indisputable as her blue-green eyes. As if it is something she was born with and will die with, and to argue otherwise is futile and plain daft. ‘I have,’ she repeats slowly and somewhat patronizingly, ‘a fear of commitment.’

‘Bollocks!’ Django says derisorily, taking yesterday’s Daily Telegraph and scanning the television listings as if they are far more interesting than Pip. ‘Absolute bloody bollocks.’

‘Language,’ Pip counters, with not much conviction.

‘Overruled,’ Django declares, scrunching down the newspaper as if he’s supremely irritated that her nonsense is preventing him from reading yesterday’s television times. ‘It’s entirely justified in this instance. You’re wrong. You’re talking codswallop.’

Pip is pissed off. The room is too hot. It’s not yet October. There’s no need for a fire, however lovely the smell. Django has poked and stoked and fed it too much. Pip smirks out loud at the parallel. She’s been given too much rich food. Too much bloody cherry bloody brandy. She’s been poked and prodded and probed. She’s bloody well going to go home tomorrow. ‘I’m tired,’ she says. ‘I’m going to go to my room. Pack. I’m off home tomorrow.’ She cringes. She said that on purpose in her petulance and she regrets it instantly. How childish.

‘Philippa,’ Django says sternly and, though she’s halfway to the door, she stops, turns and lets him lecture her. ‘I am telling you that you do not fear your own ability to commit.’ He lets the statement hang in the air, the italicized emphasis is blatant. ‘Just think about your unwavering dedication to your career, your notion of sisterhood and friendship. You are tireless. That is why we all lean on you. Because you are so totally committed to the lot of us.’ Pip finds herself sitting down on the arm of the sofa, staring at the faded knees on Django’s corduroys. ‘You do not have a “fear of commitment”, Philippa McCabe,’ he all but mocks, ‘that’s just an easy way out of all of this. What you have, dearest one, is a deep-seated and totally understandable fear of other people’s commitment to you.’

His conclusion is so strong, delivered so brazenly, that she reads it in her mind’s eye as a shout line in capital letters, italicized here and there. She blinks, she closes her eyes, she opens them and blinks again, frowning deeply. She shakes her head vehemently. She’s desperate to deny it.

Wait! She’s never been in love, for Christ’s sake! Not until Zac. So Django’s theory is flawed. And she tells him so.

‘Don’t you see,’ she concludes triumphantly, ‘I’ve never been committed to a soul! Before Zac, the blokes I’ve dallied with have been in love with me. I haven’t cared for them and therefore haven’t cared when they’ve ended.’ She pauses. She’s confused. She fears she’s contradicted herself but she’s not quite sure how. Is a fear of commitment the same as having never committed to a soul? Her mind is fuddled. It’s all boiling down to semantics. She’s in a knot and she’s squirming.

‘I totally, wholeheartedly, agree,’ says Django, taking her off her guard, ‘you’re never been in love. Until Zac, you’ve chosen chaps whom you’ve simply liked but who have loved you. So when they’re over, it hasn’t hurt you. Not that you’ve ever considered their grief.’

Pip has no idea what’s coming next. All she knows is that hitherto, Django has made sense and now she’s powerless to disagree. It’s simultaneously unnerving and yet just a little comforting, too.

‘Why have you done this, over all these years?’ He’s asking it as a question but she’d much rather he’d answer it for her. ‘I’ll tell you why,’ Django obliges. ‘Because what you actually fear is being left by someone you love.’

Thank you, Django. Thank you.

Pip just stares at him. It makes perfect sense and it appals her.

‘That’s why you have attempted to destroy what you had started to unravel with Zac.’

Go on, Django, go on!

‘Your fear of commitment centres solely on another’s commitment to you.’

More, Django, more!

‘And who can blame you, my darlingest duck,’ Django says softly, crossing the room to his niece and placing a hand so gently across her shoulders, ‘who can blame you, my dear? Your mother left you! She ran off! You were tiny!’

Django tries to still a shudder when experiencing acutely the pain he still feels at his sister-in-law’s abhorrent act. Pip holds tightly on to his hand in both of hers. He smiles down at her, benevolently. ‘I know we as a family have it down to a banter – “mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver” – but the reality is so hideous that the only way we can deal with it is by making light of it.’ Pip regards him, wide-eyed. ‘You tell your Zac that your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when you were tiny,’ Django says, ‘and if he’s even half the lad I suspect he is, he’ll pull you to him and never let you go.’ Pip stares at him. What on earth is she meant to say now? ‘Go and pack,’ Django says, ‘have a good night’s sleep – tomorrow you’ll be back to that peculiar orangey night-time you lot have in the city.’

Falteringly, Pip goes to her room. There’s a part of her that feels she’s been let off the hook. There’s a growing part of her that knows she isn’t thankful for this. She looks at her clothes, her holdall. She thinks about baggage. She inhales deeply and gazes at Nick Heyward and Duran Duran.

What’ll I do, boys?

You know what to do.

Pip returns to the Snug. Django is still reading yesterday’s television listings in the Daily Telegraph. ‘Django,’ she says, with slight trepidation, ‘it’s just that I told Zac that we’re a big happy family.’ She stares at the rug. ‘Really big.’ She feels ashamed. ‘I’ve not quite told him about my mother,’ she reveals, glancing up at Django but, unable to translate his expression, she swiftly stares down to the rug again. ‘About the cowboy in Denver bit.’ She again scans her uncle’s face but he’s regarding her intently and waiting for her to continue. ‘In fact,’ she says quietly, ‘I’ve even referred to her as “Mum”.’

Django’s heart bleeds for her. She can’t tell, though. She feels guilty, as if manufacturing her mother and reinventing the woman as someone called Mum, somehow devalues all that Django has given to her and her sisters.

Django’s heart, though, aches for Pip. For Fen, for Cat, too. For his late brother. Damn that bloody woman! No child should have to invent a mother. No child should have to accept an eccentric uncle as a mother. Damn that woman! ‘Communication communication communication,’ Django reiterates a final time in a slightly hoarse voice. ‘You confide in Zac. You tell him about your mother and you will see – if he’s half the chap I have a feeling he is – you will see how he will understand and embrace the provenance of your fib.’

Pip hadn’t once stopped to think of it like that. All that Zac is flashes across her mind. He wouldn’t think less of her, if anything he’d think more of her. And when Django meets him, she realizes, he’ll think him double the chap he reckons he is now. She looks at Django with a mix of admiration, relief, gratitude and intense love. ‘’Kay,’ she whispers. At the door, she stops, turns to face him again. ‘Night,’ she says, giving a small wave.

‘Night, duck,’ he replies.

‘We couldn’t have wished for a better mum,’ Pip tells him, ‘in you.’

Django smiles at her, tells her to stop being soppy, to have a bubble bath and bugger off to bed.

‘I could have wished for a better mum for you,’ he says quietly as he stokes the fire and settles it for bed later. ‘Damn that woman!’

So Pip returned to London by train. The sway of the carriage, the rumble of the tracks, the blur of the landscape rushing past, lulled her into a final, concluding bout of contemplation. It had taken her but a week at home to acknowledge her lifetime of hiding. She knew now that there was more to self-awareness than merely acknowledging one’s character traits. I’m a jealous type; I’m a clingy type; I fear commitment; I fear being left – that’s a start, but ultimately they are little more than excuses. Declarations alone do not provide solutions. Self-awareness is the realization that one can neither live in the past, nor run from it. The point of self-awareness is not to let history repeat itself in the future.

‘It’s not about forgetting the past or demeaning it. I have to actively embrace the past,’ she said to herself as the train pulled in to Derby. ‘I have to stare it in the face,’ she declared as the train pulled out and continued south, ‘be neither afraid nor embarrassed.’ She sighed and drifted off to sleep with the effort of it all.

‘It’s not about moving on!’ she suddenly said rather loudly, waking as the train stood stationary at Luton. A teenage boy who’d just embarked suddenly decided against sitting opposite Pip. ‘It’s not about moving on,’ she laughed, startling an elderly couple recently seated across the aisle, ‘it’s about me standing my ground, pleading my case, rolling up my sleeves and fighting for what I want and believe in!’

She felt euphoric. She felt light and lifted, and she felt like dashing straight to Zac’s, calling her friends and her sisters en route to meet her there, so she could lavish some sort of verbal group hug on the lot of them. Suddenly, it was all gloriously clear to her – where she’d been, where she wanted to go. Simple, really. She could finally define the cause. She certainly understood the effect it had had. Now, at last, she felt she had the means for solution at her disposal. Bloody train, stop dawdling! Godspeed her home so she can make amends.

THIRTY-FOUR

Pip McCabe has headed home with a heart full of hope. Her enthusiasm, however, is ever so slightly deluded. She somehow assumes that in her absence, all has been frozen in time, that everyone will be just where she left them, in anticipation of her return, hoping that she’s picked up the pieces and is coming back to take up where she abruptly left off. It’s as if, in her mind’s eye, she has turned the people in her life into a cast of cardboard cut-outs, suspended in the there-and-then. All she needs to do, she feels, is breeze back amongst them, touch them with her magic wand (the non-collapsible one) and restore them to the here-and-now, ready for her revelations and happy to hold hands and stroll forward. That is, after they’ve given her a round of applause.

As if they’d put their lives on hold!

And anyway, who exactly is waiting for her?

Certainly not Zac Holmes.

Zac is not the type to allow himself to become stuck in a rut. He’s too sensible and centred to languish in the past or rue what-ifs. He knows that time waits for no man and the only woman he currently waits for is Juliana who believes it her prerogative to be always fifteen minutes late. He’s neither wondered whether Pip has been pacing the moors, soul-searching; nor has he hoped that all her Derbyshire paths have led her to the Road to Damascus. He hasn’t had the time or inclination to think about her at all, actually.

Zac’s had a hectic week. Work has been crazy. And there’s been an inordinate amount of socializing. In his eyes, the latter provides respite from the former while the former provides the funds to facilitate the latter. For Zac, the two are not just complementary – the one is worthless without the other, not that he’s one to analyse or complain. He just goes with the flow, accommodating his clients’ particulars and peculiarities, welcoming the social opportunities that come his way, grateful for the funds that enable him to pay bills and enjoy himself. And buy that new painting – the huge green one with the orange blob and blue stripe. Once or twice he’s been slightly baffled by how proactive his sister-in-law and his ex have suddenly become. But he’s told himself not to be so bloody cynical. He should be grateful for their care and consideration. He should be plain pleased that they wish to include Juliana and welcome her into their fold.

And he is.

He is.

But it is a little odd.

He feels something of a passenger when he is accustomed to being in the driving seat.

It’s just a little strange, something to get used to, that’s all. Allowing himself to be taken for a ride.

The mantra that June and Ruth had decided upon was ‘compliment compliment compliment’ and even if they had to exercise it through gritted teeth or with fists clenched out of sight, they were determined to stick with it. On the day last week that Pip headed home to Derbyshire, Ruth had phoned Zac at work first thing.

‘About tonight,’ Ruth said, ‘just thought I’d double-check we’re still on.’

‘Er, yes,’ Zac replied, wondering why his confirmation the night before hadn’t sufficed.

‘Wonderful,’ said Ruth, ‘and as I said, I’d really much rather cook than eat out. It would be my pleasure.’ She took Zac’s pause as a possible falter so she carried on regardless. ‘Just something simple,’ she breezed. ‘See you both around 8.00-ish?’ Again Zac paused, again Ruth refused to allow it to be a vacillation. ‘Or 8.30,’ she offered, because the ‘you both’ part wasn’t open to discussion. ‘Wonderful!’ she said, as if he had replied ‘See you then!’

Juliana would really rather not have gone. A restaurant was one thing, someone’s kitchen table quite another; Holloway was something else entirely. But it was too late to cancel. And it wasn’t as though there were many viable alternatives that evening for her. There was a works’ party somewhere in Fulham but she was starting to tire of her colleagues in the London office. Distant cousins had again extended an invitation for her to spend the night at their place in Hertfordshire. But though their cottage was cute, their three children under five years old weren’t, so once again, she made her excuses. Anyway, she hadn’t seen Zac for a week or so – not since his kid’s party – and she rather fancied a Saturday morning shopping spree in Hampstead. So, though she had hoped that her time in London would preclude ever having to venture to a place called Holloway, if Saturday morning shopping in Hampstead was dependent on dinner at Zac’s brother’s there the night before, then fine. They needn’t stay long. Certainly not if the sister-in-law’s cooking was anything like as lousy as Zac’s ex’s.

Actually, June does finger food very well indeed. And very often. Fortunately, Rob-Dad and Tom feel very lucky. They think her finger food worthy of the maximum number of Michelin stars. They never go hungry. Meals in their house are always so colourful. And transportable, too! ‘Delicious and nutritious!’ Rob-Dad always marvels. ‘Fun and yum!’ Tom always says.

Ruth, however, is a truly accomplished cook. Ruth likes to cook with cream. And egg yolks. And French unsalted butter. And not so much a drizzle as a gush of cold-pressed olive oil. And she absolutely delights in desserts. The more sugar the better. More egg yolks. Litres of double cream. Kilos of ground almonds. Ingots of fine chocolate. Sloshings of liqueur.

That Friday night, June, Tom and Rob-Dad watched The Simpsons whilst picking from plates laden with cheesy potato croquettes, chicken nuggets in a coating of crisps and corn flakes, bite-sized fritters of carrot, pumpkin and courgette and skewers of cherry tomatoes and mini corncobs. One hundred and fifty miles north, Pip and Django sat down at the kitchen table to mammoth portions of the rack of lamb from the Merifields, for which Django had devised an interesting gravy enlivened with marmalade, plus a stupendous mash of interesting texture utilizing every vegetable he could find, together with chopped apricots to brighten the colour. In Holloway, Ruth prepared a veritable banquet for Zac and Juliana. Not a single element of the meal was low-fat or calorie-conscious or cholesterol-friendly. Even the side salad was drenched in a delicious, rich, whipped vinaigrette.

Juliana hardly ate a thing. She met every plate-load of food with a polite ‘thank you’ but a look of utter disdain while she prodded the food with suspicion. Ruth pretended not to notice. She knew that Zac noticed – that was enough for her. In between mouthfuls, she gamely chatted nineteen to the dozen, as was her wont, and Jim asked polite questions about life in South Africa and the vagaries of Juliana’s job. They both met Juliana’s spartan answers with grace. Although Ruth’s motives were ulterior, on the face of it Ruth was just being Ruth – chatty, vivacious, hostess extraordinaire. And Jim was just being polite towards his brother’s new woman. Ultimately, Juliana was just being Juliana, too. That, thought Ruth, was precisely the point. Without the dimmed lighting of a restaurant, or the unwanted attention of waiters, or the distraction of other diners, one could see much more clearly what one was getting. Ruth thus considered the evening a success.

When Zac went to collect Tom on the Sunday, June asked after Juliana. ‘Ruth said it was a fun evening,’ she said.

‘The food was amazing,’ Zac said, privately wondering whether ‘fun’ best described the evening. Juliana had been stroppy back at his flat when Zac admitted that he was too full to fuck. And she’d cost him a small fortune at Whistles yesterday morning. Still it was nice to have his ex asking after Juliana. And it was touching that his sister-in-law had made such an effort. Wouldn’t it be nice, too, if Juliana enquired after June, after Tom? It would have been nice if she had made more of an effort with Ruth and Jim, as well. Ever the diplomat, Zac put it all down to her having a somewhat awkward manner. Or else that she was on a diet. Or that she had a very high sex drive. He liked to think she was probably just shy under that steely exterior. Or something. He reckoned she was simply not used to the overtness of characters like June and Ruth; to rich food; to men with indigestion.

Tom was scurrying around the house, gathering various components of Tracy Island that he simply couldn’t leave home without – even though Zac’s flat housed a wealth of paraphernalia connected with Thunderbirds.

‘What are you boys going to do today?’ June asked Zac.

‘Oh, you know, a little bit of International Rescue,’ Zac replied drily. ‘Thunderbirds are go, and all that.’

June laughed. ‘Is Juliana around?’

Zac looked fairly startled. He hadn’t thought to include her in his time with his son. Certainly, she’d made no suggestion either. In fact, he didn’t even know what she was up to that day. Or the next few, for that matter. ‘No,’ he told June, ‘she has plans already.’ June nodded as if this was a good enough answer from him and a good enough reason from her. Tom came crashing into the hall, loaded with plastic toys and brimming with excited energy.

‘Thunderbirds are GO,’ he proclaimed rather seriously, kissing his mother and taking his father’s hand.

‘I’ll do the school run tomorrow morning,’ Zac told June, giving her a kiss. ‘OK, kiddo,’ he said, ruffling Tom’s hair, ‘let’s go To Infinity And Beyond.’

‘That’s Buzz Lightyear,’ Tom corrected, looking nervously about him to check no one had heard his silly old dad’s gaff.

For the week that followed, while Pip traipsed the moors with furrowed brow and heavy heart, Zac had barely a moment to himself at work or play. It was a week in which he hoped to consolidate his bonus and was therefore happy after heavy, fraught days for the evening’s entertainment to be laid on for him. On one, Juliana treated him to champagne and strawberries at her flat – partly, he realized, so she could show off her new Brazilian bikini wax which left very little to the imagination because it left very little at all. On another, he treated his brother and Rob-Dad to Chelsea v. Spurs and too many pints after a storming victory. Ruth made sure that the intervening three evenings were organized, too. With Juliana’s attendance graciously requested, of course.

Ruth had a feeling that Juliana would turn her nose up at any theatre that wasn’t West End with name-droppable cast, which was precisely why she chose a new Scottish play at the King’s Head in Islington and encouraged the party to knuckle down to a thorough critique and analysis over spicy food afterwards. The next event she pinpointed was a Spanish film, at the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead. To Ruth’s horror, she’d overlooked how kinky Almodovar’s films could be. She feared her plan had backfired when Zac and Juliana bade a flushed and hasty farewell, disappearing down Hampstead High Street towards Zac’s flat at an alarming pace.

Ruth needn’t have worried. Indeed, Zac and Juliana did have sex urgently as soon as they were in his flat. But for both of them, it was little more than assisted masturbation. The film had made them horny individually, but not really for each other. Come quickly. Then go, please. It was like being famished and wolfing down a fast-food-chain burger and fries. You don’t really taste it. It repeats on you later, rather unpleasantly. It staves off hunger without one’s appetite being truly sated. The resulting feeling is of being unfull and unfulfilled. So Juliana took a taxi home, did a little yoga and had an early night. Zac half-watched Newsnight and did some work.

It’s Friday night. Pip has been back in Kentish Town for a couple of hours, has flicked a duster over her flat, done her washing, carefully noted down various messages left on the answering machine and been philosophical over the absence of the voice she unrealistically hoped to hear. She’s prepared herself a herb omelette, some oven chips, grilled mushrooms and a dollop of ketchup and is perched on a stool in her kitchen, flicking through the mail. Tonight seems the ideal time to catch up on paperwork, pay bills and balance her bank statements with her cheque-book and carefully kept auto-bank slips. Hopefully, she’ll soon enough be far too busy for admin and chores.

Which reminds me! The hallway! I bought the paint before I left so I’ll set to transforming it from antique white to funky pistachio just as soon as I’ve washed up.

Down in Soho, Rob and June, Ruth and Jim, Zac and Juliana have formed a cosy little group in a corner of the private members’ club that Jim belongs to. June and Ruth have already spoken two or three times during the day to confirm the subtleties of the sign language and code they’re to call upon.

‘Right, so if either of us sneezes twice, the other has to go to the loo, then the sneezer has to sneeze like mad and excuse herself for the loo, too?’

‘Yup. And if I rub Rob’s knee, it means Juliana or Zac are getting too physical and one of us should do something.’

‘Like what? Spill a drink?’

‘Ruth, you are wicked! But I dare you! No, that’s cruel. Remember, we mustn’t interfere – we can only assist in making the incompatibility as obvious to Zac as it is to us.’

So the six of them are in the bar, sipping drinks and chatting as casually as a stage-managed, ready-scripted June & Ruth Inc. Production allows. Juliana and Zac are sitting opposite one another and there have been no physical displays of affection, or even casual contact. Unluckily for Rob, June has thus had no reason to rub his knee. Both Ruth and June have already had a sneezing fit apiece and have twice convened in the loos to discuss and plot.

‘Compliment compliment compliment,’ June reminds them both.

‘The thing is,’ Ruth remarks, ‘they seem somewhat disinterested in each other – don’t you think?’

‘Maybe it’s on its way out naturally,’ June theorizes. They consider this and see that such a twist would be rather unsatisfactory in the light of their thoughtful machinations.

‘But it must be Zac who does the ditching,’ Ruth stresses, for the thousandth time. ‘He must clear his slate himself.’

Ruth and June’s compliments take many different forms, from paroxysms of delight over Juliana’s Gina shoes, to an ardent interest in what exactly she does in her consultancy, to downright inquisitiveness about her friends and family Back Home. Juliana’s economic answers, polite smiles and compliments graciously but sparingly received, tell Ruth and June little more than they already know. Ruth and June worry that the men are chatting and drinking and not taking a blind bit of notice. Furtive glances over to Zac reveal little. He just nods and smiles and chats and laughs, as ever he does, whomever he’s with.

Juliana goes to the toilet. Ruth leans over to June. ‘I want to hit your ex!’ she hisses. ‘I want to say, “Come on, you dick! She may well look the part but she’s as dull as dishwater!” In fact, he should be telling us that she’s as dull as dishwater; begging us for advice.’

June nods, tips her head to one side and taps Zac insistently on the knee. ‘So how’s it going?’ she asks him, repeating herself to force him to break off from an intense debate about Budvar versus Budweiser. ‘How’s it going?’ she asks intently. ‘With Juliana?’

Zac regards her a little blankly. He glances at Ruth who has her glass midway to her lips. She shrugs. ‘Fine,’ he says, ‘cool, I guess.’ Juliana returns before June can probe into long-term potential and Ruth can dish dull water. ‘You OK?’ Zac asks Juliana with attentiveness typical of him but which June and Ruth feel she doesn’t deserve.

‘Sure,’ she smiles, touching his knee.

Hands off! Ruth shrieks to herself, unable to withhold a nudge to June.

For fuck’s sake! June curses to herself, partly because she now has a slosh of Ruth’s Cosmopolitan down her right leg.

When Zac goes to the bar to buy the next round, June and Ruth round on Juliana.

‘I really like your bag,’ Ruth says. ‘So how’s it going with Zac?’

‘Kate Spade,’ says Juliana in a doesn’t-every-woman-own-one kind of way.

It means nothing to June who’s a loyal leather Mulberry girl herself. ‘I love your bag, too,’ she says anyway, ‘and the colour of your nails – so vampy! So, you and Zac – happy?’

‘Chanel,’ says Juliana. June and Ruth nod effusively while wondering what on earth it will take for a direct answer. ‘Zac’s great,’ Juliana surprises them, but continues in the same tone as if he’s her flavour-of-the-month designer nail varnish. Her audience sits agog waiting for more. ‘I’d be bored to hell over here without him.’

Because of Juliana’s flat tone and level gaze, momentarily Ruth and June both wonder if she means here as in London, England, or here as in right now in the bar in Soho, with them.

‘When are you going back to South Africa?’ Ruth asks and it sounds more like an instruction than a question.

‘Actually,’ Juliana says, ‘my ticket is booked for next Friday.’ The ambient jazz masks Ruth and June’s sighs of relief. ‘But I may well end up staying until Christmas now,’ Juliana reveals. June and Ruth are stunned and horrified and unprepared.

‘Work or pleasure?’ June asks, as if dreading the answer.

‘Are the two mutually exclusive?’ Juliana retorts, irritated that there’s a chip in her nail varnish. ‘I don’t think so.’

Ruth and June forget all about their lexicon of sneezes, the symbolism of rubbing Rob’s knees, the coded winks and loaded nudges they’d devised for the evening. When Juliana disappears to the street to search for a signal on her mobile phone, they round on Zac.

‘I hear Juliana might be staying on,’ Ruth exclaims.

‘Until Christmas,’ June consolidates.

‘Yes,’ Zac confirms, ‘she might.’

‘Does that suit you?’ Ruth badgers.

‘Sure,’ Zac shrugs. ‘Why wouldn’t it?’

THIRTY-FIVE

Zac awoke in Juliana’s serviced apartment the next morning. His head ached a little but through general fatigue rather than a hangover.

I’d rather be in my bed, alone, actually.

Why is that?

No reason, really. Haven’t had myself to myself for a while. Plus I’d like to doze off for a couple of hours, fart a fair bit, lounge around eating Frosties straight from the packet and see if Cat Deeley or one of her lookylikey chums are on kids’ TV.

Can’t you do that here?

Juliana doesn’t do Frosties. She does wheatgrass and some kind of organic sprouted non-yeast bread. Hers is a fart-free flat. I wouldn’t dare. Ogling Ms Deeley and Co. is out.

Why? Wouldn’t Juliana be amused?

No. Not her style.

Can’t you just doze off anyway?

I’d rather head off home. Have a doze later.

‘God, isn’t it Sod’s Law not to have a party booking on a Sunday,’ Pip bemoaned. ‘I so need something else to think about, to stop me dwelling on the fact that I simply don’t know what to say. What should I say?’ Pip implored them. ‘Think of something. Tell me what to say.’

What on earth did she mean? Her sisters had no idea. It made no sense to them. How could Pip McCabe ever not know what to say? She always knew what to say. What on earth were her sisters meant to say to that? She had stolen their whinge. Whenever they’d inflicted it upon her, she’d come out with four or five expertly constructed phrases, of which one or two would be pure lines of comedy to lighten the tone, make them giggle and see their situation as more daft than traumatic. But now it is Pip McCabe herself, their sister and mentor, who doesn’t know what to say and she’s pleading for their assistance.

‘I don’t know,’ Fen said softly, confused.

‘What do you want to say?’ Cat asked.

Pip looked crestfallen. ‘Dunno,’ she mumbled glumly. ‘It all seemed crystal clear back home. Now it all feels ominously murky.’ Cat poured her another cup of tea from the pot, Fen snapped off a finger of KitKat for her. ‘It’s not just that I felt brave and optimistic at home,’ Pip furthered, ‘but I had all these word-perfect soliloquies which I composed and learnt by rote whilst striding about.’ She sipped and munched. ‘To tell you the truth, down here, they sound not just out of place, but whimsical and deluded.’

The sisters sat at Fen’s kitchen table, or what could be seen of it under the scatter of Sunday papers.

‘I tried them out in front of the mirror last night,’ Pip confided. ‘I sounded like a cross between Gwyneth Paltrow at the Oscars and a six-year-old. Ridiculous. And what a sad way to spend Saturday night.’ The sisters stared at the same crumb for some time. ‘I returned to London with such optimism,’ Pip rued, flicking it away dismissively. ‘I was bursting with declarations. Most importantly, I had the guts, the incentive, to go for it.’

‘So you do know what to say?’ Fen clarified. Pip nodded.

‘But you’ve lost the inclination to say it?’ Cat asked.

Pip shook her head. ‘No, not that,’ she explained. ‘I’d love to. But I’ve lost the confidence. In fact, perhaps I’ve never had it.’

‘Just phone him,’ Fen said, offering Pip her land-line.

Pip started surreptitiously checking her horoscope in the various Sunday supplements, a pastime she had often ridiculed her lovelorn friends for doing.

‘Why not just turn up there?’ Cat suggested, trying to read her own stars, upside down.

‘And say what?’ Pip sighed wearily, wondering what zodiac sign Zac was.

‘Fucking hell, Pip,’ said Fen, ‘it’s not as if you have to get all nuptial! Forget declarations and poetry – just say “hullo” to the guy.’

‘If he blanks you, he’s a prat,’ said Cat, ‘and if he says “hullo” back to you, you can follow it with something else. Like “How are you?”’

‘Hullo, how are you?’ Pip let the words hang. Then she started to laugh. She wasn’t quite sure why and nor were her sisters. Soon, though, they were all giggling. ‘You’re right,’ Pip chuckled, ‘you’re both completely right. I’ll do it.’ Cat punched the air triumphantly, Fen gave Pip’s forearm an encouraging squeeze. ‘First, though, I’m going to finish the skirting-boards. I’m turning my hallway into the inside of an ice-cream cabinet,’ she enthused. ‘Pistachio walls and lemon sorbet skirting.’

‘Whatever,’ Fen chided lightly. ‘Just get in touch with him, all right?’

‘And no Gwynnie-style melodramatics,’ Cat warned. ‘Just say “hullo”.’

It’s about letting go.

That’s what Pip is telling herself as she prises the lid off yet another tin of paint and stirs the lickable colour to loosen it.

It’s about letting go.

She remembers the first time she let go on the trapeze – her first flight unchaperoned. She’d hovered and dithered and hyperventilated on the platform and thought ‘Fuck this, what and why am I putting myself through this, I’m a perfectly good juggler and clown, I don’t need to do trapeze, too.’ Second thoughts, she realizes now as she pours a little paint into a tray and strokes the bristle brush over it, second thoughts are normal and understandable.

It’s about letting go. It’s about not needing to hold on.

And did you let go, on the trapeze?

I did.

And?

I flew.

Any regrets?

I flew! Of course I had no regrets! I flew! It was so nerve-racking it was utterly exhilarating. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t speak, the sensation sapped me of physical strength for hours after. Days, I think.

It was worth it.

Ah. But I had a safety net.

You have a safety net still – one that many would envy, that some don’t have and never will. Your beauty, your health, your friends. Your home. Your family.

So how is Pip going to do it? When? And is she going to do it? She’s stared at the phone a few times. She’s even dialled Zac’s number, from both her land-line and mobile phones, though she hasn’t dared activate the call. She’s restricted her number and dialled his land-line and mobile phones, hanging up before connection. Yet she won’t sit down for fear of becoming glum and confused, maudlin and useless.

There’s only one thing for it.

He can’t object.

She’s going to play him at his own game.

She’s off to Hampstead.

A little friendly stalking.

THIRTY-SIX

Pip McCabe has a great big daft grin on her face but not a scrap of slap. Her eyes sparkle naturally, her cheeks are flushed and her nose tip is reddened by the autumn chill that’s slithered into town. Her exuberant grin bestows a shine to her features in general. She is practically skipping down Hampstead High Street, having to remember not to giggle out loud or people will stare. All the heartfelt if histrionic speeches she so fastidiously devised and memorized during her stay in Derbyshire, are no longer necessary – though Pip’s enduring commitment to their importance is putting the spring into her step. The only cliché she’ll allow herself is that which has brought her to Hampstead – that actions can speak louder than words. And she’s off to find Zac. That’s her gesture and she really needn’t say a word – mime will do.

As she bounds towards his road, she feels that a weight has been lifted from her shoulders and the fog which so obscured and distorted her awareness has dispersed. Now that she knows what she wants, what makes her tick, what has made her behave as she has done; so now she sees Zac in his true colours, not the garb she had previously dressed him in. It is as if she has suddenly awoken to the world at large being in full colour, whereas previously, with eyes protectively half-closed, she’d seen only tonal degradations. Behind all this life-altering awareness is an immediate drive to simply embrace. To surprise him. To beam at him, panting no doubt, but just say ‘hullo’.

I know Zac! That’s the point – now I know him. He treats like with like – which is why he is so affable, so lovely to be around. If I laid some heavy declaration on him right now, he’d bat a load back at me. If I just bounce up to his front door, grin and brandish my best ‘Hullo, cupcake!’ he’ll grin back and say ‘Hullo, Clowngirl’ or something.

And he would.

She’s right.

Zac really would.

She has him to a ‘t’.

We know he would, too.

He’d be startled and delighted and he’d grin as good as he’d get.

Unfortunately, though, it is Juliana and not Zac who answers the door to Pip’s rhythmic chiming. Unfortunately for Pip, Zac is right behind Juliana. Unfortunately for everyone, it all happens so fast that Pip booms out her ‘Hullo, cupcake!’ before realizing the target of her affection is actually behind his sodding gorgeous girlfriend.

Hullo cupcake hullo cupcake hullo cupcake.

The three of them are gobsmacked but rooted to the spot.

‘Oh,’ Pip says because she can think of little else to say.

‘Pip?’ Zac exclaims, bewildered.

‘Cupcake?’ Juliana probes. ‘Huh?’

Pip can’t very well say ‘Sorry, wrong number’ or ‘Fancy seeing you here’ or ‘I was just passing’. In fact, all she can say is ‘Oh’, but it seems that she is only capable of that the once, and now she stands stock-still, mouth agape, staring concertedly if unintentionally at the nape of Juliana’s neck where a rather beautiful diamond nestles.

‘Won’t you come in?’ Zac says because he can’t think what else to say and they can’t stand in the doorway all day.

‘Do,’ says Juliana terribly graciously, as if it is her flat. As is all that goes with it – Zac included.

‘Oh,’ Pip says casually, waving her hand around as if there’s a fly or a smell to waft away, ‘I was just passing, that’s all.’ Her toes curl at the sound of it. ‘I mean, I was just wondering if I could use your loo.’ Her toes have practically looped the loop. High declarations of love and intent are one thing, ‘Hullo, cupcake’ is quite another. ‘Can I use your loo?’ is something else entirely.

Juliana baulks a little; the girl’s quirkiness offends her in much the same way as Zac’s ex’s lurid finger food. Where are these people’s sense of decorum, of refinement? Zac, though, laughs a little. It is both implausible and yet somehow typical that Clowngirl would suddenly front up on his doorstep calling him a cupcake and asking to use his loo.

‘Course you can,’ Zac says, ignoring Juliana’s frown. ‘You know where it is,’ he continues pointedly, aware that this turns the frown to thunder.

‘Thanks,’ Pip says meekly and shuffles in. As soon as she has locked herself in Zac’s bathroom, she realizes she has all but trapped herself. She slumps down with her back to the basin and wonders what to think. Bizarrely, she suddenly fancies taking a shower. She doesn’t need the loo at all. She notes that there is only the one toothbrush and she’s pleased. She half-thinks of cleaning her teeth. She runs her fingertips over Zac’s luxurious towels. She sniffs his aftershave balm to see if it springs to mind. She doesn’t recall it, but it smells nice. She catches sight of herself in the mirror but glances away and dutifully unbuttons her trousers and sits on the toilet. She really does not need the loo. She puts her head in her hands.

I am sitting on Zac’s loo. I’ve sniffed his toiletries, manhandled his towels and resisted the urge to shower or to brush my teeth with his toothbrush. Good God!

You really ought to leave the bathroom. It’ll be a little embarrassing soon.

It’s mortifying already. I want to stay in here for ever. I want to magically evaporate – like bubble bath around the plug hole.

Pip – you really do need to emerge.

And then what? What on earth am I meant to do? Or say?

As discreetly as she can, she unlocks the door and opens it. She emerges into the hallway and clears her throat, preparing to enter the sitting-room. Only she remembers that she hasn’t flushed the toilet, not that there’s anything to flush. But she ought to flush it or they’ll think she forgot to which won’t look good at all. Not that turning up on spec trilling ‘Hullo, cupcake’ looks particularly good. So she returns to the bathroom, flushes the loo and goes through to the sitting-room making a big deal about wiping her hands on the back of her trousers – though she suddenly wonders if they’ll wonder why she didn’t use Zac’s fine towels for the purpose.

Juliana is reclining languidly in the Eames lounger, her stockinged legs curled sinuously, the Sunday Times ‘Review’ section in her lap. She looks most at home, very at ease with her Sunday at Zac’s.

‘Thanks,’ Pip says to her in a servile way she regrets at once, ‘that’s better.’

Shut up, Pip!

‘You know how it is when you’re bursting for a pee!’

Don’t say another word, just bugger off out of here!

‘I mean, I could have popped in to McDonald’s but I thought hey, why not pop in and say “hullo” to Zac!’

For Christ’s sake, just leave!

Juliana smiles cursorily and regards Pip with an all-too-fleeting look of distaste that is all the more pointed for its brevity.

‘Tea, Pip?’ Zac calls through.

‘No, no!’ Pip calls back over her shoulder.

‘I’ve made a pot – stay,’ he suggests, coming into the room with a tray laid for three. Milk in a china jug.

‘Really,’ Pip says, locking eyes with him, ‘I was just passing. I just needed to have a wee. I ought to bugger off. I mean – you know – Sunday afternoons are precious.’

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Zac says.

Pip wants to gaze at him, try to detect what he’s feeling, see if there is a sparkle to his eyes, a spark between them. But she feels suddenly shy and stupid and incapable of maintaining, let alone instigating, eye contact. ‘Sure I’m sure,’ Pip nods. ‘Ta-ra,’ she says to Juliana who looks up eventually from some paragraph or other and fixes her with a synthetically sweet swift smile.

‘Righty-ho,’ says Zac with a shrug.

‘New painting,’ Pip remarks, nodding at his recent acquisition as she turns to leave.

‘Yes,’ he says proudly. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It’s very you,’ Pip confirms warmly. ‘You’ve moved the blue boobs?’

‘They’re in the bedroom,’ Zac laughs, ‘and they’re mountains, I tell you!’

‘Yes yes,’ Pip jests, ‘and lap dancing is a higher form of ballet.’

I really really have to go.

‘Well, porn is educational,’ says Zac drily with a nonchalant shrug. He walks Pip to his front door, both of them a little confused by how abstract art had led to porn so seamlessly. Both a little amused, too. But soon enough, awkward again. ‘Anyway,’ says Zac, frowning momentarily at his door lock.

‘Yes,’ Pip answers him, staring at his letter-box.

‘That was a surprise,’ Zac says, but too quietly for his tone of voice to suggest whether he means nice or nasty.

‘Sorry,’ Pip shrugs. ‘It was impetuous. I should have called.’

Zac brushes away her apology and opens the door. ‘Take care,’ he says.

The sound of the door closing denies Pip the ‘cupcake’ he adds to his sentence. Juliana hears it, though. It pisses her off, yet jealousy doesn’t figure. She feels restless and cooped up. She isn’t really remotely interested in the Sunday Times ‘Review’ section, let alone lounging about with a whole stack of weekend papers. She isn’t really that interested in the clown with the weak bladder. Certainly, she doesn’t feel remotely threatened. Why should she? She denounces the clown as physically uncouth and irritatingly quirky in personality. Furthermore, she feels no threat because actually, she harbours no true possessive affection for Zac. Suddenly, she feels bored beyond relief. And irritated. Christ, if she could use the toilet in McDonald’s – that’s where Zac had taken her and his kid that lunch-time – why couldn’t Pip?

‘I’m going, hon,’ she says to Zac, testing for attention and an objection. Zac, however, doesn’t object. ‘Maybe we’ll do something later in the week.’

‘Sure,’ he says.

‘Maybe we won’t,’ Julia poses.

Zac shrugs.

‘No doubt your sister-in-law will contrive one of her staged evenings,’ Juliana says with a cockily raised eyebrow.

Zac regards her squarely. There’s no way he’s going to dignify that with a worded response. She’s pushing it, she’s pushing him, he realizes. But he doesn’t want to be shoved into a corner like the bad boy. There’s nothing to justify, apologize for or clarify. So he just stands his ground, leaning nonchalantly against his wall, looking at his new green painting, quite happy to have his home to himself for the remainder of the afternoon.

‘I’ll give you a call,’ he says. She sees herself out.

Pip says ‘shit shit shit’ all the way home. She walks as fast as she can, saying ‘shit’ with every footfall, straight down Hampstead High Street, through Belsize Park, all the way down Haverstock Hill, turning left up Prince of Wales Road. Pounding the pavement, her heart pounding, chanting ‘shit shit shit’. Only when the Kentish Town Baths come into view does she slow her pace slightly and cease her fulminations. She’s given herself a blister. And a headache. And of course, as soon as she’s home, the answering machine flashes urgently and the phone starts to ring before she’s shut the door and switched on the light. She’s not scared of answering it any more. She doesn’t wonder who it will be. What will be will be, and all.

‘Well?’ It’s Cat.

‘I’m on the other end!’ It’s Fen as well.

‘Well,’ Pip tells her sisters, while wriggling out of her shoe, peeling down her sock and wincing at her blisters, ‘I did it.’

‘You didn’t!’ says Cat, full of awe.

‘You didn’t!’ says Fen with admiration.

‘I certainly did,’ says Pip. ‘I rang his bell and I said “Hullo, cupcake”.’

‘Hullo, cupcake,’ Cat repeats as if it’s a line of poetry to commit to memory.

‘Awesome!’ Fen says excitedly.

‘I did it,’ Pip repeats, ‘I said “Hullo, cupcake”. And that’s the point.’

‘And he said?’ Fen asks.

‘What did he say?’ Cat begs to know.

‘Nothing,’ says Pip, ‘initially. Nor did his girlfriend.’ Her sisters gasp. ‘So I pretended to need the loo.’ Her sisters are too shocked to wonder whether this was a cunning plan or not. ‘Then what could I do but leave?’

Fen and Cat try to make sense of the facts. Cupcakes and girlfriends and asking for the loo. They wonder what they’d’ve done. They wonder what Pip should’ve done.

‘I bet he calls,’ Fen says decisively, though deep down she thinks it now sounds pretty futile.

‘I bet so, too,’ Cat says, privately thinking that asking for the loo on top of the cupcake part would not have done her sister any favours.

‘Whatever,’ says Pip. ‘I did it, that’s the thing.’ She was feeling enormously tired – as if saying ‘Hullo, cupcake’ was in itself as complete a declaration as any she had composed whilst striding the moors. Somehow, she feels released from obligation. In truth, ‘Hullo, cupcake’ had utilized an enormous amount of energy. She needs to preserve a little because she wants to paint the door frame into the kitchen a shade of raspberry sorbet before the weekend is over. She switches Radio 2 on and her mind off.

Zac doesn’t clear away the tray of teacups until nearly midnight. His cup has drying sediment on it. Juliana’s is still half full with a discoloured scummy film now clinging from surface to sides. But it’s Pip’s cup that catches his attention. It hasn’t been used, of course. But he puts it in the dishwasher nevertheless, as if it has been. Before he goes to bed, he surprises himself by holding the towels in his bathroom against his nose. He can’t detect Pip. He tells himself he’s not trying to, anyway; tells himself he’s just checking to see whether he needs to wash the towels, though he knows full well that they’ve only been out a couple of days because he put them there.

What a peculiar turn of events. The last thing he was expecting that afternoon – or at any time, really – was an impromptu visit from Pip. He really hadn’t thought about her much recently at all. Apart from the morning when she intruded on his reverie though it was Juliana in his bed in reality.

She called me ‘cupcake’. What a peculiar thing to say. What an odd thing to do – to turn up here, with a manic smile on her face, calling me ‘cupcake’ and asking for the loo. What the fuck is a cupcake? I suppose I could ask June – it’s the sort of thing she makes, no doubt.

Call June! Do. Call June, Zac. Ask her about cupcakes.

Of course he does no such thing.

There again, I always thought Clowngirl was a trifle odd.

He goes to sleep thinking of audits.

‘What’s a cupcake?’

Ruth looked at Zac and thought it a most peculiar question to be asked in the interval of A Streetcar Named Desire. She looked at Juliana and raised an eyebrow in a hopefully conspiratorial kind of way.

‘What’s a cupcake?’ Zac repeated.

‘It’s a fairy cake,’ Ruth replied, wondering if the gin and tonic wasn’t quite as watered down as she thought, ‘an individual sponge cake baked in one of those crinkly paper cases.’

‘Oh,’ said Zac, sipping his G & T and thinking it a travesty that theatre bars should be allowed to so obviously water down their liquor.

‘Why do you ask?’ Ruth probed.

‘No reason, really,’ Zac shrugged. The second bell sounded.

‘A friend of his fronted up on Sunday afternoon,’ Juliana informed Ruth, ‘out of the blue. Wanting the toilet.’

Ruth nodded, none the wiser. ‘And he brought cupcakes?’

‘No,’ Zac laughed, ‘she called me “cupcake”.’

‘Who did?’ Ruth asked. ‘Who’s she?’

Juliana remained silent, as if she really couldn’t remember the visitor’s name.

‘Clowngirl did,’ Zac told Ruth.

Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.

Zac headed for the auditorium. ‘Then she asked to use my loo,’ he told Ruth who stared at him and couldn’t deduce what his expression could possibly mean.

Suffice it to say, Ruth could not concentrate on the second act at all, though the tickets were expensive and Glenn Close was magnificent. She was desperate to call June. Immediately. Also to have Zac to herself and grill him intensively. Phoning Clowngirl herself seemed like a good idea, too, just then.

There had to be more. You don’t just turn up on someone’s doorstep and say ‘Hullo, cupcake, can I use your loo?’ There had to be more. Zac couldn’t have taken it at face value alone, surely. He must have thought there was more to it, too.

Christ! Pip turns up with cupcakes and a full bladder and Juliana is there, too!

Ruth declined Zac’s suggestion of a drink after the play. And she was far too distracted to chat to her husband in the car on the way home. It was too late to phone June. But she sent her a text message anyway.

pip went 2 z’s on sun. called him cupcake & asked 4 loo. j there …

Zac declined Juliana’s offer of spending the night at her place. He was tired. There were unforeseen hassles at work. He took a cab home alone. He was hungry. He shouldn’t have mentioned the sodding cupcakes. Now he quite fancied an individual portion of sponge cake. He asked the driver to stop at a late-night store. The choice was between Bakewell Tarts and Fondant Fancies. He couldn’t decide. He bought both.

THIRTY-SEVEN

‘Accidentally on purpose.’

Zac loved the expression. He also liked ‘almost’, because it could instantly cast a positive light on a possibly negative situation. With ‘almost’, you couldn’t deny that you hadn’t done something you should have, but you could make it appear an innocent timing issue. ‘Accidentally on purpose’ enabled you to absolve yourself of a certain amount of responsibility in a situation.

And so it was, accidentally on purpose, that on the Tuesday evening, Zac took the High Barnet branch of the Northern Line instead of the Edgware branch. And of course, the first opportunity he had to retrace his steps meant alighting at Kentish Town. However, as if his careless re-routing wasn’t enough, while walking to cross platforms he decided that he might just have forgotten to go to the loo before he left work, accidentally on purpose. He didn’t actually need the loo – but there again, just say there was a delay for an Edgware-bound train at Camden Town? What would he do then? Well! Doesn’t fortune smile on those in need – look where he is! Kentish Town! What a happy coincidence. He knows someone with a loo. Just round the corner. Who owes him a favour. A quick pee and he’ll be home in half an hour. Just a minor detour. No big deal.

When Pip’s bell rang, she groaned. Most days, at this time, she had been opening the door to some ragamuffin or other trying to flog substandard household goods in aid of some dodgy cause. Consequently, Pip’s kitchen drawers were brimming with luminous orange dusters that left more lint than they picked up dust. She had enough pairs of rubber gloves to kit out a family of octopi though the rubber was so thin that even warm water felt scalding hot and hot water caused holes in the fingertips immediately. She’d bought oven cleaner of which one spritz had got her so high she hadn’t dared use her oven for days afterwards. She’d bought sponges that disintegrated on contact with water long before they came in sight of a pan; she’d bought plastic bags that didn’t open. Tupperware that didn’t close, toilet freshener that smelt toxic and bleach that smelt innocuous. So no, this Tuesday, she wasn’t going to open the door. Buying the Big Issue was one thing, cramming her change into collectors’ cans on street corners was another, sending cheques to charities placing tear-jerking appeals in newspapers was another. But giving her hard-earned cash to the slightly threatening urchins who loitered on her doorstep was something else entirely. She didn’t want any more tat. She had no need for any cleaning implements. In fact, she had no more room. Anyway, deep down she didn’t believe in their so-called charities and she feared her money was more likely to fund daily inhaling of the oven cleaner or some other solvent. So she was going to stay put. Sit stock-still on her sofa, muting the sound on the TV remote control, chanting quietly ‘piss off piss off piss off’.

The bell rang again.

Piss bloody off!

And again, this time a barrage of rings and an insistent flapping of her letter-box. The audacity!

Pip sighed and huffed and cursed that enough is enough. This time, she was going to ask for ID and tell them she’d check it first and would call if she required a subsequent presentation of their wares – subject to twelve-month guarantees. She stomped to the front door. ‘I’m coming!’ she barked. ‘For God’s sake.’

It was Zac.

Nothing to buy, nothing to sell. Nothing to do but stand and stare.

‘Can I use your loo?’ he asked.

Can he use my loo?

Her static silence caused his features to soften into a swift but imploring shrug of his lips. ‘I took the wrong train,’ he explained almost apologetically, ‘and I’m dying for a pee.’

Can he use my loo?

Pip shook her head to shake off the shock. ‘Sure,’ she said, realizing he didn’t deserve the stern expression she’d fixed to her face in anticipation of the scrounging urchins, ‘sure. Sorry. Come on in. I thought you were flogging dodgy dusters.’

Zac laughed and followed her into the flat. ‘I come empty-handed but full-bladdered,’ he said, standing in her sitting-room, thinking that something was different but unable to define what.

They stood, side by side, for an awkward moment or two. ‘Would you like a drink?’ Pip asked, suddenly mortified that she looked a mess in mismatched socks, jeans and hair that needed a wash. She wanted him to say ‘yes’ partly because she wanted him to stay, partly because she wanted the chance to duck into her bedroom and change her socks if nothing else. She could pinch along her cheek-bones when she was in the kitchen. She’d learned that from Scarlett O’Hara and, though it made the eyes smart, it certainly put a becoming blush to one’s face. She’d scoop her hair back into a pony-tail – she knew there was a hair-slide on top of the fridge next to the spare keys and the torch.

‘Sure,’ said Zac, ‘why not. Cup of tea?’

‘OK,’ said Pip and went to her kitchen.

She stared at the kettle without filling it or boiling it or seeing it at all, really. Her focus was elsewhere entirely.

My God. For the first time ever, I wish I could phone someone. I want to tell Megan ‘He’s in my house, I’m making tea!’, I want to phone Fen and say ‘I look a right state – what should I prioritize, hair or socks?’. I’d love to text Cat: fuck! z here! wot i do??

But you can’t because your phone is charging in the sitting-room.

I know he’s only just come, but I almost can’t wait for him to go so I can start phoning!

Don’t worry about your socks. Just make the tea. Add a plate with a couple of KitKats. The hair-slide is indeed on top of the fridge – you can do a little surreptitious hairstyling in the reflection cast by your kitchen window.

When Pip returned with the tea tray, she found Zac looking most at home, relaxed into the sofa, flicking through Livingetc. She was struck by the memory of sitting next to him there, a couple of months ago, asking him if he liked her tights, him liking her knees, them kissing. The way he left, that he then returned. And found her topless. And all the fantastic heavy petting before they went to bed. And he stayed the whole night through.

‘Tea,’ Pip announced, looking concertedly at her newly decorated walls because Zac didn’t seem to be.

‘Ta,’ said Zac.

They sipped politely, darted little smiles to one another, took delicate nibbles along the length of the KitKat fingers and enquired courteously about each other’s work.

‘St Bea’s today?’ Zac asked. ‘A toughie?’

‘Actually,’ said Pip, ‘it was one of those sessions where it was infinitely rewarding. Sometimes, being a clown doctor is emotionally draining because it’s an occupational obligation to keep the smile and the bounce and the laughter when you’d rather sit still and alone and cry. Today, though, I was in the privileged company of such bravery and dignity and beautiful humour that it was truly inspirational. I felt carried along – I felt sustained by them.’

‘You’re amazing,’ Zac marvelled.

‘Nonsense,’ Pip brushed away and meant it and Zac thought her all the more amazing for it. ‘Anyway,’ she said, keen to change the subject – she could talk about her work all night, but compliments she found awkward to handle – ‘how about you? Lots of sums?’

Zac groaned. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘it’s a fucking nightmare. Recently, we were soaring – as a company, but even more so as a department. Suddenly – for reasons I’m not going to bore you with – the bonuses look like not happening, we seem set to lose a major client and morale amongst my lot is disintegrating before my eyes.’

Pip wasn’t sure how to respond. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ She paused and thought how lame and formulaic that sounded. So she then said what really occurred to her. ‘It must be tough for you – because I suppose your staff see you swivelling in your chair in your own office and they wonder if you’re with them or just after your own gains.’

‘God, Pip,’ said Zac, ‘that’s precisely it. I’m under scrutiny by my superiors and my juniors. No one seems to have faith in my conviction. Honestly, the intricacies of the deal just fade into insignificance alongside the team morale which has been undermined. I’d rather have my team back in spirit, than a windfall in my bank account.’

‘So you swivel in your chair, racking your brains how to make things work for them, on their behalf, but they see you swivelling and presume you’re protected and don’t care?’

‘Yes,’ Zac sighed, ‘it’s so enervating. There’s fuck all I can do. It’s out of my hands.’

Pip hummed in what she hoped was a sympathetic manner.

‘I’d better go,’ Zac said, placing his cup and saucer carefully on the coffee-table. ‘I have work to do. Thanks for the tea.’

‘Pleasure,’ said Pip, clattering her china a little and rising hastily. ‘It was nice of you to pop by.’

They were suddenly both acutely aware that Zac hadn’t, in fact, gone to the loo. And to do so now would be all the more conspicuous. So they stood and smiled a little uneasily and Zac did a lot of that gathering-stuff-together-to-leave muttering. Actually, all he had to collect was his Evening Standard and his jacket. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘keep in touch.’

‘You too, Zac,’ Pip said, ‘you too.’ The formality between them was so pronounced she half-wondered if they were about to shake hands. She paused and cast her gaze downwards. Zac’s footwear. She wondered if it was incongruous for a man in soft suede boots the colour of caramel to be an accountant. Shouldn’t he be in sensible brogues or slimy slip-ons or naff Nature Treks? But she’d always known there was more to Zac Holmes than met the eye – and she knew it was her own fault that it had taken until so recently for her to see it. ‘Um,’ she faltered. ‘Sorry about Sunday,’ she mumbled.

‘Sorry?’ Zac repeated as if he didn’t understand.

‘Just turning up like that. No warning. You had company.’

‘Don’t apologize,’ Zac said. ‘I’m just sorry you didn’t stay for tea.’

‘You had company,’ Pip reiterated.

I’m sorry I had company, Zac remarked to himself, I wish I hadn’t.

I wish you had said that out loud because your silence has demoralized Pip.

Pip had her hand on the latch when the doorbell chimed. ‘Shit,’ she said, ‘I bet it’s the dodgy duster urchins.’

‘Here,’ said Zac, ‘allow me.’ He talked amiably to the scruff peddling crap and had soon parted with five pounds, and found himself with a lifetime’s supply of counterfeit J-Cloths. Pip wanted him to stay – for supper, for another cup of tea, for another five minutes. But she couldn’t find the words to ask. So she said nothing. So Zac made his exit. He climbed the steps up from her basement to the pavement. He looked back down on her, framed in the doorway, the light behind her bestowing an incongruous halo. Her hair was a mess. Her socks were odd. Her jeans weren’t that becoming.

‘Bye,’ he said.

‘Bye,’ she said. He walked out on to the street and she watched him go.

Just as he was about to pass beyond the boundary of her building, just as she was about to shut her front door, he stopped and leant over the railings.

‘Pip,’ he called down, ‘what’s a cupcake?’

‘It’s a little sponge cake baked in those corrugated paper cases,’ she said artlessly, ‘like at kids’ parties. Like Tom likes. Sometimes, with icing and hundreds and thousands or jelly shapes. Like June made.’

‘Oh,’ Zac said, ‘thought so. Cheerio.’

‘Ta-ta,’ said Pip.

Perhaps you oughtn’t to have asked what but why, Zac.

Perhaps you oughtn’t to have been so literal, Pip.

She closed the door and immediately felt desperately lonely. And rather pathetic. Her flat seemed huge to her. She felt diminished. Out of her depth. Surrounded by the strident colours of walls and skirting-boards, it was like being in some Lewis Carroll scene. Nothing was labelled ‘Drink Me’. Just two empty teacups.

He didn’t notice. He didn’t notice the colour.

But he didn’t use the loo, either, Pip.

Sometimes, you have to point out the most obvious things to a person. They know something’s different, something’s changed, but they just can’t quite put their finger on what.

Juliana phoned Zac just as he was turning into his street.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi.’

‘You OK?’

‘Sure, you?’

‘Fine.’

There was a pause. Zac sent a vibe down the phone that he hoped would load the silence, which in turn would say more than speech.

‘About tomorrow night,’ said Juliana, as if she’d been listening intently.

‘What about tomorrow?’ said Zac.

‘I’m going to cancel,’ said Juliana.

‘That’s fine,’ said Zac.

‘I’m going home in three weeks,’ said Juliana.

‘Right,’ said Zac.

‘There’s stuff I want to do before then,’ said Juliana, ‘and other stuff I feel I’ve done enough of.’

Zac read between the lines, looked up into the indigo sky of the October evening and thanked his lucky stars.

‘Zac?’ said Juliana.

‘I’m here,’ said Zac. ‘I understand,’ said Zac. ‘I agree,’ said Zac.

‘Cool,’ said Juliana. ‘I may see you, though, before I go. I may organize a goodbye drinks.’

‘Sure,’ said Zac, knowing he’d be busy.

‘Right,’ said Juliana, ‘good.’

‘Good luck,’ said Zac. ‘Have fun – and take care.’

She was touched. She hadn’t actually thought about wishing him well, or having him take care.

‘No hard feelings, hey, Zac?’

‘None whatsoever, Juliana.’

When Zac entered his flat, he was flooded with a wave of relief. He pressed his back against his front door and slithered down, squatting with his eyes closed and his arms lolling over his knees. He could either fall asleep or he could jump for joy – just then, he couldn’t decide which so he continued to sit and appreciate the stillness of his flat and the sense of calm that one phone call had reinstated in his life. Juliana had spared him the task he’d been putting off. Oddly, it made him feel more fondly towards her now than at any other time in their brief history. It also made him realize how he’d never actually been fond of her – just fancied her and took advantage of what she had on offer. Crucially, he understood that the same went for her and he didn’t mind in the least. Whatever it was that they’d had, or shared, or taken, it had been equal and balanced on both sides. They’d used but they hadn’t abused. Ultimately, they’d simply used it all up.

Thank God, though, that she pipped me to the post. Even though, deep down, I knew she wouldn’t have been upset or even particularly have cared if I’d instigated it, I really didn’t relish the task of ending things.

Zac rose. He slipped his boots off and stuffed a scrunch of yesterday’s newspaper into each, as they were still damp from lunch-time’s freak downpour. Today was one of those rare days that Zac actually rather envied the colleagues who wore suits and stiff-collared shirts to work. At least it meant they had something work specific to physically shrug off when they arrived home. Zac, though, could only change from one pair of Gap navy trousers into another, slip out of one casual shirt and pull on a similar one, albeit in a different hue.

I wonder if many blokes actually envy me? I guess most guys my age are either resolutely single or else safely married. I don’t really fall into either category, on account of Tom. I suppose I ought to get used to the fact that this is how my life will be – dalliances here, solitude there. The one constant being Tom. And if that’s the case then shouldn’t it be me who is envied the world over?

The phone rang. Zac wondered if it was Juliana with a change of mind. In which case he’d let it ring. But it was more likely to be work related. He ought to answer it.

It was Ruth. With a selection of things to do and nights to do them on.

‘Thursday sounds good,’ Zac told her because he really didn’t fancy some art opening tomorrow night.

‘Great,’ said Ruth. ‘Shall I book a table for four for dinner afterwards?’

‘Juliana won’t be coming,’ Zac told her, conversationally.

‘Oh?’ said Ruth, physically pressing the receiver closer to her ear in her curiosity. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Very,’ Zac assured her, ‘we’re just not a –’ he paused. How on earth could he categorize what on earth he and Juliana had been? We’re not two people who sleep together any more? We’re not having our casual dalliance any longer? We don’t really give a flying fuck about seeing each other again? ‘Well,’ said Zac, ‘Juliana won’t be accompanying me to things any more. Run its course, you could say.’

Ruth was so stunned and delighted that she shut her mouth for fear of emitting an excitable squeak, being all she was capable of. She felt if she were to do so, Zac might well see it as her taking credit for the state of his affair. And then he might change his mind. And ask Juliana to take him back. No. Ruth had brought him this far, she wasn’t going to allow him even a pigeon tiptoe backwards.

‘But I’m still on for Thursday,’ Zac carried on regardless, ‘as long as you didn’t have some kind of couples-symmetry dynamic in mind.’

Ruth laughed. ‘Not at all,’ she said, though she’d much rather say ‘Not a moment too soon’ and pry. ‘It’ll be great to see you.’ She was desperate for details. ‘Are you cool about things?’

‘God, yes!’ Zac assured her.

‘OK,’ said Ruth cautiously whilst she thought what else to say, ‘OK.’ She craved a post-mortem. ‘There didn’t seem much of a connection,’ she defined, sagely and subtly, ‘between you and Juliana.’

‘You’re right,’ said Zac, ‘that’s why it’s no big deal at all.’

‘How did Juliana take it?’ Ruth asked.

‘Oh,’ said Zac very openly, ‘it was Juliana who did the dumping.’

Ruth was so staggered, so supremely disappointed, so taken off her guard, that she had to stop herself from shouting ‘No no no! That wasn’t the idea! You were to do the chucking! It was all planned to perfection. Damn! What went wrong?’

‘Anyway,’ Zac continued, ‘I’ll see you on Thursday?’

‘Sure,’ Ruth managed eventually. She knew Zac better than to rummage for further information right at that moment. ‘Damn!’ she murmured, hanging up. ‘Bollocks.’ Billy glanced up. ‘Mummy just said a naughty word,’ she told him, thinking to herself that she could say a lot worse, ‘naughty Mummy.’ She dialled June, continuing to murmur ‘naughty, naughty Mummy’ absent-mindedly under her breath. Billy, however, whose vocabulary had been honed in Holloway playgrounds, was neither shocked nor impressed. He went to find his father to play PlayStation. The two of them always had a good and justified cuss at the screen.

‘Bollocks,’ Ruth cursed down the phone to June, her hand cupped over the mouthpiece lest Billy was still in earshot, ‘you’ll never guess what’s bloody happened.’

Zac had no desire to contemplate Juliana – what it had all meant, if it had meant anything at all. After all, if he had time to think about Juliana, he most certainly had time to think about work and that’s where his priorities should lie. Thus Zac really didn’t have the time or the space to think about Pip either. It was enough that he had indulged himself in the impromptu detour on his journey home. Now, though, he couldn’t really figure out why he had turned up. Actually, he couldn’t quite believe he’d turned up at her flat at all. It would take him too long to wonder why on earth he’d done it. Currently, he didn’t have time to think why. There was work to be done. Out came his laptop and on came his frown.

It seemed like only minutes later that the phone rang. However, glancing at the clock revealed that it was actually nearing midnight now. It could well be work calling. He ought to answer it.

‘It’s a term of affection,’ Ruth’s voice declared, dispensing with even a ‘hi’ to announce herself.

‘What is?’ Zac said, shutting down the laptop and settling back for an indulgent late-night chat with his sister-in-law.

‘Cupcake is,’ Ruth explained proudly, as if she’d thoroughly researched it on Zac’s behalf in her every spare moment since the theatre bar the previous night.

‘Oh,’ said Zac, suddenly losing the impetus for the chat and instead feeling just enormously fatigued.

THIRTY-EIGHT

Pip felt thoroughly confused by it all. Though it had been a wonderful surprise to see Zac – and though she was keen to read excessively into every second of his visit, every gesture, every short sentence – ultimately, she wasn’t quite sure why he’d come. Certainly, he hadn’t popped by to use her loo. Mind you, nor had she when she turned up at his last Sunday. She wondered how she could wonder what was going on when her overriding instinct was that there wasn’t anything going on at all. How could there be? After all this time? After all that had gone before? After all, he’d hardly been alone on Sunday. Perhaps she should be satisfied with a friendship based on cups of tea and the lavatory. She knew for sure that she didn’t want to lose Zac Holmes from her life. She thought he was great. More than great. So, even if she couldn’t have all of him, should she settle for just a part?

She also felt confused by how unsatisfactory it had been to share the sparse details over the phone with Megan and Fen. They’d listened and cooed but they could read no more meaning into his visit than she could. She didn’t want to hear Fen reason ‘He was on the wrong tube and needed the loo.’ It was far too sensible and prosaic. She wasn’t happy with Megan for saying ‘See! He obviously thinks of you as his pal, too’ when Pip had told her she wanted him as more than a pal. If they weren’t going to say what she wanted to hear, what was the point of her confiding? Texting Cat, who was in Paris for the launch conference of the following summer’s Tour de France, was equally frustrating. Her sister was obviously so enthralled to be back in the fold of the Lycra-lad fraternity, and back in the arms of her doctor beau, that Pip’s long texts were responded to with the scantiest of abbreviated encouragements.

She went to bed feeling glum, goading herself that there was something rather pathetic about still feeling there was something she could do. However, if Zac’s persistence early on hadn’t worked on her, how could she possibly expect, at this late stage, with all that had gone before, that any persistence on her part could sway him?

I’m not going to phone, I’m not going to phone, I’m not going to phone.

How often had Pip forced her friends and sisters to chant those words? ‘Don’t you dare phone him!’ she would tell them. ‘And if you feel you’re going to, for Christ’s sake, phone me first!’ And though they’d trust her reasons and could see sense, they obeyed only during daylight hours or when in her company. The lure was too great. Sure enough, Pip would be contacted at some point and they’d admit ever so meekly that they had, in fact, phoned. And how they wished they hadn’t. And help, what could they do?

‘It’s not about playing-hard-to-get crap,’ Pip had tried so hard to impress on them, ‘it’s not about games at all. It’s about you presenting yourself in the best possible light, from all angles. Phoning to say nothing in particular, or something irrelevant, simply won’t reflect well on you at this stage. You mustn’t give him any reason to be put off before he knows the real you.’

‘But I could just phone to say—’

‘No!’ Pip would declare. ‘Don’t! You’ll gain nothing and you’ll jeopardize the lot.’

And yet, here she is, sitting on her hands, glowering at her phone with a mixture of fear and desire. She desperately wants to phone Zac. She’s not sure what she’d say – perhaps just ‘hullo’ without the ‘cupcake’? Or ask how work is? Or Tom?

I know! I could ask if I left my gloves when I popped round on Sunday.

You didn’t have gloves with you.

He doesn’t know that!

Don’t phone, Pip. Not right now. Not if you’re not sure what to say. Not to ask about non-existent gloves. Not if you’re not sure what’s been going on in his life. Anyway, you’re running late and you’ve got ward rounds at St Bea’s. It’s Thursday, after all.

With enormous self-restraint, Pip didn’t phone Zac. But I wish she’d phoned someone because leaving St Bea’s late tea-time, she suddenly had a brainwave that to anyone else, whether they knew her or not, would seem utter lunacy. Even if she had phoned a sister or friend, she was so convinced that what she was about to do was inspiration of staggering genius, that no threat or plea or scream from anyone else was going to stop her.

It wasn’t stalking! Far from it! It was simply a brilliant idea and a prudent gesture. Far better than a phone call. And it wasn’t really going to involve Zac at all, yet she was going to do him a huge favour. It was going to work wonders – for him on a personal level and, hopefully, for the possibilities that might still be salvageable between them.

You see, he’ll ask himself why and the only conclusion he’ll come to is that I did it because I wanted to prove how deeply I feel for him.

Did what? What are you off to do? You’re leaving St Bea’s and yet you are still dressed as Dr Pippity. And you’re not heading for the tube at all. You’re stomping through the City, chuckling and winking at passers-by. You don’t mind whether they’re laughing with you or at you – they have smiles on their faces and you deem that to be the important thing. Last time you strode this route, you were sobbing your eyes out, remember?

I found that bench. Look! That one right there. And suddenly Zac was beside me, comforting me and looking after me.

And he got you drunk.

And that was our first night together.

What are you going to do in the middle of Finsbury Circus? Cartwheel across the bowling green? Perform on the bandstand? Wave? Wait? Change your mind?

Oh, I’m not staying here! I’m off over there.

Where Zac works? Now? At five o’clock? Without warning, let alone an appointment? Dressed like that? Change your mind!

What a day. Zac Holmes glanced at the clock and knew he had at least another five hours in the office. He swivelled in his chair and gazed down from the window to the green grin of Finsbury Circus. Pigeons mainly. A tramp. A couple of high-heeled power dressers marching with conviction to some meeting or back to their office for a last conference call of the day. A few young flash City bucks already drinking at the bar. In the waning daylight, a businessman was sitting on a bench eating a sandwich – wolfing it down. Zac reckoned it was probably a late breakfast rather than a late lunch or tea. He wondered how long that man would work tonight, what time he started this morning.

Zac recalled that he last ate mid-morning. A smoked salmon bagel. A kingsize Twix. Two cans of Red Bull. Nothing since. No time, no appetite. He sighed. What time would he be home tonight? No point even guessing. He didn’t have time for so much as a gasp of fresh air, which he suddenly felt he desperately needed. The circus opposite looked strangely uninviting today. The autumn livery of the trees, so stunning last week, now looked a little drab, the branches rather moth-eaten. The tramp and the pigeons, pecking around. The clocks had gone back. It would be dark when Zac looked out of his window again. He wouldn’t even know if the tramp was still there.

There was a sharp rap on Zac’s door. A rap like that required no permission to enter. His superiors huffed in. Zac caught sight of his team out on the floor, in Pod-land, all eyes on his office. They looked worried for the most part, some untrusting, others downright livid.

‘Right,’ said Mr Big Cheese in his lousy suit and naff Nature Trek shoes, shutting the door on the apprehensive audience.

‘Let’s crack on,’ said Mr Slightly Smaller Cheese, in a suit that was shiny in patches from wear, and a pair of scuffed sensible brogues.

‘Fire away,’ said Zac, taking off his fleece and running his hands through his hair.

‘You’ve hit the nail on the head,’ laughed Mr Big Cheese. ‘You’ll need to cull your team. It’s the only way. Thirty per cent.’

At first, Zac could say nothing while his brain stormed around for immediate solutions, persuasive objections and convincing obstacles. None sprang to mind. Only panic helped him strike; his loyalty to the company, his pride in his profession, his passion for his team underscoring every word he spoke. He was an accountant shooting from the heart but his long shots ricocheted back from the Cheeses who were retaliating with their heads. Every solution Zac proposed, every objection he put forward, every obstacle he prophesied, was systematically denounced and overruled by the Cheeses.

‘If I have to make thirty per cent redundant, I’ll be amongst them,’ Zac declared without histrionics. It was no threat. It was honour. Morality. Karma.

‘Nonsense,’ said Nature Trek Cheese, ‘and you know it’s nonsense.’

‘And you know the redundancies make sense,’ said Scuffed Brogue Cheese. ‘It’s business. It’s life.’

‘If you leave, you leave a sinking ship,’ shrugged Big Cheese. ‘That’s not the behaviour of a captain.’

‘You know you’d do better to stay,’ said Smaller Cheese. ‘Use your head. Work it out.’

Zac wanted to swear at them both and tell them to stuff their jobs. Most of all, he wanted to divine a way that his team could remain complete. Even if it was bad for business.

The Cheeses left and Zac swivelled in his chair. Maybe it was time for a change. And yet, wouldn’t that be letting his team down more? If he left in protest, would those remaining sink? And wouldn’t those leaving be cosseted by princely redundancy packages and glowing references? What could he do? He could do with a drink. Lucozade – the manufacturer used to say it refreshes a person through the ups and downs of the day. All it did for Zac was quench his thirst. He swigged from the bottle. And then he choked.

What the fuck is that?

What the fuck?

There is an almighty rumpus in Pod-land. A dervish is whirling her way amongst Zac’s staff; singing and joshing and squawking. She’s knocking spectacles off people’s noses, tugging their ties back to front, cartwheeling between desks, sipping their vending machine drinks, helping herself to Extra Strong Mints, trying on jackets slung over chair backs.

‘What the fuck?’

Zac doesn’t know whether to remain in his office, hopefully hidden, or brave the floor and protect his dumbstruck staff.

‘What is she doing?’

She’s ruffling hairdos, hitting herself in the eye with rulers, drawing pictures on notepads, tripping over invisible cables, swirling between the staff, singing atrociously and muttering madly.

‘What is she doing here?’

She’s leaping upon a desk, performing a handstand that looks dreadfully precarious. Now she’s upended herself. Curtsying.

‘Oh fuck, not balloons.’

She reckons, because these are miserable adults, they won’t want balloons in the shape of sausage dogs or tortoises. No. Cocks are the order of the day. For the female staff, at least.

‘Jesus.’

Zac watches in horror as his gobsmacked female colleagues are handed balloons in the shape of penises. Suddenly, he dreads what on earth his male staff are in line for.

‘Enough.’

Zac emerges from his office at the very moment Pip trills to all and sundry, ‘Take me to your leader!’ whilst standing on one leg and putting the finishing touches to a final balloon penis.

All eyes are on Zac. His staff look utterly bewildered. Holding their inflatable penises. Picking hole-punch scraps out of their hair. Retying their ties. The clown, though, looks flushed and triumphant. She’s far too charged with adrenalin and mischief to detect Zac’s expression.

‘Mr Holmes!’ the clown declares with glee, leaping from the desk, cartwheeling towards him and showering him with bits of stuff from her pockets while the plastic gerbera on her lapel squirts him squarely between the eyes with a blast of water.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he hisses. His words and his tone turn her to stone. The clown is stuck. She gawps. She can’t actually move. ‘This way, please,’ says Zac, taking a tight hold above her elbow and marching her from the floor.

Zac is seething. His grip on Pip’s arm is tight and unfriendly. He stomps down two flights of stairs though she stumbles in her daft shoes to keep abreast of him. On a landing far enough from his floor and also from the entrance hall, he stops. He faces her. He drops her arm and puts his hands on his hips. He is frowning and speechless.

‘I thought,’ Pip says, rubbing her arm, ‘I could cheer your staff up.’ She shrugs. ‘That’s all. I mean, it’s half five. I thought it would be a wacky end to a wanky day?’ She bites her lip, because she’s distressed and also because she is desperate to appeal to Zac’s soft side.

Zac laughs but with no heart. It’s sarcastic and he’s angry. ‘They’re not kids, for fuck’s sake,’ he spits, ‘they’re not kids who need cheering up. For fuck’s sake. And the day is hardly at an end – we’ll be working through the night if you must know. Christ.’

Pip shuffles. ‘Sorry,’ she says.

‘A third of them are about to lose their jobs,’ Zac hisses with incredulity. ‘Do you really think some stupid kid’s clown larking about their desks, manhandling them, soaking them, is going to make them feel better?’ Pip wants to remonstrate that clowns aren’t just for kids. But Zac gives her no chance. ‘Do you honestly think that handing out fucking balloons in the shape of cocks is going to make my staff think “Hey, I haven’t got a job, but look! A balloon like a willy!”?’

For Pip to tell him she did it for him, as a gesture, spontaneous and from the heart, seems to be futile. So she just keeps her eyes trained on his lovely shoes and lets him seethe at her in silence.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he mutters, ‘just go, will you.’ He doesn’t wait for her response. He can’t be bothered with lame apologies. Damage and disruption are done. Zac turns and takes the stairs three at a time. He doesn’t look back or say another word.

Only when she’s quite sure he’s gone, does Pip creep down the two flights and out of the building. She keeps her gaze downcast at all times. Like a child who thinks that if they cover their eyes and can’t see, then they’re surely invisible. She makes it home. Collapses on to her sofa and sobs. She leaves smudges of her slap all over the calico. She doesn’t care at all. She seems to have a knack for dripping cosmetics over her soft furnishings. She’s had no luck removing the nail varnish.

THIRTY-NINE

Something is irking Zac, unnerving him, catching in his throat when he’s eating, waking him at inopportune moments from an otherwise heavy slumber, making him frown mid-smile. It’s burrowing into his conscience like a weevil into a rug. Bugging him. It nips him at indiscriminate times – when waiting for the kettle to boil, or the tube to come, or when he should be concentrating on what the Cheeses are moaning about, or last thing at night when he thought his mind was empty. Actually, Zac knows that he probably understands what the problem is, but he also realizes that once he has acknowledged it, he will then be obliged to face it and rectify it at the earliest opportunity. Opportunity for Zac seems to be in short supply at the moment. So, because he honestly doesn’t know where he’ll find the time, and because he has other worries that are vast by comparison, he tries to justify that this is just a little niggle, after all. And oughtn’t he to prioritize? Or, better still, just accidentally on purpose forget it altogether?

He can’t. It’s impossible. It may not have millions of pounds and employment law stamped all over it, as his other hassles do, but the niggle is insistent and weighty and has value. It is as if his life is currently plagued by bugs – he’s constantly swatting, but missing. The hassles at work can be divided into two species – great big bloody hornets and dirty lumbering bluebottles. The former are dive-bombing him, the latter seem always just beyond his swipe. But essentially, he can confine them to the office, where they buzz around and goad him. Ultimately, he can shut his office door on them, escape them entirely when he opens the door to his home. However, that’s where the mosquito awaits him. Hidden. He never knows when it is going to pester him next. It’s difficult to see. Suddenly it can hound him, lunging at him during the stillness of sleep, or waking him up a good half-hour before he needs to. It’s far more stealthy than the hornets or bluebottles; insistent and controlling. It doesn’t take long before Zac knows there’s nothing for it but to locate it and rid himself of it.

‘Daddy!’

Tom wasn’t expecting to see Zac on Monday night. After all, he’d had the whole weekend in Hampstead with him and the entire cast of Thunderbirds, so Mum and Rob-Dad could go to some place called Door Zit to do boring grown-up stuff and stay in a hotel with breakable things. However, here was his dad, on his doorstep, on Monday night, and what excellent timing it was, too, because the fish fingers were just about ready and there were plenty of oven chips to share.

‘Daddy’s going to have supper later,’ Tom’s mother told him, ‘but he’s going to sit with you while you have yours so Mummy can luxuriate in a bubble bath.’

‘Will it be fish fingers you’re having later?’ Tom asked thoughtfully, because if it wasn’t – if it was, say, chicken nuggets or mini burgers – he might change his mind, have his bath now, and eat with Daddy later.

‘It’s leftovers,’ his mother informed him, which clinched the deal. She went off for her bath and Tom and his father went to the kitchen. Tom insisted his father had a few oven chips because leftovers were not enough for a growing boy, let alone a grown-up dad.

Though June was keen to extract all manner of juicy details from Zac concerning Pip turning up last weekend and the demise of Juliana during the week, she took a good sip of wine each time a burning question threatened. It was rare, but not unheard of, for Zac to call her asking if she could spare ‘a couple of minutes’. She had learned that it was his code for needing to confide, to workshop an issue troubling him, something that perhaps his male friends were not quite qualified to do. She knew, therefore, that Zac’s casually requested couple of minutes would run into an entire evening. She didn’t mind; she loved him dearly. Moreover, she was flattered. Fundamentally, she was intrigued.

Rob was happy to make himself scarce because he could indulge in an entire evening watching the European Cup at the pub near work without having to phone regularly, without having to watch his pint intake, without having to justify or apologize for the evidence of too many Marlboro Lights on his clothes, hair and breath. He liked Zac enormously in his capacity as pub-buddy or co-daddy. However, being party to a possibly convoluted confession was slightly outside the parameters of their friendship. Neither he nor Zac minded at all. They were good-time pals, not soul mates. Theirs was a friendship based on shooting the shit or building cardboard garaging for Tom’s trucks. Their easy affection for each other showed itself in friendly insults, not in the opening of hearts and the splurging of intimate details.

At first, June was worried and disappointed that perhaps all Zac actually needed to talk through were his concerns at work. For the first time since he left his last job four years ago, her cursory enquiry about work was met with a full half-hour’s monologue of the hassles therein and the anxiety he was feeling.

‘So,’ he said, ‘the redundancies will happen early next week.’ He filled up his wineglass. ‘There’s fuck all I can do about it.’

‘Grim,’ June agreed. She went to the kitchen to prepare two plates of food. She knew Zac would mind neither the leftovers, nor the partaking of the meal on his knees.

They munched in silence. ‘Coffee?’ June asked when the plates were bare, because by definition there cannot be seconds of leftovers.

‘Please,’ said Zac, stroking the arms of the armchair rhythmically and burping as politely as he could.

But he soon followed her into the kitchen.

June had him stacking the dishwasher to stop him fidgeting. She could sense that the crux of his visit was on the tip of his tongue. To ask him outright what was troubling him so would no doubt see him swallow it down and feign nonchalance instead. To carry on as if he’d just popped round for ‘a couple of minutes’ was a much shrewder tactic. She clattered around noisily, grinding coffee, boiling the kettle, cursing the chipped mugs and asking him if he’d mind soya milk.

‘Er, I’ll take it black,’ Zac said, rummaging under the sink for the dishwasher tablets. ‘You’re out of Rinse Aid. Oh, it’s over with Juliana – not that it was ever on.’

June didn’t falter for a moment. ‘I’m sure there’s a new bottle somewhere – fuck it, one cycle without won’t matter. Just shove it on. That’s a shame.’

‘What is?’ Zac asked, just in case she hadn’t heard and was referring to dishwashers.

‘Juliana,’ said June, as lightly as possible.

‘Not at all,’ Zac assured her, ‘not at all. In fact, Ruth seemed more pissed off!’

‘Oh?’ said June, filling a cafetière. She of course knew, but she couldn’t risk Zac realizing.

‘Come on!’ Zac laughed, nudging her. ‘You of all people must have known what she was up to – all that forced socializing. She wanted to point out how mismatched we were.’ June felt rumbled, too, but started frantically rummaging around in the tin foil and cling film drawer so that her blush didn’t show. ‘She even sounded gutted that it wasn’t me who did the dumping,’ Zac remarked.

‘You know what Ruth’s like!’ June laughed, leaving the ambiguity floating. She plunged the cafetière, splattering coffee grinds over everything in a half-metre radius in the process. Good. Timely diversion. Zac mopped, June apologized. She placed the coffee and mugs on a tray.

‘Anyway,’ said Zac, ‘the way I see it is that it saved me the hassle. You know how I hate stuff like that. I’m crap at it – I’d rather bury my head and keep the peace. I’m eternally grateful to you for burying “us” – I’d never have had the courage. I like you all the more for it! Thanks, babe.’

‘Cupcake?’ June asked Zac, regarding him squarely but with a brilliantly contrived expression of total innocence that he was momentarily unable to see through.

But June couldn’t hold it. It was far too exciting. She bit her lip. And Zac saw. He turned his head sideways, regarding her slyly through slanting eyes. Then he pinched her, quite hard, on the soft part of her tricep.

‘Ouch!’ she protested. ‘Bastard!’

‘You,’ he accused, ‘are wicked.’

‘Look, do you want the sodding cupcake or not?’ June asked, her eyes simultaneously sparkling with mischief and smarting with the throb from her arm.

‘It’s a term of affection, you know,’ Zac told her with fake naivety whilst admiring the little cakes on offer, each iced individually to perfection.

‘I do know,’ said June, placing a few in a careful configuration on a plate. ‘And how are you going to reciprocate?’

‘I thought of mon petit choux,’ he said, unable to resist taking a little jelly orange slice from the top of one of the cakes.

‘Your what?’ June asked, slapping his hand.

‘It’s a term of affection,’ Zac shrugged, ‘though perhaps it’s somewhat obscured in translation. My little cabbage.’

So Zac told June about Pip’s impromptu visit on Sunday. And his accidentally-on-purpose detour on Tuesday. June knew it was crucial not to comment, certainly not to judge, nor add any opinion of her own; just to listen. All Zac gave her was facts. Pip stayed fifteen minutes. Went to the loo. Had no tea. Called him ‘cupcake’. Noticed the new painting. He’d stayed twenty minutes. Forgot to use the loo. Had tea and a KitKat. Talked about work.

Riveting stuff.

But not enough.

So Zac gave June a potted history of meeting Pip. He told her about when he first saw her. How he must have come across as a mad stalker. About how he had subsequently wavered, fearing she was too eccentric herself, though deep down he sensed there was a potential connection. He told June about the preliminary texting and how long it had taken to set a date. He told her about the mad sisters in Soho, about tea at Brown’s, everything she needed to know about swans. About Pip’s pale blue trainers and that clown make-up is called slap. About her commitment to clowning and her remarkable skill at it. He told June how he found out Pip had a boyfriend and how his degree of disappointment had surprised him. He told her about finding Pip sobbing in Finsbury Circus because she had been two-timed; he told June that he’d taken Pip to the pub to drown her sorrows and eventually, hours later, after much intense evasion, they had slept together.

‘The sex was OK,’ he told June, ‘nothing spectacular. But what was good was the sleeping together.’

He told her how he’d woken to Pip’s slap-smudged face and Pippi-Longstocking-style plaits; how she’d seemed shy that morning but that he had blamed her hangover. That she tries to hide Heat magazine and HP Sauce. He told June of the marvellous coincidence at the Maida Vale kids’ party – that poor Ruth had had a migraine and he’d gone to pick Tom and Billy up. And there was Merry Martha. And she made him a balloon. And she’d accepted a lift to Holloway. And they’d spent ages steaming up the windows of the Audi before spending a great evening wading through his record collection.

‘That’s when we had sex for the second time,’ Zac told June. ‘It still wasn’t that great but the sleeping together was. The waking and finding her in my bed. I liked that.’

And then he told her about Pip’s peculiarly sudden but extreme change of heart, mind, inclination and intent. And his reaction. And that, until Tom’s birthday, they hadn’t seen or spoken to each other.

‘And damn you for making me pay her in cash,’ Zac said. ‘I felt like Richard sodding Gere in Pretty Woman.’

‘In your dreams!’ June laughed, pretending to be mortified with hindsight that she’d asked Zac to pay Pip. Cash.

‘And that brings it full circle,’ Zac told her, pausing to drink down his lukewarm coffee, accepting a refill and another cupcake. ‘She showed up on Sunday and what should have been odd and delightful was a nightmare on account of Juliana being there.’

‘But you then turned up on Tuesday,’ June pointed out, ‘and I promise you, that won’t have gone unnoticed. Especially because you didn’t use the loo.’ June grinned. ‘Honestly, believe me – I know these things. Pip’ll have been reading all sorts of fairy-tale endings between the lines. She’ll have analysed your every gesture and everything you said and didn’t say. Trust me.’

‘I doubt it,’ Zac said morosely.

‘Yes, she bloody will!’ June exclaimed, carrying on regardless of Zac’s sudden solemnity and glum expression. ‘I bet you she’ll have phoned her sisters and her friends saying “He said he wanted the loo, but guess what, he never went” as if it is as much a declaration of your romantic intentions towards her as any turquoise Tiffany box bedecked with white ribbon.’

‘No,’ said Zac decisively, ‘she won’t. Not after Thursday.’

‘Thursday?’ June asked. ‘You saw her on Thursday, too?’

‘Yes,’ said Zac.

‘And?’

‘Oh,’ says June, wishing she hadn’t because it sounds too pessimistic. ‘Oh,’ she says, unable to prevent herself and the drop in octave.

‘Exactly,’ Zac says despondently, ‘and as mad as I was with her at the time, I’m actually far more pissed off with myself now. I realize I humiliated her much more than she embarrassed me. I flew off the handle simply because stress was at boiling point. My anger was disproportionate to her so-called crime. I was in a vile mood and my head was burning. Suddenly, she’s there, making balloons in the shape of willies and squirting my staff with water. You know what my staff are like for the most part – they personify every cliché associated with my profession. Willy-shaped balloons are not their kind of thing.’

‘She did it because she wanted to help,’ June defines, ‘and because she wanted to make a gesture to you.’

Zac pauses. ‘I know,’ he says, ‘I know.’ He shrugs. He looks desolate. ‘It’s haunting me, believe me. It won’t leave me alone – like a mosquito with a grudge.’

‘I don’t think all is lost,’ June tells him with encouragement and sympathy and conviction.

‘You don’t?’ For the first time, Zac’s expression lightens and he looks to June imploringly. This is exactly what he had hoped to hear. And he knows June well enough to know that she wouldn’t tell him what she knew he wanted to hear if it wasn’t what she actually felt to be plausible.

‘I don’t,’ June reiterates. ‘I reckon you’re both evens in the apologies-pending stakes.’ Zac is eating his way absent-mindedly through a fifth cupcake, hanging on June’s every word. ‘I mean, I reckon Pip has some commitment issues,’ June defines, ‘but fucking hell, Zac Holmes – look at you! We parted over six years ago and you’ve had no desire to commit since!’ Zac nods energetically. ‘Anyway,’ June says, ‘for what it’s worth, I reckon if you sit down and hammer it out, the weight of your individual apologies should bear each other out – even if the misdemeanours are so different.’

‘You really think I should call?’ Zac marvels. ‘You honestly think she’ll answer?’

‘I do,’ June says, ‘and she’ll now be way too nervous to call you.’

‘Rightly so,’ says Zac. He’s had enough coffee. He fancies another glass of wine. He goes to the kitchen and fetches a bottle of Rioja. Alone, June wishes she had a Dictaphone so all had been recorded for Ruth. And then she’s pleased she hasn’t. It’s private. It would be an insult to Zac. Ruth could have the bare bones – she’d pick at them gratefully anyway.

‘I like Pip,’ June tells Zac, accepting the glass of wine and having a lengthy sip. ‘As Dr Pippity, as Merry Martha and as herself. You’d be good together.’ Zac raises his eyebrows. ‘You may well look stunned,’ June laughs, ‘you know how difficult I am to be won over.’ Zac raises his glass. ‘Remember that poor girl – what was her name?’

‘Amelia,’ Zac grimaces.

‘And that other one – with the specs.’

‘Rosie,’ Zac winces.

‘And the one with the weird left eye.’

‘Tina,’ Zac all but howls.

‘Well,’ June says, ‘Pip I like.’

‘I like Pip, too,’ Zac agrees.

‘Tom likes her,’ June points out.

‘He does,’ Zac agrees.

‘She seems to like him, too,’ June adds.

‘Who wouldn’t!’ Zac says and he and June chink glasses.

They sit and work their way through the bottle of wine. Though June would love to devise a precise soliloquy for Zac, she knows that even if she did, he wouldn’t use it. His style is unique. He’ll do things his way, in his own time. As he’s done thus far. She really hopes that he and Pip can finally synchronize timing. There’s no reason why they can’t. They have everything going for them. June feels all talked out, she’s worked hard this evening for him and she’s tired. The wine is finished and there’s only one cupcake left, rather uninterestingly iced, too. She’s looking forward to seeing Rob. He should be back soon. She’s prepared for him to smell of booze and fags and fried food but she doesn’t really mind. Time for Zac to make tracks. Time to change the subject and edge him towards the door. Time for bed.

‘You haven’t noticed!’ June pouts with mock outrage.

‘Noticed?’ Zac frowns. ‘What?’

June waves her arm around. ‘We redecorated!’

Zac looks about the room. ‘Oh, yes,’ he says, unconvinced.

‘We went from peach to apricot,’ June remonstrates, ‘in a day!’

‘It’s lovely,’ says Zac, ‘very subtle.’

‘You mean you can hardly notice it.’ She looks around the room. She loves it. Then she looks at Zac. He’s staring at a blank part of the wall as if he’s reading some Divine scripture there. ‘Zac?’

‘Oh my God!’ he exclaims softly. He looks at June as if a thunderbolt has struck him, granting him some celestial sign.

‘What?’ June asks, wide-eyed, correctly assuming Zac’s revelation is Pip-related.

‘I knew something was different,’ he declares, ‘I just couldn’t put my finger on it.’

‘On what?’ June begs.

‘Do you think it’s too late to go round now?’ Zac asks her.

‘Go round?’ June exclaims. ‘To Pip’s?’ Zac shrugs. ‘Yes,’ June declares, ‘it is!’ Zac looks crestfallen. ‘Look,’ June tells him sternly, ‘you two have done your impromptu thing – now it’s time for some courtesy.’

Zac considers this. He nods. ‘You’re right.’

‘Do not go there tonight,’ June warns him, ‘do not even think of phoning her tonight.’

‘Aye aye, cap’n,’ he salutes her.

Zac has to exercise enormous restraint to tell the taxi ‘Hampstead’. When he’s home, he physically unplugs his land-line and does not recharge the dead battery on his mobile, just in case he wakes in the early hours and is tempted.

FORTY

‘The thing is,’ Pip said over the phone to Django, ‘I tried my best and I failed.’

‘The thing is,’ Django reasoned with his niece, which he’d been doing for the past half-hour with permutations of tone and phrase, ‘the fact that you can hold your head high and say you failed and yet not feel a failure – that’s the thing.’

‘Oh, it hasn’t put me off men,’ Pip told him, ‘it hasn’t even put me off Zac. But I can see I have to let it lie. God – if ever a week felt like a year.’

‘Was it this time last week that you were gallivanting across his desk, then?’

‘Almost to the minute, poor bloke,’ Pip groaned, yet with grace. ‘Oh, well. I am almost at the stage of being able to laugh and cringe at it all. Give me a month and it may well become my dinner party conversation piece.’

‘Dear Philippa,’ said Django, envisaging Pip so clearly leaping about amidst all those nonplussed accountants, ‘I feel you deserve a happy ending – what’s the point of all this hard-wrung self-awareness otherwise?’

‘Whatever,’ said Pip. ‘It’s just a pity because I know you’d’ve liked him.’

‘I most certainly would!’ Django declared. ‘I’d’ve liked him all the more for a family discount – I pay my current accountant a fortune for him to tell me to pay the taxman a fortune. They’re in cahoots, I tell you, cahoots!’

‘Anyway, lots more fish in the sea,’ Pip said, ‘every pot has its lid.’

‘Hey!’ Django remonstrated. ‘You’ve gone and pinched all my clichés.’

‘I know,’ Pip laughed, ‘for good reason.’

‘Plenty more cupcakes in the tin,’ he said, slyly.

‘Django!’ she declared.

‘Come home soon,’ Django said, ‘before Cat leaves for the States. Now that Fen’s made her choice between her two suitors. Let’s have a gathering. I’ll cook something special.’

‘It’s a lovely idea,’ Pip enthused, ‘I’ll talk to the girls. You know what – why don’t you come down to London? I want to show you my spruce new flat. You’d approve.’

There was silence. Django loathed the city so much that he now found the briefest of visits took until Christmas to recover from. Regardless of when he travelled. He couldn’t possibly afford two months’ convalescence! But he’d love to see Pip’s flat, mainly because she wanted him to. She sounded house-proud and plain proud of herself.

‘The thing is,’ Pip said, knowing her uncle would never come but knowing that to invite him anyway was the point, ‘I like it. The colour. The change. I mean, I haven’t gone from one extreme to another – it’s not Day-Glo or metallic or anything. It’s just a step away from what it was. And Zac, indirectly, was the inspiration for change.’

‘The inspiration for change,’ Django repeated, thinking his niece had a very becoming turn of phrase at times.

‘All sorts of change,’ Pip said. ‘I must go – my mobile has just beeped. It’s probably Cat and I must have a hair wash before we meet up – I forgot to brush out Dr Pippity’s plaits before I left today.’

‘Come home soon,’ Django implored.

‘My littlest sister! Off to the States for a staff position on some sports mag!’

Pip is muttering to herself in her inimitable way. She’s tidying up whilst the bath is running because she prides herself on her ability to multitask.

‘Where is my mobile?’

It’s not in the bedroom. It wouldn’t be in the bathroom. It’s in the kitchen. She folds and stores the empty supermarket bags before she retrieves her phone from under a net of satsumas.

‘What’s mon petit choux?’

She scrolls through. It isn’t Cat’s number. Or Fen’s. Or Megan’s. She has a name tag for them, anyway. Whose number is it?

‘Mon petit choux? Damn, why didn’t I concentrate on French at school? My little something or other?’

Fen doesn’t know what it means, either. Megan can only suggest choux pastry and profiteroles. Pip tries Cat – all that time spent in France must have rubbed off on her. Cat says ‘cabbage’ – it means, literally, ‘my little cabbage’. Cat and Pip are baffled. So is Fen, when Pip phones to tell her that someone has sent a text about a little cabbage. Megan is amused but confused, convinced that profiteroles must surely be a more seemly translation. She says she’ll phone the French teacher at school. She phones back half an hour later. Pip is wrapped in a bath towel, combing product through her wet hair.

‘It does mean “my little cabbage”,’ Megan says, excitement creeping into her voice, ‘but, though the translation sounds bizarre, actually it’s a simple term of affection.’

‘A term of affection?’ Pip asks, the pace of her heart picking up steadily.

‘Yes,’ says Megan, ‘it is. Like – you know – cupcake.’

Pip sits on her bed, rereading the text message. She’s long since deleted Zac’s numbers from her mobile phone. But she knows she has them written down in her Filofax. She sits still. Does she dare?

Go on!

She puts on knickers and bra and pads through to the sitting-room. Flips around the pages of her Filofax as casually as she can, stopping to read next week’s appointments, skimming over what last week held for her. She doesn’t want to rush to H, or Z (she’d filed him under both) because she’s convinced that restraint and nonchalance will reap rewards.

It is Zac’s number.

It really is.

She double- and triple-checks it.

‘What on earth is going to happen now? Am I meant to make the next move? Dare I?’

Go on!

Pip and Cat spent the evening devising increasingly convoluted replies to Zac’s text message. The fun was in the composing – none would actually do. Pip then spent until one in the morning texting various options to Megan and Fen, which soon devolved into ludicrous suggestions, ultimately veering off at filthy tangents. The fun was in the sharing. She wouldn’t, of course, be sending any of the suggestions. She went to sleep feeling snug and, justifiably, a little smug, too.

Zac’s phone beeped on Saturday morning, just as he was hovering in June’s hallway waiting for Tom to amass the troops and the trucks that he simply couldn’t live without for the next twenty-four hours. With Tom’s rucksack in one hand and Tracy Island in the other, plus Woody from Toy Story slung over his arm, Zac thought the phone could wait until later. And then he thought that perhaps he might just retrieve it now. He dumped Woody and the rucksack and gave June the task of deputizing over Tracy Island. He found his phone. He read the message. He scrolled through though he had no need to. He was an accountant. He liked figures. He knew certain numbers off by heart. He read the message again. He laughed. The phone gave him the option ‘Erase?’ Certainly not! He passed it to June to read.

cabbage & cupcake??? sounds like a mad combo…

‘Reply! Reply!’ June urged excitedly.

‘Yes, yes,’ Zac said with great nonchalance. ‘Later.’ And he left June all flustered and none the wiser as to his course of action while he led Tom out towards his car. She stood by the front door blowing kisses to Tom and making a telephone gesture with her thumb and little finger to Zac.

Zac appalled himself by texting whilst he drove. He’d never done so before – he’d never even spoken on his mobile in the car unless his hands-free kit was plugged in. Yet here he was, driving one-handed, texting a message, glancing in the rear-view mirror irregularly, watching the road infrequently, trying to keep up a conversation with Tom at the same time.

acquired taste – suck it and see …

Did he dare send that?

Go on!

jamie o? gordon r? cordon b? can’t find recipe …

Pip had laughed so long and hard that by the time she sent this reply, Zac was safely parked. He set up Tom with the toys and a glass of juice and went to his bedroom window-sill to compose his response.

come 4 t? 2day? u can use loo …

Pip didn’t keep him waiting for long for her answer.

it’s a d8 …

Zac smiled.

‘Tom, guess who’s coming to see us later?’

‘Um, I dunno. Buzz Lightyear? Lady Penelope?’

‘Almost,’ said Zac. ‘Actually, your clown is.’

‘Oh. Brill. Can you do that special noise for Thunderbird 1 now, please? But I mustn’t see you. Go behind there and do the noise. Put your phone down, Daddy. Let’s play.’

Pip tried in vain to speak to Fen, Cat, Megan and Django. No one was at home and the girls weren’t answering their mobiles. She wanted to tell them the developments, she wanted to work through what she should wear, how she should act, should she bake cupcakes? Take with her a caddy of Earl Grey? Buy a small cabbage en route? How could she face such weighty decisions alone? Ultimately, she decided to read great significance into the fact that she could make contact with none of them. She’d just have to trust her instincts and think for herself. She knew they’d all kick themselves when they realized she’d tried to contact them, she knew they’d be desperate for details and would want to send her their vibes and advice and encouragement. She texted the same message to her sisters and best friend.

t at z’s – wish me luck!!!

After three entire costume changes, she settled for a chocolate brown needlecord skirt, black polo neck and tight black boots with a low heel but dainty nonetheless. She buffed her skin the Clarins way, spritzed a little perfume in strategic places, slicked on some lip balm and waved the mascara wand over the tips of her eyelashes. The ensemble was subtle, but she felt properly dressed and attractive.

‘Nicely put together,’ as Django would say. If he could see me now. If only he was at home for me to describe how I look over the phone.

She left her flat without noticing which lights she’d left on or that she had not turned off the radio in the kitchen.

Damn! Is it rude to turn up without a thing? Would it really have been corny to have brought a small cabbage? Wouldn’t such a gesture be the deal-clincher? Shall I turn back and find something to buy?

She had arrived at Zac’s empty-handed but with a stomach now so full of butterflies that, as she hovered her finger over the doorbell, she wondered how she’d find room for tea.

I suppose, though, that tea just might be a euphemism.

This both excited and appalled her. Though she suddenly felt undeniably horny, if Zac was intending to seduce her, might he not be put off by unshaven legs?

To say nothing of my knickers being the colour of well-chewed gum?

Put on your most beguiling smile, girl, and ring the sodding doorbell!

If anyone was to ask Zac about that fabled, elusive moment when he knew, he just knew, that Pip was the one for him, he’d declare it was hearing her response to Tom greeting her that Saturday afternoon. It didn’t strike him like a bolt from heaven, it didn’t really occur to him at all just then. It was only in retrospect that he credited the impact of her reaction to Tom with consolidating how he felt about her.

‘Oh hullo, Tom, how are you?’

Pip’s tone was steady and casual. She seemed neither surprised, delighted nor disappointed. It was as if she took for granted that ringing Zac’s bell might well see his son opening the door, because she was content that his son should be as much a part of the fabric of his life, the furnishing of his flat, as the Eames lounger.

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ said Tom. ‘Shall I call you Pip today?’

‘Sure.’

‘Brill. Come in and play. My dad’s on the loo just now. He’s been in there for ages.’

Pip and Tom wrinkled their noses in unison and then giggled conspiratorially.

‘Do you know how to play Thunderbirds?’

‘Um, I’m not sure, Tom. Maybe the rules I know are different to yours – let’s play your way.’

‘All right. You have to go somewhere I can’t see you – like behind there – and make a noise like this.’

‘Like this?’

‘No! That’s rubbish. Like this.’

‘How about this?’

‘Yes, that’s OK. You’ll probably get better at it. Now go over there and every time I lift Thunderbird 1, make that noise. OK?’

‘Roger.’

‘Roger? Who’s Roger? There isn’t a Roger.’

‘I mean, righty-ho.’

So Pip was to be heard and not seen when Zac emerged from the bathroom. And her first indication of Zac that afternoon came from Tom.

‘Did you have a runny tummy, Daddy?’

‘No, just a bit of wind, Tom. I should have had chicken nuggets, not the quarter pounder.’

In retrospect, that was probably the moment Pip truly fell for Zac. He liked her enough and felt comfortable enough with himself to make his flatulence public. No act. No baggage. And anyway, she herself had always veered to a lavatorial sense of humour. Plus, she was aware that whether or not Zac had wind made no difference to how she felt.

Tom positioned his father out of sight on the opposite end of the room to Pip and commanded him to make the sound of Thunderbird 2 at the given sign. Zac growled from his side, Pip perfected a vehicular grumble from hers and that’s basically how they conversed for a good ten minutes until Tom remembered something he’d forgotten to tell his father.

‘Oh!’ he said. ‘I forgot! Come and see.’

He led Zac over to where Pip was positioned. They looked down upon her, crouching and preparing to growl. She looked up. She didn’t seem in the slightest bit embarrassed but she did look a little cramped.

‘Hullo,’ said Zac.

‘Hullo,’ she responded.

‘It’s Pip,’ said Tom, just in case his father had been duped into thinking Thunderbird 1 was really full of fuel and raring to go on an International Rescue.

‘Cup of tea?’ Zac offered, offering his hand and hauling her up.

‘That would be nice,’ she accepted, rubbing her back and cricking her knees. ‘Thunderbirds is thirsty work.’

It wasn’t that time flew because they were all having fun – which they were – but more due to Tom demanding their undivided attention until he decided he was starving hungry and please could he have his supper. After which, the child was so tired and played out that he promised to brush his teeth for twice as long in the morning if he could go straight to sleep right now. His father wouldn’t hear of it. And so, for the first time all afternoon, Pip had five minutes in her own company while her host and his son – or was it her host and his father? – busied themselves elsewhere with bedtime routines. She sat herself down on the Eames footstool and had a good look at the new painting. She did like it. It proved to her that there’s a place for everything. And in Zac’s flat, it had found a sympathetic environment in which to sing. It would dwarf her flat. The colours were too strident – it would be like a blackbird singing before it is light. Lovely in itself, but somehow sadly incongruous and somewhat lost without an audience.

When Zac came through having settled Tom, he found Pip picking at the leftovers on his son’s plate.

‘I can spare you a whole fish finger,’ Zac offered. ‘The freezer is full of them.’

‘Actually,’ Pip replied, ‘I like the crunchy end bits with cold baked beans.’

‘How about the cold peas?’ Zac asked.

Pip wrinkled her nose. ‘No,’ she said, ‘you can have them. I don’t like the way they sort of implode. They look like the footballs you see in skips, or people’s fingertips after a long bath.’

‘So I’m having leftover leftovers,’ Zac mused.

‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘dig in.’

They don’t really know what to do. They’ve played Thunderbirds, drunk tea, eaten leftovers, broken the ice. They’re housebound on account of Tom and, on account of Tom, playing old records, at the sort of volume old records deserve to be heard at, is out, too. They did their critique of the new painting last weekend. Currently, neither of them needs the loo, or a drink replenishing.

‘Would you like to sit down?’ Zac asks.

‘Thanks very much,’ says Pip. He takes her hand and, awkwardly, they attempt to walk as nonchalantly as they can from the kitchen counter at which they’ve been hovering, through to the sitting-room. Pip’s hands feel clammy to her, but there again, Zac’s feel clammy to him. He sits down on the sofa and momentarily, Pip wonders quite where she should sit. She’s done the Eames – lounger and footstool. How about the banana chair? She’d like to sit right next to Zac but suddenly, she feels she should wait and see.

Zac pats the space next to him and Pip lowers herself down in a most demure way. The two of them then endure an awkward few moments of unnecessary sighs and picking at the labels on the bottled beer and starting sentences simultaneously, then deferring to each other to the extent that nothing is said. Pip contrives a yawn though she’s too excited to be tired. It is only eight o’clock.

‘Um,’ she says.

Zac stretches one leg in front of him, as if suffering from cramp. He fingers the fraying label on his beer. ‘Hmm.’

They smile, shyly and fleetingly, at each other. For two people who were perfecting impressions of the Thunderbird craft that very afternoon – albeit crouching at opposite sides of the room – they are now remarkably formal with each other. Pip finds herself wishing Tom was still up to boss them around and tell them what to do, what to say and when.

Without warning, Zac places his hand on Pip’s knee and gives a little squeeze.

‘I’m sorry about last week,’ she announces, surprising herself at her brevity. It is music to his ears but a tune he wasn’t expecting to hear just then.

‘I’m sorry, too,’ he says.

‘I mean, it was stupid of me not to call,’ she elaborates. ‘I was just trying to – I don’t know – make amends by making contact. But now I feel I’m in some crazy downward spiral, having to make amends for making amends that have gone wrong.’

Zac drinks to that. He’s not quite sure which event Pip is referring to. After all, she turned up unannounced on both occasions.

‘I thought they’d like balloon willies. Stupid it may seem, but I just thought that as a tough day drew to a close, I’d lighten the tone by lowering it. I meant no harm. And I’m mortified.’

Zac considers her apology and regards her pained expression. ‘What’s odd,’ he defines, ‘is that you’re apologizing for something I don’t think needs an apology. I’d much rather say sorry to you for humiliating you – marching you out of the office like a loony or a criminal. Stress got the better of me and skewed my vision.’

Pip reflects on this and looks at Zac. His eyes are burrowing into hers, seeking her response.

‘OK, shall we call it quits for the Office Atrocity?’ she suggests. They chink beer bottles. She takes a contemplative sip. ‘I’m sorry, too, about turning up like that last weekend. When you had company.’

Zac swigs and thinks. ‘I’m not,’ he says, ‘I’m just sorry I had company. But I’m very pleased you came. It, er, made me see right through the company that I was keeping.’ Pip’s gaze flicks around his face. He spells it out. ‘It was casual, anyway,’ he says, ‘so it was simply semantics to end something that was never actually on in the first place.’

‘You mean,’ Pip deduces, ‘you chucked her?’

‘Actually,’ Zac corrects, ‘she suggested we call it quits.’

‘Oh,’ says Pip, trying not to let her inner voice yell ‘Baggage! Baggage! Emasculated! Rebound!’

‘Saved me the job,’ Zac reveals with a very grateful shrug, and Pip’s inner voice breathes a shoulder-dropping sigh of relief. ‘We just formalized not to bother with each other any more.’ Suddenly, they are both aware that Zac still has his hand on Pip’s knee. He attempts to take it away, as if he’s being presumptuous, but she places hers on top of his and there they stay.

Pip decides to take her boots off. She wants to come very close to Zac, she wants to sit herself entirely next to him. But she oughtn’t to have her shoes on the furniture. ‘Pull?’ she asks, holding out her leg. Zac eases off one boot, then the other. She settles herself facing Zac, her legs tucked underneath her. She touches his cheek. ‘Um,’ she says, not knowing what to say but knowing that she has two or three great soliloquies to choose from, if only she could locate them. ‘It’s just.’

Fuck it.

It seems a very good idea to kiss him gently, soon enough deeply, while her brain tries to find where she’s stored all those beautifully phrased declarations. After a good long kiss, she still can’t remember. So she kisses him again. And after that one, Zac looks so dazed and lust-soaked that she half thinks she could say anything and he wouldn’t really hear.

No. This is important. For myself, if not for Zac.

‘Zac, what I’m most sorry for is the dithering,’ she says, pulling away but keeping her eyes focused on his lips.

‘Playing hard to get?’ Zac asks lasciviously, making for another kiss.

‘No,’ Pip says defiantly, placing her fingertip against his lips, ‘listen! I wasn’t playing hard to get. The point is, back then I really didn’t know if I wanted to be got in the first place.’

This makes perfect sense to Zac who feels they both deserve to increase the intensity and geography of the fondling and subsequently takes his hand to her breasts. And soon enough he’s easing her down, prostrate along the settee, and they’re petting and snogging and feeling and grabbing and his feet are on the furniture and his shoes aren’t clean and he’d rather buy a new bloody sofa than spoil the moment.

‘The point is,’ he says, some minutes later and a little breathlessly, ‘none of that matters now, does it? Not how you felt or acted then, nor my Juliana interlude, nor clowning at the office. Because the point is – look at us now. Whatever we didn’t want then, we want now. We’re allowed to change our minds.’

Pip just wants more kissing. To her, just now, physical manifestations of desire, relief, affection, apology are worth more than anything Shakespeare himself could have penned. She pulls Zac down over her again and closes her eyes, letting his lips touch down on hers, letting her mouth open and allowing their tongues to chatter away in a language of their own.

‘The point is,’ Zac pulls away again, slightly flushed, panting a little, ‘we are currently snogging and humping and making out like a couple of hormone-crazed teenagers. It consigns all the other stuff into the past. It’s all just a part of our history – because I’d like to think that we have a future. From now on.’

As Zac kisses her, Pip realizes she’s just learned a lesson she’ll never forget; that apologies can be accepted without risk of payback, that a shaky start can lead to a sublime journey, that one’s history is made of everything one does and that unsavoury or difficult elements can rest in the past peaceably alongside the happy or easy elements. Fundamentally, that there need be no repercussions for the future.

‘That we can laugh about our rocky start in times to come,’ Pip states, no need for a question mark.

‘Stay,’ Zac whispers. ‘I’m about to explode.’

‘Not tonight,’ Pip says. ‘I don’t want Tom to see me without my make-up in the morning.’

Zac considers this. ‘Tom or you?’

‘Tom,’ Pip says. ‘He’s only little. I’m Thunderbird 1 to him at the moment. And his daddy shouldn’t sleep with his toys without asking.’

‘I’ll have a chat with him,’ Zac informs her, ‘and I know he’ll be cool about it. After all, it’ll solve his perpetual problem of which craft to launch and when.’

Yet Zac remains on top of Pip, brushing strands of hair from her face, from the corner of her mouth. Gazing and grinning and dipping his lips to hers. He sees she’s wearing a little mascara, that it’s smudged slightly beneath her right eye. She smells very nice. He likes the way her bottom teeth are ever so slightly crooked. He notices a small mole on her jaw for the first time. He sucks an ear lobe. They’re pierced but she doesn’t wear earrings. He could buy her a pair for Christmas.

God, he’d love to see her breasts bare right now, rather than having to remind himself how they look by feeling them through her clothing. He’d like to get naked with her immediately. Take his time making love to her. It would be new. He now has but a vague memory of sex with Pip not being all that great. But he has a growing feeling – and not just in his trousers – that making love might be a whole class apart.

And Pip takes her lips to his ear. And she’s nibbling. And kissing. And she whispers, ‘God, I don’t half fancy a fuck!’

Zac laughs.

That’s my girl.

And he wonders whether with Pip, whom he fancies the pants off but feels all manner of soft fondness for, making love and having a fuck might well be inextricably linked.

Pip is now snuggled in her own bed, too excited to sleep just yet. She’s undecided whether to indulge in romantic day-dreams of love, laughter and domesticity while she waits for slumber, or whether she should just reach for her vibrator instead.

There’s no reason why I can’t do both. Blimey. What a novelty!

Well done, Pip.

FORTY-ONE

Megan, Fen and Cat were all apoplectic with anticipation and excitement when they each managed to contact Pip.

‘What did you wear? Did you take cabbage?’ Fen shrieked. ‘Cake?’

‘What did you talk about? Did you have a huge heart-to-heart?’ Megan demanded. ‘And what about the leggy girlfriend?’

‘Did you have rampant sex all night long? Who made who holler for mercy?’ Cat demanded to know. ‘And are you walking like John Wayne today?’

Pip answered her support group so honestly and calmly that, although Fen privately thought her sister should have taken cabbage and cake, and although Megan felt Pip ought to have revealed her one-night stand, for the record, and although Cat was slightly disappointed that no fornicating had taken place, fundamentally they were proud of Pip and happy for her, believing all indeed boded well for her future.

Fen phoned Pip again at lunch-time, suggesting Sunday papers round at hers. Cat was there when Pip arrived, obsessing herself with the sports pages and wondering out loud if she was a lunatic to have accepted a job in the States, at Team Megapac’s Colorado headquarters, and a share in her boyfriend’s apartment. Her two older sisters told her what she wanted to hear, that it was a great decision professionally, plus that it gave her a chance to cement her relationship with Ben within the crucial, mundane parameters of day-to-day living. Best of all, they decided, it gave Pip and Fen the opportunity for a cheap holiday to the States and Cat simply must go for that reason alone. The sisters refused to acknowledge out loud the potentially epic link of Colorado, Denver, their mother and her cowboy. Another time. Not now.

Intermittently, during the afternoon, Pip went through the various details of the previous day with Zac; initially when asked, soon enough spontaneously, ultimately somewhat repetitively. Both her sisters noted with delight how frequently she glanced surreptitiously at her mobile phone. Who’d have thought, Pip McCabe, bitten by the love bug!

‘Why not phone Megan,’ Cat proposed, ‘and suggest Thai tonight?’

‘Brilliant idea,’ said Fen.

Pip, though, faltered. ‘But say he calls?’ she said quietly.

Her younger sisters looked at her in horror. ‘Philippa McCabe!’ Fen declared, hands on hips, with Cat similarly posed at her side. ‘I cannot believe you just said that!’

‘The number of times you’ve shot me down from a similar standpoint!’ Cat proclaimed. ‘Saying “Catriona, don’t fit your life into him” or “Cat McCabe, say he doesn’t call – you’ll have jeopardized a perfectly nice evening” or “For fuck’s sake, do you have to gain his permission for every action you take”!’

Pip looked bashful. ‘Listen,’ Fen suggested, ‘if he does call, you can just arrange to see him later or tomorrow or something. God, I mean, the deal is hardly going to fall through on the question of your availability tonight.’

‘It sounds like it’s all set in stone anyway,’ Cat defined. ‘You like. He likes. Happy ever after.’

Pip laughed. ‘I’ll phone Megan,’ she said, hands up in mock surrender. ‘I could murder a bowl of prawn crackers. All I had yesterday was bits of fish finger and cold baked beans.’

‘Yes,’ said Fen, ‘we know.’

‘You told us,’ said Cat, adding ‘about a million times’ under her breath when Pip went into the kitchen to phone Megan from Fen’s line so she could keep her mobile free.

A part of me is appalled for doubting whether to practise what I have preached for so long. Yet there’s another part of me that thinks all these butterflies, the tenterhooks, the adrenalin, are quite good fun, too.

There was no signal for Pip’s phone in the restaurant, nor in their loos, so she didn’t pick up Zac’s text till hours after he’d sent it. It took a little intensive persuading from the girls in her life that no, of course, he wasn’t going to change his mind just because her reply wasn’t immediate.

‘It’s not that,’ Pip reasoned. ‘I just really, truly, don’t want him to think that I’m playing games or subscribing to those daft rules or acting according to the tenets of Sex and the City or Cosmo.’

‘He doesn’t sound that sort of bloke,’ Megan declared astutely.

Pip’s sisters and friend allowed her to go home directly instead of going back to Cat’s for coffee and none raised eyebrows at Pip’s excuse of tiredness. It was nice for them to envisage her scampering home, curling up on her sofa and working through five thousand possible text responses for Zac before sending one and then waiting impatiently for his reply. They’d hear about it tomorrow, no doubt. Maybe even later on tonight.

Actually, when Pip arrived home, she didn’t text Zac at all but phoned him direct, and though her heart thudded in her throat while she waited for him to answer, as soon as she heard his voice, she relaxed.

‘I was toying with the idea of popping round and using your loo,’ Zac revealed, ‘but I guess it’s a bit late now – it being a school night and all.’ He hadn’t read a thing into the tardiness of Pip’s reply. He’d simply assumed she was busy. Why shouldn’t she be? No other reason had crossed his mind. Why should it?

‘Can you keep your legs crossed until tomorrow?’ Pip asked. ‘I stink of garlic, and peanut sauce keeps repeating on me.’

‘How are your sisters?’ Zac enquired.

‘Fine – they’re fine. Cat is now happily ensconced with a bicycle doctor and heading for a job in the States; Fen has finally made her choice between two suitors. It’s a long story,’ Pip remarked. ‘Did you have a fun day? How long did Tom stay?’

‘We just hung out and played, really,’ Zac told her, ‘it was great. Though, dare I add, he was most disappointed that Thunderbird 1 had to dock all day. I told him to keep his fingers crossed for next weekend. And do you know what? He did. Physically. Until he had to hold his fork at lunch. Bless him.’

Pip laughed. ‘I’d better perfect my engine impression, then.’

‘When can I see you?’ Zac asked softly.

‘Would you like to do something tomorrow night?’ Pip suggested.

‘Tomorrow is my day in hell – it’s when I’m having to make the redundancies,’ Zac revealed wearily.

‘Oh,’ flustered Pip, momentarily feeling like she’d been stood up already, or turned down. ‘Right. Well, perhaps later on in the week, then? Some other time. Whenever.’

‘Actually,’ Zac said, ‘on the contrary. It’s going to be such a nightmarish day I’d relish the chance to take my mind off it all. So, if you don’t mind dealing with a stressed-out accountant in the midst of a morality crisis, he’d love to sulk on your sofa for a bit.’

Pip was stunned and flattered. She also felt lousy that she hadn’t thought to offer to share time and space with him in the first place. ‘Actually,’ she told him, ‘I have the perfect cure for you.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ Zac all but growled, his mind veering incorrigibly to blow-jobs and all manner of indoor sport.

‘Down, boy!’ Pip laughed, instinctively knowing along what lines he was thinking and not wanting to disappoint him by revealing she had something else entirely in mind.

‘I’ll call you when I’m en route,’ Zac said, ‘it may be later rather than earlier.’

‘Whenever,’ said Pip.

‘Night then,’ Zac said.

‘Night,’ Pip said.

She had something to add. She made a humming noise just to hold him there while she decided whether or not she was going to say it out loud. ‘I’ll be thinking of you tomorrow,’ she mumbled.

‘Thanks,’ said Zac, touched.

Zac phoned at eight. He was at Pip’s at nine. Her flat was immaculate and she glowed with the effects of a bath infused with expensive potions and hair treated to all manner of costly and time-consuming lotions. Zac looked ashen, his eyes rimmed red, his hair not so much fashionably tousled as slightly greasy and messed from all that tugging. He looked as though he’d dropped a stone in weight in two days. She welcomed him in with a kiss and a beer, and allowed him to slump into her sofa, rub his brow and stare intently at the wall for a few moments.

‘Great colour, Pip,’ he said, looking up at her gazing down at him, ‘good choice.’

‘How are you?’ Pip asked, sensing he was far from good and wondering the best way to soothe him.

‘I feel like shit,’ he laughed sarcastically, ‘which is hardly surprising as I am now known as King Shit, too.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose and drooped his shoulders. ‘It was foul. Vile.’ He looked up at her and shrugged. ‘Not nice to be loathed. But even worse having to do something that you really don’t want to do – but having absolutely no viable alternative.’

Pip looked at him and sucked her bottom lip thoughtfully. She felt as though she was hovering. She was. Because she wasn’t quite sure what he’d like, what would help, what she could actually do. She thought he might like some space. Some peace and quiet. But then she thought he’d very probably like her to act on her instincts. So she knelt down on the floor, placed a hand on each of his knees and looked up at him. ‘Poor you,’ she said quietly, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know how I can help.’

He looked at her and shrugged. ‘I could honestly sob,’ he revealed, his honesty quite startling, his voice hoarse. He shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose again, so hard that he left a mark. ‘I don’t even wear a sodding suit,’ he declared, ‘I can’t physically wriggle out of my day. A couple of times today I thought of you, Pip – dispensing your merriment and care to the sick kids. That’s one fucking tough job – however rewarding. At the end of each session, the fact that you can wipe your face off, change out of your daft gear – I’m sure that really helps you rebalance?’

‘Absolutely,’ Pip said, ‘and sometimes, I can’t wait to put on my slap and change into my motley – even the hospital foyer can be tough enough.’

Zac nodded. He yawned. He stretched. ‘What a fucking horrible day,’ he said.

‘Would you like a baked potato?’ Pip offered.

He hadn’t thought about food. Actually, he realized he hadn’t even considered food since last night. And back then, he was still full from a tea-time finger-food extravaganza when dropping Tom home so he hadn’t actually eaten since then. ‘That sounds great.’

‘I’ll put them in the oven now,’ Pip said. ‘They’ll take an hour. Which gives us plenty of time to take your mind off things.’

Zac smiled at her. What a gesture. He raised an eyebrow at the thought of slipping out of the clothes he was in.

‘Down, boy,’ she whispered, coming close and kissing him, ‘you’ll have to build up an appetite for that. I had something else altogether in mind.’

She puts the baked potatoes in, disappears into her bedroom and clatters around in there. She returns with a bag and a towel.

‘I like the way you’ve decorated the room,’ Zac says, ‘that one wall in terracotta is striking. And the skirting through there looks great.’

‘Not too ice-creamy?’ Pip asks.

‘God, no,’ Zac says, ‘it sits brilliantly. It’s odd – it isn’t like you’ve added colour, it’s as if all those neutrals simply hid the colour before.’

‘I think you’re right,’ Pip says, wondering if Zac has any idea just how incisive his remarks are, ‘I think they did.’ She tucks the towel around Zac. ‘OK, Mr Cruel Bastard Accountant,’ she announces, ‘let’s get down to the serious business of silliness.’

Into Zac’s lap she tips the contents of her bag. It’s her collection of slap.

‘Whoa!’ Zac exclaims. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘We’re going to wipe that frown from your brow and give you something to smile about. You’re going to see just how therapeutic clowning can be,’ Pip tells him, ‘by being one yourself. Until the potatoes are ready, of course.’

Zac is puzzled, intrigued and not averse to anything that will take his mind off his day.

‘What’ll we call you?’ Pip asks. ‘You have to build your make-up around your persona, not vice versa.’

‘Mr Cruel Bastard?’ Zac says.

Pip raises her eyebrow archly. ‘And what would the children make of that?’

‘OK,’ Zac concedes, ‘how about Zippity Zac?’

‘Pity Zac? Still sounds a little maudlin to me,’ Pip says.

‘Zig Zac?’ he suggests.

‘Excellent. Now, tell me what sort of clown you’d like to be?’

‘A, um, clown kind of clown?’ Zac tries.

‘Auguste or White Face?’

‘Who or what?’ Zac asks.

‘Essentially, there are two types of clown – well, three if you count the American Character clown, Mr Chaplin being its definitive. Basically, White Face’s lineage harks back to Pierrot and Harlequin. Graceful and shrewd – the French call them “Clown débonnaire”. The physical emphasis is on the eyes. In contrast, Auguste clown means “clumsy” and they’re characterized by their daft cheerfulness and charm. They’re colourful – the crowd’s favourite. Physically, the emphasis is on the mouth, the smile.’

‘You’re essentially a White Face,’ Zac says, ‘so I think I’ll be Auguste. What do you think?’

‘I think that’s a fine choice,’ says Pip. ‘We can really play with colour. Also, traditionally, White Face gets to boss Auguste about. So that suits me! They often come as a pair.’ She and Zac regard each other and smirk.

And so she began to transform Zac Holmes into Zig Zac and to take his mind well away from the traumas of his day. He sat still, covered in a towel, and was grateful for Pip demanding he close his eyes. Eyes shut, it was actually very soothing having someone smear and rub and paint one’s face. Especially when her touch was so light that it doubled as a caress.

Pip made Zac keep his eyes closed longer than was probably necessary because she could indulge in an in-depth gaze at his face; admire his cheek-bones in her own time, run her fingers across his neat eyebrows, marvel at the veritable pitchforks for eyelashes. She analysed his lips; she vaguely remembered an article in some glossy or other which ascribed great significance to the shape and plumpness of a man’s lips. Well, Zac’s top lip was as full as his bottom lip and Pip decided that this must point to balance. And kissability. And before she smothered him with slap, she indulged herself with holding his face and kissing him.

‘How did you get into the whole clowning thing?’ he asked her, eyes closed, and mumbling slightly because he presumed he ought to keep his features as still as possible.

‘I think I was probably born one,’ Pip answered, ‘always felt my métier was to make others laugh.’ Zac nodded. ‘Keep still,’ she said.

‘What about my hair?’ Zac declared suddenly. ‘I can’t go into work tomorrow if you’ve dyed it green.’

‘Keep still and hush up about work!’ Pip chided, poking him in the ribs. ‘Just wait and see!’

‘Shall we do something on Friday night,’ Zac muffled, ‘with my brother and his wife Ruth, whom I think you’ve met?’

‘Cool,’ said Pip, ‘that’ll be fun. Can you open your eyes for me?’

Zac did so and as Pip concentrated on the intricacies of Zig Zac’s facial features, Zac Holmes feasted on her face. ‘Can I kiss you, please?’ he asked.

‘No fucking way!’ Pip laughed. ‘With all that stuff on your face? Absolutely not!’

‘Is that nail varnish on your sofa – and, God, on your carpet, too?’ Zac asked.

‘Yes,’ said Pip. ‘I’m going to wait for the January sales and do something about it then. Now bloody keep still. Actually, I’m just going to see to the spuds – no peeking while I’m out of the room.’

Zac didn’t sneak a look. He quite liked the sensation of the make-up on his face. And the smell of baking potatoes drifting in from the kitchen. And the sound of Pip cursing ‘Ouch, shit!’ as she checked their progress. And in his mouth, the lingering taste of her kiss. His appetite was growing.

‘Did you peek?’ Pip asked, hands jauntily on her hips.

‘No,’ Zac said, ‘I promise.’ Pip had to bite back laughter at the juxtaposition of his earnestness with his new face. ‘Close your eyes,’ she said though she didn’t really need him to. Zig Zac was nearly done. All that was needed was a hat (she used the one Django termed his ‘daft Alec hat’ which she’d found in the pea-green candlewick bedspread). A little daub of red just there. A light dusting of talc to his forehead. Voilà. ‘You can look now,’ Pip said.

Zac rose from the sofa and went to the mantelpiece. ‘Fuck!’ He was staggered. ‘Oh my God!’ he laughed. ‘Look at me!’ He turned to her.

‘No one,’ she declared, ‘but no one,’ she stressed, ‘would ever guess that you are a cruel bastard accountant who spent all day firing people!’

‘Genius!’ laughed Zac. ‘If only Tom could see me!’

‘We could do it again, sometime,’ Pip shrugged, ‘we could do Tom, too.’

‘And then hit Hampstead High Street,’ Zac laughed, ‘the three of us.’

‘Why not?’ said Pip, who was serious.

Zac thought about it. Why not indeed?

‘Keep the hat,’ Pip said, knowing that Django had a whole collection of panamas, daft Alecs, the odd fez, and berets in every colour available. ‘When you feel it’s all too much, plonk it on, think like Zig Zac and just take time out for a while.’

‘What about the slap?’ Zac asked.

‘Well, I suppose I could keep spares at yours,’ Pip proposed.

Zac couldn’t keep himself away from the mirror, or any reflective surface. He didn’t think back over his day at all. He felt lively and a daft voice materialized easily. Pip went through to the kitchen and though she told him to sit and relax, he preferred to follow her there and loiter and get in her way and pinch her bottom and tickle her side and cup both her breasts when she reached up in a cupboard for a new bottle of HP Sauce.

‘Zac!’ she declared with mock outrage.

‘Zig!’ he corrected.

‘Beans, cheese, HP,’ she offered, ‘or I could do tuna mayonnaise. Or a combination of any?’

‘The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?’ Zac posed.

‘Actually,’ said Pip, ‘I rather think it’s through his trousers.’

She’d certainly whetted his appetite and he’d tickled her fancy, too. But she insisted he ate up his supper first. He kept his face on during the meal, checking his reflection in the back of a spoon. They cleared away the plates and before she could protest or duck, he’d caught her in his arms and was kissing her passionately. She couldn’t do a thing about it. His kiss was so seductive that soon enough she was happy to submit. She’d never kissed a clown before. How good he tasted. Greasepaint and HP and an indefinable taste that was uniquely his. He was smudged and she was covered. They were both breathless and could have stripped off and got down and dirty right there in the kitchen if it wasn’t so small and if there had been more than a breakfast bar to lie upon.

‘Bed?’ Zac murmured, sucking her bottom lip, grazing his teeth against it, slipping his tongue along it and into her mouth.

But Pip insisted that he take off his slap because she’d changed her sheets that morning. She sent him into her bathroom where a jar of cold cream and a bumper pack of cottonwool balls awaited him.

When he emerged, however, free of make-up if a little blotchy here and there, Pip felt suddenly a little shy, somewhat apprehensive. There was no Dr Pippity or Merry Martha or Zig Zac to puppeteer. There was no Tom to be aware of. There was no ambiguity over whether he’d stay or go. They hadn’t had more than a bottle of beer each to be falsely bolstered by. There was nothing more to eat, neither wanted another cup of coffee. There was just Pip McCabe and Zac Holmes on the first Monday in November. It was what Zac termed a ‘school night’ and, past midnight, it really was bedtime.

How to get there?

Do I ask him?

Shall I just ask her?

‘Gosh, is that the time?’ Pip says and it sounds so contrived that they both laugh.

‘Shall we?’ Zac suggests. Pip nods, coyly, which isn’t contrived, it’s simply the way her face falls just then. But Zac doesn’t mind at all, he thinks it rather becoming. She locks up, switches lights off, checks the fridge door and takes a couple of deep breaths on the way to her bedroom. Zac is standing in his boxers. His ankles have corrugated marks from his socks. ‘I borrowed your toothbrush,’ he informs her, ‘hope that’s OK?’ Pip nods. He comes towards her. ‘Thanks for having me,’ he says, slipping her pullover off.

‘I’m rather hoping you’ll have me now,’ says Pip with a coquettish grin which this time she employs most knowingly.

‘Well,’ Zac falters theatrically, ‘OK then. If you insist.’

‘Oh, I do,’ Pip says, ‘absolutely.’

Pip’s bedside light remains on and they marvel and delight at the sight of each other. They thought they were full, but the taste of each other is so good they could gorge all night. The physical excitement is heightened by the anticipation – not just from the evening, but really from the months leading up to this very moment. Penetration, when it comes, is not an anticlimax but a vindication. And yet, the physical sensation of Zac inside Pip doesn’t feel remotely familiar to either of them, though it feels incredible. But there again, they’ve simply had sex twice before. Right now, they are making love for the first time and it’s as intense physically as it is soothing emotionally. Previously, having sex has been about taking gratification. Climax has been anticlimax. Tonight, exploring each other’s bodies is what is most absorbing. The more pleasure they give, they more they find they receive. The foreplay lasts longer than the copulating but when they come it is within nanoseconds of each other. It’s a wavelength thing. It’s a release, a culmination, a climax and yet also a beginning, a taste of what’s to come. And as they peel away from each other and pant, side by side, they congratulate themselves on their sexual compatibility.

Pip switches the light off.

Zac switches it back on. ‘You don’t have any coke, do you?’ he asks.

‘You’ve brushed your teeth!’ Pip laughs. ‘Have water.’

‘Who can we phone?’ Zac wonders. Pip is confused but she’s grinning because she knows from his tone and expression that he’s larking about.

‘I have Pepsi Max,’ she offers, ‘those small mixer cans?’

‘No, no,’ says Zac, ‘I was talking “caine”, not “cola”.’ Pip looks confused. ‘Cocaine,’ he says with a dead straight face.

‘What?’ Pip protests, sitting up and gathering the duvet against herself protectively. ‘I don’t do drugs,’ she doesn’t care how prim she sounds, ‘well, I have done – but only the soft stuff. And I don’t now!’

‘I don’t either,’ Zac confides, ‘apart from Nurofen.’ He pauses. Pip is looking decidedly uneasy. ‘You see,’ he says, ‘even though I’m shot away with tiredness, I think we should stay awake all night and not sleep at all.’

‘What?’ Pip is lost. ‘Why? Can’t we just do that post-coital cuddle and then fall asleep? I’m shagged – literally.’

‘Pip McCabe,’ he says, regarding her sternly, ‘don’t you see? When I’ve slept with you before, you’ve run away each morning. Something must happen while you sleep, some demon descend and muddle with your mind. If we stay awake, you can’t bugger off.’

Pip doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘I’m not buggering off,’ she assures him quietly, ‘I’m really looking forward to waking up tomorrow morning. And having you here. With me.’

It’s 5.00 a.m. She shouldn’t wake him on account of his nightmare day yesterday and no doubt another hellish day today. But she needs to.

‘Zac?’ she whispers. ‘Zac?’ She puts a hand on his shoulder. His skin is silky but cold, too. She pulls the duvet gently up to his ears. ‘Zac,’ she says, ‘Zac?’

He wakes with a start. ‘Fuck, what’s the time?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Pip says, ‘it’s only five.’

‘Are you OK?’ he asks. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong – I wanted you to see that I’m still here.’

Zac absorbs this information and chides himself that, for his sins, he has lumbered himself with the peculiar girl he always suspected Pip was. How reassuring. He’d got her right. ‘Good,’ he says, turning his head back into the pillow, ‘that’s good. Be there in a couple of hours, too, and I’ll be very, very happy.’

‘There’s something else,’ Pip announces and her whisper hides the fact that she’s tearful.

‘Yes?’ Zac mumbles sleepily, raising his head from the pillow as much as he can muster.

‘I lied,’ she says.

‘Yes?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ she confirms.

‘I forgive you,’ says Zac. He’d forgive her anything for just two more hours’ kip.

‘But you don’t know what about,’ Pip implores, spooning herself against his back and touching her lips against his shoulder, ‘you don’t know what I’ve done.’

‘Whatever it is,’ he says, reaching his hand backwards and giving her a rub along her thigh, ‘you had a reason. Tell me about it in the morning. Don’t worry. Get some sleep, you mad woman.’

Zac wakes just before the alarm clock and finds Pip gazing at him intently. She smiles. He replies. She looks exhausted. ‘Hullo,’ he says.

‘Morning,’ she says.

‘Are you OK?’ he asks.

‘I didn’t sleep,’ she says.

‘Shit, was I snoring?’ Zac grimaces.

‘No,’ Pip tells him, ‘no, you sleep in a very ladylike way.’

‘Oh God,’ Zac groans, ‘you’re not still harbouring doubts about my sexual orientation, are you?’

Pip laughs and shakes her head vehemently. ‘I need to talk to you,’ she says and looks serious and sad, ‘about my lie.’

The alarm bell trills out.

‘OK,’ says Zac, ‘but would you mind if I took confession in the bathroom? The shower curtain will do as a screen.’

Zac brushes his teeth and Pip perches herself on the edge of the bath. She takes a deep breath. Looks at Zac directly. And begins.

‘I haven’t seen my mother since I was six years old,’ she declares. She pauses, trying to assess his reaction to her bombshell. ‘I don’t remember her at all, really. She ran off with a cowboy from Denver.’

This, Zac was not expecting to hear. He’d thought at the worst there’d be some lurid confession featuring the Dashing Doctor and ambiguity about the overlap with himself; at best something about not letting him keep the clown hat. But it appeared that she was chaste and that he had the hat. ‘Your mother did what?’ The information was so bizarre, it was difficult for him to take in.

‘She left us – three girls and our dad – for some bloke from Denver. A cowboy. A ranch owner. Very rich. We haven’t heard from her since.’ Pip speaks flatly, focusing on her hands lying deceptively still in her lap. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘For what?’ Zac exclaims gently, thinking to himself that it’s Pip’s mother who should be doing the apologizing.

‘For lying,’ Pip admits.

‘Django?’ Zac asks.

‘Oh God, he’s real – you could never make up someone like him. He’s been our mother and our father, our guardian angel. We never had to want for a thing – warmth, love, sustenance. Django provided for us and he still does.’

Zac sits beside her though the edge of the bath is unremittingly cold against his bare bottom. She glances at him and sees he has a blob of toothpaste dribble on his chin. It can stay there. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says again.

‘It’s awful,’ Zac says, shaking his downcast head, ‘terrible.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Pip says, wondering what else she can say or do to prove it. She knows her background must sound unconventional but she’s confident that she and her sisters are grounded, good people. And so she also knows she shouldn’t have lied. ‘I’m sorry. It is awful. You’re completely right.’

‘Huh? No, I mean for you,’ Zac says, stroking her leg. ‘I can only imagine and actually, I’d rather not. Poor Pip. And your sisters.’

‘But I lied,’ Pip says, almost urgently, ‘to you.’

‘And I can understand why,’ Zac says. ‘No wonder you’ve trodden so carefully. I don’t blame you. It must lurk at the back of your mind that people who should stay, go.’

Pip considers this. Then she sobs, her lips aquiver.

‘So, to combat that, you tend to pip them to the post.’ He raises her chin gently with his hand. Her eyes meet his. He’s gazing at her, benevolently.

Then her nose wrinkles and she sucks at her lip. ‘Pip them to the post?’ she says, helpless not to snigger.

‘I know, I know,’ Zac cringes, burying his head in her shoulder, ‘you deliver your great confession and that’s what I come out with. Jesus!’

Pip’s smile is short-lived. She looks concerned again. Zac sidles up close and nudges her. ‘I’m not afraid of commitment,’ she says as if defending herself, as if he’d be justified to think that she was, as if her revelation and the fact that she’s lied to him might well make him change his mind.

‘Good,’ says Zac, ‘because neither am I.’ They regard each other. ‘Think how I am with Tom,’ he tells her. ‘If you’ll have me, I’ll stay.’ Pip’s eyes smart. ‘I know you have your sisters. Your friends. Your crackpot uncle who I am dying to meet,’ Zac continues, ‘but if you’ll allow me, I’d really like to take on some of the looking-after, too. If your nearest and dearest will tolerate me.’

Pip looks into Zac’s eyes. Django’s voice fills her memory and her heart – he’d told her that if Zac was even half the chap he thought he was, he would understand and embrace the provenance of her fib.

Django’s right. And why wouldn’t he be. And Zac’s right for me. And why wouldn’t he be.

Pip thinks of Cat and Fen. Recently, they haven’t seemed like her little sisters. It’s not that they’ve suddenly grown up, Pip realizes, but that she herself has let them into her world, though she had to dismantle some of her barriers to do so. And in they bustled, armed with affection, concern and actually pretty mature, sound advice. Pip looks again at Zac. How they’ll all love him! They’ll be so happy for her. And he’ll fit right in. Pip has not needed a man, but at last she is content to want this one. She can practically smell, almost taste, the banquet that Django will no doubt prepare in honour of Zac’s first visit.

I want to make it soon. I want to bring Zac into my family’s fold.

A tear slicks an oily passage out of Pip’s eye and takes a faltering path down her nose to her lips. She licks it away. Zac has let her have her thinking time without intrusion but now he senses he can gently nudge her. ‘You can never,’ he says, soft but firm, ‘never have too many people looking after you. You ask Tom!’ Pip wants to nod and laugh and cry but finds she’s only capable of a jerk of her head and a strangled gulp. Tenderly, Zac puts his arm around her. ‘I’m here,’ he whispers, ‘because I want to be. Why would I want to leave?’ Pip lays her head against his chest and hears his heart as she listens to his words. ‘But,’ Zac says, ‘I’m late for work and I have a sod of a day ahead.’

Pip walks to the bathroom door. ‘Zac?’ He pokes his head around the shower curtain. ‘I’m sorry I lied,’ she stresses a final time.

‘You’d have to do far worse to put me off,’ Zac assures her. She nods. She looks over to him, he’s shivering slightly. She ought to let him have his shower and embark on his nightmare day.

‘Tell you what,’ Zac says, ‘I’ll forgive you everything for a cup of tea.’

Pip laughs. ‘Herbal?’ she asks. ‘Or normal?’

‘Normal!’ Zac pleads. ‘And a towel,’ he calls after her. ‘This one is like the Turin bloody shroud – it has half of Zig Zac’s face on it.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Theodora Children’s Trust, which was the inspiration behind my fictitious Renee Foundation, trains and funds talented artists to work with sick children in hospital every week of the year. The Swiss Theodora Foundation was formed in 1993 and has established Theodora clown doctor programmes in nine countries around the world. In the UK, the Trust (set up in 1996) currently supports nine trained Theodora clown doctors. Eight hospitals, one special centre and almost 30,000 children a year benefit from their visits. I am indebted to the Trust and its executive director Joanie Speers for enabling me to study the work of its clown doctors. It was a privilege to watch them at Great Ormond Street and at Guy’s hospitals. I would like to thank Dr Mattie (Matthew Faint) and Dr Doalot (Eliza Neam) for allowing me to follow them on their ward rounds. I know that Pip is a better clown doctor for it.

My research for Pip was fun and fascinating. I am grateful to Clown Mattie (again) for all his help and enthusiasm, for opening the doors to the Clowns’ Gallery to me after hours and for lending me research material. Also, to Clown Fizzie Lizzie (Elizabeth Morgan) whose knowledge on clown history is encyclopaedic. Other people willing to assist me were: Clown Bluey (Blue Brattle), Gino the Clown (Georgina Hargreaves), Emile the Mime Clown (David Girt) and Clowns International photographer Robert Morgan.

Many thanks are due to Alan McGee for kindly letting me set up my laptop in a relatively quiet corner of his office when my son Felix decided my study at home ought to be his bedroom.

I’d like to thank the team at Random House and the indefatigable Sophie Ransom from Midas PR. As ever, immense gratitude goes to my agent, mentor and friend, Jonathan Lloyd. Finally, special thanks to Mary Chamberlain for her fastidious editing – and patience.

Theodora Children’s Trust, 42 Pentonville Road, London N1 9HF. 0207 713 0044. www.theodora.org

‘Clowns work as well as aspirin, but twice as fast’

Groucho Marx

AFTERWORD

The number of people who said to me ‘you can’t have an accountant for a hero’ or ‘you can’t have a heroine who’s a clown’ …! However, before I’d even started to write this, my 6th novel, I knew Pip herself pretty well through writing about her sisters Cat and Fen in my fourth and fifth books. And as for a hero who’s an accountant? Well, why not? I’ve always been keen that my characters should be down-to-earth, normal people – people my readers will recognize themselves in or know others just like them. It’s one of the reasons I started writing – I was bored of reading books where the characters were uber-glam and had careers and lifestyles that meant nothing to me.

Whilst researching this novel, I discovered amongst friends and family just how many people don’t much like clowns. But also during my research, it became clear how clowning goes way beyond greasepaint. The Clowns Gallery in east London was a fascinating starting point – colourful, yet odd and eerie too. A huge cabinet contained over a hundred years of painstakingly painted eggs – each documenting and also copyrighting the unique masks of individual clowns.

In March 2003, when my daughter Georgia was just 6 weeks old, my son Felix, then twenty three months, broke his leg quite badly. It necessitated a lengthy stay in hospital, in traction, followed by a period of time at home in a ‘spica cast’ which went from his waist down both legs. He adapted marvellously – but it was traumatic for me. In hospital, despite being flat on his back, he still had fun with the art therapist – but there were no clown doctors there. When, that summer, I started to research Pip in earnest, it became fundamental for me to highlight the incredible work these artists do – and thereby give substance to my book as well. Research is a true perk of my career – but for the first time, through Pip, I found it incredibly humbling and enriching too. Watching the clown doctors at work and seeing the effects on patients and their families was profoundly moving. They’re a gifted and generous bunch. And, after a day’s shadowing them, I’d return home to hug my children tight and be so thankful for my blessings.

I have an adored younger brother but I don’t have sisters – and those McCabe girls are the closest I’ve come to having them. I’ve often felt like their eldest sister – alternately feeling responsible for them and frequently becoming quite fed up with them! My readers pleaded with me to write about the McCabe girls again. I did so in Home Truths (2006) – picking up their stories five years on. I thought I’d tied together all the loose ends in a particularly pleasing bow … but still my readers want more! Recently, on my Facebook page, there was a vote for the most popular McCabe sister. It was fascinating to find there isn’t a firm favourite. Cat, Fen and Pip each have a fan club of their own and pulled in pretty much even scores. However, it seems Django is the character my readers love the most.

Could I write about the McCabes again? A couple of years ago, I thought not. But I miss them too. I miss Derbyshire and Django’s cooking and the sisters’ snipping at each other, offset by their genuine closeness – and I miss their blokes. However, I don’t think I could take up where Home Truths left off – I’d have to face the inevitable with Django and I’m not robust enough to do so. Perhaps a prequel, then – set in the 1970s when Django first comes by those three little girls … Watch this space!

Incidentally, there is one sentence that is repeated in Cat, Fen and Pip – and it remains my favourite across all the novels I’ve written.

I know your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, but …

Freya North

Spring 2012

Acclaim for Freya

‘Darkly funny and sexy – literary escapism at its very finest’

Sunday Independent

‘Secrets will make you smile, sigh and cheer as this story proves love can be found in the most unexpected places’

Sunday Express

‘… another sure-fire hit for Freya’

Heat

‘A breath of fresh air … fresh and witty’

Daily Express

‘A fab read’

Closer

‘Fast paced, page-turning and full of endearing, interesting characters. I defy anyone who doesn’t fall in love with it’

Glamour

‘Settle down and indulge’

Cosmopolitan

‘The novel’s likeable central characters are so well painted that you feel not only that you know them, but that you know how right they are for each other … the beauty of the North Yorkshire countryside contrasts convincingly with the bustle of London’

Daily Telegraph

‘North charts the emotional turmoil with a sexy exactitude’

Marie Claire

‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals with the darker side of love – these are real women, with real feelings’

She

‘A delicious creation … sparkling in every sense’

Daily Express

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship’

Glamour

‘Plenty that’s fresh to say about the age-old differences between men and women’

Marie Claire

‘An eye-poppingly sexy start leads into a family reunion laced with secrets. Tangled mother/daughter relationships unravel and tantalising family riddles keep you glued to the end’

Cosmopolitan

‘You’ll laugh, cry, then laugh some more’

Company

‘Freya North manages to strike a good balance between drama, comedy and romance, and has penned another winner … touching, enjoyable’

Heat

‘An addictive read with a realistic view of home life, sisterhood and identity crisis’

Prima

FREYA NORTH

Home Truths

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006

Copyright © Freya North 2006

Freya North asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

EPub Edition © 2006 ISBN: 9780007325788

For Georgia
my beautiful, beautiful girl

In loving memory
Liz Berney
12.2.1968–24.12.2005

Write your sister’s weak points in the sand
and her strong points in stone.

Anon

Contents

Cover

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter 1: Django McCabe

Chapter 2: Tuesday

Chapter 3: Django McCabe and the Nit-Pickin’ Chicks

Chapter 4: The Rag and Thistle

Chapter 5: Penny Ericsson

Chapter 6: Home from Home

Chapter 7: Winter Ice

Chapter 8: Road Kill

Chapter 9: Waterworks

Chapter 10: He’s Not There

Chapter 11: April Fool

Chapter 12: My Round

Chapter 13: Freeze a Jolly Good Fellow

Chapter 14: Derek

Chapter 15: Then What?

Chapter 16: 1960s and All That Jazz

Chapter 17: The M1

Chapter 18: Dovidels

Chapter 19: Kate and Max and Merry Martha

Chapter 20: Sweet is the Voice of a Sister in the Season of Sorrow

Chapter 21: Coupling

Chapter 22: On the Phone

Chapter 23: Seeds Sown

Chapter 24: Seeds Not Sown

Chapter 25: Seeds in a Packet

Chapter 26: Bad Seed

Chapter 27: Stray Cat Blue

Chapter 28: A Fish Out of Water

Chapter 29: Al and the Girl from Purley

Chapter 30: Cat Out of the Bag

Chapter 31: The Ten o’Clock News

Chapter 32: Where Were You When You Heard that Django McCabe Had Cancer?

Chapter 33: Testing Time

Chapter 34: Time for Tests

Chapter 35: VT 05154

Chapter 36: Lester Falls

Chapter 37: Plastic Tubing

Chapter 38: Love at Long Distance

Chapter 39: No-Brainer

Chapter 40: Freedom Trail

Chapter 41: Red-Eye

Chapter 42: Return of the Natives

Chapter 43: Fen McCabe and Matt Holden

Chapter 44: Pip and Zac Holmes

Chapter 45: Cat and Ben York

Chapter 46: To the Bone

Chapter 47: Hard Facts and White Lies

Chapter 48: Sundae

Chapter 49: Moving On

Chapter 50: Christmas

Acknowledgements

Praise

PROLOGUE

‘How do you say goodbye to a mountain?’

From her vantage point, Cat York looked across to the three Flatirons, to Bear Peak and Green Mountain. She gazed down the skirts of Flagstaff, patting the snow around her and settling herself in as though she was sitting on the mountain’s lap. ‘It’s like a giant, frozen wedding dress,’ she said. ‘It probably sounds daft, but for the last four years, I’ve privately thought of Flagstaff as my mountain.’

‘There’s a lot of folk round here who think that way,’ Stacey said. ‘You’re allowed to. That’s the beauty of living in Boulder.’

The sun shot through, glancing off the crystal-cracked snow on the trees, the sharp, flat slabs of rust-coloured rock of the Flatirons soaring through all the dazzling white at their awkward angle.

‘When Ben and I first arrived and I was homesick and insecure, I’d walk to Chautauqua Meadow and just sit on my own. It felt like the mountains were a giant arm around my shoulders.’ Cat looked around her with nostalgic gratitude. ‘Then soon enough we met you lot, started hiking and biking the trails and suddenly the mountain showed me its other side. You could say it’s been my therapist’s couch and it’s been my playground. It’s now my most favourite place in the world.’

Stacey looked at Cat, watched her friend cup her gloved hands over her nose and mouth in a futile bid to make her nose look less red and her lips not so blue. ‘This time next week, the only peaks I’ll be seeing are Victorian rooftops,’ Cat said, ‘grimy pigeons will replace bald eagles and there’ll just be puddles in place of Wonderland Lake. Next week will be a whole new year.’

‘Tell me about Clapham,’ Stacey asked, settling into their snow bunker.

‘Well,’ said Cat, ‘it’s a silent “h” for a start.’

They laughed.

‘God,’ Cat groaned, leaning forward and knocking her head against her knees, ‘I’m still not sure we’re doing the right thing – but don’t tell Ben I said so. I can’t tell you about Clapham, I don’t think I’ve ever been.’ She paused and then continued a little plaintively. ‘God, Stacey, I have no job, my two closest friends don’t even live in the city any more and I’m moving to an opposite side of London to where I used to live, where my sisters still live.’

‘It’s exciting,’ Stacey said, ‘and if you don’t like it, you can always come back.’ She tore into a pack of Reese’s with her teeth, her chilled fingers unfit for the task. ‘And there’s some stuff that’s really to look forward to.’

Placated and sustained by the pack of peanut butter, the comfort of chocolate, Cat agreed. ‘I’ve missed my family – by the sound of it, my middle sister Fen is having a tough time at the moment. And it’s going to be a big year for Django – he’ll be seventy-five which will no doubt warrant a celebration of prodigious proportions.’

‘I’d sure like to have met him,’ Stacey said and she laughed a little. ‘I remember when I first met you, I thought you were like, so exotic, because you came to Boulder with your English Rose looks and a history that Brontë couldn’t have made up. You with the mother who ran off with a cowboy, you who were raised by a crazy uncle called Django, you and your sisters brought up in the wilds of Wherever.’

‘Derbyshire’s not wild,’ Cat protested, ‘not our part. Though there are wallabies.’

‘What’s a wallaby?’

‘It’s like a mini kangaroo,’ said Cat. ‘They were kept as pets by the posh folk in eighteenth-century Derbyshire – but some broke free, bred, and now bounce happily across the Dales.’

Stacey took a theatrical intake of breath. ‘So we have you and your sisters, living in the countryside with your hippy dude uncle and a herd of mutant, aristocratic kangaroos because your mom eloped with J. R. Ewing?’ She whistled. ‘You could sell this to Hollywood.’

‘Shut up, Stacey,’ Cat laughed. ‘we’re just a normal family. Django is a very regular bloke – albeit with a colourful dress code and an adventurous take on cuisine. I’m starting to freeze. Let’s go into town and get a hot chocolate. My bum’s numb even in these salopettes.’

‘Weird, though,’ Stacey said thoughtfully.

‘What is? My bottom?’

‘Your butt is cute, honey,’ Stacey assured her, as they hauled each other to their feet. ‘I mean it’s a little weird that your mom runs off with a cowboy from Denver when you were small, right?’

‘Yup.’

‘And you’ve been living pretty close to the Mile High City these last four years, right?’

‘Yup.’

‘But you never looked her up?’ ‘Nope.’

‘Never even thought about it? Never went shopping in Denver and thought, Hey, I wonder if that lady over there is my mom?’

Throughout Cat’s life, it had always been her friends who’d been far more intrigued by her family circumstances, her absent mother, than she. ‘But I never knew her. I was a baby. I have no memories of her,’ Cat explained. ‘I’m not even curious. We had Django, my sisters and I – we wanted for nothing. Just because we didn’t have a “conventional” mother or father didn’t mean that we were denied a proper parent.’

Stacey linked arms with Cat. ‘Conventional families are dull, honey – stick with your kooky one.’

‘Oh I’m sticking with my kooky one all right!’ Cat laughed. ‘I love them with all my heart. And now that Ben and I want to start our own, it feels natural to want to be within that fold again.’

At the time, Cat and Ben York had argued about putting the set of three matching suitcases on their wedding list. Cat had denounced them as boring and unsexy and why couldn’t they peruse the linen department one more time. Ben told her that some things in life were, by virtue, boring and unsexy and he pointed out there were only so many Egyptian cotton towels a couple could physically use in a lifetime. Three years later, Ben and Cat are contemplating the same three suitcases: frequently used, gaping open and empty, waiting to be fed the last remaining clothes and belongings. The process is proving to be far more irksome than the packing of the huge crates a few weeks ago, now currently making their passage by sea back to England.

‘Weird to think that this time next week we’ll be back in the UK,’ Ben says.

‘Weird that we both now refer to it as “the UK” rather than “England” or simply “home”,’ says Cat. ‘Stacey and I went for a fantastic walk this morning.’ She looks through their picture windows to the mountains, a huge cottonwood tree in its winter wear with stark, thick boughs boasting sprays of fine, finger-like branches, the big sky, the quality of air so clean it is almost visible. ‘God, it’s stunning here.’

‘Hey,’ says Ben, ‘we’ll have Clapham Common on our new doorstep.’

Cat hurls a pillow at him. He ducks.

‘We can always come back,’ Ben tells her, ‘but for now, it is time to go. We have things to do. That was the point, remember. That’s why we came here in the first place. It’s the things we do now which provide a tangible future for our daydreams. That’s why it’s timely to return to the UK.’

‘Do dreams come true in Clapham?’

Ben hurls the pillow back at Cat. She hugs it close and looks momentarily upset. ‘I don’t even have a job to go back to,’ she says, ‘and not from want of trying. And I’m not pregnant yet – not from want of trying. I feel like I’m just traipsing behind you.’

‘we’re a team,’ Ben states, ‘you and me. I’ve been given a great job which will be big enough for both of us. I’ve taken it – for the both of us – so you can take your time and think about you.’

‘I know,’ Cat smiles sheepishly. ‘But what’ll I do in Clapham all day? Are we packing the pillows?’

‘I don’t know – do furnished flats come with pillows?’

‘I’m not sleeping on pillows used by God knows who,’ Cat protests, though she calculates that three pillows will fill an entire suitcase.

‘You do in hotels,’ Ben reasons, with a frustrated ruffle through his short, silver-flecked hair. ‘It’s not as if we’re going to some boarding house – I told you, the flat is really quite nice. And when I’m up and running, we’ll look for somewhere to buy.’

‘In North London,’ Cat says and Ben decides not to react to the fact that this is emphatically not a question. ‘Pip says she’s worried about Fen.’

‘Your eldest sister worries about everyone,’ Ben says, remembering that, actually, these pillows came with this apartment. He doesn’t comment.

‘But she says that Fen and Matt aren’t getting along. Since the baby.’

‘You’re not your sisters’ keeper,’ Ben says carefully.

‘Oh but I am,’ Cat says, as if she’s offended, as if Ben’s forgotten to understand the closeness between the McCabe girls, ‘we all are. It’s always been that way, it had to be.’

Ben decides to change the subject. He knows that when his wife is emotional, the legend of her family can be detrimentally overplayed. But he knows, too, that once she returns to their fold again, all the normal niggles and familial irritations will surface and Cat will no doubt be glad of Clapham. He wedges socks into spaces in the cases and then crosses to Cat. ‘Your family won’t recognize you,’ he says. ‘They’ll be expecting that blonde girl with the pony-tail they saw last summer – not this auburn pixie. Mind you, they won’t recognize me – you couldn’t call my hair “salt and pepper” any more, it’s just plain grey.’

‘Makes you look very distinguished,’ Cat says, brushing her hand tenderly through Ben’s hair. She tufts at her elfin crop with a beguiling wail. ‘Do you think mine’s too short? I told them to cut it shorter than usual, and colour it stronger than normal because I wouldn’t be coming back for a while. It’s like I forgot that the UK basically invented places like Vidal Sassoon and John Frieda.’

‘You look gorgeous,’ Ben says, ‘really sexy and cute and fuckable.’ He’s behind her, nuzzling the graceful sweep of her neck that her cropped hair has exposed. He fondles her breasts and then takes his hand down to her crotch and cups at it playfully.

‘Dr York!’ Cat says. ‘I have packing to do.’

‘And I want to fuck my wife,’ Ben whispers, with a titillating nip at her ear lobe.

Cat resists theatrically but he catches her wrists and suddenly he’s tonguing her hungrily. ‘Come on, babe. Procreation is top of our list after all, remember.’

‘Making babies is a very serious matter, Dr York,’ says Cat with mock consternation though she is wriggling out of her clothing.

Ben plugs her mouth with a kiss and takes her hand down to his jeans where his hard-on wells at an awkward angle. ‘Well then, we’d better commit ourselves to honing our technique.’

‘You’re the doctor,’ Cat says, dispensing with her knickers. Ben’s hands travel her body, he gorges on the sight of her. He loves her naked when he’s still fully clothed, the tantalizing interference of fabric between him and his wife’s silky skin. She squats down and unbuckles his belt, makes achingly slow progress with the flies of his trousers, easing down his boxer shorts as if it’s the first time she’s done so. She’s on her knees. His cock springs to attention. Her mouth is moist but teasingly just beyond reach.

‘Christ, Cat,’ Ben says hoarsely, clutching her head and bucking his groin to meet her.

‘Blow-jobs don’t make babies,’ Cat tells him artlessly, but she kisses the tip of his cock and follows this with swift, deep sucks that make him groan. She stands and looks up at him. His height has always turned her on and when he dips his face down to kiss hers it darkens his brown eyes. ‘Isn’t there some position that’s meant to facilitate fertility, doctor?’

‘Yes, Mrs York,’ Ben confirms, turning her away from him, running his hand gently up her back, pushing between her shoulder-blades so that she is bent forwards, ‘there is. Just. Like. This.’

He takes her from behind. The sensation is so exquisite that, for a while, they are silent, motionless.

‘Dr York? Are you sure doggy-style is medically proven to assist conception?’

‘No,’ Ben pants as he thrusts into her, his hands at her waist to haul himself in, ‘but I’m quite certain that the sight of your immaculate peach of an arse improves the quality of my load.’

DJANGO MCCABE

Often, making light of the dark makes good sense. When Django McCabe was trekking in Nepal in the early 1960s, en route to some saffron-robed guru or other, he came across a man who had fallen down a screed slope along the mountain pass.

‘Need a hand?’ Django had offered.

‘Actually, wouldn’t mind a leg,’ the man had responded. It was then that Django saw the man in fact had only the one leg, that his crutch had been flung some distance. Django learnt more from his co-traveller than from the guru: not to let hardship harden a person, to keep humour at the heart of the matter, to make light of the dark. A decade later, when Django found himself guardian to three girls under the age of four, the offspring of his late brother, he thought about his one-legged friend and decided that the circumstances uniting him with his nieces would never be recalled as anything other than rather eccentric, strangely fortunate and not that big a deal anyway. ‘I know your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, but …’ has since prefixed all manner of events throughout the McCabe girls’ lives.

I know your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver, but crying because I accidentally taped over Dallas is a little melodramatic.

It was mid-morning and Django McCabe felt entitled to a little sit-down. But there wasn’t time for forty winks. It was Monday and if the girls were coming home for the weekend then he needed the week to prepare for their visit; he couldn’t be wasting time with a snooze. However, to sit in a chair and not nod off was as difficult, perhaps even as pointless, as going to the Rag and Thistle and not having a pint of bitter.

‘I’ll multi-task,’ Django muttered. ‘Apparently it’s a very twenty-first-century thing to do.’ And so he decided to combine his little sit-down with doing something constructive, in this instance scanning today’s runners. After all, studying the form would stop him dozing off.

And there it was. Staring him in the face. 2.20 Pontefract. Cool Cat. Rank outsider – but what did they know.

‘It’s a sign,’ he said, patting himself all over to locate his wallet which, after an extensive grope through the collection of jackets draped over most of the chairs in the kitchen, he finally found. ‘I’ll put a tenner on the horse. In honour of Cat. I need to pop into town anyway so either way, it won’t be a wasted trip.’

Django would never place a bet by phone. He doesn’t trust the telephone. He says, darkly, that you never know who may be listening. But his Citroën 2CV he trusts with his life and, along the lanes of Farleymoor and the roads around Chesterfield, the little car filled to bursting with Django is a familiar sight. At seventy-four, Django is physically robust. Tall and sturdy, affably portly around the girth and crowned by a mane of grey hair always pony-tailed. He toots and waves as he drives. He thinks fellow drivers are slowing down to let him pass, to wave back. Actually they’re swerving to keep out of his way, holding up their hands in protest.

There are people in every continent who regard Django as their friend, though his travelling days ended with the arrival of his three small nieces some thirty years ago. He has rarely left Derbyshire since and it is the area around Farleymoor, on the Matlock side of Chesterfield, where his warmest clutch of friends are massed.

‘Morning, Mary, and don’t you look divine for a Monday,’ Django says, entering the bookmakers.

‘And don’t you look colourful for January,’ Mary says, wondering if he’s warm enough in his paisley shirt and tapestry waistcoat.

‘From Peru,’ Django tells her, opening his waistcoat wide, like a flasher. ‘I had to trade with bandits on a mountain pass.’

‘And what did they get of you, duck?’

‘My passport,’ Django says and he roars with laughter. ‘A tenner on Cool Cat, if you please.’

‘Rank outsider,’ Mary warns him.

‘I know,’ Django shrugs, ‘but the odds were worse for Fenland Star yesterday and truly terrible for Pipistrelle last week and they both won.’ He hands over a ten-pound note. ‘She’s flying home as we speak, you know. Cat. I have all three girls descending on me for the weekend.’

Mary knows Django’s girls. They were at school with her daughters. ‘No doubt you’ll be cooking up a treat for them, then?’

‘She’s been in America for four years,’ he says, leaning on the counter and beckoning Mary closer. ‘That’s an awful lot of McDonalds. Apparently her hair is now red.’

Mary can’t see the connection between McDonalds and hair colour. If she remembers correctly, Cat is the sporty one who married the doctor of a professional cycling team.

‘So I am indeed preparing a Spread to welcome her home and put back some nutrients,’ Django is saying. ‘Oh, and let’s have a tenner on Three’s Company at Fakenham. Good little horse, that.’

Django McCabe hasn’t had a beard for over twenty years, yet still, in moments of contemplation, he strokes his chin with fingertips light and methodical as if his goatee still sits proud on his face. The habit is one that he uses for all manner of pontification, from selecting horses according to their names or the form given them by the Racing Post, to his choice of the next domino at the Rag and Thistle. Currently, he is toying with his chin while wondering what to cook. Laid out before him are all the foodstuffs from the fridge, most of those from the larder, and a few from the capacious chest freezer too. He doesn’t believe in shopping according to a recipe, he cooks to accommodate available ingredients; he invented food combining in its most oblique sense. He fingers his invisible beard and begins to make his considered selection, as an artist might choose pigment for the day’s palette. Indeed, Django feels at his most creative when cooking – he sees blending, mixing, combining, concocting, as art, not science. Thus he never measures or weighs and he believes cookery books are to cooking what painting-by-numbers kits are to painting.

Whenever his nieces visit from London, it warrants a Spread. And as the forthcoming weekend is to be not just an ordinary visit, but a homecoming celebration, it has to be a Monumental Spread. Django hasn’t seen Cat since the summer. None of them has. Christmas was peculiar for her absence. She’d turned thirty-two years old in the autumn and he hadn’t been able to make her a birthday cake. On top of that, Pip implied recently that Fen has been a little down. He knows of no way better to warm the heart and feed the soul than to fill the stomach with all manner of home cooking first.

Django is at his happiest when cooking for his girls, even though they are all in their thirties, with homes of their own, and their health has never been of concern.

‘It’s habit,’ he’ll say when they say he needn’t have, when they say a pub lunch or ready-meal supper would be fine by them, when they say they are too full for seconds let alone thirds. ‘I’m old and stuck in my ways,’ he’ll declare. ‘Humour me.’ he’ll say the same thing when presenting them with carrier bags bulging with Tupperware containers when they leave again for London.

Django McCabe is their family tree. The desertion of their mother, the death of their father gave him no choice – but ultimately gave him his greatest blessing. His arms, like great branches, have been the protective clasp, the loving embrace of mother, father, confidant and mentor to Cat, Fen and Pip. He provided the boughs in which their cradles were rocked. His are the roots which have always anchored them and kept them safe.

TUESDAY

Fen McCabe used to enjoy looking in the mirror. Far from it being a vanity kick, She’d found it an affirming thing to do. In the scamper of a working day, to grasp a private moment to nod at her reflection was sustaining. Hullo you, She’d sometimes say, what a busy day. And in the heady period when Matt Holden had wined, dined, wooed and pursued her, She’d frequently nip to the loo in some restaurant or bar, for a little time out with herself. He likes me, She’d beam at her reflection, you go girl! She’d wink at herself, give herself the go-ahead to party and flirt and charm the man who, soon enough, wanted to be with her for life.

Since having a baby six months ago, Fen has hated looking in the mirror. Not because she finds the sight depressing but because she finds the sight so strange. She doesn’t so much wince away from the sight of a few extra pounds, the limp hair, the sallow skin, the dark and puffy eyes, as glance bewildered and wonder who is that? How can this be my reflection when I don’t actually recognize the person staring back? And mirror mirror on the wall, wasn’t I once a damn sight fairer than this? So it’s something of a relief not to have the time during the day and to be too tired in the evening to face the facts staring back from the looking glass.

The phone is ringing, the baby is crying. Fen is nearer to the phone and Matt is nearer to the baby. Matt knows that Fen can find little wrong with the way he answers the phone so he’s happy to swap places here in the kitchen.

‘Hullo?’ he answers. ‘Well hullo!’ He looks over to Fen. She’s wearing truly awful pyjamas. Even if they’d been a matching set they’d have little to commend them. The bottoms have polka dots on a sickly lilac background. The top is littered with cutesy cartoon animals, a strange hybrid love child of a dog and a rabbit and even some teddy bear chromosomes somewhere along the line. ‘Hold on, I’ll just pass you over.’ He holds out the receiver.

‘Who is it?’ Fen mouths but Matt will only cock his eyebrow and grin. As Fen shuffles over to the phone, the placated baby at home on her hip, Matt notes her slippers. The grey, felted monstrosities he once termed ‘eastern-bloc lesbian clogs’. He’d had her in stitches at the time, She’d done a bastardized folk dance in them and had him in hysterics, before She’d banished them under the bed. For good, so He’d thought, until just then.

‘Hullo?’ says Fen.

‘Boo!’ says the voice.

‘Cat?’

‘I’m back! we’re in a cab, on the M4. Heading for Clapham.’

Matt watches the smile warm her face. He thinks how clichéd it sounds to say that the sun comes out when Fen smiles. But in his eyes, it does. And suddenly he forgives her the pyjamas and the clogs and he feels bad for having felt irritated with her and now he wants to go to her and put his arms around her and kiss the asymmetric dimples on her cheeks, brush her overlong fringe away from her forehead and kiss her there too, scoop her hair into a pony-tail and bury his nose in her neck. She’s hanging up the phone and he thinks that, though he’s now ready to leave for work perhaps there is time for a little spontaneity, for affection, for physical and emotional contact. The baby can stay on Fen’s hip. They’re a family after all. Group hug and all that. So he crosses the kitchen and he’s about to reach for her when her nose wrinkles.

‘Gracious,’ she’s saying to the baby, ‘how can someone so little and cute make such a revolting smell.’

‘I’ll change her,’ Matt offers.

Fen falters. ‘It’s OK,’ she says, ‘I’ll do it. I want to check that her nappy rash has cleared.’

She may only be six months old but Cosima Holden-McCabe has decided, quite categorically, that she will not be eating anything unless it is orange in colour. Fen is fretting over whether puréed carrot and mashed sweet potato for the fourth day running – and currently for breakfast – might give her baby carotene poisoning. Or have caused the nappy rash. Or created the current extreme pungency of the nappies.

‘Wouldn’t you rather have a nice squidgy banana? Are you OK, pumpkin?’ Keeping her eyes on her baby, waggling a spoon loaded with orange mush, Fen speaks to Matt. ‘Does she look orange to you?’

‘Pumpkins are orange – You’re probably giving her this complex.’

Fen looks at him for a loaded moment.

‘Joke?’ Matt says with a sorry smile. ‘She looks bonny – she has a lovely glow to her fat little cheeks.’

‘She’s not fat!’ Fen protests.

‘It was a compliment,’ Matt assures her. ‘I meant it affectionately.’

‘But do you think the glow to her cheeks is a bit orange?’

‘No, Fen, I don’t.’ Matt peers in close to his baby and kisses her cheek. ‘She looks fine.’ He glances at his girlfriend. ‘I think Cosima is happy and healthy and that carrot-and-sweet-potato mush is her favourite food of the moment. I reckon it’s because you look peaky in comparison, Fen.’

‘If I do look peaky,’ Fen says defensively, ‘it’s because I’m so bloody tired.’

‘I know you are,’ Matt says and it irritates him that Fen heard an insult instead of the concern intended. He wants to say, I’m tired too, you know; but he hasn’t time for a petty dispute over who is the more exhausted. ‘Why don’t you ask your sister if she’s around today? You can have a little time to yourself?’

‘She’s only just got off the plane!’

‘I meant Pip.’

Somewhere, Fen knows Matt’s intention is sweet. But lately, unbridled sensitivity has lain far closer to her surface than sense. ‘You don’t think I’m coping, do you?’ she says.

‘You’re doing brilliantly,’ Matt says, because the books and the magazines have instilled the sentence in him and advised him to ignore the ironing mountain, piles of toys and general debris. ‘I’m late. What are you doing today? Is it Musical Minis?’

‘No, that’s Thursday.’

‘TinyTumbles?’

‘No, that’s tomorrow. I may meet up with the baby-mums this afternoon.’

‘That’ll be nice.’

Fen shrugs. ‘I always come away feeling a bit insecure,’ she confides. ‘Their babies apparently sleep through the night and most have at least one tooth. And I’m not really sure about the women – I can’t find a connection apart from the babies being the same age. They’re forever trying to outpurée each other with increasingly exotic organic recipes. But all my baby wants is orange stuff.’

‘You’re being unnecessarily hard on yourself,’ Matt says, ‘and on Cosima. And possibly on that bunch too. Stop being silly. You’re wondermum and we love you.’

Fen can’t hear the last sentence. Her ears are ringing with the fact that Matt says she’s silly. She wants to say, Well fuck you. But they’ve made a pact not to swear in front of their child.

‘I’m late.’ He gulps his coffee. ‘Work is mental at the moment – I’ll try and leave early, cook us something nice.’ He kisses the top of Fen’s head and brushes his lips over the peach fuzz adorning Cosima’s. ‘Bye, girls. Have fun.’

Tom Holmes likes Tuesdays very much. He doesn’t like the fact that at school Tuesdays mean dictation followed by football. Tom finds it difficult to coordinate hearing a word, then assessing its meaning in context and having to write it down, all in the space of about two seconds. It thus seems entirely logical that instructions for rigging a yacht could well be ‘Pacific’ instead of ‘specific’. It frustrates him that he never does well in dictation and that there’s no opportunity in dictation to saliently reason that ‘Pacific’, taken contextually, is just as appropriate as ‘specific’. He’s slightly taken aback that Miss Balcombe won’t at least acknowledge that ‘Pacific instructions for rigging’ sounds fairly logical. He doesn’t like it that there’s no room for manoeuvre with meaning where dictation is concerned.

Football makes Tom miserable, more so because He’s acutely aware that a nine-year-old should never admit to being miserable in the context of football. He supports Arsenal, which has won him friends at his North London prep school, but he hates playing the game. He hates playing because his limbs are often sore from eczema. Mud can actually sting but tracksuit trousers can catch and snag on chapped skin. Though his teammates are pals enough not to comment, Tom still catches them glancing at his body, unintentionally repelled. However, what makes dictation and football bearable is that, on Tuesdays, he stays with his dad and stepmum at their cool place in Hampstead.

They actually only live a mile or so from his home in Swiss Cottage and, though Tom spends every Tuesday, Wednesday and every other weekend with them, and any time in between that he fancies, the novelty value is still high. His dad’s place is closer to school than his other home so instead of his mum slaloming her Renault through the school run (which has its plus points because she appears unaware how much she swears) Tom strolls down Hampstead High Street with his stepmum. And, without actually holding hands (He’s nine now, someone might see), Tom can still subliminally tug her into a detour to Starbucks for hot chocolate.

Tom’s had Pip for nearly four years. Her presence at the school gates continues to provide much intrigue. Being a clown by trade, Pip is well known to many of Tom’s classmates from the birthday-party circuit of their younger years. She’s also been to assembly to talk about the other work she does, as a clown at children’s hospitals. She did the splits and a flikflak on the stage, bonked the headmaster on the head with a squeaky plastic hammer, made a motorbike from balloons in four seconds flat and Tom was the centre of attention all that day. His friends still make a point of saying hullo to her when she collects him. Invariably, she has rushed to school from the hospital, with her hair still in skew-whiff pigtails and traces of make-up on her face. Far more exotic than the widespread Whistles and ubiquitous Nicole Farhi worn by the other mums.

This Tuesday was no different. There was Pip, eye-catching in orange-and-purple stripy tights and clodhopping boots, chatting amiably with the other Hampstead mums.

‘Hi, I’m starving. It was shepherd’s pie for lunch. Heinous,’ said Tom, keen to drag her away.

‘Dear oh dear,’ said Pip, ‘heinous shepherd’s pie? I’d turn vegetarian, if I were you.’

‘No way, José,’ Tom retched. ‘The veggie option is always vomtastic.’

‘Vomtastic,’ Pip marvelled, planning to use the word in her clowning. ‘How was football?’

Tom gave a small shrug. ‘Cold.’

‘Are you angling for a brownie and hot choc?’ Pip nudged him.

‘If you say so,’ Tom said.

‘Well, your dad won’t be home till sevenish,’ Pip reasoned with herself, as much as with Tom.

‘It would be very good for my energy,’ Tom said not entirely ingenuously. ‘Starbucks would really help my homework.’

Pip laughed. ‘Come on, tinker,’ she said. They walked towards the High Street. ‘I had a sad day at the hospital. It’s lovely to see you.’

Tom slipped his hand into hers. Just for a few strides or so.

Pip looked at the kitchen table laden with the remains of supper later that evening, then she looked at her husband and his son embroiled in PlayStation. She put her hands on her hips and cleared her throat. They didn’t look up.

‘Hullo?’ she called, as if testing whether anyone was there.

Zac glanced up briefly from the console, but not briefly enough to prevent Tom taking advantage.

‘Dad!’ Tom objected. ‘Concentrate!’

And then Pip decided She’d just smile and ask if anyone wanted a drink. She still found it difficult to gauge her boundaries as a stepmother. Her own standards, based on her childhood and her family’s dynamic, said that a nine-year-old should help clear the table, or at least ask to be excused a chore. But she also acknowledged that this father and son hadn’t seen each other for a week and Zac had been first down from the table challenging Tom to a PlayStation final-of-finals. So she tidied up and allowed them their quality time.

She glanced at the clock and felt relieved that it really was nearing Tom’s bedtime. Zac had worked so late the last couple of nights she felt she hadn’t seen him at all. ‘I’ll run your bath, Tom,’ she said.

‘One more game,’ Zac called to her.

‘I’ll run it slowly,’ Pip said.

Despite actually trying his damndest to win, Zac lost at PlayStation. Far from being wounded, his pride soared at Tom’s skill and after a noisy bathtime, he cuddled up with his son for a lengthy dip into James and the Giant Peach. Pip could hear the soft timbre of Zac’s reading voice. She poured two glasses of wine and organized Tom’s school bag for the morning.

Zac appeared and made the fast-asleep gesture with his hands. ‘He was tired,’ he said.

‘Well, It’s late for him,’ said Pip, offering a glass of wine.

Zac looked at his watch. ‘I just have a little work to do,’ he told Pip who looked instantly deflated, ‘just an hour or so.’ He took the wine, kissed Pip on the lips, squeezed her bottom and disappeared with his laptop. He’s happy, Pip told herself. She looked on the bright side, which was very much her wont. At least it gave her the opportunity to phone Cat, as long as her youngest sister had been able to resist the jet lag on her first day back in the country.

Many would say that being a high-flying accountant would have its ups and downs: financial remuneration in return for long hours and often relatively dull work; a bulging pay packet to compensate for a dry grey image. How else would accountants have become such a clichéd race? But the only things grey about Zac Holmes are his eyes which are dark slate to the point of being navy anyway, and the only dry thing about Zac is his sense of humour. If Zac’s looks and his personality had dictated a career, it would have been something on the funky side of creative. But Zac’s brain, with its amazing propensity for figures, decreed accountancy from the outset. Anything else just wouldn’t be logical. Zac likes logic, he likes straightforward solutions and simple answers to even the most complex of problems. Consequently, he never judges anything to be a dilemma because he knows intrinsically that there is always a way to work it all out. Zac believes that problems are merely perceived as such. If you just sit down and think carefully, there’s nothing that can’t be solved. Problems don’t really exist at all, it comes down to attitude. That goes for his personal life as much as his professional. So, when ten years ago, his on-off girlfriend announced she was pregnant a few weeks after a forgettable drunken friendship fuck, Zac welcomed the news with a shrug and easily devised a formula that would suit them all.

2 firm friends + 0 desire to marry/cohabit
(+ never ÷ by £/♡ issues)
= great + modern parents
= 1 lucky child.

June, the mother of his child, can never be an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend because she was neither when Tom was conceived. She’s Zac’s friend and Zac is her friend and for Tom to have parents who are friends is a gift. Tom also has two step-parents. Everyone is friends. It might appear unconventional, but it works. A large family of friends.

Django McCabe may have trawled the sixties, trekking from ashram to commune, hiking from yurt to kibbutz, in search of the same. But he was happy to admit that his eldest niece had found its apotheosis in London NW3.

Pip is hovering. Zac’s hour at his laptop has turned into two.

‘Coffee?’ she offers.

‘No, ta,’ says Zac, ‘need to crack on.’

‘Tea?’ she suggests.

‘Nope, I’m fine thanks, Mrs,’ says Zac. ‘I have to knock this on its head.’

‘Whisky?’

‘No, nothing – I’m good. Thanks.’

‘Rampant sex?’

‘Tempting – on any other night. I have to work. Seriously.’

‘One of my very special blow-jobs?’

Zac looks at his screen. He has a very good head for figures. But if there’s one figure that gives very good head, It’s Pip. His eyes don’t leave his laptop, his finger hovers above the mouse-pad. ‘A special blow-job?’ Zac asks, as if It’s a deal-breaker. ‘Not just a standard one?’

‘Trust me,’ Pip winks.

‘Because,’ says Zac, ‘if It’s just run-of-the-mill sucky-sucky, I’ll pass. This audit is crucial.’

‘I’m not capable of run-of-the-mill sucky-sucky,’ Pip clarifies, hands on her hips, chin up.

‘I mean, I’m talking cosmic, Pip,’ Zac stipulates with a lasciviously raised eyebrow. ‘It needs to be mind-blowing.’

‘I assure you It’s not just your mind I’ll be blowing.

’ Finally, Zac looks from his laptop to Pip, then back again. Contriving a sigh, as if he was doing her the favour, he logs off. ‘I’m sure the powers that be will understand,’ he says.

‘I’ll write your boss a note,’ says Pip. ‘I’ll tell him the dog ate your homework.’ She takes Zac by the hand and leads him to the bedroom. They undress silently and have rude sex as quietly as they can.

Matt had come back from work early, made sausages, mash and onion gravy. Perfect for a cold January night and essential for his girlfriend who’d told him she hadn’t had time to eat more than toast and Marmite during the day. He’d bought a DVD too, which Fen managed to stay awake through despite snuggling up against the cosiness of Matt’s chest. Now She’s reading in bed and Matt is nuzzling the fragrant softness of his girlfriend’s neck. His cock is surprisingly responsive. He’d only intended to kiss her goodnight. He didn’t know he had the energy to feel horny.

‘How did we make Cosima again?’ Matt whispers, running his hand the length of Fen’s thigh, spooning against her, the sensation of her buttocks against his erection causing his pelvis to rock automatically, his hands to travel up along her torso. He bypasses her breasts. They’re Cosima’s for the time being. He doesn’t really mind, It’s lucky He’s always been a legs and bum man. And his hands sweep down to Fen’s thighs again, and over them, and around. And he walks his fingers up through the fuzz of her sex then attempts to tiptoe them down in between.

Fen’s hand joins his. ‘I do want to,’ she announces, a tinge of apology, a ring of reluctance, which stills Matt’s hand immediately. ‘I’m just really really tired. Sorry.’

‘I bet I can have you in the mood; bet you I can have you hollering for mercy,’ he tells her. He always used to be able to. He leans across her and kisses her, pulls her to face him, holds her against him. He rocks his groin gently against her, takes her hand down to his perky cock and works his hands over her body. He is not sure whether He’s taken her breath away or whether She’s holding it to pull her stomach in. But he feels her stiffen, and a glance at her face, where anxiety is mixed with reluctance, causes him to turn away from her, to stare at the ceiling with a sigh.

‘Do I feel different to you?’ she asks. ‘I’m still so squidgy and unattractive.’ And then she mutters that she shouldn’t have had all that bangers and mash.

‘You look gorgeous,’ Matt says, ‘I keep telling you. God. Wasn’t my raging hard-on proof enough how much I fancy you?’

Fen shrugs and looks downcast. ‘I know you do,’ she says quietly, ‘but I have to fancy myself, too, to feel horny.’

‘Will you give yourself a break,’ Matt says. He switches off the bedside light and kisses her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Stop being silly.’

Fen lies in the dark, wide-eyed and confused and wishing they had a spare room she could withdraw to. She encourages a hot, oily tear to sting its way from the corner of her eye and slick down her cheek and onto the pillow. She knows It’s bizarre, but rather than being bolstered by Matt’s assurances that he loves and lusts for her however she feels she looks, She’s cross that he appears to trivialize her concerns, her loss of confidence, her fragile self-image.

He called me silly. For the second time today. Silly is a stupid, insensitive word to use. He just doesn’t understand.

God. It’s gone midnight. Cosima will wake in a couple of hours. I have to get some sleep.

DJANGO MCCABE
AND THE NIT-PICKIN’ CHICKS

Though only three years separated the oldest and youngest of the McCabe sisters, Cat had always been very much the baby of the family. She was a little shorter than Pip and Fen, her features more petite. She lacked Pip’s aptitude for performing, to entertain, which gave her eldest sister her apparent sassy confidence. Nor did she have Fen’s self-containment, her ability to seem so quietly self-possessed, so attractively serene. While Pip and Fen had encountered the various dramas in their lives head-on and for the most part single-handedly and discretely, Cat had always simply stood there and cried loudly for help. It wasn’t that she was particularly feeble, nor was she excessively attention-seeking or spoilt; Cat was accustomed to being looked after because there was something about her that inspired others to care for her. Ben believed it was to do with the arrangement of her features; her large eyes set winsomely around the childlike upturn to her nose which led down to the natural pout to her lips. It compelled one to offer protection, even if it was not specifically needed or asked for. However, Cat’s strength was that she was never too proud to ask. She’d grown up knowing that what made her feel strong and able was the presence of her support network, her sisters in particular.

When Cat had gone to live in America with a relatively new boyfriend (as Ben was then) and brand new job, everyone anticipated floods of tears to wash her soon back again. But the anticipated plea to be rescued never came. Her letters and e-mails and phone calls attested to her happiness, and her occasional visits home confirmed this. Her apparent self-sufficiency was a source of joy and relief for her family and soon enough they were delighted for her that She’d gone. Not half so thrilled as they are now, four years later, that she has come back.

Being swept north by rail for their family reunion, the McCabe sisters were initially preoccupied with three-way inane grinning and quietly assessing physical details and changes.

‘So.’

‘So?’

‘So!’

‘You’re back.’

‘I am.’

‘For good?’

‘Indeed. For better, for worse.’

‘I do love your hair,’ Pip told Cat. ‘When you e-mailed to say you’d gone short and red, I had visions of a ginger buzz-cut.’

‘It’s very gamine,’ Fen said whilst hastily retying hers into a hopefully smoother pony-tail, ‘very Audrey Hepburn. God I feel a dowdy frump.’

‘You don’t think It’s too short?’ Cat asked them. ‘And You’re sure you like the colour? Yours is so much longer,’ she said to Fen, ‘and darker.’

‘That’s probably because It’s greasy,’ Fen said. She took a twist of her hair and scrutinized the ends. ‘I can’t remember the last time I went to the hairdresser.’

‘Go this weekend,’ Pip said. ‘Django will know somewhere.’

‘When did he last go to a barber?’ Cat interrupted. ‘You’re not telling me He’s chopped off his pony-tail? I expected things to change while I’ve been abroad – but nothing that drastic.’

‘It’s still his crowning glory,’ Pip assured her with a smile.

‘How’s he been?’ Cat asked.

‘Fine and dandy,’ Pip said. ‘Same as ever, really.’

‘It’s funny, initially I’d curse him for not having e-mail, but actually I loved receiving his letters and writing back,’ Cat said. ‘I’ve kept them all. They’re hysterical. He’d send me the TV listings page every single week so I could keep up with Corrie.’

‘Zac and I bought him an answering machine for his last birthday – but he took it back,’ Pip said. ‘I suggested a mobile phone – but you can imagine what he said.’

‘Talking of birthdays, I wonder what we’ll do for his,’ Cat said brightly. ‘Can you believe he’ll be seventy-five this spring?’

‘he’ll either throw a huge party – or go on a retreat,’ Pip said. ‘In which case we’ll make him a surprise party.’

‘Yes!’ said Cat. She gazed at the sleeping baby nustled up to Fen in a papoose. ‘Cosima is so beautiful,’ she said dreamily, watching Fen’s fingers tap out a mother’s instinctive, gentle rhythm against the baby’s back. Absent-mindedly, Cat rolled her thumb against her wedding ring. ‘Still no plans to wed then, Fen?’ She felt Pip glance at her.

Fen balked. ‘What an odd thing to say.’

‘Sorry – I just mean, you know, since you now have a baby.’

‘Shock, horror, an illegitimate child? Is that what You’re implying?’ Fen said.

‘Blimey Fen, I was only teasing,’ Cat said, because she had been. She glanced back at Pip who, ever the diplomat, decided it was a good idea to change the subject.

‘I’m hungry,’ said Pip.

‘I’m hungry now too,’ said Fen. ‘Do you think Django’s made a late lunch for us?’

‘Followed almost immediately by an enormous tea with just time enough to burp before a Spread for supper?’ Cat laughed.

‘I’ll go and buy sandwiches for us,’ said Pip.

‘And salt-and-vinegar crisps!’ Cat called after her. Fen smiled at her. Cat turned her gaze out to the English countryside zipping by outside the train. So different to Colorado, where she had remained in awe of her surroundings. Here, the scale was comfortingly familiar, if a little tame by comparison, the colours darker, damper.

‘Sorry about before,’ Fen said. ‘I’ve been horribly snappish, lately. I hate it and I can’t help it. I’m just so tired. And – well – things at home have been a little strained.’

Cat watched Fen’s gaze drop. She’d been shocked by the physical change in Fen, the wan complexion, the dark eyes, puffiness here and a general lankness there. Objectively, Fen had always been the true beauty of the three of them; her features and complexion adding refinement where Pip was just pretty, where Cat was simply cute. Today, though, Cat noticed a certain pallor now veiling this.

‘Is it Matt?’ Cat broached, though She’d intended to seek details from Pip later.

‘I don’t know, Cat,’ Fen said, a tear clouding one eye, ‘but I think it might be me. My love for my baby is so primal and complete that sometimes I feel like running away so It’s just the two of us.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Cat said and she reached across the melamine for her sister’s wrist, ‘please don’t do that. I’ve just come thousands of miles to be back in my family fold. I want Cosima to get to know her Auntie Cat. And when I am pregnant, I’ll need you within arm’s reach to tell me how to do it all properly.’

Fen smiled. ‘I’ll need bloody long arms to stretch to Clapham from East Finchley,’ she said.

‘Clapham is not, I repeat not, permanent,’ Cat said. ‘You know I’ve always had a thing for Tufnell Park.’

‘It’s good to have you home,’ Fen said, ‘but it’ll be even better to have you on the doorstep.’

Pip returned. ‘Cardboard bread with rubber cheese in between,’ she announced. ‘Don’t anyone tell Django what we’re about to eat.’

Peeping through the window, it is a joy for Django to behold his three precious girls spill out of the taxi. Momentarily, he turns away from the sight and offers a prayer of sincere thanks to all the gods and spirits who have ever interested him at any stage during his life. He can hear their laughter and their excited chatter. Will you look at Cosima – how she has grown in the last month. How naturally Fen has the baby against her. See the sun spin gold through Pip’s hair. And Cat, that can’t be Cat! Cat was the little girl with the jaunty pony-tail. Who is this beautiful woman? And what’s with the red hair!

Django had intended to position himself in the hallway, so that when the girls opened the door He’d be there; his arms flung wide, like a celebrity tenor on an album cover. In the event, he is as excited as they are and he strides out to meet them, booming his welcome. The only member of the family who does not cry is Cosima. She regards the grown-ups with her solemn unblinking eyes, absorbing all the facts and details as if logging the information that when you haven’t seen your family for a long time, you leap about and sob and touch each other’s hair a lot.

‘I’m still stuffed from tea-time!’ Cat whispered to Pip while Django tinkered in the kitchen. ‘Those scones were like cannon balls. Never mind enough to feed an army – enough to sink the navy!’

‘Shh,’ Pip said.

‘Has he been well?’ Cat asked quietly. ‘Hasn’t had flu, or something? It’s just that he looks a little tired to me, a bit peaky, since I last saw him.’

‘I think He’s been fine,’ said Pip. ‘He certainly hasn’t said anything to the contrary. He’s probably been slaving over the stove all week, preparing for our arrival.’ She spied a copy of the Racing Post. ‘Or else He’s put all his money on some old nag and lost the lot.’

Cat walked around the living-room, fingering objects, lingering over framed photos, feeling the heavy brocade of the curtains, running her hands over the worn warm upholstery, filling her nostrils with the scent of home. It was like remaking her acquaintance with the essential elements of her personal history; reminding herself how everything looked and felt and smelt and should be, while at the same time reasserting her own presence in this sacred family space.

The Spread was simmering and sautéing and roasting and steaming. Elements of it were happily marinating, or being chilled, or else ripening at room temperature. All the pots and pans were in use and every utensil had served many a purpose. The various scents emanating from oven and hob joined forces to create an olfactory explosion that, to Django, was as contradictory yet ultimately pleasing as a jazz chord.

The point of cooking and the point of jazz are essentially one and the same, Django thought to himself as he ran a sink of water and half a jar of Bar Keeper’s Friend to soak all the knives. It’s about an element of surprise, of revelation and re-education. Of experimentation. Like when the African pentatonic scale met the European diatonic scale and jazz was born; a sound that was initially bizarre, disconcertingly discordant. It simply required one to open one’s ears and one’s heart to the flattened third and seventh notes and suddenly the aural pleasure of the blue note coursed through one’s veins. Likewise, one’s initial concern that Tabasco and tuna may be odd accompaniments to duck with a celery stuffing, dissipates when one shrugs off preconceptions of convention and allows the tastes to speak for themselves.

‘Not too dissimilar to Kandinsky either,’ Django mused as he left the kitchen in search of his nieces, ‘seemingly an arbitrary cascade of colour and shape yet utterly grounded in structure and purpose. Jazz, Cookery, Abstraction. It’s all art.’

He found them in the living-room and observed them unseen for a nostalgic moment. Just then, the girls could have been any age. The scene was immediately familiar and timeless and the continuity was poignant. ‘By golly,’ Django declared, ‘sing hey for the return of the nit-pickin’ chicks.’

The nit-pickin’ chicks looked up at him. Fen stopped plaiting Pip’s hair, Pip stilled her hands from massaging Cat’s foot, Cat brought her head up from Fen’s lap and ceased tracing patterns on her sister’s legs.

‘Django, You’re not going all sentimental on us are you?’ Pip asked, resuming her massage in a businesslike way. The girls laughed. Privately, they each felt suddenly very sentimental, in an affirming way. It had been years since Django had referred to them as the nit-pickin’ chicks, because it had been such a long time since they’d sat in their huddle with their hands almost absent-mindedly working on each other.

‘Stop fiddling,’ Django said. ‘Let’s eat.’

‘I’ll just check on Cosima,’ Fen said.

‘You were only up there half an hour ago,’ said Cat, ‘and she was quiet then.’

‘you’ll see,’ Fen said, slightly defensively, feeling entitled to her knowing nod, ‘you’ll see.’

‘It transpires that Cat hasn’t just come home because she misses your cooking,’ Pip told Django, slipping her arm around his waist, ‘She’s come home to breed.’

Django took a moment. ‘Wonderful!’ he then said, placing his hand on Cat’s head as if blessing her. ‘Another reason to celebrate. There’s some champagne somewhere. It may well be in the bottom drawer in your room, Pip.’

‘I could look in on Cosima for you while I check,’ Pip suggested to Fen.

‘No,’ said Fen decisively, ‘I’ll go. I’ll do both.’

‘The meal is organic,’ Django told her, ‘mostly. Shall I purée a little for Cosima for tomorrow?’

‘No, thanks,’ Fen said, hoping she hid her alarm.

‘The sauce is relatively orange,’ Django elaborated.

‘That’ll be the Tabasco,’ Fen said, ‘which isn’t really appropriate for a six-month-old baby.’

‘It’s never too early to prepare the palate,’ Django said.

Despite the size of the scones, the aromas from the pots and pans were too tantalizing to resist and appetites magically expanded to meet the quality and quantity of food prepared. Though the menu was predictably unorthodox and though they started with dessert because Django didn’t want to risk the lemon-and-rum soufflé collapsing, traditional manners had always been proudly upheld in the McCabe household. Don’t hold your knife like a pencil, elbows off the table, don’t talk with your mouth full. Between courses, after polite dabbing with napkins, news and plans were discussed.

‘A toast to absent menfolk,’ Django said, charging his glass, ‘to the accountant, the publisher, the doctor.’ He took a sip. ‘There was plenty of food for them, you know, even if you lot want second helpings.’

‘But we didn’t actually want them here,’ Pip said as if revealing a secret. ‘We wanted you to ourselves.’

‘And Ben’s mum wanted him to herself,’ Cat reasoned.

‘Next time you come, you bring your boys,’ Django said. ‘This stew will be good for days – You’re all to take a tub home.’ He topped up his glass again. ‘Well, another toast. To the clown.’ Everyone chinked Pip’s glass. Django cleared his throat: ‘To the art historian.’ They raised their glasses to Fen. And then they all looked at Cat. ‘What shall we toast you as?’ Django asked her. ‘Sports journalist? Redhead?’

Cat looked concerned. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘But you so love the cycling world,’ Pip said, ‘and you had such respect as one of the few female reporters.’

‘And You’re married to the doctor of one of the world’s top cycling teams,’ Fen said.

‘Ex-team doctor,’ Cat pointed out.

‘No more gallivanting around the globe with that circus of Lycra and bicycles then?’ asked Django.

‘No,’ Cat laughed though she looked a little forlorn. ‘I’ve fallen out of love.’ Pip and Fen jerked with concern. ‘With the sport,’ Cat clarified. ‘So has Ben. Too many drugs, too much cheating.’

‘So, what’ll you do?’ Pip asked again.

‘I’m not sure – maybe write more widely. Maybe not just yet.’

‘And are you back for good?’ Django asked. ‘Or is this a pit stop?’

‘This is home. This is where we want to start a family. Maybe I’ll take a leaf out of Fen’s book – and yours, Django – and make motherhood my career.’

‘No finer, more noble job than that,’ Django said, ‘mark my words.’

‘You forgot to add knackering,’ Fen laughed. ‘Academia was a breeze in comparison. Not that I have any desire to go back to it.’

‘But You’re so talented,’ said Cat, ‘you’ve had stuff published. You’ve lectured at the Tate. You’re the authority on the sculpture of Julius Fetherstone. You have all those hard-earned letters after your name.’

‘Art is still my great love – just because I choose not to work in that field doesn’t negate that,’ Fen shrugged and continued more defensively. ‘I’ve gone for a change of career. Raising my baby is just as challenging, as stimulating – and far more time-consuming.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to see which comes first – a blue line on the dipstick, or a job offer,’ said Cat.

‘I’d like to propose a toast,’ said Pip, ‘to my sisters, to our Django. To family.’

Django makes his announcement over strong Turkish coffee and enormous petits fours. He clears his throat and asks for silence, please, ladies.

‘No doubt my impending milestone birthday has been the cause for much speculation – and I hope you haven’t already planned a surprise party.’

‘You’re not going on a retreat are you?’ Cat asks.

‘On my seventy-fifth birthday?’ Django objects. ‘Good Lord no. I have no intention of retreating anywhere. Quite the opposite. They’ll be coming out of the woodwork, far and wide, because I’m going to throw a party.’

‘Here?’

‘Of course here,’ Django says, ‘a huge rollicking knees-up that will rewrite the significance of May 16th in history. I’m going to have a party That’ll be totally, eye-openingly unsuitable for someone of such an age.’

Cat, Fen and Pip gawp at him.

‘You’re all invited,’ he assures them earnestly, ‘along with anyone who thinks they might ever have known me.’

THE RAG AND THISTLE

Early the following evening, Django placed his hands on Fen’s shoulders. ‘Do it for me,’ he said quietly.

‘It’s only the Rag and Thistle,’ said Pip, ‘It’s only down the road.’

‘And It’s my welcome-home weekend,’ Cat protested.

‘I don’t feel like it,’ Fen said.

‘Your sisters request your company and I’d like to have my granddaughter all to myself,’ Django said but he could see that he hadn’t dented her defence. ‘You do have faith in my abilities, don’t you? Did I not bring up you three single-handedly – and fabulously – when your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver?’ He paused carefully to assess the just perceptible upturn to the corners of Fen’s mouth. ‘And isn’t Cosima already sound asleep and unlikely to waken anyway?’

‘It’s not that,’ Fen said. ‘Of course I have faith in you. It’s just I don’t really feel like going out.’ She wanted to sound needy rather than defensive so that they’d sympathize.

‘But It’s my weekend!’ Cat reiterated.

Fen looked deeply uncomfortable. ‘I don’t want to go to the Rag and Thistle because I don’t want to leave Cosima,’ she explained, looking at the semicircle of her family surrounding her. ‘It’s not something that I’ve done. Why can’t we just stay here – open some dodgy home-made elderberry wine?’

Her sisters and uncle regarded her while she scrutinized a threadbare patch on the Persian rug. Was that newspaper beneath it? Probably. When from, Fen wondered. She’d known the rug all her life.

‘You mean to say you haven’t had any time apart from Cosima in six months?’ Cat asked.

‘No – yes,’ Fen elaborated, ‘not really. Matt has babysat a couple of times.’

‘You mean you and Matt haven’t been out together since she was born?’ Cat asked, thinking it sounded preposterous.

‘That’s right,’ said Fen, with a tightness that told her audience she thought they shouldn’t be questioning.

‘That’s not right,’ said Cat, ‘That’s terrible.’

‘Fuck off, Cat,’ Fen said sharply.

‘Don’t swear,’ Django said.

‘I have offered,’ Pip said to Cat and Django, ‘to babysit.’

‘But Cosima was colicky,’ Fen said.

‘No one’s likely to judge your mothering abilities on whether you occasionally have some me-time,’ said Django.

‘It’s not that,’ Fen sighed.

‘It’s good for you,’ said Pip, ‘it said so in that baby book you keep in the loo.’

‘What’s all this Fen-bashing?’ Fen asked. ‘God, You’re my bloody family. Cosima is a tiny baby and I’m allowed to indulge my maternal instincts.’

‘I simply want the treat, the honour, of looking after my first granddaughter, and your sisters just wanted a couple of hours down the local with you to themselves,’ Django reasoned. ‘As you say – we are a bloody family.’

‘It’s not a challenge,’ Pip said, ‘It’s just a quick drink down the pub, silly.’

‘Christ, why is everyone calling me silly these days?’ Fen muttered to herself. ‘And it is a challenge, actually, to me. Do you not think it doesn’t disturb me that my self-confidence can leak away like breast milk? That I’d reject my sisters’ invitation to go out for a couple of drinks? That a strange and terrible part of me doesn’t even trust the man who raised me to look after my baby for two tiny hours?’ Her eyes darted around her family from under knotted eyebrows.

‘Look – I’m sorry, Fen,’ said Cat, who looked it. ‘Please come. I’m so excited to be back. I’ve missed you.’

For a moment, Fen thought she might cry. Then she wanted to stand her ground and refuse. ‘I don’t know,’ she faltered.

‘Leave me a long list,’ Django said brightly, ‘with illustrations.’

So, still a little reluctantly, Fen took him at his word and did just that. When she was quite sure Cosima really was fast asleep, she left with her sisters for the Rag and Thistle.

As pubs go, the Rag and Thistle was both lively yet homey. Having been in the Merifield family for four generations, it retained the charm and authenticity that many brewery-owned pubs never achieve despite trying so obviously to replicate. Thus there were no mass-produced sepia pictures of Street Scene Anywhere but photos instead of Merifields old and young, dead and alive, their various dogs and horses, adorning most of the wall space. The cast of Peak Practice had signed beer mats which David Merifield had framed in a jaunty pattern around a cast photo. There was a paper serviette, illegibly autographed by an actress whose name no one could remember and sometimes this was hung upside down in case it was meant to be so. There were no laminated menus with novelty meals and photos of the dishes. Just simple home cooking, available whenever required. The bell for last orders was usually rung when someone remembered to ring it. The Rag and Thistle was a mainstay of the community and its community cherished it. Though the McCabe girls left home over a decade ago, they still think of it as their local and the Merifields welcome them back as if they last served them a drink just the day before.

‘G & T,’ Pip ordered.

‘Glass of house red,’ said Cat. ‘Fen?’

‘Oh go on then,’ Fen said guiltily, ‘V.a.T. But loads of tonic and easy on the vodka. I’m still breast-feeding, remember.’

‘We couldn’t possibly forget,’ Pip murmured to Cat though it landed her a harsh glance from Fen.

‘I’ll bring them over,’ said the publican Mr Merifield, who always treated the girls like royalty on their visits home. ‘you’ll be wanting to nab that table That’s just come free.’

‘So Django’s going to throw a birthday party,’ Cat marvelled, making a beeline for the table in the corner bedecked with horse brasses. ‘Is he serious about having it at home? He could have it here.’

‘This place couldn’t fit everyone in – They’ll be coming from the four corners of the earth,’ said Pip.

‘Didn’t you know the earth was round?’ said Mr Merifield, setting down their drinks.

‘we’re talking about Django’s birthday.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Merifield, ‘and the party. No point us opening the pub that night – everyone will be at yours, if memories of his sixtieth party serve me right.’ The girls laughed and everyone buried their heads in their hands.

‘Can you believe He’s going to be seventy-five?’ Fen said, arranging a beer mat in front of each of them and removing the ashtray to the window sill with a look of utter distaste.

‘It sounds so old,’ said Cat. ‘Seventy-five.’

‘He is a grandpa,’ Fen defined, ‘though actually he likes to be called Gramps.’

‘Tom calls him that,’ Pip explained to Cat. ‘Tom calls him Django Gramps which is weird really, because He’s even less of a real grandfather, in the literal sense, to Tom than he is to Cosima.’

‘I laughed when you told me in that e-mail that Django refers to Tom as his “step-grandsonthing-or-other”,’ Cat told her.

‘I wonder if our children will be confused that they have a grandpa for an uncle, but a non-existent grandmother?’ Fen mused.

‘They have other grandmas,’ Pip said. ‘Matt and Zac’s mums.’

‘It’s odd,’ said Fen and then she stopped. ‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

‘It’s just that, having really thought of her so rarely, just recently I’ve thought of her more.’

‘Who?’

‘Our mother,’ Fen shrugged. ‘Now that I have my baby. I just can’t figure out how a mother can leave.’

‘That’s why we’ll all make grade A mummies,’ Cat said. ‘we’ll be automatically compensating for the fact that our mother was sub-Z grade.’

‘It struck me recently that the only person I’ve ever called “Mummy” is myself,’ Fen said. It quietly struck her sisters that they hadn’t called anyone ‘Mummy’ at all.

‘I can’t wait to be called Mummy,’ Cat said dreamily. ‘Do you realize I was pretty much Cosima’s age when our mother left?’

‘It’s only since having Cosima that maternal instincts, in all their crazy hormonal cladding, have made sense,’ Fen continued, ‘and to be honest, though previously I never much cared about her, it now makes me shudder. A woman ran off with a cowboy from Denver and left behind three girls under the age of four? How could she do it? How can a mother not have maternal instincts? It’s criminal. They’re chemical.’ Fen looked at her sisters. ‘I gaze at my daughter and I think of us three. Three tiny little girls. How could she have walked out?’

‘I reckon life would still have been better under Django than under her if she hadn’t left,’ Pip reasoned. ‘His maternal instincts more than made up for her lack of them.’

‘It never bothered me before, really, because there were never situations when we wished we had her,’ Fen reiterated quietly, ‘but now, recently, It’s made me utterly bewildered. Indignant too. That’s why I don’t like to be separated from Cosima. That’s why I hold her so tight.’ Pip and Cat regarded her and felt bad about before. ‘I don’t like missing a minute with her – not because I’m a hormonal fruit cake, though you probably think I am. But because, in my book, there cannot be such a thing as an overprotective mother.’

‘Do you want another?’ Cat asked Fen.

‘God no,’ said Fen, ‘this one’s gone to my head already.’

Cat laughed. ‘I meant another baby – not vodka.’

‘That would necessitate Matt and me having sex,’ Fen said glumly.

‘Oh God, does all that really go down the nappy-bin?’ Cat asked.

‘Pretty much,’ Fen admitted. ‘To be completely honest, we prefer that extra hour’s sleep to banging away for an orgasm.’

‘The royal “we”?’ Pip asked. ‘Do you speak for Matt?’

Fen blinked a little. ‘You know blokes,’ she laughed it off but didn’t elaborate. ‘The weird thing is, it all seems a bit irrelevant. As if Cosima has shown us what life’s all about. It’s like, in retrospect, it was all a means to an end. Fancying Matt, falling in love with him, rampant sex, domestic daydreams – It’s as if all that was a preamble, all a clever cloak to ensure the continuation of the species. Having Cosima has shown us that life is about going forwards with her, rather than backwards trying to cling on to pre-baby days.’

‘Us?’ Pip questioned. ‘The royal “us”? Do you speak for Matt too?’

Fen glanced at her with fleeting annoyance. ‘Life is more meaningful now that I’m a mummy,’ she said to Cat. ‘I have a true function, a role. I’m a mummy. I don’t feel any need to reclaim my sexuality. This is me now. This is what I was made for. This is the best thing I’ve ever done.’

Cat thought this sounded extreme, mad even. Pip thought it was sad and she immediately wondered how Matt was. He was going out with Zac for a pint that night. She’d probe. She was fond of Matt and, being the Great Looker-Afterer, She’d see to it that his relationship with her sister did not suffer.

‘God,’ said Cat with nostalgic admiration, ‘and you used to be such a vamp, Fen.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Fen rubbished. ‘Me? A vamp? Hardly.’

‘You were a downright slapper,’ Pip teased.

‘Piss off,’ Fen protested, suddenly knowing to what they alluded and not wanting to revisit the past.

‘Don’t tell me your nappy-addled memory doesn’t stretch back four years when you were having to choose between two men?’ Pip said.

They looked at Fen who was peering through a cage of her fingers as if shying away from a horror movie that turned out to be her history. ‘Stop it you two,’ she winced, ‘it was ages ago. It was a different me.’

‘It was right here in Derbyshire,’ Pip said pointedly.

‘He moved away,’ Fen said, ‘a while ago. You know that.’

‘Regrets?’ Cat asked.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Fen said.

‘Does Matt know?’ Cat wondered. ‘Did you ever tell him?’

‘Are you mad?’ said Fen. ‘It had no bearing on my feelings for Matt. When it ended, it didn’t release extra love for me to bestow on Matt. My feelings for Matt never changed – my feelings for the other man did.’

‘I love Matt,’ Pip said.

‘Me too,’ said Fen, ‘me too. I’m very lucky.’ Suddenly she felt overwhelmingly sad. Just then she longed for Matt even more than she longed for Cosima. ‘I’m such a crotchety old bag at the moment,’ she admitted and her sisters could see fear written across her brow. ‘I’m tired and narky the whole time. I can’t seem to help it. Who is this Fen who doesn’t have the energy to make love to her boyfriend, who has lost the desire to be touched but doesn’t really care? I can’t remember when I last told Matt that I love him.’

‘You should, you know,’ Pip said sternly, ‘according to that baby book you keep in your loo.’

‘Do you and Zac plan to have proper babies?’ Cat asked. Fen and Pip stared at their younger sister whose cheeks suddenly turned the colour of her hair and she buried her head in her hands. ‘God that sounded awful. Poor Tom – I didn’t mean—!’

‘It’s not in our game plan,’ Pip laughed. ‘we’re a gang of three. I like being a stepmum. It suits me. I’m not really broody, I don’t think.’

‘You wouldn’t have time anyway,’ Cat said, ‘because You’re always so busy looking after everyone else.’ Pip looked a little nonplussed. ‘It’s a compliment,’ Cat assured her. ‘Even Django calls you the Great Looker-Afterer. You’re only three years my senior but you’ve always mothered me. Capably, too.’

‘And me,’ said Fen.

‘Someone had to,’ Pip shrugged.

‘To us,’ said Fen, now toasting with mineral water, ‘to sisterhood and motherhood.’

Pip went to bed hoping everyone was all right. She was worried about Fen. If having a baby had brought such sense and sunshine into her life, as Fen claimed, why did she seem so out of sorts? Alternately under-confident and yet smug, defensive yet somehow needy too. Pip didn’t doubt that it was normal and right to be so absorbed in her child, but she was concerned that Fen seemed so defiantly blasé about the other aspects of her life. As if being a mother had given her a superiority complex and inferiority issues in one fell swoop.

And what about Cat and Ben? Pip lay there anxious that her youngest sister had skipped back home hoping to play out a rather unrealistic daydream of easy baby-making and rosy domesticity.

She thought about Zac. And Tom. Just then Pip felt intensely grateful for Tom. Really, what a joy her gorgeous stepson was – what a privilege to have so many rewards without any of the hormonal rumpus apparently affecting her younger sister. She chastised herself sharply for certain occasions when she was irritated by Tom; when he hogged Zac or overran the flat, when Zac all but ignored her, when Tom appeared to think he needn’t listen to what she said.

I’d hate anything to disrupt what I have with Zac. There’s a safe harmony between us; I know when our tides come in and go out. Tom graces our lives but ultimately, by virtue of the living arrangements, lets them be as well. Zac and I are man and wife in the conventional sense but I still feel we’re girlfriend and boyfriend too. Nothing is a chore, nothing is a bore. Everything is a treat. The sexual buzz I feel for him is as charged now as ever it has been. Our domestic set-up is perfect. Nothing can better it. As a couple, we have freedom and privacy and Tom.

As Cat lay in bed, she wondered whether she could still blame jet lag for making her feel suddenly so teary. She considered going downstairs – Django would be up for another hour or so, with his ‘medicinal’ brandy. Or whisky if He’d used all the brandy in the soup. Or she could knock out the special sequence on the wall dividing her room from Pip’s. Pip would remember their childhood code, the tympanic lingo of knuckle against plaster. Long, short, short – Are you awake? Short, long, long – Come in here. Long, long, short, short – Can I come in?

It’s just the jet lag. I’ll let Pip sleep. I’ll let Django relax over the day-before-yesterday’s crossword. I won’t disturb Fen. Actually, I don’t really want to talk to her. I hope having a baby won’t make me like her. That sounds awful. Fen’s consuming passion for Cosima, her zeal for her role as mother, is beautiful on one level – lucky little Cosima. But where’s my sister gone? Where’s Matt’s girl? Where’s Trust Art’s brilliant art historian and archivist? I’ve come home to find that Fen has only half an ear to lend us and half her personality available. That sounds harsh. Perhaps I don’t understand. But I don’t want it to be like that for me. Cosima has gained a brilliant mother but we’ve lost Fen. It will be different for Ben and me. A baby is for the two of us. At the end of the day, it will always be Ben and me and when baby makes three, we’ll welcome it into our life. I can’t wait.

Fen’s daughter slept soundly in her pop-up travel cot, making occasional grunts and snuffles. Fen listened carefully, while gazing around her childhood bedroom which Django had lovingly preserved. Above her head, an Athena poster of a semi-nude faceless bloke in peculiar tones of lilac duelled for attention against pouting men with big hair and a penchant for frills who postured down from album covers drawing-pinned to the wall. Teenage angst novels crammed a shelf, flanked by two chunks of Derbyshire stone holding their skinny spines straight. Under the Formica dressing-table, oversized tiger-feet slippers, padded with scrunches of Racing Post from 1989. In her bedside drawer, the jewels of her pocket-money days: a Mexican silver brooch in the shape of a cat, small 9ct gold hoop earrings with a single seed pearl, a silver-plated heart-shaped locket whose hinge broke when she opened it and found it empty, a three-band Russian wedding ring She’d bought for Pip’s fifteenth birthday but decided to keep for herself yet never felt comfortable wearing. It was all tarnished, everything was a little bashed.

It felt strange to be in a single bed, strange that only two-thirds of her own little family were together that night, nicely strange to miss Matt. She smiled at the pin-ups of her teenage years and suddenly Matt’s face loomed large in her mind’s eye. She hoped she loved him as much as she used to. Again, she felt subsumed by a longing tinged with loneliness and she sent him a text message saying night night love your girls xxxx. She looked at it and worried over the lack of punctuation, that he might think she was nagging him to love his girls. Hopefully He’d be distracted by all the x’s instead.

Her mind drifted back to a time before Cosima. Not so long ago, really, there was a girl called Fen for whom motherhood had then been such a distant notion as to have had no realism. It was like recalling a best friend she hadn’t seen for years, a soulmate who had gone so far away that their paths would never now cross. Just then, it made Fen wistfully sad. She reminisced that there had been fun in all that dangerous gallivanting. It had been liberating and energizing, being responsible for no one but herself.

She thought back to that heady time when she and Matt had just met at work and were embarking on the definitive office fling. She conjured again the feeling of exquisite anticipation, remembered so clearly sitting amongst the papers and pictures and boxes in the archives willing Matt to rudely interrupt her with a furtive snog and a grope. She relived the joy of racing down the corridor to delight Matt with her unbridled enthusiasm about some discovery or other amongst the dust and documents. She felt again the euphoric pride when their romance was exposed amongst their colleagues, when they were the centre of attention, the focus of gossip and approval, soon enough the benchmark for love and romance.

And then she thought back to those short, secret trips to Derbyshire around the same time, to those exhilarating afternoons of sex with another man; the urgency to have her desire sated but to make her home-bound train. It’s really only now that she feels horror while she wonders what on earth all that was about, how bizarre it all was. At the time She’d divided her heart meticulously into two and coolly separated her body from her conscience. It had been intoxicatingly exciting for a while. It hadn’t felt wrong. But then her sisters found out. And, in retrospect, thank God for Cat and Pip badgering her on the finer points of morality. Thank God she chose Matt and he never found out. And thank God She’d grown out of all of that. And grown up. And most of all, thank God for her beautiful beautiful baby.

As Fen lay thinking, her hands subconsciously assessed the changes in her body. Really, she knew she ought to adore her post-birth figure, her fuller breasts and becoming curves. But lying there, squidging more than an inch to the pinch, she did not. Instead, she tormented herself with clear images of how her body had been when it was the object of all that sexual attention. Pert and lithe and powerful in its energy and desirability. Ultimately, though, it did not come down to aesthetics. Her body was no longer her own now. It was as if, in nurturing a baby, She’d renounced sole ownership. Though she was slowly scaling down breast-feeding she knew She’d never have the same freedom with her body, she wouldn’t be reclaiming it as her own.

Does Matt miss it? My body? Does he miss the way we were? I don’t like to think that he might. I haven’t asked him on purpose. I’ve just been hoping that his tolerant nature and all those ante-natal classes plus the magazines I leave lying around and the baby book That’s in the loo will have filtered through, will have put paid to any resentment or disaffection.

Anyway, what was all that spontaneity actually worth? Was it really such a privilege to be able to do as we pleased whenever we liked? I suppose I’m on a crusade of sorts – that what we have now completely outweighs what we were then. Surely Matt feels the same?

Django pottered around downstairs. He couldn’t find the crossword from the day before yesterday. He couldn’t even find today’s paper. Then he remembered He’d used one to wrap up the giblets. And He’d used another to wrap up the broken wine bottle which had tumbled onto the flagstone floor after He’d sloshed its contents into the stew with excessive flamboyance. Instead, with jazz playing softly, he tidied and swept and took lengthy breaks to sip a little whisky.

He had loved babysitting Cosima. She was an angel who hadn’t woken once but still He’d taken his responsibility gravely and hadn’t dared tidy or sweep or search for lost crosswords lest she should wake and he not hear her. Sipping whisky any earlier had been quite out of the question. He’d spent most of the evening intermittently creeping up the stairs to the point where he knew the treads would creak. He could sense the baby in the silence and He’d had a lovely evening, halfway up the stairs. He was pleased Cosima hadn’t woken because he wanted to be able to reassure Fen on her return. He hoped the fact would bolster her, encourage her to breathe a little more deeply in fresh space of her own, or even breathe a little more lightly in other spaces.

I can reason it out. I can see why. Couldn’t anybody? Her mother buggers off with a cowboy so Fen has decided she won’t be leaving her baby at all. That’s OK. That’s OK. It’s still relatively early days. But I hope all is well with Matt. I’ll invite them for a weekend soon. I’ll take him to the Rag. Or perhaps I’ll babysit and send the two of them there for a little them-time.

How lovely to have our Cat back in the bag. A relief that her accent is unmodified by her time abroad. She’s grown, She’s bloomed, She’s chopped off her hair and She’s home. I must have her and Ben up for a weekend too. He’s a good chap. I’ll try and find an opportune moment to slip in my little query. I’m sure It’s nothing but if he could just pop his doctor’s hat on for a minute or two I could ask him a couple of questions and be done with it. I don’t want to worry the girls, or waste my own GP’s time. It’s probably nothing. I’m probably daft for even noticing it. After all, I am growing old – I can hardly expect the rude health I used to enjoy.

Pip looks well. Whoever would have thought that the wilful girl who denounced any merit in love and money, found both in the good form of Zac? And a ready-made son too! Tom may officially be a stepson but that doesn’t place him on any lower rung in my affection. He’s my grandson-thing-or-other. And I’m most certainly his Gramps. I haven’t seen him for far too long, though I wrote him a letter in rhyme last week which I’ll try and remember to post when I’m in Bakewell next Tuesday.

Funny thing, blood ties. I don’t think of Tom as any less my grandchild than Cosima. Some pompous old genealogist wouldn’t even consider me a grandfather. I’d be stuck out on a limb on a sub-branch of some silly conventional family tree. But the girls do and the children do and That’s what counts. My nit-pickin’ chicks, back together in the embrace of our funny family.

PENNY ERICSSON

On the other side of the Atlantic, it is still the day before and Penny Ericsson is wondering how to handle the hollow stretch of another evening alone. This is her twenty-fourth since Bob, her husband of thirty years, died. And though friends have ensured that she does not often spend long tracts of time on her own, Penny has felt utterly alone whether she has company or not.

Her house is immaculate. She is not hungry. She doesn’t care for television. There’s nothing to do but grieve. In some ways, it makes sense of her life. You love, you lose, you grieve for ever more.

Even the staircase feels longer and steeper now Bob’s gone.

‘Life’s gonna be one long drag,’ Penny murmurs as she ventures downstairs because She’s been doing nothing upstairs for ages. She rotates all the scatter cushions from resting like squares on the two large sofas to perching like rhombs. She changes the angle of the many framed photographs on the mantelpiece so that they all seem to be standing in line to the right. She chooses two large art books from the shelves to replace the current photography books on the coffee table. She sits beside them and laughs hysterically. So many places to sit, so much time. Too much time. She decides the scatter cushions look ridiculous and they should live up to their name so she chucks them around the sofas until she feels they’ve found their natural grouping. Still she doesn’t fancy sitting there. She gazes at Bob’s chair and her laughter is stilled by a sigh that seems to start in the pit of her gut and expels every molecule of breath in her body.

‘You know, I always thought you were ugly and nothing but,’ she says. ‘I mean, my cooker may be ugly but I like it. But you, you I never liked. If I’d had my way I’d’ve sent you back just as soon as you arrived.’ She looks out of the window. More snow. ‘Think what I could’ve had here without you taking up all the space. You’re the ugliest chair in the world. With some things, you can appreciate that form simply follows function. My summer sandals for example. If they were pretty I’ll bet you they wouldn’t be comfortable. But look at you – You’re ugly and you don’t even look like you’d be comfortable.’

There’s someone at the door. A rattle of friendly knocks followed by a ring of the bell.

‘Penny? Penny honey – you home?’

It’s Marcia and She’s gonna let herself in anyway.

‘Pen? It’s me. I’ve brought soup. Snow’s said to be bad tomorrow. You in here?’

‘In here,’ Penny’s voice filters through to the kitchen where Marcia has put the soup on the stove. She goes through to the sitting-room to find Penny.

‘Hey you.’

‘Hullo, Marcia.’

‘You sitting in the dark on the coffee table for a reason? You want me to get some lights on in here?’

‘Sure. I didn’t see It’s gotten dark. I’ve been sitting here, Lord knows how long, cussing Bob’s chair.’

‘Cussing Bob’s chair,’ Marcia says sagely. ‘Well, you never did like that thing.’

‘If the first sign of madness is talking to oneself, then talking to a chair must make me insane. But hell, It’s ugly.’

‘Ah – but is it comfortable?’

Suddenly Penny finds She’s laughing again. Marcia seems taken aback. ‘You know something, I don’t know! I never even sat on it! I never tried!’

Marcia’s eyebrows, tweezered into supercilious arches, shoot heavenwards. ‘In thirty years, you never sat on it once?’

‘Not once.’

The notion is simultaneously idiotic and rather amazing. ‘Was that out of pure stubbornness?’

‘A little,’ Penny smiles forlornly, ‘but then you see, Bob was usually sitting there himself.’

Marcia sits down alongside Penny and places a hand gently on her arm. They gaze over to the chair, both trying to privately conjure Bob – any image of him, at any point over the years – sitting in his chair. Marcia finds she can do so with ease; for Penny It’s impossible.

When is his face going to come back to me? Why can’t I remember how tall he was? Which way did he position his legs when he sat in that chair?

‘Did you ever see Bob sit anyplace other?’ Penny remarks wistfully.

‘You know what,’ Marcia marvels gently, ‘no I did not.’

‘For thirty years I’ve been complaining about it – I told Bob over and again that it was a clumpy, ugly thing, out of keeping with all our other furniture. But he wouldn’t consider looking at an alternative. He’d sit there, relaxed as you like, while I cussed.’ Penny gives just a little laugh. ‘I can throw it out now,’ she says, with dull triumph, ‘I can dump it outside. I can have it chopped up for the fire.’

‘Oh don’t chop it up, my dear,’ Marcia takes Penny at her word. ‘Perhaps the refuge – they might find a good home for it?’

‘Perhaps,’ says Penny. Then she frowns. ‘You know something, crazy as it sounds, I couldn’t bear to. All these years I’ve been hating it. But just now, this instant, I love it. It’s just where It’s always been. And here it shall stay. I’ll give it a good home – right here. How insane is that?’

‘Honey, are you doing OK?’ Marcia asks tenderly, giving Penny’s arm a squeeze of wordless sympathy and concern.

‘No. I’m not,’ Penny states confidently, sucking in her bottom lip so hard her face looks turtle-like and inappropriately comic.

‘It’s been less than a month,’ Marcia almost doesn’t want to remind her.

‘Twenty-four days,’ Penny shrugs.

‘Honey,’ Marcia tries to soothe though she feels impotent in the presence of such pain.

‘What am I going to do without him?’ Penny asks. ‘What else do I have?’

Suddenly, Marcia is acutely aware of the fact that her own husband is just fine. Just down the street and just fine. It’s almost embarrassing. She feels guilty. And She’s horribly aware that next week, she’ll be swanning off to their winter home in Florida. ‘Why don’t we all go to Boca for the winter?’ she says. ‘I mean, Mickey and I are planning to leave next week but there’s so much room for you too. Oh say you’ll come. Stay as long as you fancy. I’d love it. It would be good, Penny.’

‘I’ll be fine here,’ Penny says, surprising herself at how decisive she sounds. ‘This is my home.’

‘You know you can just call whenever? Come whenever?’ Marcia says. She looks out of the window. ‘I’d better go – It’s snowing hard now. You eat that soup. I’ll call you later. I’ll see myself out.’

‘Thanks for stopping by,’ Penny says and She’s ready for Marcia to go. She wants to be on her own, free to grieve, free to drift into a space where just perhaps she might feel Bob still. A semi-dreamland.

She listens to the muffled sound of Marcia’s car driving through the fresh snow and away. She turns the lights out in the sitting-room and stands in the darkness quietly. The snow sends silver glances into the room. The moonlight silhouettes the hills as a lumbering but benign presence. Penny wishes she hadn’t rubbished clairvoyance and the concept of the Spirit. Because just say it is for real, say it really does exist – has she jinxed herself by being a cynic most of her life? Are you there? Can I sense you? Is that you I can hear? How was your day, honey? Can I fix you a drink? You sit yourself down in your chair. That goddam ugly chair. Let me fetch you a Scotch. Then you can tell me about your day.

‘I never even sat in that chair.’

Penny goes to it and sits down. She has no idea whether the chair is comfortable or not. It is as close as she can now get to being with Bob again. She sleeps.

HOME FROM HOME

Cat sat at the table, in the furnished flat she and Ben were renting, tracing a pattern someone else had gouged into the wood at some point. Some previous tenant with little respect, she assumed with distaste. As she ran her finger over it, she considered perhaps it wasn’t wilful carving, it might even be as old as the table – a slip of the original carpenter’s chisel? It was a nice piece of old farmhouse pine. Ben watched Cat work her middle finger along the furrow as if she was gouging it anew.

‘Are you OK, babe?’ he asked, looking from one tub of fresh pasta sauce to another. He held them to Cat for final selection.

‘Arabiata,’ she said. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Liar,’ said Ben. ‘What’s up?’ He left the sauce to simmer and sat, cowboy style, astride the chair next to Cat. He brought his face to the level of hers. Cat looked at him, stuck out her bottom lip in an over-exaggerated pout that she knew would invite a kiss, and shrugged.

‘How are your sisters?’ he asked. ‘How’s Django? Everything was all right up there, wasn’t it?’

‘God, fine,’ Cat assured him. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that It’s all changed a little since we’ve been gone. I suppose I was expecting to find my life, my family, just as I left them. As if they’d been happily freeze-framed in anticipation of my return.’

‘And?’ Ben said.

‘Now Django’s going to be seventy-five,’ Cat said quietly.

‘You staying in the UK the last four years couldn’t have prevented that,’ Ben pointed out.

‘And Pip is more sensible than she used to be,’ Cat bemoaned. ‘By that I mean She’s all settled and content with her grown-up role as a school-run stepmum.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ben asked. ‘And aren’t you settled and content?’

‘Of course I am, you know I am,’ said Cat. ‘But Pip’s the one who should be doing cartwheels down the hallway, who makes teaspoons disappear and then reappear from behind my ear. She didn’t do one handstand against the wall this weekend.’

‘It was the weekend. She was off duty,’ Ben pointed out. ‘It’s normal for people to not want to take their work home with them. Imagine if I came home with my stethoscope, or took the blood pressure of any visitors to our house.’

‘But we don’t own a house,’ Cat mumbled, ‘just this horrid rented flat.’

‘Cat!’ Ben remonstrated. ‘We’ve been back in the UK two bloody minutes.’

Cat ignored him by changing the subject. ‘Fen is in the throes of this immense love affair with her baby and she can talk of nothing else.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Ben asked. Cat shrugged.

She wasn’t prepared to say out loud that though her niece was utterly adorable, she had found Fen uptight, boring even.

‘They’re not who they were,’ Cat said. ‘Their identities have changed.’ She could hear the plaintive edge to her voice.

‘That’s par for the course – growing up, growing old,’ Ben said, though he saw his wife flinch from his cheeriness. ‘Anyway, they probably find you different too. But That’s no bad thing.’

‘I don’t like this place,’ Cat said, irritated. ‘I don’t like other people’s furniture. I don’t like stupid Clapham. I want to be in our own place, with our stuff. Perhaps we should have rented unfurnished. Perhaps we should have stayed in the US. It’s all going to take ages.’

Ben looked at her, suddenly serious. ‘Nothing’s going to happen overnight,’ he said. ‘it’ll take a while to attain Pip’s peace of mind and Fen’s healthy baby. Nine months at the very least.’

Cat thought for a moment. Perhaps that was it – perhaps she didn’t resent her sisters their changes, perhaps she aspired to what they had. Or there again maybe it was just jet lag.

‘I’ll tell you what was peculiar,’ she said. ‘Fen talked about how being a mother had made her really think about our own mother. It had me thinking too.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘But say. Just say.’ She looked imploringly at Ben, as if he might know what without her having to just say.

‘Just say what?’ he asked.

Cat paused. ‘Just say It’s hereditary?’ ‘But you just said that Fen is a caring mother to the point of being obsessed,’ Ben said carefully.

Cat glanced at him shyly. She shook her head. ‘I don’t mean Fen. Say it runs in the family. Say I’ll be a crap mother? Maybe I should concentrate on my career for the time being.’

Ben thought for a moment, scratched his neck. ‘Actually, genetics rarely play a part in such extreme behaviour,’ he said. ‘For all you know, your mother sucks in her bottom lip – like you do – and That’s the only family trait you’ve inherited from her. Think of Fen – mother superior, however much she might irritate you. Think of Pip – her maternal connection with Tom is great and there’s no blood there. You McCabe girls are all destined to be extraordinary mothers – by virtue of the fact that your own set such a poor example.’

He watched Cat start to thaw. He ruffled her hair and she ruffled his. Then they put their foreheads together for a moment.

‘Being a mother is a state of mind, a condition of the heart, as much as it is biological,’ Ben said. ‘Christ, look at Django – He’s the best mother you girls could have wished for. Stop worrying, Cat. You’ll be a star.’

‘Do you really think so?’ Cat asked, a little bashful but privately delighted.

‘I do,’ said Ben, ‘but we have to get you pregnant first.’

Cat propped her head, chin in her hand, and looked over to Ben. ‘It’s what I love about you,’ she said in an intentionally dreamy tone, ‘that you know me inside out but I never feel I’m getting on your nerves. You love me in spite of my foibles. You’re so tolerant. That’s what I so love about you – that you so love me.’

‘Stop it,’ Ben joshed, getting up and checking his pager, ‘you make me sound a wuss. And anyway, I thought you loved me for my enormous dick.’

‘I cannot believe that I’m going to spend my Saturday traipsing around Alexandra Palace at a convention of model railway nutters and their train sets!’ Pip declared, only half joking, surveying the hall and its eccentric population.

Zac raised his eyebrows. ‘Firstly, It’s the Thames and District Society of Model Engineers. Secondly, if it wasn’t for me, you’d have to spend every Saturday dressed ridiculously trying to entertain roomloads of sugar-crazed party children.’

Pip fanned out her fingers in front of her sulky expression, then furled them away to reveal a winsome look with much batting of doe eyes. Zac crossed his arms and regarded her sternly. She fanned and then furled her fingers once more, reinstating a natural grin to her face.

‘Thirdly,’ Zac continued, ‘we haven’t had Tom for two weekends in a row.’

Pip nodded. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’m only joking.’

‘Look at him,’ Zac said softly, noting that his son had teamed up with a new-found posse of young rail boffins, ‘He’s in his element.’

Tom was a thoughtful child; not shy, popular at school, but thoughtful. Zac had a theory that boys were divided into two camps: football and fantasy. His nine-year-old son was firmly in the fantasy camp. It wasn’t that the restrictions of his eczema ruled out football, it was that Tom’s natural interests were dominated by trains and dinosaurs. My son the trainspotter who knows his connector rods from his couplings, Zac would say with pride. My son who could spell pterodactyl before he could spell his own name, Zac would beam.

Watching an animated Tom admiring the array of essential pieces of kit and name-dropping each model engine from at least fifty paces with his new pals, Pip was consumed by a totally unexpected pang. It was like an electric shock and she jolted physically.

‘Are you OK?’ Zac asked.

Pip nodded earnestly and went off at a tangent to dislodge the thought. ‘Django called us lot the “nit-pickin’ chicks” last weekend.’

‘That’s a fine Djangoism if ever I heard one,’ Zac laughed, strolling on to the next stand.

‘He hasn’t called us that for ages. Mind you, It’s been a while since the three of us sat like that,’ Pip said wistfully. ‘We always used to, when we were little – gravitate into a huddle, play with each other’s hair, trace patterns on each other’s clothes, tickle each other’s forearms. We do it absent-mindedly.’

‘Nit-pickin’ chicks,’ Zac mused. ‘I’d’ve called you a bunch of monkeys, I think. Did you ever actually have nits?’

Pip laughed. ‘I do remember that we all had them at the same time – some epidemic at school. But of course Django couldn’t be doing with those torture combs and vile chemical shampoos so he doused our hair in some bizarre concoction of mustard powder and bicarbonate of soda. Or something. Tabasco. I don’t know.’

‘Did it work?’

‘The daft thing is, I can’t remember,’ Pip laughed. ‘I can only remember feeling slightly miffed that not even a case of head lice was going to make Django conform to conventional methods. I do remember the three of us having pretty short haircuts soon after. Django appeased us by saying our hair was so glorious that He’d been able to sell the offcuts to a master upholsterer in London and we would each be paid £5. We believed him. Even though the salon junior was sweeping it all away.’

‘And you were £5 richer?’

‘We were,’ Pip laughed, ‘though of course, Django made a rod for his back because we expected payment for every haircut thereafter.’

‘You must have done well, between the master upholsterer and the tooth fairy,’ Zac said.

‘The tooth fairy never paid cash,’ Pip bemoaned.

‘Can I have some money?’ a flushed and rather breathless Tom jogged over to ask. ‘I’d like to buy the guys a juice. They’re 50p each. I need about £2.’

Pip looked over to where the other three boys were loitering by a spectacular G Scale display. ‘They seem nice,’ she said, ‘nice guys.’

‘They are,’ said Tom proudly. ‘They’re coming again tomorrow. It’s the last day of the show. There’s a prize draw. A model of Lampton Tank. Can we come again too?’

‘Sure,’ Zac told Tom, and Pip took a deep breath. Hadn’t they planned to take Tom to Tate Modern and then have lunch with Cat and Ben? Yes, father and son hadn’t had a whole weekend together for three weeks but Tom had met Cat only a handful of times over the last four years. However, watching Tom belt off to buy refreshments for his steam gang, Pip let her breath and the objection go. He was a sweet, sweet boy.

Again, the pang confronted Pip and she shuddered. Zac sensed it. ‘Pip?’

‘Do you think Tom minds?’ she asked Zac. ‘I mean, do you think he ever minds being an only child?’

Zac looked at Pip and frowned into thought. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said at length, ‘I mean, He’s never mentioned it. He has plenty of pals and He’s thick as thieves with his first cousin.’

‘I know,’ Pip rushed, ‘I just meant. I was just thinking about my sisters. Our closeness. I read a lovely saying the other day – Vietnamese, I think. Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet.’

Zac kissed Pip. ‘Well, worry no more,’ he said, ‘because Tom isn’t to be an only child for much longer. I mean, he may be our only child, but He’s soon to have a sibling. June is pregnant. She told me this morning when I picked Tom up. He doesn’t know yet – June wants to wait till the tests are all-clear. Rob asked me if we’d mind having Tom an extra night now and then while June is feeling ropy.’

Pip was dumbstruck, felt flushed and suddenly light-headed.

‘Are you sure You’re OK?’ Zac pressed. ‘You look a little odd, Mrs.’

‘I’m fine. Good for June. Great news. I’ll call her later. Odd, though,’ Pip said, though she was aware that her thoughts were unreliably half-formed and should stay silent until worked through, ‘odd that Tom’s being was the result of two friends getting drunk, feeling horny and being careless – yet his half sibling has been meticulously planned. I wonder how he’ll feel about that later on.’

Zac stopped. ‘What a weird take on it all, Pip,’ he murmured.

Pip shrugged. ‘I used to wonder if I was planned, you see,’ she said. ‘I used to presume that I wasn’t planned – because that meant my mother had some kind of excuse for buggering off.’ Pip linked arms with Zac. ‘But then I think of Fen and Cat and my theory goes out the window. No one could be that careless.’

Zac slipped his hand into the back pocket of Pip’s jeans and gave her buttock a light feel. ‘Well, I’m pleased for June and Rob. And I’m made up for Tom.’

‘Me too,’ Pip said, ‘me too.’ But she turned away from Zac to conceal the prickle of tears, feigning interest in a Hornby set-up, while trying to figure out the provenance of these tears. And whether they were happy or sad.

Cosima was fed orange food, entertained, fed more orange food, played with, bathed, given some bosom, sung to, cuddled, cuddled some more and placed gently in her cot where She’d promptly fallen into a blissful sleep with the revolving night light and an Elvis for Babies CD playing softly.

‘Perfect perfect baby,’ Fen thought to herself as she padded out of the room. ‘Bloody awful day.’

She went to the bathroom and tidied up, catching sight of herself in the mirror.

‘Yuk. You haggard old bag.’

With a rubber duck in one hand and a Miffy flannel in the other, she peered closer at her reflection. Sallow and saggy, limp and lacklustre, hollow and haggard, she thought. Then she thought, poor old Matt. Fancy coming home to this every evening. Not much to fancy at all. So she rummaged around in her long-forsaken make-up bag and turned to her faithful Clarins mainstays for assistance. Just closing her eyes and slowly, properly, cleansing her face felt as heavenly as a spa facial. Exfoliate. Moisturize. A careful dab of concealer under the eyes, a swipe of mascara, a lick of lippy for the hell of it. Lastly, a few pinches to her cheeks which made her eyes smart a little but gave her cheek-bones a comely emphasis. Matt’s key in the door. Hear Matt sigh. A dormant butterfly taking wing in her stomach. Here, Matt, this’ll make you feel better.

‘Hullo,’ Fen said, walking downstairs, carefully tucking her hair behind her ears.

‘Hiya,’ Matt replied. ‘You look – have you got make-up on?’

‘Yup.’

‘Why?’

Fen frowned and wondered which way to take this. She felt helpless not to opt for the wrong way. ‘Because I feel a frump and I feel I look worse than I feel,’ she snapped.

‘Are you fishing for compliments and craving attention?’ Matt teased her. Fen felt embarrassed.

‘Well, I think you look very pretty,’ said Matt, ‘and It’s a nice distraction from the baby puke on your top.’

Fen didn’t know which to take off first, the make-up or her messy top.

By the end of a rerun episode of Taggart, Fen was chanting to herself, I will instigate sex; I will, I will. But by the end of News at Ten half an hour later, she was willing herself to simply stay awake.

‘Tired?’ Matt asked.

Ruefully, Fen nodded.

‘Go to bed,’ he suggested with a friendly pat to her knee.

And therein lay the calamity. As much as Fen feared the platonic mundanity of Matt’s knee-patting, she loved his suggestion that she go to bed. She still wanted Matt to desire her, she thought she wanted to desire him, but actually her strongest inclination at the moment was to go to sleep. She sat beside him, torn between what her body was shouting at her and what her conscience was whispering and what her partner was sweetly telling her.

‘I was trying to be all vampy for you,’ she confessed, ‘like the girl you fell for. But I’m just a tired old frump.’

‘Fen,’ Matt said, ‘don’t worry about it. Just go to bed.’

Fen had looked nice. Matt thought about it as he zapped TV channels. The messy top didn’t matter. He felt a little badly for her – She’d made an effort but an effort it had obviously been. There was nothing on television. Matt looked around the living-room. A soft towelling rabbit on the armchair, one tiny sock under it. A muslin square, scrunched up, on top of yesterday’s Evening Standard. A glob of something orange just above the skirting board. The all-pervasive scent of laundry washed in hypo-allergenic powder. But suddenly, Matt didn’t want to smell drying babygros. He snapped his eyes shut. He didn’t want to see any of these accoutrements of fatherhood. Actually, all he wanted to see was tits and arse. Quietly, he tiptoed up to the bedroom. It was dark, Fen was sleeping. Could he wake her? Would she mind? Dare he risk it? But realistically, was there really much point trying? He went instead to the cupboard, eased open the door, waited a moment to see if She’d woken. She hadn’t. By feel, he differentiated between the suits that were hanging there, found the Paul Smith one according to its superior cloth. He slipped his hand into the pocket and tiptoed his fingers along the edges of some discs. One would do. It didn’t matter which. Though Fen slept on oblivious, Matt still felt obliged to tuck the DVD up his jumper and hurry from the room as noiselessly as He’d entered.

Porn. Odd stuff, really. In reality, pneumatic women had never been Matt’s type, let alone the stuff harboured in secret fantasies. He’d never pursued a situation of sharing a girl with another bloke, exotic underwear had never really turned him on and he could take or leave the thought of getting down with a pair of rampant twin sisters. But Matt had always enjoyed porn. He’d been sustained by top-shelf supplies as a teenager, even wondering if sex for real could ever match up to the thunderous wanks he indulged in. And then in his early twenties, purchasing hardcore videos by mail order became a rite of passage. Did he dare? Yes he did. Matt Holden became Mr M. Smith and Mr M. Smith shared his consignments amongst the lads with whom he lived. By his mid-twenties, Matt was a serial monogamist and there were rarely fallow periods long enough between girlfriends to warrant the purchase of new porn. But then his girlfriend had become the mother of his child, their sex life had dwindled and porn had progressed to DVD.

Tiptoeing back downstairs, he didn’t check which disc He’d pulled out. He’d never been one for the stories; he never had to start a scene from the beginning. He wanted cunts and cocks to fill his screen just as soon as he pressed play; fast forward any kissing or slinky foreplay, just delve in deep to the fucking and sucking. Matt loaded a disc and, with the sitting-room door ajar and the TV volume low, skipped forward until a mêlée of bodies was having sex in his face. Fantastic, he commented under his breath, as a variously pierced woman with a shorn head and spiked dog-collar was simultaneously being double penetrated, wanked upon, and orally stuffed from an incongruously orderly queue of erections.

Matt masturbated frantically and synchronized his orgasm with a generalized spurting from the remainder of his on-screen cohorts who were not yet spent. Their spunk was gobbled up; Matt had to mop up his from his belly. He didn’t realize until He’d done it that He’d used the muslin square his daughter nustled up to, not the sheets of kitchen paper He’d prepared in advance. He was aghast. He put the soiled muslin into a plastic bag, knotted it and then threw it away in the dustbin outside. He wouldn’t even want it washed on the hottest cycle. He took his DVD and made his way quietly upstairs, putting it back in the pocket of his Paul Smith suit before going in to check on Cosima. He slipped into bed and lay in the dark, staring at an approximation of the ceiling. He felt utterly empty.

I’ve always thought a wank to porn is similar to a curry. The sort of thing one craves, one hungers for. You’re absolutely in the mood, so looking forward to it, ravenous to the point of visible drool – poppadams or a smooth little blow-job scene to whet the appetite and get you started, then straight for the glut of hot and spicy. Stuff it in. Gorge. But like a curry, once you’ve had your fill you really don’t want to look at what’s left on your plate; so it is with hard-core – once You’re done you just don’t want to see any more.

I feel grubby and not nice. I wanked into my baby’s muslin. Fen’s asleep upstairs while downstairs I’m shooting my load with a bunch of blokes over some really quite ugly woman. Physically I’m relieved, sated. But I feel a bit, I don’t know – sad.

He listened to Fen’s breathing, soft and shallow. Turning towards her he spooned lightly against her. The sleep-scent wafted from her neck. Matt closed his eyes.

My sexy girlfriend who I used to fuck became this amazing vessel who carried and bore my child. But I miss fucking my sexy girlfriend.

WINTER ICE

‘Perhaps I’ll thaw when spring comes,’ Penny muttered to herself, a gaze at the wide white world beyond her picture windows informing her that she could thus stay exactly as she was for a good couple of months still. Her solitude and grief felt cathartic, they were becoming a way of life though she quietly wondered if they risked becoming a habit that would soon be hard to break. Penny Ericsson may have lived in the States for most of her adult life and though her accent was commendable and she had not left the country for practically thirty years, she displayed a control when it came to expressing emotions that her friends fondly remarked was transparently English.

‘Oh honey,’ Marcia once laughed, ‘you fool no one with your rhinestones and your blue jeans and your Chevy and all. You’re still an English Rose at heart – and That’s because you keep your heart all polite and proper.’

‘You mean to say that English women are incapable of expressing their emotions?’ Penny had retorted.

‘Heavens no,’ Marcia had said, ‘It’s just we guys gush, while you chaps are more, well, sparing. It’s genetic, is all. Nothing any of us can do about it. We are who we are. Can’t deny that.’

And yet just recently, Penny felt her all-American friends, with their gushing and their ability to frequently say I love you, now seemed to expect her grief to have lessened. That she ought to feel able to find closure, be ready to move on, and confront a host of other emotional achievements carrying the Oprah Winfrey seal of approval.

Noni had left her a message, inviting her to see a movie at the Mall.

‘I’ll not go,’ Penny told herself and justified that it was because she didn’t share Noni’s taste in film. Really, she didn’t want to have to act upbeat and lie that she was doing just fine. But what else to do? What might pass time, occupy a couple of hours of her day which would be otherwise devoted to the futility of missing Bob? Where could she go in her snowbound county on a bright February afternoon and not bump into a soul?

‘I could go for an ice cream,’ she said, and she found that the notion was sweet. In fact, she was nearly excited. She’d go in honour of Bob, who had always loved the stuff, and by venturing by herself back to their favourite parlour She’d be simultaneously closer to him while also laying just a little more of him to rest.

There was only the one road into the mountains, with three communities of decreasing scale placed along it. They’d developed organically but a town planner could not have done better. Nothing was duplicated. Everything was shared. Lester Falls, where Penny lived and the largest town, had the Mall and a cinema and a Pack’n’Save on the outskirts. The smaller Hubbardton’s Spring, further along and higher up, had a great fish place, a lively pizzeria, a gallery and a hardware store amongst its amenities. The last village, smallest in population but servicing the wider community no less, was Ridge. There, on Main Street, cosy alongside the bookstore, a small theatre, art supplies and a cheese maker, was Bob’s favourite ice-cream parlour, Fountains.

Supply and demand. Make superior ice cream from the finest ingredients and people will want it, whatever the weather. The parlour wasn’t busy, but it was by no means empty and Penny was relieved to see it wasn’t patronized solely by brave widows out for day-trips. Recently, when browsing at the Mall, or strolling the nature trail to the panorama, or visiting the library, Penny had passed other women who’d catch her eye and hold her gaze with a searching nod of recognition. Yes, I lost my husband too, you know, they seemed to say. Join the club.

But I don’t want to join your club, Penny would divert her gaze quickly, I’m not ready to be a widow. It’s different for me. You wouldn’t understand. I don’t want to nod knowingly back at you. I don’t want to learn to play bridge. I’m not going to buy a little dog to give me a reason to leave the house every day and join communal walks. I’m perfectly content to pop out for an ice cream. By myself.

‘You want a taste?’

Penny looked up. The waitress behind the counter was offering her a pink plastic spoon on which was a furl of ice cream the colour of butter and the texture of suede.

‘It’s a new flavour. Banudge-Nudge.’

‘Banudge-Nudge,’ Penny marvelled at the appetizing name, accepting the sample.

‘Banana, double fudge – half fat. Delicious, hey? You want a scoop?’

Penny glanced swiftly along across the colourful tubs like a pianist travelling the length of a keyboard with a single finger. ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘actually I think I’ll sit and have a sundae.’

‘You take a load off,’ the woman encouraged her. ‘Menus are on the tables. Juliette’ll be right over.’

Aren’t the staff great, Penny thought, they give you long enough with the menu so that You’re truly salivating and desperate to order. ‘I’ll have Chippy Chippy Bang Bang, please,’ she said, just as soon as she was aware that the waitress hovered, ‘with hot chocolate sauce. And nuts. And Lucky Charms. Hell, why not.’

The waitress brought over the sundae, perfectly presented in a pretty frosted dish, oozing with sauce and smothered in extras.

‘Enjoy,’ she said.

‘Oh, I will,’ Penny assured her, ‘thank you very much.’ She sensed the waitress linger, so with the long elegant spoon she dug up a glut of sundae and held it aloft as if to say cheers. Penny experienced a sensory burst that was delicious and exquisitely sweet and intensely painful. She closed her eyes. She closed her eyes to appreciate the taste. She closed her eyes because it hurt, because she suffered from sensitive gums and always seemed to forget the fact where ice cream was concerned. She closed her eyes because she used to bring Bob here when ice cream was the only thing he found digestible and that didn’t taste metallic from the chemotherapy. That was the sweetest thought, and That’s what hurt the most.

When Penny left, leaving an empty dish and a grateful tip, the waitress Juliette who had served her turned to Gloria behind the counter.

‘I recognize her – do you?’

‘Not especially,’ Gloria said.

‘Sure you do – she used to come in, with her husband I guess. You do remember him. He was sick. They used to sit right there. Sometimes She’d spoon it for him, feed him. Like a child.’

‘Hey, I do remember,’ said Gloria, ‘but that was a few months back.’

‘Yes. But today she comes in on her own,’ Juliette said.

‘You think he died?’

‘I guess,’ said Juliette. ‘Sad.’

Noni invited Penny to the cinema again the following week but Penny thanked her and declined, citing other plans. She took herself back to the ice-cream parlour, which was no less empty though the day was dull and the weather was now too cold to snow.

‘Hi,’ said the counter waitress, ‘have a taste.’ The pink spoon, today laden with an ice cream the colour of coal, was passed to Penny.

‘Liquorice,’ Penny said, having assessed it with the commitment of a sommelier.

‘And?’ said the waitress.

Penny tasted it again. ‘I’m not sure – there’s something. I can’t—’

‘Raspberry.’

‘Raspberry,’ Penny marvelled, ‘and liquorice. Fancy that.’ And she went to the same table She’d sat at the week before. The one in the window, furthest from the table in the corner she used to seat Bob at.

‘Hi, I’m Juliette,’ the younger waitress came over to take her order. ‘How are we today? You set?’

‘I’m good,’ said Penny, ‘and I’d like a scoop of that liquorice one.’

‘You should get a sherbet with that – brings out the flavour.’ Juliette was quite forthright about that. Penny looked up. The girl looked like a confection herself, in her uniform striped the colours of apricot and strawberry, her hair in a high pony-tail, a jaunty little pink-peaked thing on her head, her name in copperplate across it. ‘I’d recommend lychee,’ Juliette said and Penny nodded.

When Juliette brought the bowl over, Penny took a small taste and nodded her approval. Her gums didn’t seem so sensitive today. She didn’t have to close her eyes so often. But there again, She’d abstained from hot chocolate sauce or candy toppings. And Bob had not liked liquorice at all. She felt relaxed, as though she needn’t scurry away just as soon as she finished. So when the waitress suggested a cup of coffee, Penny accepted.

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ the waitress said after placing the cup and turning the saucer so that the handle was correctly placed. Penny looked up and read the girl’s name again. Juliette. Well, Juliette looked a little concerned. ‘I don’t mean to – well, Gloria and I, we just. We remember you from the summer, from the fall. You used to come in with the gentleman? He was – he was.’

How old? Penny thought. Early to mid-twenties, she guessed. Nice-looking in a plain way, perhaps nicer-looking on account of her politeness and her slightly shy sweetness.

‘Is he?’ Juliette was bending down a little, as if in a reverential curtsy. ‘Was he?’

‘He was my husband,’ Penny told her. ‘He died. Near enough two months ago.’

‘Oh I’m so sorry,’ said Juliette, instinctively clutching her heart for emphasis. It touched Penny. It was as if everyone, no matter how little they knew Bob, had been rooting for him to pull through.

‘Thank you,’ said Penny. ‘He sure loved this place.’

Penny returned two days later. Not to avoid any social invitation, nor because she had a craving for ice cream, but because Fountains felt like a nice place and seemed a good space to be. Comfort and warmth. Lovely warm chocolate sauce. Beautiful, pastel-coloured candy. Ice creams whose names brought a smile. Everything sweet. If you licked the blossom-coloured walls or bit the backs of the chairs, you’d probably discover they were made from candy. Everything there was sweet. The staff especially. They were like a personification of some of the ices. Pink Wink. Smile Sweetie.

When Juliette brought over Honey in Heaven, with chocolate sauce and marshmallows, Penny spooned into it but then spoke before tasting. ‘We were married thirty years nearly,’ she said. She looked up. Juliette didn’t seem taken aback by the information, her expression invited Penny to continue. ‘He called me dear. Always did, right from the start. Good morning, dear. Well dear, I’ll be off to work now. I’m home, dear. What a nice supper, dear, shall I fix the coffee? It may have sounded formal, but I always heard it as charming and old-fashioned.’ Penny tasted the ice cream. Heavenly indeed. She had two more spoonfuls but Juliette stood beside her, quietly attentive. ‘I guess you wouldn’t call us a lovey-dovey couple. But we were a good team.’

Juliette was shaking her head shyly. ‘I watched you feed him,’ she said very quietly. ‘That’s far more beautiful than lovey-dovey. It must be so hard – but I guess It’s a blessing that his suffering should be over, that he is at peace.’

‘I’m not a superstitious type,’ Penny said, working her spoon busily against the sundae as she spoke, ‘I don’t believe in astro-mumbo-jumbo, I pooh-pooh voices from the dead, I don’t do karma and yin-yang spirit guides; you know? But when Bob was fading I’d whisper to him, over and over, Find a way, Bob, find a way to be with me. Stay in touch. Send a message. Show me a sign. Promise me?’

‘I believe,’ Juliette confided with quiet earnestness, while Penny ate.

‘Nothing,’ Penny said gruffly as if disappointed by Juliette’s response. ‘I haven’t seen any signs, I haven’t felt warmth – nothing at all. Just the icy emptiness of being on my own.’ Her hand formed a fist around the spoon, the skin so taut across her knuckles they looked like the snow-sharp mountains outside. ‘There is no blessing,’ she ridiculed. ‘He shouldn’t have suffered in the first place. Death is not a good thing. It’s very cruel and It’s a waste.’ She didn’t finish her ice cream and she didn’t leave a tip. And she didn’t go again the following week.

But she did return the week after that. And she felt her eyes smart at the bright sweetness of the welcome Juliette gave her. Fountains, she decided, was better than any support group. ‘Hey stranger, you missed out on Chuckle Berry last week. Gloria will give you a taste. You sitting?’

Penny sat. She managed to make the sundae last an hour and at any opportunity, she passed the time with the waitresses about the weather, or about ice cream. Then she ordered coffee. And a refill. She was obviously lingering but no one, herself included, was quite sure for what.

‘My father passed,’ Juliette told her, when she accepted a second refill.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Penny said, genuinely shocked. She’d practically forgotten that grief could befall other people. ‘Can you sit awhile?’ Penny asked. Juliette glanced around the parlour, raised her eyebrow at Gloria who gave her a nod. ‘When?’

‘Coming up to a year and I need to tell you that I think death is a great thing. He was a rotten drunk and he hurt me and my mom. So I guess I envy you a little,’ Juliette said with a reluctant smile. ‘Not your pain, not the longing that must weave the minutes into the hours and drag your hours into these dark days right now. But I envy you the fact that your loss is so great because your love itself was so great. I never had that.’

Penny didn’t know where to put herself. For the first time she experienced the guilt that she assumed her own friends were feeling. The guilt at one’s own good fortune. She put her hand over Juliette’s wrist because she was lost for words. She didn’t know what to say because recently Bob was all she really talked about. Just then, though, she wasn’t actually thinking about him at all.

ROAD KILL

Pip butters toast, Zac is skim-reading the Financial Times and the Today programme drifts sedately through the kitchen; not loud enough to be an active part of breakfast but audible enough to be an integral component in their morning routine. Pip knows to savour these few minutes before Tom breaches the peace.

And here he is. Hastily dressed for school. His nine-year-old physique spurting in fits and starts; just recently his feet have apparently doubled in length yet the softness of his peachy cheeks remains unchanged from when he was a toddler. His fingernails exhibit the indelible grubbiness commensurate with a boy of his age but the pale pitch of his voice seems so pure and clean. His hair truly has an energy of its own and Tom is not yet of an age to exhibit much interest in styling or even basic control. Consequently, it tufts itself into increasingly haphazard configurations, caused as much by spasmodic keratin production as by the freedom of such deep sleep. Today, it resembles something that the forefathers of punk rock spent hours trying to achieve.

‘Happy St David’s Day,’ Tom announces. ‘we’re doing it in school today.’

‘Good Lord,’ Pip declares, ‘It’s the mad March hair.’

Zac looks up from his paper. ‘Or the mad March heir,’ he quips though neither Pip nor Tom cotton on to the pun. It’s too early to hear silent ‘h’s. It’s too early to have to explain, thinks Zac, returning to the pink pages.

Pip attempts to smooth down Tom’s hair with her hand. He shirks away and ruffles up Pip’s meddling. ‘Toast?’ she asks.

‘Yep,’ Tom says. Zac glances over his paper. ‘Please,’ Tom adds with a sigh.

‘Do you want to go through your piece?’ Pip asks.

Tom looks alarmed. ‘My piece?’

‘For assembly this morning? On the patron saints of the British Isles. Aren’t you St George?’

‘Oh. That. I thought you meant my piece of toast,’ says Tom. ‘Digby says that the dragon is a metaphor. But he doesn’t even know what a metaphor is.’

‘And do you?’

‘No,’ says Tom, ‘but it sounds boring, like something Miss Balcombe would go on about. And on and on. Yawns-ville.’

‘Well, would you like to go through your piece about St George?’ Pip asks.

‘I know it off by heart,’ Tom says proudly, and launches into a fast, monotone delivery. Pip can see the Financial Times quivering. She surreptitiously kicks Zac under the table. Tom finishes his recitation to applause from the table and the 8 a.m. GMT pips from the radio.

‘If babies are such a great thing, if They’re such a miracle and stuff – why do they make their mums so poorly and so mega grumpy?’

Pip wasn’t prepared for this. Usually when she walked Tom to school she was entertained with a diatribe of the personal hygiene habits and physiognomic misfortunes of his teachers, which merely required tuts of her disapproval whilst she bit back laughter.

‘Seems a bit stupid to me,’ Tom continued darkly. Pip wasn’t sure what to say. Was Tom about to probe for the facts of life? She felt uneasy, having not yet discussed with Zac the information and terminology he was prepared to give his son. ‘Did I do that to her, to my mum, do you think? When she was having me, did I make her puke like mad and be a grumpy old moo?’

Tom was asking Pip about something on which she had actually no authority to answer. ‘Perhaps,’ she answered cautiously, having never actually discussed the vagaries of June’s first pregnancy, ‘but excuse me, young man, your mum is not an old moo.’

‘But she is grumpy,’ Tom muttered. ‘I thought she would be chuffed about having a baby but all she does is grumble and puke.’ He allowed Pip to take his wrist as they made to cross the road. ‘there’s going to be buckets of blood too, of course, when the baby comes. And do you think Mum’ll scream her head off – like that woman on Holby City last week?’

Pip couldn’t really answer that one, not knowing June’s take on epidurals.

‘I can see why you don’t want all that madness,’ Tom said darkly, with much sage nodding.

‘Pardon?’

‘You and Dad,’ Tom shrugged. ‘Don’t tell my mum I said stuff like that about her and stuff.’

Pip and Tom were about to step off the kerb when they saw the squirrel. Tom was still young enough to point and declare ‘Hey! Squirrel!’ as it bolted into the road. And then came the car at the same time and they both foresaw the death of the squirrel by a second or so.

‘Oh God,’ Pip gasped, helpless not to be transfixed by the spatter of guts, the barb of torn limbs, the stark stare of sudden death.

‘Gross!’ Tom said, not quite sure if he was thrilled or distraught.

‘we’ll cross the road further down,’ Pip said.

‘Do you think It’s really dead?’ asked Tom.

‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘I do.’

‘Oh.’

‘Poor little thing.’ ‘Poor little thing. Do you think it was a boy or a girl?’

They crossed the road and Pip began to gamely tell Tom that babies didn’t cause their mums to feel poorly and be grumpy, all that was down to chemicals causing a lady’s body to be able to grow and carry a baby. And anyway, mums and dads so want to have babies that a bit of yukkiness now and then didn’t matter at all in the long run.

‘Tom?’

Tom was quietly sobbing though the school gates were in sight.

‘Your mum is fine – please don’t you worry about her. She doesn’t mean to be grumpy and she can’t help feeling a bit yuk.’ Pip gave Tom a hug. ‘Do you want your dad to talk to her? I promise you she can’t wait to give you a little baby brother or sister.’

‘Not the baby,’ Tom sniffed, ‘the squirrel.’

happy st david’s day!!! Pxxx

Fen stared at the text message Pip had sent her and wondered for a moment whether St David’s Day was something She’d forgotten that they celebrated despite having no Welsh blood in the family. Funny old Pip, Fen smiled, texting back.

and to you. F + C xx

Fen knew Pip would start to text her at length but soon tire of the thumb effort and phone her instead. The call came a couple of minutes later.

‘Happy St David’s Day.’

‘Same to you, with bells on.’

‘What are you up to today?’

‘Oh, the usual – puréeing things, changing nappies, singing daft songs, spending the afternoon with women I have nothing in common with other than postcode and the fact that our babies were born in the same month.’

‘Shall we meet up, then? I’m not clowning today – and I’d love to see Cosima. And you.’

Fen looked around her home. It was a tip. She ought to prioritize the chores and say no. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘That’ll be lovely.’

‘Kenwood?’ Pip suggested. ‘It’s equidistant. Let’s have coffee and cake. See you in an hour or so?’

Fen looked at the clock. It was ten o’clock and though Cosima was dressed beautifully in Catimini, Fen was still in her dressing gown. She opened her wardrobe and perused her pre-pregnancy Agnès B skirts and John Smedley cardigans. It was a perverse, masochistic ritual she taunted herself with almost daily. She didn’t dare hold them against herself, let alone try them on; scrambling instead into yesterday’s cargo pants. Packing Cosima in a snowsuit that made the baby resemble the offspring of the Michelin Man and Laa-Laa the Teletubby, Fen crammed essentials and non-essentials into the changing bag and just about remembered to grab her own jacket before heading out of the house.

Big Red Bus, Cosima!

Look at that little fluffy doggie!

Can you see the blue car, baby girl? Yes, it is a blue car, a nice blue car. Blue, blue, blue car blue.

Walking through East Finchley, Fen and Cosima passed buses and dogs and cars of various descriptions. However, there was little to point out to Cosima about the Bishops Avenue other than Great Big Houses and Great Big Trees and Great Big Cars.

But then Fen saw the young man with the flowers.

She slowed her pace. He was some distance ahead, fixing a bunch of flowers – tulips, they looked like – around the trunk of a tree. Fen was captivated; how often had she passed by a tree, some railings, displaying a bunch of bedraggled flowers as a memorial to a life lost? But such flowers had simply been there and, usually by the look of them, for quite some time. Had she ever actually seen someone placing such flowers? No, she hadn’t. Had she ever seen flowers tied to this tree-trunk? She didn’t think so. Not until today. She was approaching him, the man now fixing a bunch of daffodils alongside the tulips. Fen was close enough to see that some had orange trumpets, others white; a cut above the bog-standard yellow for sure.

Should I cross the road? Should I treat him as the bereaved – give him space and peace so he can have his ritual as solemn as is fitting? He looks so young. Who did he lose?

And the young man was offering a daffodil with a broken stem to Cosima. ‘Happy St David’s Day,’ he was saying.

‘Oh!’ Fen chirped. ‘A lovely flower! A lovely daffodil. Are you Welsh?’

‘No. Will she eat it if I give it to her?’ the man asked.

‘Probably,’ said Fen.

‘Here, you have it, then,’ he said, worrying his hand through his already tousled jet black hair as if he was genuinely concerned. ‘Put it in her room. Or something.’

‘Oh. OK. Thank you.’

The man paused. ‘My sister would like it.’

Fen looked at him. Christ, how awful. Suddenly she wanted to know details; how awful. She should say something. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’

‘Thank you,’ the man said, and he genuinely seemed touched. ‘She was twenty and was killed three years ago. My mum lives in Manchester and I’ve promised her that I’ll replenish the flowers each anniversary.’

‘Was it a car?’ Fen asked, cringing that this sounded both tactless and interfering.

‘No, a motorbike,’ the man said.

Fen regarded him. He was fresh-faced and slightly gawky, looked as though he should be putting up leaflets about drama soc at Oxford or Cambridge, rather than road-kill flowers in East Finchley. How old was he? Early twenties? Had he been a younger or older brother to his late sister? ‘How long do the flowers last?’

‘Longer than in a vase, bizarrely,’ he replied, ‘but I hate seeing commemorative flowers all withered and limp. I always come back and check. I take them down before they’ve passed their best. You could say my sister was in full bloom when she was cut down. So I don’t think she should be remembered any other way.’

‘What was her name?’

‘Kay. What’s your name?’

‘Fen.’

‘Short for Fenella?’

‘Yes,’ said Fen, charmed. ‘Not many people know that.’

‘I was at college with a Fenella.’

‘What’s yours?’

‘Al.’

‘Short for Alan?’

‘No, Alistair.’

‘Ah.’

‘Know any Alistairs?’

‘Nope, You’re my first.’

‘What’s the baby’s name?’

‘Cosima.’

‘That’s pretty.’

‘I think some people think It’s a bit pretentious.’

‘Is the mum a bit arty-farty then?’

‘The mum?’ Fen was simultaneously shocked and charmed again. ‘I am the mummy.’

‘No way! I thought you were the nanny.’

‘No. I’m the mother all right.’ ‘Cool. I see. Wow.’

There followed a pause that was simultaneously awkward yet heightened as they both scrambled around for some other common ground, just something to say, to prolong conversation.

‘Anyway, we’d better go – we’re meeting my sister at Kenwood,’ Fen said, as if She’d been miles away and had suddenly come to. ‘It’s been nice talking to you. And I’m sorry – about Kay.’

‘Thanks. Thanks. Nice to meet you too – and Cosima. How old is she?’

‘Eight months old,’ said Fen, now really wanting to know how old Al was and whether he was younger or older than his late sister. They’d paused too long for her to ask now. ‘Bye, then,’ she said, a little reluctantly. And just a little coyly too.

Fen walked on. She stopped and turned. Al was looking after her. She waved and he raised his hand. She strolled onwards to Kenwood House, breaking into a sudden grin every now and then. Flattery. How good it felt. ‘I don’t know whether to be charmed or insulted,’ she said to Cosima as she walked. ‘I thought I had “Frumpy mum” written all over me.’

The unusual incident, the unexpected attention of a stranger, the break from the drag of just a normal day, served as a tonic that Fen wanted to keep private for utmost potency. So when Pip said how bright she looked, Fen didn’t mention Al. She didn’t say that attraction is a peculiar, sly thing that can work wonders on the complexion. She pointed instead to a good night’s sleep at last and that Cosima had gobbled up pear purée that morning that had no orange tinge to it whatsoever.

‘It wouldn’t be wise to tell Auntie Pip anyway,’ Fen chattered at Cosima as they walked back. ‘Auntie Pip would only give me her worried look – her “Motherhood has made my sister loopy” look.’ Fen stopped at Al’s flowers. Cosima was fast asleep. Fen tucked the fleece around the baby and stroked her cheek. ‘I feel a bit ambivalent that I should feel just slightly flattered that Al thought I was the nanny, not your mother. He said “Wow” when I corrected him. What did that “Wow” mean exactly? That I look good for my age? That I’m a yummy mummy? That I’m the first person He’s met with an eight-month-old baby? I can’t remember the last time I wowed someone. Daddy just calls me silly.’

WATERWORKS

‘Mr and Mrs York! Mr and Mrs Holmes and Master Holmes! Mr Holden, Ms McCabe, Miss Holden-McCabe! Welcome one and all.’ Django genuflected flamboyantly throughout his roll-call, much to everyone’s amusement. He was wearing the jeans He’d worn to Woodstock, tessellations of denim patchworked together, teamed with a shirt swirling brightly with paisley motifs. His belt was all buckle, in the bashed bronze form of a mounted Red Indian, bow and arrow poised. Pip had seen similar go for princely sums on ebay. ‘Cuppa tea? Something to dunk?’

‘Can I have squash?’ Tom asked, but directed the question to his father. ‘And something to dunk?’ Although Django was certainly the most exotic adult he knew, Tom still passed all requests via his father first.

‘You can, my boy, you can,’ Django responded to Zac’s nod, ‘but you’ll have to tell me how to squash it – I’m sure to have the ingredients.’

‘You just untwist the bottle top, pour in about a centimetre and then top it up with water. Even water from a tap,’ Tom explained helpfully despite being somewhat incredulous. It occurred to Django only then that they were talking different types of squash. He realized with some relief that he needn’t attempt to juice the pumpkin. And he realized with some disappointment that he did not own the bottled cordial to which his step-grandson-thing-or-other alluded. Good job, really, because he hadn’t a clue what a centimetre was anyway. A dash he knew intrinsically, a dollop too; he could do a smidgeon blindfolded and had always denounced the pinch as miserly. Feet and inches he was fine with, metric however was another matter; one he staunchly felt did not matter. ‘I have some cherry syrup,’ he said quietly to Zac. ‘Do you think that might do?’

‘I’m sure it will,’ Zac said, laying an affectionate hand on Django’s shoulder. ‘But what on earth do you use cherry syrup for?’ he asked as they walked on up the path and into the house.

Django stopped. ‘Do you know, I don’t think I’ve used it for anything. I think It’s unopened. I’ve had it ages.’

In the event, Django couldn’t find the cherry syrup but he did have cherry brandy and decided that a smidgeon watered down excessively with flat R White’s lemonade wouldn’t do the boy any harm at all. He was right. Tom acquired a liking for it and asked for more.

‘I hope you left the beds for the blokes to do,’ Pip said, all stern, ‘like I suggested in my letter and on the phone.’

‘Yes, I have,’ Django sighed, ‘but only because You’re so bossy I didn’t dare do otherwise.’ He didn’t confess to certain relief at Pip’s directive; that he didn’t actually feel like shunting and shifting divans about any more, didn’t feel he could. ‘there’s a zed-bed out in the shed,’ he added, ‘though I’ve used its mattress to lag the water tank.’

‘can’t I sleep in the shed?’ Tom sighed, looking imploringly to Zac before winking beguilingly at Django.

‘Have you been incorrigible?’ Django asked him.

‘No, actually, I’ve been exemplary,’ Tom said. ‘Miss Balcombe told me That’s what I am in some things – like maths. It’s just that Pip told me all about the shed.’

Django’s contrived haughty expression softened. ‘In the summer,’ he said, ‘if you promise to be as incorrigible as Pip was when she was young, before she was bossy, I promise to banish you to the shed for a night. Now come along, troops, we have a party to plan. There’s only two months to go.’

No one would hear of Django sleeping on the sofa; they were reluctant enough to let him give up his bed but the deal was settled on Django sleeping in Fen’s bed and Tom sleeping in Fen’s room on the zed-bed plumped up with two sun-lounger mattresses, Fen and Matt in Django’s bed with Cosima in her pop-up travel cot, Zac and Pip in her old room with Cat’s bed dragged through, Cat and Ben on various cushions and beanbags in her room. ‘You’re the youngsters,’ Django had told them, ‘you won’t have the spinal issues of those over a certain age.’

‘Shall I point out that I’m older than Matt?’ Ben joshed.

‘No, don’t do that,’ Django replied. ‘You know how I enjoy my theories.’

At the crack of dawn, Django came across Fen boiling a kettle in the kitchen.

‘Did Cosima wake you?’ she asked, alarmed.

‘No darling,’ Django said, ‘just the infernal need to pee. Not that you’d want to know the finer details of my water-works. It’s an age thing.’

‘And a pregnancy thing – I remember it well,’ Fen groaned. She took the kettle from the hob. ‘Can we buy you an electric kettle for your birthday?’

‘No thank you,’ Django said, ‘far too dull.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d like a microwave then?’

‘Absolutely not. What would a seventy-five-year-old want with one of those?’ Django said.

Fen poured boiling water into a Pyrex jug and immersed a baby bottle to heat through. ‘I’m trying to reclaim my boobs,’ Fen explained, with a tone of regret and a look of guilt, ‘not that you’d want to know the finer details of my lactation.’

‘Quite,’ said Django. He paused. ‘Matt must love it – the bottle feeding – enables him to feel hands-on and useful.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Fen. ‘I like watching him.’

‘Watching or checking?’ Django posed. ‘It’s good for him to feel useful – because, you see, you are so very capable, Fenella.’ Fen was taken aback by the use of her name in full and she detected a subtle note of warning from Django. ‘It must be easy for Matt to feel left out a little – on account of you being so very capable.’

Fen felt a little defensive but it was too early and she was too tired to express it with much vehemence. ‘It’s not that Matt does things wrong,’ Fen attempted to explain, ‘It’s that he doesn’t do things quite right. It’s often easier for me just to do it in the first place. It saves time. And tears.’ With that she took the warmed milk upstairs to feed a now grumbling Cosima.

Fen gazed down at her daughter, sucking contentedly on the bottle, locking eyes with her and sharing silent waves of intense love. She looked over to Matt who was sound asleep. How strange to feel simultaneously grateful but also resentful of the fact. Though nothing, not even a much-needed simple lie-in, was worth trading these silent waves of love, yet still Fen felt a little put upon that Matt never woke instinctively in advance of the baby stirring. However, though she knew that He’d be happy for her to boot him out of bed and be on early-morning bottle duty, she also knew She’d only lie there wondering if the bottle had been mixed correctly, whether it was the right temperature. She’d end up double-checking anyway. So what was the point in not doing it herself in the first place? There was no such thing as a liein. Did it slightly offend Matt? She rubbished the notion – he understood, didn’t he? He understood that It’s a mother’s prerogative to be finicky. It’s out of love for the baby anyway. No bad thing.

An hour later, swathed in his voluminous velvet dressing gown, his hair not yet pony-tailed and so fanning around his shoulders in silver skeins, Django sat in state, in the huge old Windsor chair in the kitchen. He looked like a Norse god, or straight from a William Blake painting, receiving his house guests one by one. First Tom, who scampered down, hair in hysterics, to see where his roommate was. Then Zac, to check his son hadn’t actually woken Django. Then Pip, to check Zac and Tom were helping themselves to breakfast though of course she found Django busy rustling up his panffles, because He’d offered to make his highly complicated hybrid of pancake and waffle and Zac and Tom had readily accepted. Cat and Ben appeared because the scent of maple syrup warming over pancakes or waffles or some such, had drifted evocatively into their room and filled them with hungry memories of American breakfasts. Next came Fen and Cosima, the baby dressed immaculately down to the colour-coordinated tiny hair grip gathering together the few strands she had, while her mother wore mismatched socks. Finally, Matt emerged, still sleep-crumpled but characteristically cheerful.

‘The morning is for Chatsworth, the afternoon is for lolling and party planning, and the evening is for the Rag and Thistle – for men who are over the limit,’ Django announced.

‘Over the limit?’ Zac and Matt asked.

‘Over the age limit,’ Django said, with an apologetic ruffle to Tom’s wayward hair.

‘I see,’ said Cat, hands on hips with consternation that wasn’t wholly mock, ‘while we womenfolk keep the home fire burning?’

‘And do the washing-up,’ Django added calmly. The men cheered. The baby cried. Let the day begin.

If Django was a perk of being married to, or partnered with, a McCabe girl, it was definitely a high point of a trip to Derbyshire to share an evening at the Rag and Thistle with their eccentric host. While Zac, Matt and Ben donned a change of shirts, Django certainly dressed for his big night out; watched by Tom fascinated with the provenance of each article of clothing. Django gathered this was a delaying tactic but it was his pleasure to spin yarns about his threads. Whether they were fact or fancy was of little relevance to Tom. He’d further embroider it all at school next week anyway. Tales of Django Gramps and his pink shirt with the gold buttons. Real gold. A gift from the King of Kathmandu.

To Matt, Ben and Zac’s urbane, understated signatures of Ted Baker, Gap and Paul Smith, Django added a certain flamboyance with his Astrakhan waistcoat, his Pucci neckerchief, his peculiar multi-seamed corduroys and yet another great big fuck-off belt, this one with an amber-encrusted buckle. The only item no one had seen before was the excessively floral shirt.

‘I knew a woman who worked at Liberty’s,’ Django explained nonchalantly. ‘Her name was Maureen. The summer of 1970. She was spectacular.’ And with that, the men left.

While Fen checked on Cosima, who was compliantly sound asleep, Pip served up the casserole Django had left simmering and Cat poured the wine.

‘Come on, Fen,’ Cat muttered to herself, ‘I’m starving.’

‘Cravings?’ Pip probed.

‘Unfortunately not,’ Cat said, ‘but not for want of trying.’

‘Django’s recipes would be perfect for pregnant women,’ said Fen, who’d appeared and sat herself down in a chair with a great exhausted sigh, ‘on account of all his bizarre combinations.’

‘I’ve just found a walnut,’ Cat said, chewing thoughtfully. She detested walnuts and was privately slightly irked that Django appeared to have forgotten this. ‘God, I’ve only been away four years.’

‘They’re very good for you,’ said Fen.

‘Isn’t there stuff one should eat if you want to have a boy, and other stuff if you want to have a girl?’ Cat asked her.

‘Apparently there is,’ said Fen, ‘but I couldn’t tell you which was which. Would you like one more than the other?’

‘No, no,’ Cat said, ‘but I would like just the one – I don’t think I have the space for twins.’

Fen glanced at her sister’s slender frame with gentle envy.

‘You certainly wouldn’t have the space in that Clapham place,’ Pip remarked. ‘What’s happening with all that?’

Cat sighed. ‘Apparently, we’re under contract until June. I keep telling Ben It’s never too early to scout around. There’s no harm in planning. It’s fun. I’ve always really loved Tufnell Park,’ Cat enthused, ‘and Parliament Hill. I know it can be expensive – but what an investment. Then we’d all be within a mile or so of each other. And I’d have Hampstead Heath on which to push my pram and have picnics. It’s Nappy Valley, isn’t it?’

‘You need to conceive first,’ Fen said.

Cat giggled. ‘Each time we have sex, I hold my legs up for about five minutes. Ben thinks I’m daft.’

‘it’ll happen when it happens,’ Fen tried to reason.

‘I hope it happens soon,’ Cat said wistfully. ‘I’m doing everything right with the folic acid and the yoga and the magazines. Or watching repeats of Location Location Location. I’ve always had a thing for Shaker kitchens and tumbled mosaic tiles in bathrooms.’

‘You need to find a job,’ Pip interjected. ‘You have a little too much time on your hands at the moment, methinks.’

‘And expensive taste,’ said Fen.

‘That’s easier said than done,’ Cat muttered. ‘I have looked. There’s nothing. Not even freelance work.’

‘Maybe you should think tangentially,’ Pip suggested.

‘You mean settle for less?’ Cat said gloomily.

‘No,’ Pip said gently, ‘but perhaps you have to consider the bigger picture rather than fixate on details.’

‘You’re so sensible,’ Cat muttered with slight irritation. ‘What do you expect me to say?’ Pip said. ‘It was something he said,’ Fen interrupted. ‘Who?’ Cat was confused. Hadn’t they been focusing on her?

‘Django,’ said Fen, ‘about that flowery shirt. About a woman called Maureen.’

‘Who was spectacular!’ Pip mimicked.

‘I wonder who she was,’ Fen said. ‘A spectacular woman called Maureen, who defined Django’s summer of 1970.’

‘We can ask him,’ Cat suggested. ‘He’s bound to be fantastically verbose when he comes rolling home with the boys later.’

‘Come to think of it, I do remember him in other floral shirts,’ Pip said. ‘They were probably all Liberty. Perhaps they were all from this Maureen.’

‘When you have children, there’s so much you leave by the wayside,’ Fen said pensively.

Instinctively, it didn’t seem right to Pip or to Cat to tease their sister just then for contradicting her previous conceit.

‘Flowers by the wayside,’ said Fen, her voice cracking. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, ‘sorry.’

‘Are you OK?’ Pip asked. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Are things no better with Matt?’ Cat asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Fen, ‘I don’t know. I’m just tired, I suppose.’

Django’s posse was the centre of attraction at the Rag and Thistle, especially when it became known that the main topic of discussion was the forthcoming infamous seventy-fifth birthday party to which, it seemed, all the clientele and staff of the Rag and Thistle, plus their pets, had already been invited.

‘I was thinking of three marquees,’ Django proclaimed, accepting a complimentary pint of Guinness with effusive thanks, ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’

‘But Django,’ Zac pointed out, ‘how will you decide which guest goes in which tent?’

‘Marquee!’ Django objected.

‘Marquee,’ said Zac. ‘It’s rather subjective. I mean, take Matt, He’s bad and ugly.’ Matt raised his pint.

‘I didn’t see it like that,’ Django mused, as if he now found Zac’s take rather interesting. ‘I envisaged a natural progression from tent to tent—’

‘Marquee,’ chorused Ben, Matt and Zac.

‘Mar-bloody-quee,’ Django sighed. ‘You know: a suitable, conducive environment to assist the three key stages of any good party. Conduct starts off good, behaviour then worsens until hopefully proceedings become downright shameful. Each marquee would have food to facilitate, cocktails to complement and soft furnishings to, well, accommodate.’

‘McCabe,’ said Mr Merifeld the landlord, with a grave shake of his head, ‘sounds right costly to me.’

‘Merifield,’ said Django, ‘What’s money? I can’t take it with me and I am well into my eighth decade.’

‘Marquees don’t come cheap,’ said Mr Merifield.

‘Tents it is then!’ Django exclaimed, to much raucous approval.

By the time the four men made their somewhat unsteady passage up the garden path after a lock-in at the Rag and Thistle, Django’s party had been planned to an imaginative degree; the minutiae mapped out down to the wording of the invites, the order of speeches and cleverly themed play-lists for each hour.

‘The devil is in the details,’ Matt justified, with drunken solemnity.

‘Then the devil can come too!’ Django proclaimed. ‘Who’s for a cup of tea or a nightcap?’

‘Nightcap,’ said Ben.

‘Nightcap,’ said Matt.

‘Nightcap,’ said Zac.

Ben gave Django a hand, while Zac checked on Tom and Matt tiptoed in on Cosima and Fen, who sleepily protested that he reeked of booze.

‘Django,’ Ben said cautiously, while he searched under the kitchen sink and found a bottle of cognac shoulder to shoulder with Domestos, ‘are you happy with your health? Is all well?’

In the context of the lightness of the evening’s conversation, Ben’s question surprised Django. ‘I’m in rude health, doctor,’ he declared, placing four enormous brandy balloons on a tray.

‘Any concerns?’ Ben pressed. ‘However minor?’

‘I can’t shift and shunt the beds about like I used to,’ Django joked.

‘It’s my job to notice that you appear to go to the loo a lot,’ said Ben. ‘Have you noticed an increase in this? Pain? Discomfort? Any change in the old waterworks?’

‘You cheeky whippersnapper,’ Django protested, ‘don’t you go calling my waterworks old.’

‘I’m just saying perhaps a check-up might be a good idea,’ Ben said evenly.

Django didn’t reveal that He’d thought the same himself. He didn’t tell Ben He’d gone so far as keeping an appointment with the GP.

But the GP turned out to be a girl who looked no more than twelve. Don’t doctors seem younger and younger these days? I’d really rather not discuss my waterworks with a young lady. I had to invent a sore throat as the purpose of my visit. She told me to go easy on the Tabasco. And she recommended Strepsils. Jolly nice they are too.

‘Django?’ Ben was saying. ‘There are basic steps you can take – restrict fluid intake after 6 p.m., cut down alcohol and caffeine. Limit spicy food. Increase fish, carrots, broccoli. And exercise.’

Django nodded thoughtfully. ‘Life would be a bit of a bore,’ he said.

‘Just cut down on some stuff and increase other things. Invent new stews,’ Ben suggested.

Django was about to respond but then Matt and Zac were joining them again, switching the conversation back to party planning.

HE’S NOT THERE

If the devil is in the details, if the pleasure is in the planning, then the fun is in the fantasy. Though Fen knew well enough how reality can let a daydream down, that Monday she made sure she forgot. Though she was aware that the planning might well be pointless, she happily indulged herself. Though she knew that her own guardian devil was guiding her, she turned deaf ears to her conscience. All her conscience wanted to say was Think about it – what is the point? But for Fen, just then, the point was that her imagination had been ignited and running with it was fun. And wasn’t it refreshing to have the energy and the desire to spend a little time choosing what to wear? And didn’t it seem entertainingly decadent to put mascara on in the daytime? And wasn’t it fun to think about something other than baby food for a little while? And when it all seemed suddenly fanciful, questionable even, Fen simply justified that Cosima needed some nice fresh air. And wasn’t a stroll up Bishops Avenue as good a route as any? And if further corroboration was needed, then a date with Cat at the café in Kenwood House provided it.

‘He’s not there,’ Fen said to Cosima as they walked up the Bishops Avenue, ‘but there again, why would he be?’ She walked on, mulling theories on coincidence, unrealistic expectations and downright improbability. She stopped to pick up Cosima’s teething rings. She looked back over her shoulder to the tree and the flowers. ‘Shall we leave a little note?’ she asked. ‘there’s no harm in that. It would be friendly, wouldn’t it – might make his sad task a little less so.’ She turned the buggy and retraced her steps.

Hi Al!

Cosima and I were passing.

I noticed a couple of Kay’s daffodils were looking peaky so I’ve removed them.

Hope That’s OK.

Fen.

‘Shall we leave Mummy’s mobile number too? I mean, It’s no big deal, is it, It’s just a friendly gesture – communication being a global thing.’ Fen added her number after her name.

She set off for Kenwood in earnest and thought to herself how She’d just done the right thing.

It’s not like I’m hoping he’ll call. It’s not like I’m swept up in daft daydreams. She spent the rest of the route distinguishing between the Daydream and the Distraction.

There’s a major distinction between the two. A daydream can be pointless, a distraction useful.

It was with a spring in her step that she crunched along the sweep of gravel driveway heralding Kenwood House.

Cat was already there, sitting in the converted coach house, caressing a cup of tea. Fen zoomed the buggy over to her, mimicking a screech of brakes with her voice. An elderly couple looked slightly alarmed, as if that was no way to handle a buggy, as if babies should be in nice coach-built prams, not bizarre three-wheeled monstrosities.

Though they’d spent all weekend together, Fen gave Cat a kiss and a hug. She took Cosima from her buggy.

‘Here, you cuddle your Auntie Cat,’ she told the baby. ‘Mummy’s going to get herself an enormous slice of cake.’

‘You’re chirpy,’ Cat told Fen on her return, declining the gateaux that Fen had bought.

‘And you look miserable,’ Fen commented, giving Cosima an organic sugar-free rusk. ‘Everything OK?’

‘I feel glum,’ Cat admitted, ‘and I want to be allowed to feel glum. So thank God You’re not Pip.’

‘What’s up?’ Fen asked, spooning butter-cream from the cake’s surface directly into her mouth.

‘I’m not pregnant. I don’t have a job. I don’t like Clapham. Ben’s never home and I wish I’d stayed in Colorado,’ Cat declared.

‘Cat,’ Fen said, ‘you’ve only been home two minutes.’

‘It’s been three months,’ Cat corrected. ‘I’ve had sex forty-two times and have sent out nineteen pre-emptive letters for jobs. Nothing.’

‘Cat, you make the former sound like a chore and You’re being unrealistic about the latter,’ Fen admonished her lightly.

‘And you sound like Pip,’ said Cat, ‘so stop it because I need you to be the one who there-theres me.’

Fen paused to consider this. It was true. Go to Pip for practical advice and accept her authority. Go to Fen for a hug and be assured of some plain sympathy. ‘It takes time,’ Fen soothed, ‘both take time.’

‘You got pregnant overnight!’ Cat objected.

‘It wasn’t planned,’ Fen said.

‘Then It’s not fair,’ said Cat.

Fen looked at her younger sister apologetically and put her hand over Cat’s. ‘Come back to mine this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Let’s look at my books and magazines. There’s sure to be Ten Top Tips For Tip Top Fertility or something.’ Though Fen made it sound as though she was doing Cat the favour, privately she liked the idea of a way out of the mumsand-babies group.

‘What’s wrong with Clapham anyway?’ Fen asked. ‘I thought it was meant to be quite a happening place?’

‘I stick out like a sore thumb,’ Cat said. ‘All the women bustle about with perfect children, or sit smug behind the wheels of their SUVs.’

‘But That’s your goal too,’ Fen said, ‘That’s what You’re hoping for. And actually, it doesn’t sound dissimilar to this part of North London.’

‘But while It’s not happening for me, it makes me feel so isolated,’ said Cat, ‘and It’s made me realize that I really want to be nearer to you. And Pip. I felt less far away when I was living in Colorado – how mad is that? I feel lonely stuck over the river. Ben’s really upbeat about his job but He’s working really long hours. I haven’t made any friends. I miss Stacey and the gang in Boulder. And I miss my mountain.’

‘Your what?’ Fen asked.

‘Flagstaff. Remember that hike we went on? That’s my mountain. You saw where Ben and I lived, Fen. You saw the awesome wilderness right on our doorstep. You filled your lungs with that crystal-pure air. You stayed in our gorgeous apartment. You hung out with our mates. You saw how people drive SUVs out there because of the terrain, not fashion. You had a taste of our quality of life.’

‘But you wanted to come back,’ Fen pointed out. ‘It was part of your game plan and you were adamant.’

‘I know,’ said Cat, ‘It’s true. We had a purpose. A goal. Hopes and dreams. Absolutely. But you see, It’s March, It’s been three long months and none of it has happened. And in that context It’s really difficult to like Clapham. And It’s bloody easy to wonder whether we’ve done the right thing. You know me – I love planning in my head but in reality I can’t set the pace. I was so eager to return, I suppose I’ve been a bit deluded too – thinking nothing will have changed, like everything has been on hold for four years, awaiting my return.’

Fen nodded. She rubbed her sister’s knee. She wondered what constructive advice she could give. But then she thought, That’s Pip’s job. What Cat wanted her to be was typical Fen just then. ‘I understand,’ she said, with a ruffle to Cat’s hair. It was still short, but longer than that stunning elfin crop She’d arrived back in the UK with. ‘It will happen, Cat. I promise you. Everything will be fine. Don’t worry – That’s the main thing. You’ll make a wonderful mummy. We’ll pick up brochures from estate agents on the way back to mine. Make some appointments for next week. There’s a new kitchen design shop in Muswell Hill – we could go there after Cosima’s nap.’

‘Thanks, Fen,’ Cat said, squeezing her sister’s hand, ‘That’s just what I needed to hear.’

Walking back down Bishops Avenue, Fen considered crossing the road as they neared Al’s flowers. It was as if they suddenly personified Al; that Cat might see something she shouldn’t, make something out of nothing. While Fen didn’t want Cat even to comment on the flowers, she knew she needed to bite her tongue herself. Must not make a bouquet out of a hasty posy. Must not read into this. Must not say anything out loud.

Her note had gone.

A piece of folded paper was tucked between the stems of a few daffodils and the trunk of the tree. As they passed by, Fen could see her name written on the paper. Neat and bold handwriting. There was no way she could take it just then and though she didn’t resent Cat, she reprimanded herself for having invited her forlorn little sister back home with her.

I wonder what it says?

I suppose I’ll have to wait until Matt’s home before I can retrieve it.

But say That’s too late? It’s windy. It looks like it might rain.

It’s exciting!

Of course Fen couldn’t wait for Matt. Could you? She nipped out while Cosima slept, supposedly to the shops, leaving Cat snuggled up on the sofa with back issues of Prima Baby and the property section of the Ham & High.

The note just said ‘Thanks, Fen. Alistair.’ There wasn’t much to read. Certainly, nothing could be read into it. But she quickly reconfigured a crashing disappointment into no big deal. It was nice, anyway, wasn’t it? Nice of him to reply, and nice to have a tiny, harmless secret.

However, it was difficult not to feel a little glum when, a week later, Fen saw that the flowers had been taken down. That there’d been no phone call to her mobile phone. It made it difficult to know what to do with his note. She’d kept it folded and tucked into a book of stamps in her purse. She’d have to throw it away, and her silly fantasy with it. The note was only three words long, after all, and you could hardly read into those. It wasn’t as if it was even long enough for there to be any lines to read between.

APRIL FOOL

Penny had specified no flowers at Bob’s funeral. She didn’t much like flowers – not cut ones. You cut flowers and then the natural process decrees that you witness them die. Why be reminded of death by things that are themselves dying? Much better to say ‘No flowers. Donations to the Lance Armstrong Cancer Foundation’. Lucky Lance – cancer hadn’t killed him, like it had Bob. Perhaps if other mourners over recent years had boosted the funds of cancer charities, rather than the coffers of the funerary florists, then things might have been different for Bob. Wishful thinking, perhaps – but what else could she think about or wish for?

She didn’t feel like going out. But she knew it wasn’t sensible to mope around the house. Not at this time of day. It would make the wait until bedtime interminable. Marcia was back from Florida and Penny thought to phone her, but they already had an arrangement for the next day and she didn’t want to come across as needy. Marcia would worry. And when Marcia worried, she would fuss. And Penny had never liked being fussed over. So she summoned up some sense and energy and went out for a drive. Just a drive, she told herself, no rush to be anywhere specific. It was a fine day, though there was a chill to the air – the sharp brilliance of April sunshine issued a defiant dismissal of winter. Just beyond Hubbardton’s Spring, Penny stepped from the car to admire the herd of unusual red-and-white Holstein cattle peacefully chomping away at the lush spring grass. She gazed at the cows for a while and found she was often gazed back at. ‘I’ll see you in a moment, ladies,’ she said, marvelling how beasts so lumbering and lugubrious could also be unequivocally female. She walked to the famous covered bridge a few yards ahead. She read from the plaque aloud because she didn’t want to hear Bob’s voice in her head. He’d loved this spot: postcard perfect yet untainted by commercialism. ‘1872. Horsemen keep at a walk,’ Penny read. She glanced around her. ‘If they went at a trot, the bridge would bounce,’ she explained conversationally, though there was no one around. ‘It was used as a boxing ring too, you know.’ Suddenly, she found the sound of her voice a little embarrassing – talking to no one sounded worse than talking to cattle – so she walked briskly back to the car, nodding quickly to the cows on her way. Making much of the correlation between the rich Holstein milk and the ingredients for Vermont ice cream, Penny headed off for Ridge as if the idea to drive there for an ice cream had only then occurred to her.

‘Hi Penny,’ Juliette said casually, whilst taking the order of another customer. Penny nodded without checking if Juliette had seen. She didn’t go to the counter where Gloria was already preparing her a taster of that week’s special flavour but when Penny realized that someone sat at her table – a mother and toddler – she felt so discombobulated as to be tempted to walk straight out of the shop.

‘Penny,’ said Juliette kindly, guiding her to a table with no fuss. She came back a few minutes later with a pink plastic taster spoon, mounded high. ‘It’s a new flavour,’ she told Penny. ‘It’s called Sing for Spring. It’s pistachio and meringue – boss says it symbolizes the spring pasture peeping through the snow fields.’

Penny sucked the glob off the spoon. ‘I’ll have a banana split, thanks,’ she said flatly.

‘Banana split for Penny,’ Juliette called and Penny detected excessive jollity and loud kindness in the girl’s usually soft voice. Simultaneously, Penny felt her eyes smart and her toes curl.

‘It’s April Fool’s Day,’ Penny told her with a shrug. ‘In Britain everyone plays pranks – practical or intellectual.’

‘I knew it,’ said Penny, triumphant. ‘I says to Gloria, that Penny’s not from around here. You’re English? How cool is that?’

‘A long time ago,’ Penny confirmed.

‘I’m sorry – I interrupted. You were saying about playing tricks?’

‘I made an April Fool of Bob one year,’ Penny shrugged. ‘He took it well – but I know he was a little upset. I never said sorry for it.’

Juliette wasn’t quite sure what to say. ‘Bob won’t have taken anything by that,’ she mumbled.

‘That stupid movie Love Story got it wrong,’ Penny frowned. ‘Love means you must say You’re sorry. I never said, Sorry Bob – that wasn’t funny and I apologize. I’ve been saying it over and over today. But It’s too late.’

Juliette hovered. Penny had barely established eye contact with her this visit. Juliette glanced over at Gloria who used her eyebrows and vigorous tilting of her head to signify for her to sit down. She slid into the chair next to Penny. ‘My dad used to tell me I was a fool the whole time – he didn’t need April 1st,’ she told Penny. ‘He used to tell my mom she was a fool as well. Actually, he didn’t use that word. He called us dumb. Dumb-ass bitches.’

Penny jerked and locked eyes with Juliette.

‘When he said sorry, he never meant it so I stopped believing him quick,’ Juliette said with a shrug. ‘He’d even try tears, get down on his knees and holler that he was sorry. He was a better actor than Ryan O’Neal, I’ll say that. It’s a crap film anyway.’

‘I left my husband on April Fool’s Day,’ Penny suddenly interrupted in a hoarse whisper. Juliette’s eyes darted in confusion. ‘Not Bob,’ Penny hastened to add. ‘I left this other man for Bob. I left this other man for Bob thirty-three years ago today.’ She tucked into her banana split that was on the verge of being renamed banana spilt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Juliette, ‘I interrupted you. It’s just I never told a soul about this until right now.’

Two weeks later, when Penny caught sight of Juliette at the Pack’n’Save, a world away from Fountains Ices, she wasn’t sure what to do but she didn’t think she wanted to be recognized. Fountains had become a sacred space for her, her visits there sacrosanct. She liked the anonymity, the sense of sharing but of confidentiality. She’d come to feel that it was as close to a support group as she would ever come by. And it was a comforting thought that wherever she was, whatever the time, the candy-coloured parlour where everything was sweet and pretty, existed. So, it didn’t seem right to see Juliette in Pack’n’Save. But Juliette was apparently pleased to see Penny there as She’d made her way over, an older woman with her.

‘Hi Penny.’

‘Hi Juliette.’

‘This is my mom, Cyn.’

‘Hi Cyn.’

‘Hi Penny.’

‘You shopping?’

‘I am. You too?’

‘We are. My aunt’s coming to stay.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Honey, I’m going to pick up some soda.’

‘OK Mom, I’ll be right there.’

Penny and Cyn nodded at each other, smiled cordially. Penny thought about the woman’s deceased husband calling her a dumb-assed bitch. It chilled her. ‘Well, you have a nice weekend,’ Penny told Juliette.

‘Thank you,’ Juliette said, ‘and you. You doing something?’

‘Not especially,’ Penny said.

‘Oh. Oh. Well, see you next week, I guess.’

‘Yes,’ said Penny, ‘goodbye.’

But Juliette loitered. ‘Bob sure was special,’ she said to Penny. ‘I mean – for you to up sticks and leave like that. Your home, your country. When you were so young.’

Penny was taken aback. She couldn’t possibly comment.

Juliette tipped her head to one side and regarded Penny. ‘I know you can come across a little frosty and all,’ she said with kindness, ‘but I say It’s a shame you never had kids of your own. You’d’ve been a good mom.’

Penny was so stunned she hadn’t the self-possession not to let it show, scrambling around for her composure whilst scrabbling for something to say. However, her feelings of disarray obviously didn’t offend Juliette who smiled sweetly and made to go.

‘Don’t you go thinking you and your mom aren’t special just because your daddy didn’t say so,’ Penny suddenly said.

Juliette was visibly touched. ‘See you next week, Penny,’ she said.

‘Actually, I won’t be here next week,’ Penny heard herself telling Juliette though she knew the thought was unformulated.

‘Oh?’

‘No. No. I’m going to be in England,’ Penny told her, ‘I haven’t seen my family in many many years.’

Juliette smiled and placed her hand warmly on Penny’s arm. ‘You do that,’ she enthused, ‘you do just that.’

MY ROUND

Predictably, it had been Pip’s idea to encourage the menfolk to meet.

‘You always say what a good bloke you think Ben is,’ she said casually to Zac as they dressed for work: Pip braiding her hair tightly into pigtails and securing them both ends with polka-dot ribbons, Zac donning a sober navy blue suit enlivened by a Paul Smith tie emblazoned on the underside with a 1950s pin-up girl. ‘You should get together more often with him and Matt. You’re brothers-in-law.’

‘That’s stretching it,’ Zac laughed, peering over Pip’s head to check his reflection in the mirror.

She twisted around and looked up at him. ‘Well, whatever you are officially, you are certainly family,’ she said. Zac kissed the bridge of her nose as the tip of it was already painted red. ‘Anyway, you three need to meet up to discuss the music for Django’s party. It’s less than a fortnight away. He’ll be digging out the gramophone and all his scratchy old vinyl if you Don’t.’

‘Good thinking, Mrs,’ said Zac. ‘Remember to pick Tom up later.’

What a stupid thing to say, Pip thought.

To meet at the Mariners was Zac’s suggestion and it was a good one. Tucked away up a side street off the Embankment, it was a hop across the river from Ben’s hospital, a walk through the City for Zac and a quick taxi ride for Matt, better locating him for the journey home anyway. The establishment itself, though categorically a pub, had the feel of a gentleman’s club, with walls panelled in oak, tub chairs set around tables placed discreetly apart and booths upholstered in dark green leather along the back wall. There were no fruit machines, no television, no music, no menu. The landlord and bar staff were male and conservative, in their waistcoats and ties and neat moustaches and referring to their clients as Sir. There was no active misogynism in play, indeed the landlord was somewhat mystified that the various girls to whom He’d offered bar work had turned him down. His bar, it seemed, was simply not conducive to a female clientele.

‘It’s what the young people refer to as the “vibe”, dear,’ the landlord’s wife defined. ‘It doesn’t have the right vibe for the ladies.’ Even she preferred to take her occasional gin and tonic at the Kings Head in the parallel street.

‘Bitter?’ Zac asked.

‘And twisted,’ Ben quipped. ‘Actually, I hate to say it but I’m a bit of a bottled lager man now – those years in the States lured me away from warm beer.’

‘You drank pints at the Rag and Thistle when we were there the other week,’ Matt commented.

‘Country pubs are different,’ Ben said, ‘and the Rag and Thistle is in a league of its own.’

‘Apparently They’re providing the beer for Django’s party,’ Matt said, ‘in barrels.’

‘We must discuss the music, we only have this weekend to sort it out,’ Zac reminded himself out loud of the reason for their meeting.

‘I can’t do Saturday,’ said Ben, ‘I have clinics all day.’

‘How’s work?’ Matt asked him.

‘Brilliant – but long hours, which pisses Cat off,’ said Ben. ‘But I’m in my element – I’m pleased we seem to be taking sports medicine seriously in this country at last. It’s not so much about treatment – if you get to that stage, You’re a little too late. It’s about understanding and management – That’s why I pressed for the department to be called Sports Medicine, not Sports Injury. If we look after our sportsmen – professional, school, club – we’ll see less injury and better results.’

‘Interesting,’ said Matt. ‘God, It’s years since I put on a pair of trainers.’

‘It’s not years,’ Zac corrected, ‘you and I were playing a bit of tennis last summer – you mean It’s since your baby came on the scene.’

‘Christ You’re right,’ Matt chinked glasses with Zac. ‘All those things I used to do BC.’

‘BC?’ said Ben. ‘B C,’ Matt said. ‘Before Cosima.’ Then he continued, theatrically sotto voce, ‘Can you slip me a nice little tonic, doctor? Some va-va-voom?’

‘Va-Va-Viagra?’ Ben asked.

‘Sod off,’ Matt laughed, ‘not for me. Something I can slip into Fen’s Ovaltine?’

‘Oh dear,’ said Ben, ‘not enough action?’

‘None whatsoever,’ rued Matt, ‘and I’m so bored of furtive wanks in the shower I can’t even be bothered to do that any more.’

‘Christ,’ muttered Ben and Zac sympathetically, grateful it wasn’t them.

‘Bad patch?’ Zac asked, knowing Pip had said so but not wanting to offend Matt by revealing this.

Matt shrugged. ‘I Don’t know,’ he faltered. ‘It’s probably fine.’ He took a sip of his pint. ‘Look – It’s just I’d rather it didn’t get back to Fen,’ he said, ‘and you know what those sisters are like.’

‘Off the record,’ Zac assured him while Ben pulled an imaginary zip across his lips.

Matt shrugged. ‘To be honest, things aren’t as good as they were – dare I say it – BC. I mean, I’ve read the mags, the books, I went to the ante-natal classes, I cut the cord and I change nappies. I expect to be tired beyond belief – I understand that tiredness plays havoc with the libido. But actually It’s not just about sex. It’s more.’

‘It’s about more sex?’ Zac asked and they all laughed before Matt buried his head in his hands in exaggerated woe.

‘I love the mother of my child,’ Matt said, ‘but where the fuck has my girlfriend gone? I feel surplus to requirements, you could say. It isn’t in any of the books that when your child has a wonderful mother, you can’t have your girlfriend back.’

‘She’s obsessed with the baby?’ Ben said, being careful to turn it into a question though actually he was stating the obvious.

‘Yes,’ said Matt, ‘and nonplussed by me. I must admit, initially I was delighted and relieved by Fen’s almost fierce maternal instincts – She’s certainly not following in her own mother’s footsteps. But now It’s frustrating me.’

‘It will be temporary,’ Ben told him. ‘It’s hormonal – motherhood is still partly chemical in these months.’

‘But we’re dangerously close to being in a rut. Don’t either of you say “Give her time”,’ Matt warned them, ‘seriously.’

‘Have you talked about this?’ Ben asked.

Matt looked embarrassed. ‘When? How?’ he said. ‘I arrive home from work and Fen badgers me to have quality time with Cosima. Then we eat in front of the television. She goes to bed early and is out like a light. If I can’t use all the tricks of the frigging trade to arouse her for some sleepy shagging, I certainly can’t rouse her for a heart-to-heart.’

‘You two need time together,’ Zac said, ‘grown-up time away from home.’

Matt looked deflated. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but she doesn’t trust babysitters.’

‘We’ll do it,’ Zac offered.

‘Us too,’ said Ben.

‘Thanks,’ said Matt, ‘thanks. The thing is, she doesn’t seem interested. She just wants an early night. Every night.’

Ben took a long pull at his bottled beer. He shook his head with a sorry smile. ‘I tell you, Matt,’ he said, ‘It’s a cruel irony – but I’m having so much sex I’m rapidly going off it.’

‘You total wanker,’ Matt laughed, a little bitterly.

‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Ben assured him. ‘Cat’s constantly analysing calendars and her temperature and demanding sex at scientific moments and weird angles. I’m seriously thinking of providing her with samples and a turkey baster. We’ve stopped making love, we’re “trying for a baby”. And I’m the sperm bank.’

Zac laughed. ‘Not really Kama Sutra, then, Ben?’

‘It’s about as far from the Kama bloody Sutra as A Nun’s Story is from Debbie Does Dallas. All this sex – It’s not fucking or shagging or making love. It’s purely mechanical. But of course she also wants me to gaze at her in a deep and meaningful way because we’re baby-making.’

Zac had a contemplative sip of his pint. ‘Much as I do love my two sisters-in-law, I thank heavens Pip doesn’t want to procreate. I have my son and my wife and life is very very good.’

‘You smug git,’ Ben laughed.

‘Isn’t June pregnant?’ Matt said with a sly edge to his voice.

‘June?’ said Ben. ‘Remind me?’

‘Tom’s mother,’ Zac said and Ben slapped his forehead and said, Of course. ‘Yes,’ Zac confirmed, ‘She’s due this summer.’

Ben and Matt exchanged glances and eyebrow-raises.

‘What?’ said Zac.

‘It won’t be long before Pip’s going to want to keep up with the June-ses,’ Matt said.

‘Pip?’ Zac was incredulous. ‘Pip Isn’t remotely broody!’

‘Have you asked her?’

‘We discussed it before we got married,’ Zac said.

‘Tick-tock tick-tock,’ said Ben, with a shrug. ‘Biological clock, mate, biological clock.’

‘We have Tom,’ Zac exclaimed, ‘our family is complete.’

‘Talking about tick-tock,’ said Matt, glancing at the old clock above the bar, ‘one for the road? My round. We need to discuss the music for the party.’

‘A soundtrack to Django’s life?’ Ben said.

‘It’s going to be a memorable night,’ Zac said. ‘Take tissues. You know how over-emotional the McCabes become en masse.’

‘Has Django been all right?’ Ben asked. ‘His health? The last couple of years?’

‘I think so,’ said Zac and Matt nodded. ‘He always has a comedy moan about gammy hips and old bones and such. Why do you ask?’

‘It’s probably nothing,’ said Ben. ‘I’m trained to notice things, I suppose. Age can creep up on a person in quite a sudden way.’

‘Pip grills him about how he is on a weekly basis,’ Zac said. ‘She goes through a checklist which covers everything from the freezer to the hot water to his bones and brain.’

‘The trouble is, though Django’s such a big character and he appears so robust – He’s seventy-five.’

‘Or at least he will be next weekend,’ said Matt.

‘Here’s to a great party,’ said Zac, ‘and to Django McCabe’s very good health.’

‘Here’s to Fen,’ Ben said, knocking his beer bottle against Matt’s pint glass.

‘And to Cat,’ said Zac.

‘And Pip,’ said Matt. They drank.

‘Swing Out Sister,’ said Ben, ‘remember them? Are they in your collection, Zac?’

‘Sisters of Mercy,’ said Matt.

‘Sister Sledge,’ said Zac.

‘Scissor Sisters,’ said Matt.

‘As if having two older sisters wasn’t enough,’ Ben laughed, ‘I have two sisters-in-law too.’

Zac thought about what Pip had said that morning and he realized how much he liked Matt and Ben. He chinked his glass against theirs. ‘Brothers in Arms,’ he said and called it a night.

FREEZE A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW

The fact that Django McCabe’s seventy-fifth birthday party happened at all was a feat of some engineering and community spirit. On the Monday he had to admit that to single-handedly cater for over a hundred people was a tall order for anyone, let alone a man of his advancing years; but to request outside assistance was such an affront to his pride and his culinary standards that temporarily he thought he’d rather cancel than do so. On the Tuesday, the Matlock Marquee Company went out of business and though Django left a message saying he’d buy the bloody tents for cash, no one replied. On the Wednesday, the storms came with such ferocity that only an extreme heatwave could prevent the lawn becoming a quagmire on the night. However, by the Thursday, the sun indeed blazed and by Friday morning, Babs Chorlton had already made the spiced-chicken-and-white-chocolate vol-au-vents to Django’s stringent specifications. By lunch-time, Mrs Merifield was baking Bakewell tarts with the quince jam and crystallized ginger that Django provided, and the Blakes car dealership in Chesterfield were installing their marquee on Django’s lawn. He didn’t mind in the slightest the ubiquitous Vauxhall branding emblazoned all over it – it brought back very colourful memories of playing jazz with Vauxhall Vinnie and the Bebop Boys.

Cat and Ben arrived at tea-time on the Friday; Zac, Pip and Tom were in time for supper – a vast, misshapen pie using all leftover ingredients, from pickles to plums, chillies to cherries. The beds were shifted and shunted, Pip turned her hand to floral arrangements, and Tom painted an old sheet with ‘!!! go Django !!! go Django!!!’. Cat managed to persuade Django to put the heirloom canteen of cutlery back under his bed and let her buy plastic cutlery, rather than silver polish, at Morrison’s tomorrow. Fen, Matt and Cosima arrived in time for the institution of After Eights with News at Ten, and the family were sleeping soundly by midnight.

The day of the party dawned fine and the family gathered for a civilized breakfast. ‘Speeches,’ Django announced as if he was requesting the jam, please.

‘Before or after the food?’ Zac asked, noticing that the sisters were motionless in shocked silence.

‘There will be no before or after,’ Django said, ‘the food is to be a constant for the duration of the party.’

‘After the savoury and before the sweet, then?’ Matt asked.

‘I never make such distinctions,’ Django said. ‘One must respect one’s taste buds – if one fancies Bakewell tart before Scotch eggs, then there’s probably a jolly good reason for it.’

‘When would you like the speeches to happen?’ Ben asked him.

‘Before we’re all too blotto,’ Django reasoned.

‘What time is kick-off?’ Tom asked, already anticipating this party to be the highlight of his life so far.

‘Seven thirty,’ Django told him.

‘Cool!’ said Tom, looking forward to staying up well past his bedtime.

While the menfolk, accompanied by Cosima and a long list of Fen’s handwritten notes taped to the buggy, spent the morning chuffing between Matlock and Rowsley on the Peak Rail steam train, the sisters took up position under the apple tree with notebooks and pens and adjectives scattered around them.

‘I Don’t know what to say,’ Cat wailed. ‘I used to write for a living and I Don’t know what to say. I feel pretty emotional, I must admit.’

‘Me too,’ Fen said, ‘and I’ve never written a speech – only dissertations and academic lectures which are easy compared with this.’

‘And here’s me, able to juggle, do flikflaks and balloon-modelling in front of an audience, but I shudder at the thought of an ode to Django in public,’ Pip declared.

‘he’d love it in rhyme,’ Fen smiled.

‘We haven’t the time,’ rued Cat.

They looked at each other and laughed.

‘Barber’s shop?’

‘A cappella?’

‘God, he’d love that!’

‘No bloody way.’

When Django and the others arrived back, he requested a run-through of the speeches. ‘Just to check your chronology,’ he said, ‘and to approve the length and breadth of superlatives. You only have a few hours to perfect it, you know.’

‘Django,’ said Pip, ‘if It’s a dress rehearsal You’re after, you need to follow suit – literally. We’ll read our speeches – if you give us a twirl in what you’ll be wearing.’

Django looked outraged. ‘And spoil the surprise? Philippa!’

Pip gave a triumphant shrug and rolled her piece of paper tightly into a scroll. Cat and Fen copied her.

‘I do hope everyone will come,’ Django said thoughtfully. ‘I’m looking forward to it immensely.’

And they came; they came from all over the county, from up and down the country, from further afield too. Jim McKenzie came down from Glasgow in his kilt, and Bibi came from Paris swathed in the shawls and jangling with the bangles the girls remembered so vividly from their childhood. Gregor and Ferdy brought their banjos and strolled amongst the guests like minstrels. Landed gentry rubbed shoulders with rogues; lifelong friends mingled with folk of a more recent acquaintance; musicians and artists vied for eccentricity – it wasn’t officially a fancy-dress party but the colourful flamboyance of many guests suggested otherwise. Pip, Fen and Cat were embraced constantly as faces they’d forgotten beamed back into their lives. People ate and ate and their eyes watered; they drank and they drank and their tears rolled, theatricality seamlessly blending with genuine emotion.

Django coasted around; resplendent in voluminous batik trousers from the Caribbean, a floral shirt that was alarmingly diaphanous, a suede waistcoat in colours of fire and a trademark neckerchief in incongruous toile de jouy. He kissed everyone regardless of their sex or age, how well he knew them and whether he’d kissed them already. He sang and he danced, he improvised impressively on Ferdy’s banjo and the sound of his laughter became the underlying theme tune to the party. He could not pass Cat, Fen or Pip without hugging them – and if he hadn’t seen them for a while, he searched them out.

‘Where’s your sister?’ he asked Pip who was mopping a splodge of mayonnaise from the knee-skimming hem of her black shift dress.

‘Which one?’

‘The Fenella one,’ he said, having already noted Cat jiving with Joe and Jack, still nimble on their feet at seventy-five.

‘Checking on Cosima, probably,’ said Pip, scanning the throng and noting Bibi encircling an entranced Tom in one of her shawls like a wizard taking an apprentice.

‘Fetch the girl,’ Django said. ‘I feel a speech coming on.’

Pip made her way through the marquee and over to the house. She called Fen softly from the hallway and made her way upstairs. She trod a careful path along the corridor, knowing which floorboards to avoid. From Django’s bedroom, she could hear gentle music. The door was ajar and Pip tapped out a little rhythm on it.

‘Shh!’ came the response. Pip put her head around the door. ‘Oh It’s you,’ Fen whispered.

‘Do you always hiss at Matt?’ Pip asked quietly.

Fen put her index finger to her lip. Pip looked over to the travel cot where Cosima was evidently sound asleep. ‘Just changing the CD,’ Fen whispered. Pip frowned and mimed that the baby was fast asleep. ‘In case she wakes up,’ Fen mouthed. Pip looked at the CD case of Elvis for Babies. To the sound of ‘Love Me Tender’ being played out on a glockenspiel, Pip raised her eyebrows and made the universal symbol of insanity; corkscrewing her finger against her temple. Fen stuck her tongue out at her, and gazed down at her baby for a long moment before tiptoeing from the room.

‘What’s wrong with “Baa Baa Black Sheep”?’ Pip said as they went downstairs.

‘Nothing,’ Fen said, ‘but a girl is never too young for Elvis. Django will back me on that one.’

‘Talking of Django, he sent me to fetch you. It’s time for the speeches.’

‘God,’ Fen groaned. ‘Hang on, I’ll just double-check the baby monitor. Stay here.’ She placed a plastic egg-shaped receiver in Pip’s hand. ‘I won’t be a moment.’ She went back upstairs. Pip held the machine to her ear. She could hear heavenly angels la-la-ing to ‘Suspicious Minds’. Then she heard Fen’s whisper crackle through. ‘Pip? Pip? Code word: Tabasco.’

‘Tabasco,’ Pip declared, as soon as Fen joined her again.

‘Good,’ said Fen, ‘now I can relax.’

‘No you can’t,’ Pip said. ‘It’s the speeches.’

Django’s speech was surprisingly short but effusive with thanks and characteristically emotional. ‘But enough from me,’ he concluded, ‘let’s hear all about me instead! I hasten to add I’ve paid them proudly so I’m confident They’ll be extravagant with the compliments. Ladies, gentlemen, troubadours and one important young man of nine years old – I give you my three exquisite girls, Pip, Fen and Cat.’

The sisters weaved their way to the head of the gathering, turned to face the guests and curtsied to much applause.

‘As you all know, my sisters and I are famous for having the mother who buggered off with a cowboy from Denver when we were small,’ started Pip, clutching her hands in front of her and then behind her and not really knowing what to do with them.

‘And a father – Django’s brother – who died not long after,’ Fen said, nervously tying and retying her pony-tail.

‘But far from being poor little orphans, or being remotely rootless or in any way scarred,’ said Cat, fiddling furiously with the beads decorating her cardigan, ‘our glory is that we had Django.’ There followed much applause and whooping from those gathered and the three sisters felt each other relax. The smiles broadened, their confidence and showmanship blossomed and they started to enjoy themselves.

‘Most of you know Django as a friend, a musician, an artiste, a culinary superpower,’ said Pip. ‘For my sisters and me, He’s all of these – but He’s also our parents. A good father makes you feel safe, he provides for you and protects you. He teaches you about trust and explains fairness so clearly that you can understand it even if you Don’t agree. He teaches you to ride your bike without stabilizers, he makes you a sledge by adapting the old garden slide, he takes you out for your first driving lessons and doesn’t protest when you crunch his gears or clip his wing-mirror. He gives you pocket money when You’re young, bales out your overdraft when You’re a student and helps you with your first mortgage when You’re trying to afford to be a grown-up. A father instils your sense of right from wrong.’ Pip smiled and winked at Cat and Fen. ‘You grow up hoping the man you’ll spend your life with might possess even half the qualities of your father. We three are true daddy’s girls. Thank you, Django, for being Superdad.’

Pip stepped back to whistling and clapping, stamping and banjo-strumming. She saw Zac wink, watched Tom clap his hands high above his head and Django dab tears from his eyes with Ferdy’s polka-dot handkerchief.

‘Encore!’ Django cried. ‘Encore!’

‘A good mother,’ Fen began, ‘nourishes you.’ She let it hang and raised an eyebrow. Laughter was spontaneous, followed by a tide of applause, just as She’d hoped when She’d practised it silently in the bathroom mirror earlier. ‘When it came to love and food, Django ensured we were fed like royalty. A mummy strokes your hair when you’ve had a nightmare and mops up after you when You’re sick. A good mother soothes your heart when some cad or other has broken it. A mother hands down prized recipes – be they for beetroot crumble or fish pie with olivey hollandaise – and has a snack waiting for you when you get home from school. A mother takes in your jeans to drainpipe proportions, lets you borrow Pucci scarves for dressing up, and French-plaits your hair perfectly before you go to school. A mother makes curtains for your Wendy house and clothes for your dolls. A mother brings you hot chocolate when It’s that time of the month. You should always feel that a mother loves you more than anything and anyone. A mother must make you believe you are the purpose of their very existence. A mother is a daughter’s best friend.’ Fen looked at her sisters and giggled involuntarily, shrugging helplessly as tears spiked her eyes and caught in her throat. ‘I raise my glass to the best mother in the world.’

Fen grinned at Django who clasped his hands against his heart while coos and ahhs resonated through the marquee.

‘Encore!’ Django croaked. ‘Encore.’

‘A friend,’ said Cat, as if she was about to recite a poem at school assembly, ‘is there whether you need them or not.’ She paused and looked imploringly at Fen and Pip, biting her lip. She scanned the crowd for Ben, who gave her an encouraging nod when she found him. She plucked at her cardigan and faltered. ‘I can’t remember what we wrote.’ The crowd laughed soothingly. ‘Something about It’s our friends who make our world.’ She winced. Fen whispered something to her. Cat shook her head adamantly. ‘But the thing is, usually you choose your friends – but Django McCabe had no choice when we had no one else. He created our world for us. And what a world. How fucking amazing of him was that!’

‘Language, Catriona!’ Django called from the throng, cupping his hands over the ears of an obviously delighted Tom.

‘Django – you always said we could swear when we really needed to, if a situation truly warranted it. Talking of situations – Christ, you had no choice, Django. You had no choice. But look at the life you made for us – our lives are a tribute to your devotion, your friendship, your parenting. And of course your home cooking. You, who are mother, father and friend, to me and my sisters. So you are fucking amazing, OK? We couldn’t live without you. Does everyone realize that?’ Cat looked out amongst the guests. ‘Do you? Does everyone realize how great this man is?’

‘Never let a McCabe girl near the punch,’ Matt whispered to Ben. ‘One sip and They’re squiffy and hyper-emotional.’

‘The sacrifices he made,’ Cat continued, ‘his generosity, his altruism and selflessness.’

‘I’ve always thought tautology a good thing,’ Django nudged Bibi proudly.

‘He’s always made us feel that we are his good fortune,’ Cat declared, ‘but of course he gave up so much for us.’ Thoughts of Maureen and the summer of 1970 sprang to her mind and, momentarily, Cat was unsure whether She’d spoken aloud. ‘He’s our life-force,’ she started to sob.

‘Christ,’ Ben whispered to Matt, ‘never mind journalism, her natural career is Oscar speeches.’

‘Django,’ Cat declared, ‘look around. Look who’s here. From far and wide. From over the sea. From over the years. It’s because you are so fucking amazing.’

Pip patted Cat’s shoulder and interrupted. ‘Could you all please raise your glasses and toast Django McCabe’s seventy-fifth birthday before my sister swears any more and is sent to her bedroom.’

‘To Django,’ said Fen, tears making a mockery of her mascara. ‘Happy, happy birthday.’

The adrenalin from speech-making, combined with the gin, vermouth and some strange green liqueur from Grenada in the punch, had a fast-acting intoxicating effect on the McCabe girls though their reactions differed. Fen became physically demonstrative, offering hugs and hand-holding to whomever was within arm’s reach. Pip became affectionately animated. Cat was simply over-emotional.

‘I do so love my family,’ Cat declared to Pip who was trying to French kiss a bemused Zac much to Tom’s jaw-dropped delight. ‘Family is everything,’ she said, looking desperately fondly at Ben. ‘The family you have, the family you create.’

‘Family is what matters,’ Pip agreed. ‘You’re so right.’

‘Oh God, not the waterworks,’ Ben groaned passing Cat a serviette to mop her eyes.

‘I can’t believe you said “fucking” three times in front of everyone!’ Tom marvelled.

‘Fucking fucking fucking fucking,’ Cat laughed. ‘There, That’s another four.’

‘Cat!’ Zac protested, shooting a glance to Pip for backup.

‘Cool!’ Tom laughed, deciding Cat was definitely his favourite step-aunt-or-something.

Cat hugged him. ‘I just can’t wait to have a little Tom or a little Cosima of my very own,’ she told him. ‘Family is what matters most in life.’

‘I agree,’ Tom said earnestly. ‘I’ve got loads.’

‘That’s what they should teach children in school,’ Cat said. ‘Are you excited about your new baby?’

‘Mega excited,’ Tom said. ‘I Don’t even mind if It’s a girl.’

Zac laughed. ‘That’s only because you think your train collection will be safe.’

Tom grinned and shrugged.

Cat and Fen are teaching Tom how to swear in German and French. Matt and Ben have snuck behind the marquee for a secret spliff. Pip’s arms are about Zac’s neck again. ‘Why Don’t we do it?’ she whispers, whilst nuzzling his ear lobe.

Zac regards her with a lascivious grin. ‘Sneak away for a quick knee-trembler against the oak tree?’

Pip frowns fleetingly. ‘I Don’t mean that,’ she laughs, ‘I didn’t mean a shag. I meant why Don’t we do it, Zac. You and me. Us. Have a baby?’

What was previously but the hushest of whispers in the furthest recesses of her own mind, is suddenly out in the open. Though she has enunciated the question mark and made it sound like a request, her words are less a suggestion and more a proclamation of intent. And Zac must respond, he must answer, he must acknowledge her invitation. And for Pip, in an instant, it is irrelevant whether Zac’s expression is specifically one of shock, one of bemusement, one of aversion or an amalgamation of all three. The significance is the absence of a smile. It’s shocking. Zac’s smile was what She’d first fallen in love with. It can’t have gone.

‘You’re drunk,’ He’s saying, ‘You’re joking.’

‘I’m not,’ Pip protests. ‘Well, maybe I am drunk. But I’m not joking.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ Zac says and he plugs her mouth with an affectionate kiss. ‘And stay off the punch, Mrs.’ He looks around while Pip stares at his shoes and quashes a sudden desire to scuff their well-tended shine. ‘Have you seen Tom?’ he asks her. ‘There he is. Can you keep an eye on him? I’m going to find Matt and Ben for a crafty puff.’

Pip weaves her way to Tom. She feels winded. She hadn’t known she was to make her revelation so of course she couldn’t reasonably anticipate his reaction. But the reaction, when it came, flummoxed her more than her revelation itself. She’s embarrassed. And a little hurt. It’s a sensation she does not like, one that she won’t allow to show because She’d hate anyone to pry. She’s always been very committed and particular in her role as the eldest; She’s taken it to mean that she must appear infallible and in control. How would Cat and Fen cope if she wasn’t? They depend on her. It’s their family way.

And here they are, her little sisters, their arms around her stepson.

‘Where’s my dad?’ Tom asks.

‘I Don’t know,’ Pip says, ‘and you should be thinking bedtime.’

‘But It’s not ten o’clock,’ Tom protests.

‘It’s five to,’ says Pip.

‘But Dad says I can stay up until ten,’ Tom moans.

Pip bites her lip. Fine. Whatever. What does my opinion matter anyway? I’m not your mother. I have no natural authority.

‘Pip?’ Fen asks. ‘Are you OK?’

‘What? Fine,’ Pip says and she walks away.

‘Go after her,’ Cat nudges Fen.

‘You,’ says Fen. ‘I need to check on Cosima.’

‘Come on, kiddo,’ Cat says to Tom whom She’s noticed has much the same hairstyle as her – though his here-and-there tufting is beyond his control while hers requires expensive products and much time. ‘Let’s go and find some crazy chums of Django’s to chat to.’

‘It’s my bedtime,’ Tom says gravely.

‘Fuck bedtime,’ Cat says with a wink and a nudge. ‘Let’s pretend we can’t tell the time.’

‘You’re wicked,’ says Tom, beaming, as Cat puts her hand on his bony little shoulder and guides him into the party.

‘Sleeping peacefully?’ Matt whispers.

Fen turns from the travel cot and puts her finger to her lips. She nods. Matt comes over. He doesn’t glance in the cot. He has eyes only for Fen. She looks so pretty tonight and He’s feeling so horny, a bit drunk and stoned too. He comes up to her, tucks a straying lock of hair behind her ears and cups her head in his hands. He winks suggestively. The gesture is partly comic but engaging too. Over her clothes, Matt’s hands peruse her breasts while his mouth finds hers. To his surprise and delight, suddenly She’s tonguing him greedily, grasping his buttocks and pulling his pelvis against hers. Privately, he salutes the punch and the green stuff from Grenada. He thinks he’ll ply Fen with alcohol on a regular basis. She’s wearing a soft skirt and all evening He’s been noticing how it catches the curves of her bottom, the sides of her thighs. No panty line. No panties? He explores. A thong. God, when was the last time he saw her in a thong? His hands move over her bare buttocks, he slips his fingers under the fabric of the thong and starts tugging it gently, knowing it creates tantalizing friction for her.

Fen’s hands are all over him. Sweeping over his torso, grabbing his neck to pull his face even closer to hers, fondling the bulge in his trousers. He fumbles with buttons while Fen drops to her knees and tugs down his boxers. There’s no preamble. No inner-thigh massage or ball-licking or shaft-caressing. She takes the entire length of his tumescent cock in her mouth and sucks so ravenously that he has to desperately conjure an image of the mad old woman near work, to stop him coming right then. He pulls Fen up to him, pulls at her top and fiddles with her bra cup to release her breasts. Her nipples are hard between his fingers and his cock is now achingly erect. He’d love to spend time sucking her tits, fingering her sex, maybe go down on her, some reciprocal oral sex, perhaps some mutual masturbation but actually all he wants to do is fuck her, get his cock up inside her in some primal urgency to reclaim her as his own. They fall onto the bed, not bothering about what clothing is on or off, just as long as there’s no fabric restricting entry. Fen pulls her G-string to one side, fleetingly Matt brushes through the fuzz of her mound, to confirm the ready ooze from her sex. Her legs are spread, their eyes are locked, their lips are parted and wet. He thrusts into her and they hump vigorously. Usually, Fen likes to go on top. Usually, she wants to go on top, to dictate the pace and the angle to facilitate her orgasm. Usually, she needs penetration interspersed with manual or oral stimulation to climax. Tonight, it is as if she has started to come as soon as Matt is inside her. The longest, most overdue, most body-racking orgasm. She gasps and bucks and scratches and yelps and She’s pretty sure She’s just come again instantaneously. Yet despite this fantastic vast throbbing wet pleasure zone electrifying her body, her mind tunes into her baby’s cry the millisecond before the sound is made.

And then Fen’s eyes are wide open and She’s shoving and pushing Matt off her. He’s a matter of thrusts away from his climax but the strength of a mother is no match for him. She’s gone. She’s gone away. He lies there, his balls aching with unspent sperm, his cock more flaccid by the second. He thinks It’s an amazing but dreadful feat, the way she can flit between sex-greed and maternal obsession. It’s really quite some skill. One to revere, but not necessarily like. What he doesn’t like at all is a lurking sense that while he was compelled by passion for her just now, she was pursuing only her own physical gratification. I’ve come – you can go now. Matt feels used, really. As let down and deflated as his ignored, limp cock.

Once Cosima has settled again, Fen offers herself to Matt; caressing his wilted cock, taking it in her mouth. Though she performs a variety of usually fail-safe tricks and techniques, it is not possible to disguise her drive as one of desire rather than duty. She’s not even half-hearted; her heart obviously Isn’t in it.

‘Moment has passed,’ Matt shrugs, tapping her head.

Fen looks up. His cock snuggles against his pubic hair like a little creature asleep in a nest. He thinks it looks pathetic. He closes his eyes.

‘Don’t I turn you on any more?’ Fen says and he looks down at her pouting up at him.

He knows She’s trying to be cute but he wants to tell her, Actually, sometimes no you Don’t, especially not when you reject me to faff with the baby. But It’s not worth it. It’s Django’s birthday party. Matt can’t possibly instigate a confrontation, or even a heart-to-heart.

‘You can owe me one,’ he tells her as he rearranges his clothing.

She gives him a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘Deal,’ she says warmly, led by growing guilt. She’s horribly aware that throughout the fuck she was abandoned to the fantasy that Matt was someone else. No one whom she knew. Just someone specifically not Matt. But now is not the time to worry and analyse it. There’s a party out in the garden. She double-checks the baby monitor and returns to the mêlée.

Django is telling Tom somewhat fanciful stories about his time with the Beatles. Bibi is nodding earnestly, adding details of her own which She’s pretty sure must be true. ‘The thing about the sixties,’ she confides to Zac, ‘is I can’t remember a bloody thing about the sixties! I think LSD may well have been a terrific trip – but the downside is I Don’t honestly know which memories are real and which are purely chemical.’

‘Where’s Ellisdy, Dad?’ Tom asks Zac, wondering if such a trip might be something they could do over the summer holidays. Zac is momentarily thrown. Now does not seem an appropriate time for the ‘just say no’ lecture.

‘Ghastly! Don’t go there!’ Django rues, which is good enough for Zac and good enough for Tom.

‘Gracious me, look at the time – It’s nearly midnight and I’ll turn into a pumpkin. Or, rather, seventy-five years old officially.’

‘I thought it was a birthday party?’ Tom says, confused. ‘You can only have a birthday party if It’s on your actual birthday. Otherwise it has to be called a party.’

‘My seventy-fifth birthday is actually tomorrow,’ Django says. He looks at his watch and counts down the seconds with theatrical nods of his head. ‘No. I tell a lie. It’s now today. I’m now seventy-five years old.’

‘So it is a birthday party,’ says Tom, dreading his father hearing all this talk about what the time is.

‘Whatever you’d like to call it, I had an absolute blast,’ said Django. ‘And now I’m going to bed.’

DEREK

Often, a great party is defined less by the event itself, than by the calibre and longevity of subsequent reminiscences. A balmy May Sunday morning in the idyllic setting of the house and grounds at Farleymoor, provided a conducive carte blanche for lounging, lazing and recounting. Of course, this could not be done on an empty stomach, nor with a hangover, so Django had prepared his remedy for both – a vast breakfast of sausages, eggs, bacon, champ and beans, all flooded with Henderson’s Relish and roofed over with slabs of toast plastered with marmalade. His family lolled about outside, turning their faces to the sun, chatting. Behind them, the Blakes of Chesterfield marquee seemed to breathe; its sides swelling rhythmically in the gentle breeze, as if still sleeping off the excesses of the night before.

‘You said “fucking” seven times!’ Tom whispered to Cat who winced, covered her eyes and apologized profusely.

‘Did anyone video the speeches?’ Fen wondered, hovering her hand an inch above Cosima’s head so that the baby’s downy hair caressed the palm of her hand.

‘Video?’ Django balked. ‘Gracious no, though the Ravellas brought their Super8. Doubt whether it had film in it. They’ve taken that thing everywhere with them over the years, amassing a footage that runs into – well – minutes on account of their forgetfulness.’

‘Bibi’s dancing deserves to be documented for posterity,’ Ben marvelled. ‘She’s more loose-limbed than Josephine Baker.’

‘Actually, she really was a contortionist in her prime. That’s how we met. It was some festival or other. She was doing frightfully bendy things whilst saluting the sun, or the moon, or something similarly yogic. However, she ended up making quite a few bob as many people presumed she was busking for tips.’

‘What a character,’ Pip said warmly. ‘I hope she pops in sometime today, to say goodbye again.’

‘Look, here are Ferdy and Gregor!’ said Cat.

‘No banjos,’ Tom remarked sadly.

It took some time for the couple to kiss everyone on both cheeks. They then made much of how ghastly their headaches were and that the least Django could do was provide hair-of-the-dog by way of compensation. Zac’s constitution was far too delicate just then, to withstand an explanation of the term to Tom, though Matt promised the boy he’d tell him later, when his own headache had subsided.

‘Will you be having an eighty-fifth birthday party?’ Tom enquired. ‘In a decade?’

Django considered the question carefully. ‘I can’t see why not,’ he reasoned, ‘as long as I’m still relatively hale and hearty.’

‘I’ll be nearly twenty by then!’ Tom said. ‘How fucking amazing is that!’

‘Tom!’ everyone remonstrated, before levelling accusatory glares at Cat.

‘Goodness me, I need a cup of tea,’ Django declared.

‘I’ll make it,’ offered Pip.

‘You stay put, darling,’ Django ordered. ‘I may be old, but I’m not incapable.’

‘Can we just have Darjeeling, please?’ Fen requested as diplomatically as she could.

‘She means not that weird purpley stuff that smells like stewed grasses,’ Cat laughed.

‘I didn’t bring you up to be dull,’ Django protested, though he had to privately agree with the stewed-grass analogy. ‘Might you settle for Lapsang?’ he asked. They’d have to.

‘Do a flikflak, Pip!’ Tom implored his stepmother. Pip looked at the lawn: soft, level and inviting. It was where She’d taught herself all manner of tumbling over the years, but she didn’t much feel like demonstrations today. She had a hangover and what she wanted was to have a private moment with Zac so she could say Did you mean what you said last night? Because, actually, I meant what I said. But Zac had been infuriatingly cheerful all morning, tactile and attentive, thus allowing her no recourse to challenge him.

‘Please do a flikflak?’ Tom pleaded. ‘It makes sense to do flikflaks before you have a cup of tea.’

‘I wasn’t actually considering doing any after,’ Pip pointed out. And then she looked at Tom’s disappointed little face and flikflaks suddenly seemed a tiny price to pay for his smile. ‘I want applause,’ Pip stipulated, ‘cheering and whistling, if you please.’ And off she went, executing a perfect line of four.

‘I used to be able to walk on my hands,’ said Ben. Rolling his head, giving his wrists and ankles an energetic shake, to gasps of admiration, he found he still could.

‘I can cartwheel!’ said Cat, scrambling to her feet and doing just that.

And when Penny Ericsson came through the garden gate, That’s the scene that greeted her: a laughing bunch performing amateur acrobatics in the early summer sunshine.

No one knew who she was. Why should they? But the appearance of a stranger didn’t surprise them. People had been calling in all morning to thank Django for the party and wish him many happy returns. Some hadn’t even been present the night before, but still they came with their birthday greetings. So the group on the lawn didn’t bat an eyelid at the woman. She was just another friend of Django’s, wasn’t she? Someone from his dim and distant past, from some far-flung shore, no doubt. Relatively conservatively dressed for a friend of Django’s. Silvering blonde hair cut close. Small tortoise-shell glasses. A tunic top and cropped trousers in the same honey-coloured linen. Sensible sandals. Interesting jewellery. She had stopped some distance away. She raised her hand. Fen raised hers.

‘Hi,’ the woman called.

‘Hullo!’ called Cat.

‘Hi,’ she said, coming nearer, ‘hi.’

An American. Django had plenty of friends from the States. Perhaps this was the famous Toni from Squam? Or the infamous Rayner from Sausalito?

‘Hi,’ she said, once again, slightly breathless, squinting in the sunlight.

‘Hullo,’ said Fen. And Cat. And Pip. And the men. And Tom.

It is often a peculiar surprise to hear the sound of one’s voice on a recording. The sound doesn’t make sense. I Don’t sound anything like that. Sometimes, a mirror presents an image so far from one’s perception of oneself that the reflection could well belong to a stranger. But That’s not how I feel I look.

However, for Ben, Matt and Zac, a glimpse of the future, of seeing how their partners might look in twenty-five years’ time, was immediate. But that wasn’t the shock of it. The fundamental shock was that this woman’s resemblance to their girls was so striking that there could be but one explanation. And yet the girls obviously hadn’t noticed a thing.

But what when they did?

What then?

The three men could do little more than glance at each other and feel their heart rates thud like the countdown to a detonation.

‘So,’ the lady said, ‘where is the birthday boy?’

‘He’s making tea,’ Cat said. ‘he’ll be out in a mo’.’

‘He always makes plenty,’ Fen assured her.

‘Sorry – were you at the party last night?’ asked Pip.

‘No,’ she said, ‘no.’ And she fingered the cord of silver around her neck while being smiled at.

Tom wondered whether this new lady might be interested that Cat had said ‘fucking’ seven times.

‘Here he is,’ Fen said, before Tom had a chance to find out.

Django was far too busy balancing the tray with all the cups and saucers and teapot and plates piled high with biscuits to notice his guest at first.

‘Hi Derek,’ the lady said, ‘happy birthday.’

Derek?

Who’s Derek?

I Don’t think we know a Derek.

There’s no Derek here.

In severe electric shocks, it is impossible to let go. Such shocks are, literally, riveting; they simultaneously root you to the spot while they decimate you. Django didn’t drop the tray, he didn’t faint or fall to his knees and he didn’t wail or gasp. He couldn’t. He couldn’t make a sound, let alone say a word. He couldn’t drop the tray. He couldn’t move. He stood there, momentarily paralysed.

‘This is Django,’ Cat was saying to the lady, ‘Django McCabe.’

‘If You’re lost, there are loads of Ordnance Survey maps in the house,’ said Fen helpfully.

‘I think They’re in that trunk in the shed, actually,’ added Pip.

‘Girls,’ said Django, and the pureness of his audible pain was not for himself, but for those he loved most on whom he was about to inflict it. ‘Girls.’ Carefully he put the tray down. He did not know in whose eyes he should look. So he looked at her. ‘Girls. This is your mother.’

Where were you when Princess Diana died? What were you doing when the planes struck the World Trade Center on 9/11? Were you sitting down to Christmas Day leftovers when you learnt about the Asian Tsunami?

On Django’s seventy-fifth birthday, Cat, Pip and Fen wouldn’t have had a clue where they’d been on those landmark moments. For them, history ceased to be defined by such events. On Django’s seventy-fifth birthday, history was retold.

Our mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when we were small.

And then she came back.

THEN WHAT?

Then what? No one could actually say a thing. Time had stopped, the temperature had dropped and Pip, Cat and Fen were paralysed in a state of frozen panic. If the magnitude of the situation was beyond belief, it was certainly beyond words. They had never imagined this occurrence, never craved it, never dreaded it. Therefore, they had never bothered to prepare fanciful speeches in the event of their mother showing up. They’d never even wondered ‘What if?’ This sudden reality was so far from their expectation that they were utterly ill-equipped to deal with it. They could only sit and stare, with time suspended while their hearts thumped with disbelief. No one wanted to break it. In the silence, they were still safe. If anyone moved or any sound was made, time would have to resume. Nothing would be the same again. This they knew. And yet Cat, Fen and Pip hadn’t ever wanted anything to change in the first place.

Penny stood there and deduced which daughter was Cat, though just then she didn’t know Pip from Fen. It also occurred to her, with unexpected pleasure, that she appeared to be a grandmother too. The particulars of her gene-pool were immediately legible; her three daughters had paired up and had two offspring between them. The bare facts were pleasing. The girls appeared in good health. Their men looked nice. Everyone seemed happy. It was a soothing scene to behold but one she suddenly wished she was seeing as a fly on the wall. Home seemed very far away.

‘Hi,’ she said, focusing on the baby, ‘and aren’t you a cutey?’ She stooped to Cosima who was gurgling and bashing her pudgy legs with her little fists. Penny offered the baby a finger. ‘Hi, hi, cutey-pie.’

Fen grabbed her baby away before she could grasp her grandmother’s finger. She staggered to her feet, the brittle rubber of one flip-flop ripping away from the sole as she did so. Her face glowering with mistrust and animosity. ‘What the fuck?’ she managed in a hoarse whisper.

Tom gave a delighted gasp. ‘Fen said f—’

‘Tom!’ Zac hissed, now in no quandary over whom to protect. He took Tom away, to the tyre swing at the outer edge of the garden. He could only touch his wife gently between the shoulder-blades as he went.

‘You’re Fenella?’ Penny deduced. ‘And look, you have a daughter!’

Fen couldn’t respond, she could only hold Cosima protectively. What did all this mean? What was going on? Matt rose and stood oak-like and silent behind his family.

‘You’re Philippa?’ Penny asked Pip.

Pip was unable to give much more than a childlike shrug. Where was Zac? Where should she be? By her sisters? But they had their partners. No one was looking to her for help. They were each in a constrictive space of their own. Pip felt entirely alone. Zac was in another space, protecting his son. She was surrounded by a family in splinters and for the first time she had no idea how to go about putting it all back together again. She felt very cold.

‘And I guessed you were Catriona,’ Penny gave a small smile. She turned to Django. ‘She has your eyes, hey?’

1960S AND ALL THAT JAZZ

If ignorance had been the background to the bliss in the McCabe sisters’ lives until that moment, knowledge was its polar opposite and it suffused them with panic and pain. In desperation, they tried to plead ignorance. If they pretended they didn’t know what she meant, everything might be all right.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Pip.

‘Who’s Derek?’ said Fen.

Say something Cat. Quickly. You need to say something naive and pedestrian. Why not tell that woman she simply has the wrong family. But Cat’s voice was horribly noticeable for its silence. Her sisters turned to her. She looked back at them, imploringly. ‘What does she mean about me having Django’s eyes?’ said Cat, capable of little more than a whisper. They turned to Django who was staring at Penny. They turned to Penny who was gazing at the three of them.

‘I had to come,’ Penny told them. ‘I know it must be a shock and all. But could we talk? Might you listen?’

The sisters turned to Django but his head hung low and his eyes were fixed on the ground.

‘If You’re on some mission to appease your guilt, you’ve wasted your journey,’ said Pip flatly. ‘It has nothing to do with us.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Fen said so icily that Cosima wriggled and began to cry. ‘What are you implying about Cat? Why do you call our uncle “Derek”?’

‘You did not know?’ Penny appeared shocked. ‘Did you God-honestly not know? Your whole lives – and you did not know?’

‘Know what?’ Cat asked, her voice barely audible.

The faintest of whispers coursed through Fen and Pip, but they blocked it out, not ready to listen.

If we did not know any of this, what else might we not know? The thought was trying to sidle.

Cat now had her hands clamped over her ears, her eyes screwed shut. She did not want to hear them and she did not want anyone looking at her eyes.

‘I am sorry,’ Penny said with a hand at her heart for emphasis, ‘this must be a terrible shock. Derek – could you not help me out here?’

All eyes turned to the man in the candy-striped cheesecloth smock, the man with the moccasins on his feet, wearing patched cords with fraying seams and a faded CND patch appliquéd under one knee. Whatever his name was. There had to be an explanation. He was the man who had always made everything all right. Who had made sense of everything. He had always told them, when they were hurt, that he was there to make them better. That it was his job to kiss that bruise. That he was the world expert in cuddling away tears. There there. There there. Django is here. Don’t cry. Don’t worry. Django’s here.

Except he Isn’t.

Some bloke called Derek is standing in his moccasins.

He suddenly looks very old and tired, thought Pip.

He doesn’t look well, thought Fen.

I hate him, thought Cat.

Christ, this is one crackpot family, thought Ben. Bugger, Cosima needs changing, thought Matt.

‘I,’ Django said. ‘She.’ He paused. ‘You,’ he said, though he focused on no one. Silence fell and Django felt powerless to do anything about it.

She took off her glasses. ‘My name is Penny Ericsson,’ she told them, ‘and I am your mother.’ Her voice was gentle and clear, tinged with reflection but underscored with relief; a timbre that told everyone that the truth was being told. ‘I was married to Nicholas McCabe when I was a very young girl. I was seventeen and pregnant – not with you, Philippa, with another child. I miscarried. I had you. I had Fenella. I had Catriona. And I left.’

The silence, no less heavy, was calmer.

‘Why do you say that Cat has Django’s eyes?’ Pip asked finally, the reluctant spokesman for the sisters.

‘You have Nicholas’s chin, Philippa,’ Penny said levelly, ‘Fenella has Nicholas’s eyes.’ She stopped. ‘And Catriona has Derek’s eyes.’

‘What are you saying?’ Fen then turned to Django who finally met her gaze. ‘What is she saying?’

Django looked around him. His home. His garden. His girls. His grandchildren. All that he loved. He was soaking up the sights, as if within seconds he’d be denied them for ever. All that he held sacred, all he had hoped to keep safe, was teetering on a precipice that was as much of his own making as of Penny Ericsson’s. He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to step in as protector or if he was about to push what he held most precious straight over the edge. He stumbled, grabbed the cold edge of the curlicue garden chair and sat down heavily. With a hand on each knee, and rocking gently, he spoke with audibly heart-heavy reluctance. ‘My name is Derek McCabe – or at least That’s what it says on my birth certificate.’ Suddenly, it seemed like a good if desperate idea to fixate on the triviality of this particular revelation, to step outside the bigger picture and the graver question. A glance at his girls suggested they were almost glad of the diversion. ‘Look at me, I hardly look like a Derek, do I?’ he tried a meek smile. ‘Derek was my given name – but Django is my true name. Can we settle on that?’

‘Django?’ Pip enunciated the word as if it sat awkward on her tongue, as if it were no longer a name. ‘How the hell did you go from Derek to Django?’

Django looked hurt. ‘Jazz,’ he declared, as if to prompt, ‘jazz.’ Fen and Pip nodded as if they thought they understood. ‘When I heard the music of Django Reinhardt, the colour and spirit at my core leapt free,’ he explained, ‘and in the sixties, to be who you felt was the easiest thing in the world. You think Bibi’s parents called her Bibi when she was born in 1939? They called her Doris, but what did they know? Can you imagine Bibi being called Doris, for goodness’ sake? One day she said, Hey call me Bibi, so we said, Cool. And one day I said, Hey call me Django, and they said, Cool. Feel the vibe. Tune in. Dig it.’

Too many psychedelic drugs, Ben mused in a quick, private glance to Matt.

Good thing his hero was Django Reinhardt and not Bix Beiderbecke or Thelonious Monk, Matt thought as he raised his eyebrow to Ben.

But for the sisters, Django’s eccentricity was suddenly baffling and irritating. Throughout their lives, in spite of his quirks, he’d been utterly reliable and had ensured consistency in their lives. Now they felt conned.

‘But are you?’ Cat’s voice suddenly rang out, far stronger than Pip’s, much calmer than Fen’s. She locked eyes with Penny. ‘Is he?’

‘I am,’ said Django.

‘How long have you known?’ Cat asked.

‘I’ve always known,’ Django said.

With that, there was now nothing else to misconstrue, nothing to cling to in the faint hope of a mistake. And in the here and now, the hear and now became far too onerous for Cat. Burying her head in Ben’s chest was her only option because, just then, he was the closest she felt she had to proper, genuine family.

Penny cleared her throat, to invite all eyes back to her. She looked from Fen to Pip, gazed at the back of Cat’s head, at Ben’s hand holding it protectively against his chest, his wedding ring glinting in the sunshine. Then Penny glanced at Django. ‘He’s kinda right,’ she said. ‘I Don’t know.’ She stopped. Attempted to speak again. Stopped. ‘Nowadays there’s Prozac,’ she said, ‘and therapy. But back then, there were magic mushrooms and acid and free love. Only it wasn’t free. None of it was free or liberating. The cost was high.’

‘But why are you here?’ Pip asked.

‘You’re screwing up our lives a second time around,’ Fen cried.

Penny looked crestfallen. She hadn’t anticipated this and she certainly had not intended this. Privately, she cursed Grief for having centred her world around herself. ‘If I could try to explain?’ she asked them and continued before they could deny her. ‘Despite the fog of my screwed-up 1960s state, I met the love of my life. The love of my life. The light in my life. A beautiful man called Bob Ericsson.’ She looked around her. Their faces wouldn’t be blank if they’d known him, she thought. ‘He died, you see. He died five months ago. The light in my life went out. And I am here because suddenly I Don’t want to be hated like Juliette hates her father.’ Penny faltered. So much to explain. How could she have suddenly arrived at Fountains ice cream when there was over a quarter of a century’s details to divulge? ‘Juliette is this young woman I’ve met,’ she said, a little meekly. ‘She’s about your age, Fen, I would imagine. I Don’t actually know.’

‘Don’t you even know how old I am?’ Fen cried.

‘Oh, I know exactly how old you are,’ Penny said, her voice so hoarse it had no tone, ‘to the day. The minute. I just Don’t know how old Juliette is, precisely.’

For the sisters, details were now irrelevant. Other people’s sob stories were irrelevant. The quandary all three shared was who to feel most betrayed by. The mother who had abandoned them when they were small? Or the man who had lied to them, to a greater or lesser degree, throughout their lives? In their past, at tumultuous points in their lives, there had always been that one place to go to – home, Derbyshire, Django. Now it was the one place they wanted to run from. Their hearts were not here so how could it be home? Their hearts had been fractured into splinters and shards by the arrival of this woman saying she was their mother, and this man called Derek admitting he was Cat’s father.

‘I want to go,’ Fen told Matt.

Pip looked over at the tyre swing. ‘Zac?’ she called. He looked up. we’re going, she mouthed with an urgent beckon.

She and Fen looked at Cat, at the back of her head, Ben’s chest keeping her face from view, her hands still protecting her ears. ‘Us too,’ Ben nodded, kissing the top of his wife’s head again and again.

Where were you when you found out that Pip and Fen were only your half sisters? That your father was a man called Derek McCabe whom you’d known your whole life but was now a complete stranger?

I was listening to Ben’s heartbeat, sixty-two beats per minute. Strong and steady. Take me away from here, Ben. Quickly. Back to Clapham – That’s fine. Wherever. As long as I’m with you. Home is where my heart is. And it won’t ever be here in Derbyshire. Never again.

From standing stock still with time suspended, suddenly the emphasis was on movement, on going, on getting away and fast. There was no flouncing, no histrionics, just calm and purposeful organizing.

‘Have you had a wee?’ Pip asked Tom.

‘I’ll just change Cosima,’ said Matt.

‘It’s OK, I’ll do that,’ said Fen. ‘You pack the car.’

Finally, the sisters hugged each other and pointedly stayed beyond arm’s reach and avoided eye contact when muttering goodbye to the approximate location of Django and their mother.

How can something planned to perfection go so horribly wrong? Though the thought had conflicting relevance in terms of timescale, both Django and Penny pondered as they stood in the garden transfixed by the space made by the girls’ leaving.

‘Oh dear,’ Penny said, ‘this I did not plan. How dumb am I?’

‘Ditto,’ said Django, ‘still. Still.’ He sighed and glanced at her. ‘One can’t expect to hoick secrets one’s whole life. They’re far too cumbersome.’ He spoke for them both. She nodded and hung her head. ‘Though I’d say I’m more deluded than dumb,’ Django said. ‘I’ve spent over thirty years keeping them from hurt. How conceited I must be to have assumed I could maintain this.’

He looked at her. Penny at fifty-three. She hadn’t really changed. Physically, the years had apparently treated her relatively well but a good complexion could not mask a certain delineating sadness. And it was precisely this that he remembered, from thirty years ago; more than the colour of her eyes, the set of her mouth. Still the same sad, mixed-up girl, currently hiding behind a more weathered façade. ‘Why on earth did you come back?’

Penny looked at her sandals, looked at Django’s moccasins, made an oddly childish semicircle in the grass with her foot. ‘I Don’t really know right now.’

‘Well it can’t have been to wish me happy birthday.’ ‘No,’ Penny agreed, ‘I’d already booked my flight when I remembered your birthday and realized it was your seventy-fifth.’

‘Why come?’ Django asked. ‘Why now?’

‘Because Bob died,’ Penny shrugged, hastily blinking away tears and feigning that it was the sunlight bothering her.

‘I am sorry for your loss,’ Django said, his eyes and his voice softening a little.

‘I tend to lose most things, Don’t I?’ Penny remarked. ‘But I really did try to take good care of Bob, you know.’

I’ve just lost the lot, Django thought sadly to himself.

THE M1

Junction 27

Guns N’ Roses was a very odd choice. Odd, because Ben had no idea that Cat particularly liked their music. Odd because they’d always favoured Moby for motorways. Odd because the thrash and slash of heavy rock should surely be utterly at odds with the fragile, solemn mood. Wouldn’t Cat want to listen to something more ambient, something to soothe the scorch on her soul? Obviously not. Sweet child of mine.

At first, Ben thought she was singing silently. From the corner of his eye, he assumed Cat was miming along to Axl, imitating his physiognomic contortions. But a swift glance across at her and he realized she was hyperventilating, tears streaming, her face racked in torment.

‘Oh babe,’ he said, while thinking to himself that he was driving at eighty miles an hour and wondering if he could pull over to the hard shoulder. He placed his hand on her knee. ‘It’s OK. It’s OK.’

‘It’s not!’ she cried. ‘Nothing’s OK. And I can’t breathe. Help me.’

‘In through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth,’ Ben chanted at her, calm but insistent. ‘Cat, breathe into that paper bag. Down there – that the bananas came in.’

‘It has rubbish in it.’

‘Take the banana skin out. Throw it on the floor. Put the bag against your mouth and breathe into it. Come on Cat – in through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through your mouth.’

With the music hammering and Cat sucking and blowing into the bag, Ben thought it ludicrously plausible that she should look like some solvent-abusing rock chick.

‘I want to stop.’

‘Babe, I can’t stop on the hard shoulder. There’s a services in a couple of miles. In through your nose and out through your mouth.’

‘I need to stop,’ Cat gasped. ‘Stop the car.’ Ben swerved the car to the hard shoulder. He flicked on the hazard lights, unclipped his seat-belt and leant across to hold his wife. However awkward and uncomfortable the angle for him, he knew it was nothing compared to the pain she was in. There were hundreds of questions he wanted to ask but of course he refrained. There’d be time for that. Way too much time. Just now, he knew there was not much he could say at all. His job was to hold her and fill her ears with comforting hushing, place the tender kisses on her forehead and keep her freezing cold hands warm within his. He promised her, over and over again, that everything would be all right though he hadn’t the faintest idea how to fulfil such a pledge.

‘I can’t believe it. I Don’t know what happened. What does it all mean? I Don’t want anything to change. Life will never be the same again.’

No. Oh fuck no. Not the fucking police. Blue lights flashed up behind Ben’s car and an officer walked over. Ben racked his mind for explanations, excuses, lies – anything would do. He wound down his window.

‘Everything OK?’ the policeman asked, peering in to the interior of the car and politely overlooking the state of Cat’s tears-ravaged face for the time being.

‘Yes,’ said Ben, ‘fine.’

‘Your car OK, sir?’ the officer asked. ‘Broken down?’

Ben faltered. It was his wife who had broken down. Wasn’t that glaringly obvious?

‘Everything all right?’ the officer asked again, now looking directly at the sobbing, shivering heap of Cat half in Ben’s arms.

Ben didn’t know what he ought to say. ‘I. It’s. She.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s personal.’

Suddenly Cat looked up. ‘Someone died,’ she told the officer. ‘I’ve only just heard. It’s my uncle, who brought me up. He’s now dead.’

The officer spoke quietly to Ben. ‘You need to move along, sir. It is an offence to stop on the hard shoulder. There’s a services a few miles on. Take her there.’

Back on the M1, Cat continued to sob, alternating sucks on the paper bag with great soul-crushed wails while Axl Rose still blared out about bad apples and dead horses.

‘It hurts,’ she cried. ‘Christ the pain, Ben.’ ‘I know, babe, I know.’ ‘You Don’t! You can’t possibly! No one does!’

Ben thought about this. It was true. ‘I know. You’re right. I can only begin to imagine. I’m sorry. But they know,’ he said, ‘your sisters.’

‘It’s not the same, I’m nothing like them. They’re the ones who are sisters. They still have an uncle called Django.’

Ben drove on in contemplative silence, one hand on the wheel, the other on Cat’s knee. Perfectly true. The mother’s reappearance was to some extent irrelevant. Much more of a shock to discover at the age of thirty-two that your father is in fact alive and that half of each sister didn’t actually exist.

‘In through your nose, Cat, out through your mouth. Good girl. Good girl.’

‘I Don’t know who I am,’ Cat sobbed. ‘I’m not who I grew up thinking I was.’

Junction 23a

Matt’s eyes scanned a constant triangle: ahead to the motorway, sideways to Fen, to the back to Cosima and then forward to the motorway. The traffic was light and driving conditions were good. The baby was dozing contentedly – her thumb had fallen from her mouth but her sucking reflex continued regardless, her cheeks dimpling and the underside of her chin pulsating rhythmically. Fen’s gaze was directed out of the window but it was obvious she wasn’t admiring the view. She usually commented on the cooling towers near Nottingham but they’d passed them, solid and peaceful and elephantine, yet She’d said nothing. Nor had she remarked on the radio listening station outside Rugby, as she was wont to do; today the slightly alarming, sci-fi forest of antennae in the lie of the two motorways was spared Fen’s customary comparison with a Ridley Scott film set.

Every few miles, Matt had placed his hand on her knee with a supportive stroke or squeeze and asked her if she was OK. Each time, She’d reply that she didn’t know. And Matt would ask if she wanted to talk. And She’d shake her head and return her attention to the hard shoulder.

Matt scanned his triangle of interest again. The motorway and Cosima were doing as he wanted, Fen remained beyond reach. He put his hand over hers.

‘You OK, Fen? Do you want to talk?’

Don’t block it out, Fen. It’s not healthy. Don’t block me out, Fen. It’s not good for us.

‘Fen, you OK?’

‘Life will never be the same again, Matt.’

That’s what worries me, Fen, That’s what worries me most.

Junction 16

Aren’t grown-ups odd. It’s not a question, It’s a statement. We’d already been in the car for years and I was trying to ask what name I should call Django Gramps from now on. Dad gave me one of those looks with his eyebrows that told me to zip it. Then Pip suddenly starts talking about dandelions. But the thing is, she finished talking about dandelions ages ago and we are all still sitting in silence. It’s boring. Motorways are for singing and ‘I-Spy’ and playing ‘I-love-my-love-with-an-A’ all through the alphabet. I’d even secretly practised in case I had ‘q’ or ‘z’. For ‘z’ I found the name ‘Zuleika’. Imagine that! you’d change it wouldn’t you, change it to something like Zara or Zoe. Like if you were called Derek it would certainly be a good idea to change it to something like Django.

I couldn’t even join in about the dandelion – I was going to ask Pip if it was a metaphor because I thought it probably was because Miss Balcombe was teaching us about metaphors in English last week. But just as I was about to, Dad gave me another ‘zip it’ look with his eyebrows. I wonder if it is a metaphor or whether it is a simile or something. I’ll ask my mum. Anyway, Pip starts going on about how in an instant her family is suddenly scattered and flung far beyond reach. She says she and Fen and Cat were like the seed head of a dandelion, that Django was the stalk around whom they gathered and clung to. And then that woman comes along and blows them away and Pip doesn’t know where They’ll all fall but that she does know it is now impossible for them to be the same dandelion ever again. Or something like that.

‘Dad, I really really need a wee soon.’

‘Can you hang on until the next service station – about ten minutes?’

‘OK. Dad?’

‘Yes?’

‘Shall we play I-love-my-love-with-an-A?’

‘Er. Not just now.’

‘I’m bored.’

‘For goodness’ sake.’

‘It’s natural for a kid to be bored in a car – That’s why they invented games like I-Spy and I-love-my-love. And now they’ve invented cars with DVD players in the seats for the kids – so I suggest you get one of those next time.’

‘Could you please pipe down, Tom. I’m driving.’

‘Tom, I’ll play I-love-my-love with you.’

‘Well, if You’re going to do “u”, I’ll do “z” – we Don’t have to do it alphabetically, Pip. We can make it more complex.’

‘I meant you not “u”.’

‘Oh. I’ll start with “z” anyway. But can I just ask one very quick, small question first?’

‘OK.’

‘Am I still his grandsonthing-or-other?’

‘I’m sure you are.’

‘Phew. One other minute question – can I still call him Django Gramps or do I have to change it to Derek? I’ve been thinking about it and Derek Gramps doesn’t sound right – but I was thinking Grandpa Derek sounds all right.’

‘Tom, will you please just button it.’

‘It’s OK, Zac, It’s OK. Tom – I Don’t know. It’s very complicated and I can’t tell you anything at the moment. I’m sorry.’

‘I was just thinking that it would be as strange as having to call you Philippa all of a sudden. I mean it is your name but It’s not your name. You’re Pip. Do you see?’

‘Tom – last warning.’

‘Zac – It’s all right. Tom, listen, I need some grown-up time to come up with some answers for you.’

‘Oh. OK. The very very last thing I was just going to ask – is Cat still your sister, though?’

‘Tom!’

‘It’s OK, Zac. Of course she is, Tom. She’ll always be my sister.’

London

In previous times of crisis, the siblings had always turned to each other, and of course Django, for support and advice. In the past, there had always been an easily accepted hierarchy of need because crises had never befallen them simultaneously. They’ve always had each other to turn to, to consult. They’ve never had cause to crave attention; they’ve never had to shout to be heard. Never had to face fears alone or mop tears unaided. Long distance, middle of the night, intrusive, time-consuming, occasionally expensive, sometimes frustrating – but always there, always there. That’s what families are for. Families matter. But until now, the McCabes have never confronted family matters. Nor have their crises collided.

They have not been shaken to the core. It’s far worse – now their core has gone. Like a split atom: something previously so complete suddenly obliterated; propelling components so far flung that they are surely destined to remain beyond reach. The destruction unfathomable.

No one phones anyone that night. This is not denial but a heart-rending clutch at survival in a world they Don’t understand. The only way to cope with a world you Don’t understand is to do something completely different. Reinvent yourself anew.

DOVIDELS

There were some crude similarities with a hangover in that, the next morning, Cat awoke feeling wretched, with details of the previous day swarming over her in bilious waves. Like a hangover, the easiest way to react initially was to pull the duvet over her head and beg for a dreamless sleep to numb the pain and drive the memories away. Unlike a hangover, there was nothing that could combat her fuggy head and untold nausea when she finally awoke at noon. No hair-of-the-dog equivalent to settle the soul from the shock of meeting your long-absent mother and being told that your father is not dead but standing right in front of you. A mammoth fryup might be a miracle cure for a body depleted by alcohol, but it doesn’t work when a mind racing with hideous facts ties a stomach in knots. None of the painkillers in Cat’s medicine cabinet would have the slightest effect on the anguish choking her.

She deleted the voicemail messages on her mobile phone from her sisters without listening to them and she left the envelope icons of their text messages unopened. She sensed their contact was one of love and support but just then she felt too raw and bewildered to receive it at all. She phoned Ben though she had nothing to say and clung to the receiver, eyes closed to direct the sound of his voice straight to her heart.

You’re all I have, she said to herself when she hung up, You’re all I really have. When the phone rang again, she didn’t answer it. If it was Ben, She’d only break down. If it was anyone else, she didn’t want to speak to them anyway.

There was a loaded pause, followed by an uncertain ‘Hullo?’ It was Django, famously suspicious of answering machines, leaving a message for Cat nonetheless. ‘Hullo? Is that Ben? Oh, It’s the whatsit. Is there anyone—Hullo? Hullo. This is Django McCabe. I’m leaving a message for Catriona. This is Django. Just leaving a message to say—Blast these blessed machines. I’d like to leave a message to say I hope your journey was OK yesterday. That was Sunday. And I’m. Thinking.’ He phoned again almost immediately afterwards just to say, ‘Monday. It’s now Monday.’ For the first time, Django’s trademark flummoxed messages brought no smile to Cat. She deleted the messages immediately and switched the answering machine off.

I’m Cat McCabe. I’m thirty-two years old. I never wanted to meet my mother. I thought I was brought up by my uncle. I thought I had two sisters, that I was one amongst equals, in the same boat, cut from the same cloth, sharing the same blood tie. This is the opposite of finding out You’re adopted. There’s no one out there for me to find and I can’t bear the sight of those staring me in the face.

Roof upon roof upon roof. Obnoxious pigeons the colour of concrete. Where was a mountain when a girl needed one most? Flagstaff. The Flatirons. Bear Peak. Where was the exhilaration of feeling so tiny in the great wide open, the comfort of feeling so alive surrounded by vast natural wilderness? It was time zones away. A whole day on a plane away.

In Boulder, there’d still be snow on the peaks but the pastures would be so lush they’d be positively luminescent. Nowhere had Cat seen colours in nature clash so cacophonously and yet so pleasingly as in Colorado. Nature’s daytime fireworks. She looked out of the window. Rust-red roof tiles smudged with lichen here, dull grey mass-produced slate tiles there, ugly dormer windows, redundant chimney-pots, bird shit, the spike and clutter of too many aerials. She looked at her watch. Stacey would be awake. And even if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t mind Cat phoning her.

‘Did I wake you?’

‘No – I’m just back in from a run. Seven-miler – the killer loop. I wiped the ass off your best time, lady. How are you!’

‘Miserable,’ Cat said. ‘Where are you? In your kitchen? By your fridge? Will you look out of the window and tell me what you see? Tell me everything.’

Stacey’s description was soothingly detailed and Cat listened with her eyes fixed on the roof network outside.

‘I hate it here, Stacey. I want to come back.’

‘You serious?’ The surprise in Stacey’s voice was edged with excitement and it heartened Cat.

‘Yes,’ said Cat, ‘desperately. For good.’

‘You OK, hon? Ben OK?’

‘He’s fine,’ Cat said.

‘And you?’ Stacey repeated, a soft insistence to her voice, a perceptiveness that Cat was so grateful to hear.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m not doing so good. Life’s gone pear-shaped. In fact, there’s no shape at all. It feels like my world has imploded. Can you talk?’

‘Sure,’ Stacey said. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I want to run away and start afresh,’ said Cat.

‘What’s happened?’ Stacey repeated.

‘you’ll never believe who I met yesterday,’ Cat said and out the story tumbled.

Ben came home to find Cat curled up on the sofa in his towelling robe looking as though she had flu. He put his hand against her forehead and then stroked her cheek.

‘How are you, babe?’ he asked. ‘Did you have much of a day?’

‘I spoke to Stacey,’ Cat told him, ‘for over an hour. Sorry – I know It’s long-distance.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Ben. ‘It was probably a good thing to do. Have you – Fen? Pip?’

Cat shook her head and scrunched her eyes. ‘can’t do that just yet,’ she said.

‘Did you tell Stacey everything?’

‘Of course,’ said Cat, ‘and that I wanted to go back to Boulder for ever.’

‘Would you like that?’ Ben asked thinking the timing was lousy but he loved his wife and would move mountains for her, or move back to the mountains with her.

Cat gave a forlorn smile. ‘The thing I love most about Stacey is that She’s so good at the caring sympathy but She’s also brilliant at common sense. She has Fen’s and Pip’s qualities perfectly combined.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said going back now would be running away. She said if I Don’t face facts head-on, They’ll hunt me down and haunt me.’

‘And how do you feel?’

‘I Don’t care if I’d be running away,’ Cat said thoughtfully, ‘but I trust Stacey and I know what she says makes sense.’

Ben put his arms around her. ‘Bloody hell, babe, what a total palaver.’ Cat snuggled into the crook of his arm. ‘For the first time, I actually give thanks for the dullness of my own family,’ he told her.

‘For the first time in my life, I wish my family weren’t who they are. For the first time ever, I curse all those eccentricities and unconventional quirkinesses that I used to feel so proud of.’

‘You have me,’ Ben said, tufting life into the flatness of her hair, ‘and for me, You’re just what this doctor ordered.’

Ben could not reach Cat on her mobile phone the next day and it unnerved him. He had considered going in late but there was a departmental meeting he could not miss. She’d assured him she felt fine, that She’d slept well, that she felt much better than she had the previous day. He’d studied her face carefully. Pale but not drawn; her eyes dull but not so desperate now; She’d washed her hair and styled it.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him. ‘I’m going to fanny around the flat for a bit, do some ironing then go through the jobs in yesterday’s Guardian.’

‘I’ll phone you later,’ he’d told her, with a glance at his watch and a tender kiss.

And he had been trying to. But her phone was off. Now he wasn’t sure what to do. Nip home during his lunch-hour? Not practical, as the afternoon surgery was always a busy one. Phone her sisters? He didn’t think She’d thank him for that, at the moment, though he felt they would. He tried both phones again and left messages on each. Over lunch by himself in the canteen, he wondered if Cat had found much demand for sports journalists in the job pages of yesterday’s Guardian.

Ben tried her phone a final time, five minutes before his afternoon appointments were due to commence. She answered. Thank Christ.

‘Hi, just me,’ he said, feigning a casual tone.

‘Oh. Hi.’ She sounded odd.

‘You OK, babe? I’ve been trying all morning.’

‘I’m fine. I can’t really talk right now.’

Was she whispering? Why was she whispering? Ben shook his phone. ‘Hullo? Where are you? Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine. I’m at work. I Don’t know their policy on personal calls.’

‘At work? What work! Cat?’

‘I’ll tell you when I see you tonight. I finish at 6.30. I’m fine. See you later.’

At work? Cat had a job? What sort of job? How could she find one and start there and then? What was she doing? This time last week he would have been delighted for her to have been so proactive and successful in finding a job. Instead, he worried that her haste was indicative of some state of denial. It was only forty-eight hours after meeting her mother and father for the first time.

Ben’s secretary was buzzing through the first patient. Ben glanced at the notes. Ah yes, the male ballet dancer with the tendonitis. Later, between patients, Ben sent Cat a text message; hopeful that She’d be able to respond, whatever her employers’ take on mobile phones.

job wot job? DrB x

The answer came an hour later.

Dovidels!

There are eighteen branches of Dovidels, up and down the country, comfortingly uniform in their classic bookshop interiors, a brave and stubborn reaction to the cavernous bookstores found in city centres and commercial parks. In design, Dovidels shops are bright and stylish; burgundy-coloured shelves edged in maple, limestone floors, leather armchairs and sofas. For Cat that day, it was the lure of such a chair and the opportunity to flick through a new Lance Armstrong biography in an amenable environment. Over an hour later, she was still there and the friendly manager who’d said hullo to her earlier now remarked in passing that there was a job going.

‘You look part of the furniture already,’ he added.

‘Have I outstayed my welcome?’ Cat worried.

‘Not at all,’ he said.

‘Are you serious about a job?’ she asked.

‘Yes. Do you love books?’

‘God yes,’ said Cat, ‘but I Don’t have any experience – I was a journalist. A sports journalist.’

‘Hey – you wrote words, now sell them. Are you interested?’

‘I think I am. Yes. Yes I am.’

‘When can you start?’

‘Now?’

‘There speaks a Dovidels girl. Welcome.’

KATE AND MAX AND MERRY MARTHA

Over the time that Cat had spent analysing the roofscapes, making long-distance phone calls and finding herself a job, Fen and Pip had been trying to find their feet too, seeking a balance of their own amongst the debris of their family trauma. They’ve left messages for Cat by phone and text and they’ve been in touch with each other to say, Hullo, how are you feeling, what should we do. But the truth is, they Don’t know how They’re feeling or what they should or can do.

Like Cat, their initial and instinctive priority is to establish firm footing in their individual lives before they can tackle their wider roles as sisters, half sisters, nieces, daughters.

‘Fen, well hullo! We haven’t seen you in ages! Come on in, come on in. Just wait until you see Max – he has four teeth and another two breaking!’

Previously, Fen had found Kate somewhat overpowering, her house a little intimidating and little Max rather annoying. Kate’s life was all so fastidious, so impeccably ordered, so terribly grown-up. Kate’s life, it seemed, barred tiredness, fretting and mess. The walls and floors, an elegant chorus of ochre and taupe, were miraculously unscuffed and gunk-free. There must be rusks and rice cakes in places other than labelled Tupperware in the meticulously organized cupboards. Mashed into the rug, perhaps? Down the sides of the sofas, surely? Apparently not. Max’s hand-crafted wooden toys were so tasteful and so amazingly unchewed. How could Kate’s baby never be sticky? How had he managed to sleep through the night since ten weeks old? And have four teeth and another two breaking? How did Kate have a wardrobe free from stains and why did her hair always look so good? How on earth could a baby co-exist so happily with decorative pebbles placed on the side of the modernist fireplace?

Fen had been avoiding these mums-and-tots gatherings at Kate’s because invariably she left feeling personally unkempt, grubby even, self-conscious about her surfeit of stained clothing and split ends. She also felt petulantly discomfited with her own home: shelves yet to be painted, cushion covers in need of a clean, gaudy plastic toys with tinny electronic jingles and indeterminate stickiness, beakers with mismatched lids, no ensuite utility room, an ooze of Johnson’s baby shampoo treacherous on the bathroom floor. She tried to rationalize how, if Cosima was partial to the woodchips in the playground, what a meal She’d make of decorative pebbles at home. After gatherings at Kate’s, Fen would return home convinced her organic food wasn’t organic enough, her baby wasn’t teething quickly enough and that somehow she as a mother wasn’t doing anything quite well enough at all.

Fen didn’t much connect with Kate, didn’t care for her plasma TV, shared nothing in common with her birth story, was irritated by her success with broccoli and her smugness with Max’s centile chart. But more than her hair, Fen envied Kate her composure; her ability to achieve so much with so little visible expenditure. How could Max have four teeth and two breaking yet his mother have no dark circles around her eyes? How was it possible for Kate to prepare such successful dishes utilizing organic vegetables of every colour when there was no evidence of it daubed on her kitchen walls? How did Kate get so much enjoyment out of these banal gatherings when Fen left them feeling inadequate and insecure yet bizarrely envious? How was Kate able to be constantly so gracious? It made Fen feel all the more frazzled and fractious.

However, the day after Fen discovered Derek and met her mother, she made a beeline for Kate’s and was the last to leave. Suddenly she found all the tasteful, neutral loveliness utterly soothing. She coveted Kate’s walls and rugs and home cinema system, the shiny Lexus jeepy vehicle parked outside. Fen now felt slightly in awe of it all, as if here was a proper and conventional grown-up environment to which to aspire. She found herself far more conversant with the group than She’d ever been, happily imparting her recipe for carrot-and-sweet-potato fritters to a cheerily receptive audience. She made plans with Beth to take their babies to SplashyKins at the local swimming pool the next day and even suggested to the group at large that they all meet at the café in Highgate Woods the day after that. She asked Joanne for her hair-dresser’s salon, she wrote out Susie’s salmon pie recipe, she took down the number of Kate’s decorators and made a note to phone Lexus for her nearest dealership.

Fen suddenly didn’t mind that Cosima had fewer teeth than her contemporaries, nor was she remotely worried that her baby was happy to sit Buddha-like whilst the others were keenly attempting to crawl. Fen’s overwhelming ambition, just then, was not to compete but to blend in, to fit the scene as evenly as Kate’s walls ran from soft ochre to antique buff. To dull down elements of her sense of self in return for an environment of safety and belonging seemed no compromise to Fen. It wasn’t too dissimilar to her first days at university, when she chattered to anyone even if she sensed little in common, let alone any potential for lasting friendship. Just having company was the key. Thus she joined practically every university club, from Cycling to Cluedo, Wine Soc. to Winnie-the-Pooh Soc. – £1 for a sense of belonging was a small price to pay. It all helped to pass the time in a new world and made it seem not such a hostile place. Over a decade later, Fen found herself a new club out of necessity; Yummy-Mummy Soc. (London North branch), with daily activities to tag along to. Blend, blend until all is refreshingly bland.

Pip McCabe’s career was an odd one. There is little true structure to being a clown. Children have birthdays but once a year and being married to a well-off accountant had enabled Pip to cut right back on her weekend work. Tuesdays and Thursdays she worked as Dr Pippity, her clown-doctor alter ego, a vastly different form of clowning for which she was rigorously trained to bring an alternative form of therapy to the children’s wards at St Bea’s hospital. During school holidays, Pip was rushed off her stripy, clodhopping feet, performing as Merry Martha in Golders Hill Park, on Parliament Hill, at Brent Cross shopping centre and the KidsKorners in theme-pub gardens.

Often on a Monday, She’d visit Fen, or spend hours on the phone nattering with Cat, since her return. However, the day after Pip met her mother, lost half a sister and discovered Django was called Derek, her appointments diary was frustratingly bare. It wasn’t as though she had an agent she could phone to ask, ‘Any jobs going for today?’ But Pip had to get out of the house because thoughts were starting to lurk around her soul, badgering her mind and hurting her heart, and once they took hold, she feared they’d never let go of her. Where better to hide than behind a slather of slap and motley.

So Pip undressed. She pinned back her hair with kirbygrips, laid out pots and palettes, sponges and brushes and slowly masked Pip McCabe from view. She pulled on a pair of lurid tights that She’d customized from two pairs – one leg green and sparkly, the other red and stripy. She put on a polka-dot ra-ra skirt and a lemon-yellow top bedecked with patches of orange material. She rejected the multi-coloured waistcoat because it was an old one of Django’s and she did not feel like having him around her today. Finally she plaited her hair into pigtails so tight they stood out at right angles to her head as if She’d suffered a comedy electric shock or was the head of the Pippi Longstocking Appreciation Society. Before she left the house, she took the bucket from under the sink. She drove to Brent Cross shopping centre and spoke to management about loitering with intent to raise money for charity. They gave her the go-ahead, knowing her well.

Four hours later, Barnardo’s was £193 richer. She took the loose change to the bank and sent the charity a cheque immediately. The next day she dressed as Dr Pippity and immersed herself into her ward rounds at St Bea’s. The following day, Wednesday, she was back at Brent Cross as Merry Martha but raised a disappointing £109.56 for Barnardo’s. She drove back to Hampstead, parked the car outside the flat and, still in full clown guise, walked up the High Street with her bucket of change. She queued at the bank before brandishing the bucket at the teller and being invited to take a seat whilst the money was counted.

It was a beautiful afternoon. Tom would be finishing school, just up the road, in an hour or so. But today was not a Dad and Pip day, it was a Mum and Rob day. So Merry Martha swung her bucket and headed off for a stroll on the Heath. She decided to walk to Kite Hill, overlooking Parliament Hill fields, because the Kenwood side was out of bounds on account of it being the space she traditionally shared with her sisters.

Preschool children pointed at her, delighted, and she happily performed impromptu tricks and mimes much to their delight. Finding a bench, Pip sat. She turned her face to the sun and attempted to smile at its warmth, despite the risk of make-up meltdown. A cloud came and her face chilled. She opened her eyes and tried to see. She couldn’t see the view. She could stare right into the mess of it all but was unable to deflect her gaze. Tears started to well caustically in her throat, impervious to any attempt to swallow them down. They squeezed themselves out of her eyes, resistant to frantic blinking and the digging of nails into the palms of the hand. Attempting to stem the impending flow only provoked her nose to clog with snot that impaired breathing and crackled audibly. Pip realized she could no longer break it all down into objective physiology. She’d just have to break down. Her throat was aching and her nose was running and her eyes were streaming because she was crying. She swiped at her wet cheeks and itched her nose vigorously against her arm. Then she buried her head in her hands before rubbing and rubbing her tired, hot eyes.

‘The clown is crying!’ Pip heard a child’s delighted whisper.

‘It’s all part of an act,’ Pip heard a parent explain. ‘It’s called miming, darling.’

‘Does she have a red nose?’ the child continued. ‘I can’t see – her hand is in the way.’

‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ the parent enthused.

Oh shit, thought Pip, can’t a clown sit in a public space and cry in private?

Of course not.

And then Pip thought, Oh shit, when I look up, my slap will be smudged to gruesome effect and will surely frighten the child.

Well, you’d better make sure that Isn’t the case.

Slowly, Pip unfurled her crumpled form and lifted her head. Her histrionic sigh, her expression of highly theatrical grief, were so fabulously comic that parent and child were delighted and the blurred make-up was an irrelevance. Pip stood and clutched at her heart while contorting her face in the universal mime language of ‘Woe is me’. Then she stooped to the child and pulled her most beseeching face. She pointed to her nose and pressed it lightly. The child looked to his parent for guidance.

‘I think the clown wants you to press her nose,’ the parent whispered.

Gingerly at first, the child eventually did so. Suddenly, there was a chorus of great honking from a small horn hidden in Pip’s pocket. Her face broadened into a smile of prodigious proportions and she outstretched her arms in triumph, performing a jig of merriment on the spot.

‘I did it! I did it – I did a happy spell on her nose!’ the child shrieked with delight, clapping and jumping. The parent put £1.70 into the empty bucket, nodded gratefully at the clown and led the child away in the direction of the ice-cream van.

Pip walks home and finds Zac already there. He looks at her askance.

‘Merry Martha again?’ he asks, privately thinking she looks more like Miserable Molly.

‘Yup,’ says Pip.

‘Blimey, £1.70,’ Zac says.

‘Plus £109.56,’ Pip protests.

‘Are you OK?’ Zac asks her. She looks a fright.

‘Fine,’ says Pip.

‘You look as if you’ve been – well – crying,’ Zac pauses. ‘Your slap is all over the place.’

‘Oh,’ says Pip, thankful she has her mask still on, however blotched and smeared it may be, ‘It’s all part of today’s act.’

‘Oh,’ says Zac, unconvinced, ‘do you want to talk? I want to give Tom a call and I have a little work to do – but I could crack on with it while You’re in the shower.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of having a shower,’ Pip mutters and she leaves the flat, silently cursing Zac for making her feel so low down his list.

Zac takes a beer out onto the balcony and dials Matt’s mobile.

‘Hiya mate,’ he says, ‘It’s Zac.’

‘How are you doing?’ Matt greets the call.

‘Fine, fine. Listen – I Don’t want to speak out of turn or anything, but I’m wondering how Fen is? You know, since all the drama.’

There’s a long, loaded pause. Matt clears his throat. ‘She’s gone absolutely barking bloody mad, if you ask me. Not that she’ll talk to me.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Zac says. ‘What I mean is, Pip too. Bonkers. The only time She’s not being a clown is when She’s asleep. And I can’t get anything out of her.’

‘Fen keeps putting rocks and pebbles everywhere,’ Matt says.

‘Why?’

‘I Don’t know why – but They’re everywhere. On the side of the bath. By the fireplace. On the mantelpiece. That’s not all – suddenly I’m being asked to pay a fortune for some interior designer to go all Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen on the flat. ‘And she keeps baking all this – stuff. I think She’s joined the Women’s Institute or the Stepford Wives or something. Have you spoken to Ben at all? Because if our two are like this, can you imagine how it is for Cat?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ says Zac.

‘I’ll give him a call tomorrow,’ says Matt.

‘I’ll give him a call now,’ says Zac. ‘Pip’s stormed off somewhere. Looking like Smarty Arty on acid.’

SWEET IS THE VOICE OF A SISTER IN THE SEASON OF SORROW

Fen overheard Matt’s conversation with Zac and she was pissed off. It wasn’t because Matt thought She’d gone mad which annoyed her, just then she was far more riled that he didn’t like her pebble motifs. And couldn’t he see that her grand designs for their house were much more Kevin McCloud than Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen? What did he know anyway? Pebbles weren’t indicative of insanity and nor was Pip choosing to dress as her clown character. It occurred to Fen that no matter how deeply they were loved by their menfolk, she and her sisters were fundamentally misunderstood. She realized then that the only people who could possibly appreciate how she was feeling were those feeling just like her. Suddenly she longed for Pip and Cat and realized the last few days had been all the more lonely for lack of them.

Traditionally, Pip had always been the one to take the mature option and decide what to do, taking all matters onto her own shoulders and then dispensing constructive and logical advice. Cat had always simply cried out loud for assistance, inciting the others to rally round. But Fen had customarily kept herself to herself, until her sisters instinctively came looking and coaxed her out into the open.

Well, hadn’t so much changed. She dialled Pip. Zac answered.

‘Is Pip there?’

‘Fen?’ ‘Yes?’

‘Hi – how are you?’ ‘Very well, thanks Zac. Is Pip there?’

‘She’s in the shower.’

‘Please could she call me once She’s dry.’

She dialled Cat. Ben answered.

‘Is Cat there?’

‘Fen?’

‘Yes?’

‘How are you?’

‘Well, you know. Anyway, is Cat around?’

‘She’s not back from work yet.’

‘Work? She has a job?’

‘Yes. In a bookshop.’

‘Oh. Good for her. Will you ask her to call me when She’s back?’

‘No problem – good to hear you, Fen.’

While Fen waited for either sister to call, she played with the configuration of various pebbles and analysed the Farrow & Ball colour chart through slanted eyes. What gorgeous names: Clunch, Mouse’s Back, Dimity, Cornforth White, Porphyry Pink, Sutcliffe Green, Cook’s Blue. Names are everything. If Dulux or Crown also did these particular colours, Fen reckoned She’d still buy the Farrow & Ball version, even if they were more expensive, on account of them being so inspiringly named.

‘Do you like the sound of Ringwold Ground?’ she asked Matt.

‘Shouldn’t the question be do I like the look of it?’ Matt said. Fen thrust the colour card at him. The shade looked like unpainted plaster to him, though he realized that was probably the point and chose therefore to nod and not comment.

‘For our bedroom?’ Fen furthered. Matt considered this. The bedroom looked fine to him. Though of course he wanted to make her happy, to see her smiling, this was becoming costly in a single-salary household. He was about to allude to this but wisely bit it back. After all, hadn’t he actively encouraged her change of career, from art historian to mother? Realistically, her freelance wage would mostly cover just childcare; the amount She’d bring home would be paltry enough not to be worth the separation anxiety. He thought about asking if B & Q did their own version of Sugar Bag Light but was saved by the bell. Pip was returning Fen’s phone call.

‘Hullo. It’s me.’

‘Hullo, you,’ said Fen. ‘I think It’s time – Don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘We’ll go in our car. I’ll pick you up.’ ‘Thanks.’

From the first-floor window of the flat, Ben watched in disbelief but with great relief Pip and Fen walking up the street. He glanced across to Cat, engrossed in a copy of the Bookseller, and could not anticipate how she might react. Did he have a duty to tell her they approached? Or did he owe it to all of them not to interfere? His wife would be better off for the company of her sisters, of that he was sure, no matter how over-emotional the proceedings might be. It had been difficult enough to gauge her reaction when told that Fen had called. And now the doorbell was sounding. He looked over to Cat and she looked up.

‘Shall I get it?’ he asked and she looked at him with a slow nod as if it was a pretty daft question as he was nearest and it was gone nine o’clock and who could it be.

Fen and Pip filled the room. Cat’s heart heaved with relief. Here was Fen, and Pip too, the promise of their familiar smiles, side by side. And Cat hadn’t even needed to cry out loud, she hadn’t asked for help, she hadn’t said a word. Still they’d come. How lovely to feel so second-guessed, to be known so well, to be loved so fully.

‘We thought you probably wouldn’t return Fen’s call,’ Pip explained, walking straight over to her little sister and kissing both cheeks.

‘So we came to you,’ said Fen, glancing around the flat and thinking it would be really quite nice if it was given a lick of Joa’s White. She went to Cat and hugged her close. ‘I hear you have a job,’ Fen said, ‘in a bookshop?’ Cat gave a nod. ‘Do you get a discount?’ Fen asked slyly.

‘Signed copies?’ asked Pip.

‘I think I’ll just pop out. To Waitrose,’ said Ben, but the girls hardly heard him. Fen was fussing at Cat’s tears with a tissue and Pip was fiddling with mugs and the kettle.

‘Our blokes think we’ve gone nuts,’ Fen said indignantly once Ben had gone. ‘I heard Matt and Zac discussing it.’

Cat still hadn’t said a word but it didn’t bother her sisters. Her tears, and the way she clung to them, told them enough.

‘I mean, Fen and I are entitled to have flipped out,’ Pip reasoned, ‘but You’re allowed to go loop-the-frigging-loop, my dear.’

‘I think we’d be far madder if we were untouched by this,’ Fen said.

‘Anyway, we’re not mad, we’re not insane, and we’re certainly not over-reacting,’ Pip decreed. ‘It was a huge shock. When You’re a child, normal is whatever you know. We’ve suddenly had everything we’ve ever known stripped away from us.’

Cat regarded her. While she felt the official age gap between her and Fen had lessened as they’d become older, she still revered Pip as very much the eldest and wisest – her keeper, her protector. How she loved her. How safe she made her feel, safe enough to finally find her voice. ‘Do you love me less?’

Pip and Fen could clearly hear the quiet fear beneath the plaintive timbre of Cat’s voice and they could see right through her beguilingly mournful expression to the presence of panic. Cat might be dressing her question with a certain theatricality, but the question was no joke. Her sisters let her ask it because they knew she had to. They were well aware that She’d probably tortured herself with the possibility of the notion, since the revelation. Pip folded her arms and raised her eyebrow. Fen put her hands on her hips and looked at Cat. ‘Stupid question,’ Cat answered shyly, on their behalf.

‘Do you need us to answer?’ Fen said softly.

‘Would you like us to answer?’ Pip asked.

Cat shrugged. ‘Yes, please. I think I would.’

‘You’re our baby sister,’ Fen said, nudging her gently.

‘Nothing can ever change that,’ said Pip.

‘I’ve been wanting to be a grown-up so desperately,’ Cat croaked. ‘All these thoughts of baby-making and house-hunting. But now I feel like a crazy mixed-up kid.’ She stopped. The faces of her sisters were close to hers, their eyes large with love and concern. ‘I feel I’ve lost what I had – and what I had I loved.’ Cat continued. ‘Django is a liar. I’ve been lied to my whole life.’

‘This will not come between us,’ Pip said sagely, unfurling her sister’s clenched fists, ‘between us three. It wouldn’t matter to me if I shared no scrap of DNA with you.’

‘But suddenly our stupid little family seems so dysfunctional,’ Cat said quietly, ‘whereas before, I was proud – I felt it was joyously eccentric.’

‘Wonderfully unconventional,’ Fen mused sadly. ‘I agree,’ said Pip. ‘It now seems messed up to the extreme. Remember how we’d vilify those prim mothers of some of our schoolmates for assuming that our family was somehow substandard, not real because of it being not proper? Well, now It’s hard not to think that they were right. I can’t help but feel It’s all been a bit of a farce.’

‘But what can Django have been thinking?’ Fen asked, sitting heavily on a kitchen chair. ‘Did he really believe we’d never find out? Part of me would hope that it was irrelevant to him that one of us was biologically his child. I certainly never felt his love for us wasn’t utterly equal and unconditional. But actually, it appals me that fatherhood didn’t make a difference to him. Sorry Pip – but Don’t you feel he should’ve loved Cat more? Or differently? Or something? Sorry Cat – but You’re his daughter. A parent’s love for their offspring should be omnipotent, it should be chemically impossible for it not to be. So is he an amazing man for loving us the same, or is he downright neglectful for that very reason? I can’t work it out. I can’t.’ She laid her head on her folded arms and focused on the grain of the kitchen table.

Pip wanted to argue that a stepmother’s love for her stepchild could be just as true. But she was aware that this was not the forum for hypothetical discussion.

‘I Don’t know how to handle any of it,’ Cat said with a frantic shake of her head, ‘and we haven’t even spoken about her.’ She began to pace the room.

‘The odd thing is, I’m not so curious as to why She’s returned, why she showed up on his birthday,’ Pip said. ‘Perhaps I would be, had the Django stuff not transpired. I just Don’t know what to do about him.’

Cat looked taken aback – how could Pip not know what to do? She always knew what to do. Cat stomped around the room again.

‘He’s called Derek,’ said Fen, lifting her head from her arms only temporarily. ‘It’s so weird.’

‘Why didn’t we ever wonder why he has an Italian gypsy name,’ Pip said, ‘when his family were from Sutton Coldfield?’

Cat stopped pacing and burst into tears. ‘All these years I’ve wept for the father I never knew, now I’m presented with one I’d rather not have.’

‘Don’t cry,’ Pip tried to soothe her.

‘we’re here,’ said Fen, feeling desperately in need of being soothed herself.

‘I never want to see my father again,’ said Cat. ‘I want Django back. I Don’t know. I really Don’t. It’s what Ben would call a complete and utter headfuck.’

‘How very medical that sounds,’ Fen remarked.

‘The thing is,’ said Pip to Cat, with a glance at Fen, ‘It’s your call, Cat, in the first instance. We can cease all communication, if that makes life easier for you. Or we can roll up our sleeves and dig around the mystery.’

‘But I can’t make the call,’ Cat said slowly. ‘I can’t. I can’t.’ She fingered Pip’s wedding ring. ‘But you can.’

Their gaze alighted on the telephone and Pip sensed her sisters look imploringly at her, of course.

Pip wants to duck out. She wants to protest, ‘But what will I say?’ but she can’t. That wouldn’t do at all. Pip has always had the answers for Cat and Fen. She’s grown up knowing that even if she doesn’t have the answers immediately, she has to find them for the sake of her sisters. But today she doesn’t know what to say – and what She’d like to say is that she doesn’t know what to do. There’s been little opportunity for vulnerability in Pip McCabe’s life; the occasions when She’s felt fragile have been kept carefully out of sight and out of earshot. She’s always liked being the Big Sister, She’s found it preferable to be the solver of other people’s problems, She’s been flattered to be hailed as the Great Looker-Afterer. But just now she curses these roles. Actually, she wants someone’s lap for herself to curl up into, to assure her that it’ll be OK.

Zac?

But She’s been distant with Zac since he rubbished her revelation at the party that she just might like to make a baby. She’s hidden behind her slap and motley and let him have Merry Martha or Dr Pippity for company since then. The sad irony is that, traditionally, when issues have been just too heavy for her to shoulder herself, it has been Django to whom she has turned.

‘Ah, my precious caryatid,’ he would soothe, ‘whose burden is too much to bear. Let me help. Offload, pet, offload.’

I can’t, Django. You’re the burden.

You have to, Pip. See how Fen and Cat are depending on you?

So Pip dials. She’ll know what to say, she tells herself, when he answers. Please let him be out. Be out be out be out. Dominoes. Something. Fen and Cat crowd around the receiver. They hear the click as the phone is answered in Farleymoor.

‘Hullo?’

But it Isn’t Django. It Isn’t Django. The voice is female and American.

Pip hangs up in a fluster. ‘She’s still there,’ she tells them, incredulous. Now She’s bemused, very bemused. ‘I have to phone again,’ she says already dialling though she has no idea what she’ll say when the American woman claiming to be their mother answers Django’s phone. But the phone is ringing. And now it is being answered.

‘Hullo?’

It’s Django.

‘Hullo?’

Pip glances at Cat and Fen but their wide-eyed gazes seem to mirror back her own question. What do I say next? What was I going to say in the first place?

‘Is this a trickster?’ Django is asking. ‘Hullo? This is Farleymoor 64920. If you are going to sell me something, you can bog off.’ He hangs up.

‘He’s hung up on us,’ Pip tells Cat and Fen who’ve heard every word anyway.

‘Phone again,’ they urge.

Pip dials. No one answers. She dials again.

‘Great Gods!’ Django barks. ‘Who is this? I’ll have the police track you! This is trespass. Now bloody bog right off.’

‘It’s us. It’s me. It’s Pip.’

Now no one knows what to say.

‘Hullo?’

‘Hullo?’

Pip is clutching the receiver tightly, Fen has grabbed her wrist and Cat’s face is so close Pip can tell She’s had milky coffee before they arrived.

‘Pip?’

‘Yes. We’re all here.’

‘I see.’

‘What’s she doing there?’

‘She? Oh. Packing. She flies home tomorrow.’

The girls send each other thank-God-for-that but what-the-fuck-is-going-on glances. ‘What’s she doing there anyway?’ hisses Fen. Pip repeats the question down the receiver.

‘She needed a holiday,’ Django says.

For Christ’s bloody sake. ‘There are too many secrets,’ Pip says, the words oozing acidly from between clenched teeth, ‘and true families Don’t have so many secrets.’

‘Nothing is secret,’ Django replies steadily. ‘You have only to ask.’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t have to ask,’ Pip says, while Fen and Cat nod earnestly.

‘That’s because You’re not sure you want to hear,’ Django says.

Pip shrugs. Fen and Cat shrug back. Django can sense them, in a huddle in a muddle, clutching at each other.

‘When You’re ready,’ Django says, ‘I am here. You can ask all you like. And I will tell.’

COUPLING

Bizarrely, in times of extremis, there is always sex. Actually, It’s not all that bizarre at all. It floods the body with feel-good endorphins and releases reassuring opiates in the brain. It feeds the soul and occupies the mind. It infuses the spirit with a sense of well-being, it enhances communication, it builds an appetite, it facilitates sleep. Not tonight, dear, I have a headache, is one of the greatest misnomers. An orgasm can alleviate a headache far more efficiently than paracetamol. Sex is good for mind, body and soul. Sex is both a leveller and a lift; it soothes as it soars. Sex is necessary. It’s natural and base and when the fundamentals of life have been challenged, sex takes an instinctive, primal function. If life is under threat, then make more life. Regenerate. That was the point of sex in the first place: the survival of the species. The fact that it also felt so good was life’s great added bonus. The fact that it felt so good inspired people to connect on a spiritual dimension in addition to the primary physical level. Sex ceased to have the sole role of procreation. Sex, it transpired, was extremely good for the heart. And so sex evolved into making love, the most sublime form of communication. Words can be so clumsy. Action can be far more productive.

‘Are you OK?’

Hold me, Ben, hold me. My head is killing me. Envelop me and keep me safe. Now I am OK. Yes, kiss and kiss and kiss the top of my head. Oh, the smell of you. Heaven scent. I can close my eyes and melt into you. If I raise my face I find your mouth, your lips meet mine with so much more than a kiss: a whisper of tenderness, the taste of love. I hear all that you say, you needn’t utter a word. The touch of your tongue causes my hands to move, to search and feel and squeeze and stroke. Now your hands too. Traverse my torso in a caress so fluent, the flow of your touch, the walk of your fingers, the feel of your skin – the softest, warmest substance I know. The smell of you. The taste of you. The strength of your limbs, your manliness alongside my femininity. My breasts the most perfect shape for the precise cup of your hands, my sex soft so that yours can be hard. The yin and the yang. The ebb and the flow. The up and the down. The ins and the outs. The peaks and the troughs. The thrill of the thrust. We fit and flow, we fit and flow. You and me into you into me.

I’m going to come. Oh God I’m going to come. And as I come I go, my soul floats into yours. The synergy of it all, the rhythm of Us.

‘How did it go?’

Oh Zac – you waited up, you noodle. You needn’t have. You have that conference call first thing. But thank you. It’s so good to see you, to be home. I Don’t really want to talk about it. You talk to me. I’m happy to just listen to the mundanities of your day. Just keep talking facts and figures while I listen to the timbre of your voice. I Don’t know why I’m shivering slightly. It’s May. But I sense your warmth and you sense my chill and you are doing something about it – now I’m not cold at all.

I love it when you tiptoe your fingers along my arms. I love it when you absent-mindedly finger my nipple. So instinctive for you, so exciting for me. This is a position I like so much – you on your back, me on my side, the lolling of limbs. I rest my outer leg on top of you, I stretch my arm along your torso, have my hand cup your neck, my fingers playing with your ear lobe. And when you talk I touch your lips and I know that before long you’ll be unable to resist kissing my fingertips. Then you’ll flick your tongue tip over them and then my face will look up and your face will look down and our mouths will be magnetized. Your hands will search out the parts of me that excite you and thrill me. Secret pathways to electrifying pleasure. You found them – I never knew they were there. I find myself rubbing against you. And my hands will seek your beautiful hard cock. Pull me on top of you, then you can sweep your hands up and over my buttocks. You love them, Don’t you. Makes me love them too, makes me believe They’re the most shapely pair on the planet.

I like being on top. There’s no psychology to it, It’s not a control thing or a domination thing, it doesn’t make me feel empowered or emancipated. I just like the angle of you inside me. Instinctively I move, I undulate and rock against you. I hold myself up on my arms because it increases the intensity and it enables you to fondle my breasts, to reach for them with your mouth by raising your head – which serves to increase the intensity of the angle even more. Christ I could come right now. Or I can push you down and still my body so I can build for a more exquisitely potent orgasm alongside yours in a while. Let’s do that.

Let’s do doggy.

God, You’re close. I can sense it in the fluidity of your thrusting, I can hear it in the rasp of your breathing. Wait. Missionary – and quickly! I love it that you sense I’m on the verge of orgasm. I love it that you know my body inside out, that you know to push in and up, your balls nustling against my buttocks, your cock suctioned into perfect position. And your gaze penetrates me one way as your cock penetrates me another and you stare and It’s so intense and you let me rock and writhe as you see deep into my soul while I come.

And then you trace a tenderness of kisses all over my face as the throbs of my body subside. And I love you and I fold my arms around your back and I move against you, letting you pick your rhythm. I love feeling you come. I love hearing the abandon and the desire. Come on, Mr.

Oh. You’re spurting on my stomach.

God, are you that risk averse, Zac?

I’m stuck for words and I feel like crying.

‘Do you want to talk?’

I thought you were asleep, Matt. Did I wake you? I tried to be quiet. I tiptoed in to see Cosima and tripped over her plastic turtle but she didn’t stir. I’m exhausted. I have a headache. But I can’t possibly sleep. There’s so much in my mind, running rings around me, too much to fathom. From the dishwasher to Django, from Cat to Cosima; from stupid meanderings to portentous thoughts. If I bury my face in your chest, can I pretend that everything is OK? Because the sound of your heartbeat can block out all the other stuff. I think sometimes – recently – I Don’t listen carefully enough to your heart. Are you tired, Matt? Because quite to my surprise, I feel rampant and horny. So actually, Matt, no I Don’t want to talk, I just want to fuck. If I imagine myself a porn star, can I forget that Fen is just a frazzled mum with a pile of washing She’s forgotten to hang out and a heap of shit on her shoulders?

ON THE PHONE

Fen was standing in the middle of her sitting-room, looking from a pile of laundry yet to be ironed, to a heap of toys, to a mound of papers and magazines that She’d half sorted into recycling or keeping sub-piles the day before yesterday. She looked at her watch. 10.30 a.m. Was it really worth tidying the toys at this end of the day? No. Was there any real chance She’d do any ironing during daylight hours? No. Was there any point saving papers to be recycled when the bin-men were due to come tomorrow and She’d already missed the recycling service for this week? No.

‘Don’t eat the pebble, Cosima – Mummy give you a rice cake instead.’

Fen looked from rice cake to pebble and thought there probably wasn’t much in it, taste-wise. The phone was ringing.

‘Hi Fen. It’s me – Kate. How are things? How’s little Cosima?’

Fen imagined Kate in her tidy house, her perfect shades of unstained neutral, her toothsome ten-month-old baby happily doing algebra. ‘Oh, great,’ Fen breezed, ‘and you? And Max?’

‘we’re wonderful. Listen, I was wondering – do you fancy coming to the Chelsea Flower Show tomorrow?’

She may as well have said Australia. Or the moon. A lovely idea but somewhat implausible. ‘I’d love to,’ said Fen, ‘but how baby-friendly is it?’

Kate laughed. ‘It Isn’t. That’s the point. Can you get babysitting? We can make a girls’ afternoon of it.’

Fen thought for a moment. She and Matt didn’t have much of a garden, let alone the time or inclination to work the little they did have. But there again, she didn’t have much of a social life either so, though her interest in horticulture and her friendship with Kate were both limited, the notion of an away-day from toys, recycling issues and laundry taunts was certainly attractive. Fen was surprised to find that the thought of being apart from Cosima for more than an hour didn’t seem so unthinkable. She’d phone Pip; wasn’t her sister always offering to babysit after all?

‘Fen?’ Kate prompted.

‘I’d love to,’ Fen said. ‘I’ll phone my sister and let you know this afternoon. We’re meeting at Anna’s at three, aren’t we?’

‘Yes. But actually, can you text me as soon as you know? Because if you can’t make it, I’d like to offer the ticket to Ruth.’

‘Oh. OK. Of course.’ It did then occur to Fen that she herself may not have been Kate’s first choice. But she didn’t dwell on it. She fancied the invitation at any cost, even if She’d been Kate’s last resort. Anyway, she couldn’t be – because apparently Ruth was lower down the rungs than she. It made Fen feel rather smug.

‘Hullo Pip?’

‘Hullo Fen. How’s you? I spoke to Cat on her way to work. She sounded a little brighter.’

‘Good, That’s good.’ Fen paused. ‘Pip – any chance you could have Cosima tomorrow afternoon? It’s just that one of the mums in my group has tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show. And She’s invited me.’

‘Chelsea? Are you now doing a Charlie Dimmock outside, in addition to Sarah Beeny-fying inside?’

Fen laughed. ‘It just sounded different and fun. And aren’t you always telling me I Don’t get out much?’

Pip looked at her Filofax. ‘No problem,’ she told Fen. ‘We have Tom tomorrow but Cosi can do the school run with me. Can you drop her off?’

‘Of course,’ said Fen, loving Pip’s intimacy with her niece but hating the way she abridged her daughter’s name. ‘Thanks, Pip. There’s a bunch of daffs in it for you.’

‘Daffs,’ Pip said, ‘are out of season. You’d better gen up before you go or They’ll make compost out of you.’

‘Dovidels, can I help you!’

Cat had been manning the phone all morning. It was her shift on the information desk at the back of the shop. She was loving her job: the books, the customers, her colleagues. It was more than a distraction, it was a revelation. And she found that to immerse herself in this new world, this lovely space, afforded her hours and hours where she didn’t have the time to think about anything else. No one asked her about herself, they just asked her about books. The information desk put her in good view of the entrance and each time a customer came in She’d fling over a smile, hoping to lure them over, promoting herself as a preferable alternative to shelf-browsing. She unpacked the special orders with enthusiasm, lovingly handling the books and taking much pleasure in announcing their arrival to the customers, as if the books were one-offs, written to order. Mrs Cohen, I’m pleased to tell you that your Laurie Graham is here. Mr O’Connor, good news – your Tom Holt has arrived. And when they came in to collect their copies, She’d hand them over in a most midwifely way. Enjoy, She’d tell them, as she embraced the cover, enjoy.

Jeremy, the manager, was charmed by Cat. He’d never had a writer who wanted to be a bookseller; it was far more usual to be the other way around. He loitered as the phone rang again.

‘Dovidels! Can I help you!’ Cat answered.

The great thing about Cat, thought Jeremy, was that there was never any question mark. Just enthusiasm and energy. She might as well be saying Dovidels! I can help you! and he was in no doubt that, subliminally, this was the way most of their customers heard it. He’d never caught her picking her nails or gazing into the middle distance or clock-watching. During quiet periods, she busied about tidying shelves, checking orders and asking him the secrets of successful bookselling. She was in early, back promptly from her breaks and often stayed late.

‘One moment please,’ she was saying to a caller, ‘the computer says we have two copies – but let me do a shelf check.’ She scurried away, soon racing back, triumphant. ‘Sorry to keep you on hold but yes! We do! I have a copy right here. I’ll put it on one side for you. Pardon? It’s my pleasure! No, thank you.’

‘Cat,’ Jeremy said, ‘head office are coming in this afternoon – I’m going to recommend you for assistant manager.’

Cat blushed and gawped but the phone was ringing and it was her duty to answer it.

‘Dovidels! Can I help you!’

‘You might as well be trilling hi-de-hi,’ Ben’s voice told her. ‘I’m just between patients – thought I’d give you a bell. Your mobile is off, as per usual.’

‘I can’t talk now, Ben,’ Cat scolded him. ‘we’re very busy. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing and head office are coming in this afternoon.’

‘I just wanted to ask—’

‘I’ll call you later, Ben,’ Cat said sternly, hanging up with an irritated sigh she ensured Jeremy could hear, lest he felt she condoned or, worse, encouraged personal calls.

‘Dovidels! Can I help you!’

When Ben’s mobile phone rang a minute or two later, he assumed it was Cat returning his call from the sanctuary of a storeroom or somewhere.

‘Babe, I’m just about to see a patient,’ he said. ‘I’ll call you at lunch-time.’

‘Actually It’s not Babe,’ said the voice, ‘It’s Django. McCabe.’

For a suspended moment, Ben found himself wondering why Django had emphasized ‘McCabe’. He really did know just the one Django. And it would only make sense to stress McCabe if the man was now going to refer to himself as Derek. Which, obviously, he wasn’t. Ben’s receptionist was buzzing through the arrival of a patient.

‘Django – good to hear from you,’ Ben said, ‘but I’m just about to see a patient – can I call you afterwards?’

When it came to returning the call, Ben wondered whether to phone Cat first. But no doubt She’d give him short shrift for not being a bona fide Dovidels caller. He dialled Derbyshire. The phone rang unanswered. Ben dialled again, intrigued but slightly uncomfortable. Regardless of his affection for the old man, his allegiance was to Cat and she might well disapprove of this exchange. He’d just see what Django wanted. No harm in that. Keep the call short. He could always press the buzzer himself and invent a patient if the call was lengthy or the subject contentious.

‘Django? Hullo – It’s Ben. Sorry about before.’

‘Hullo Ben, thank you for calling back. I’m no good with these telephone things. I always seem to use them at an inconvenient time. That’s why I Don’t trust the blighters.’

Ben smiled at Django’s characteristically convoluted theory. ‘Don’t worry. It was just a slightly neurotic dancer anyway. Now, What’s up?’

‘I,’ the line went very quiet. ‘Well.’ Django cleared his throat. ‘Are you still there?’

‘I’m still here,’ said Ben continuing to hope that whatever it was that irked Django wasn’t going to take too long to reveal, and would not compromise his loyalty to his wife.

‘Well, I’m telephoning you at work because I appreciate it Isn’t appropriate to telephone you at your home,’ Django said, ‘on account of Cat’s needs. I fear my tones would not be dulcet but despicable to her ears – you needn’t comment. But actually, the main reason I’m telephoning you at work, is because this call is in fact a work call.’

‘I see,’ said Ben, who didn’t, and whose stomach was telling him it was past lunch-time. ‘Django?’

‘Yes?’

‘A work call, you say? Hullo?’

‘It’s my waterworks,’ Django said, his anxiety transmitting straight through the receiver. ‘And. Well. It’s just.’

‘Django,’ Ben said, with bedside manner expertly employed in an instant, ‘has there been a change in the situation?’

‘Oh, just a very minor one,’ said Django.

‘And that would be?’

‘Well, just a little bit of, you know, something a little like blood.’

‘There is blood in your urine?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Discomfort?’

‘No. Not really. Though I’m rather irked by having to spend so many bloody pennies. Especially at night.’

‘When did you first see the blood?’

‘A couple of visits ago.’

‘And since? Is it still present?’

‘A little. I suppose. But you know I am partial to beet-root – and that certainly discolours one’s water. Almost gave me a heart attack, when that first happened. Far more alarming than the effect of asparagus.’

‘Have you eaten beetroot, Django? In the last thirty-six hours?’ Ben asked.

‘No. No. But I am fond of it and have eaten a lot of it in my time.’

‘Django, did you see your GP about your waterworks? After we had our chat?’

‘Well. I did go to my GP. But It’s all changed. Dr Sutton Isn’t there any more. In his place, just some lovely young doctor but she really is too young to be dealing with me, you know.’

‘Django, I really do want you to go and see a doctor. It’s probably nothing. But at your age, we need to check your prostate. It’s very easy to do.’

‘Is it? I see. But I Don’t think this very young lady doctor should be bothered by me because as you say It’s probably nothing.’

‘Is there another doctor at the practice you might prefer to see?’

‘I don’t know. It’s all changed so much. In Dr Sutton’s day, you knew them and they knew you. Now they Don’t even tick you off – you have to tap in your name on a computer screen yourself. You know how I hate newfangled technology.’

‘Will you phone them?’ Ben pressed. ‘Request a male doctor, if you prefer?’

‘I could do that, I suppose.’

‘You do that, Django, you do that. It’s a very simple thing to test PSA. It’s just a quick blood test to measure levels of a particular antigen associated with prostate conditions. Plus, an examination.’

‘An examination?’ Django said vaguely. ‘I Don’t know very much about my prostate, I’m afraid. Or prostates in general.’

‘No, Django,’ said Ben, ‘not that sort of exam.’

‘No. I didn’t think so.’

‘It’s just a very quick digital exam.’

‘Oh a digital exam. Well. Isn’t that marvellous. All this technology. Computers to sign you in and computers to diagnose your prostate. Marvellous. They say we’re living in the digital age, Don’t they!’

‘Django, I’m sorry – I’ve misled you. Digital – as in finger.’ Ben closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘It’s the best way to check your prostate gland.’

‘Oh. Oh dear. A finger.’ There was a horrified pause. ‘The doctor’s?’

‘The doctor’s,’ Ben confirmed. ‘The doctor will need to insert a finger into your back passage to assess your prostate gland.’

‘Oh.’

‘Django, I know it sounds ghastly but It’s fast, gentle and diagnostically efficient alongside the blood test. I really do want you to see a GP. Prostate conditions are common but some can be quite nasty if They’re left too long. I think we’d like to rule out anything more untoward.’

‘You know, I’m just thinking here – but actually, I may have had beetroot.’

‘Django – would you like me to phone your practice? Make you an appointment?’

‘No thank you.’

‘But you will phone them directly?’

‘Well, yes I will. If That’s what you say, doctor.’

‘It is. I’m sure It’s probably nothing – it might just be a minor kidney infection. But combined with your increased bladder activity, I would really like you to have a prostate check-up.’

‘Yes, I see.’

‘So will you phone me when you have an appointment?’

‘Well, OK then.’

‘OK then. Good. And if there’s anything that worries you or you Don’t understand in the consultation, will you please call me? Take notes – doctors Don’t mind.’

‘Righty-ho.’

‘OK. OK. Good. I’m glad we’re agreed. But Don’t you worry – as I say, It’s easy to diagnose and sort out.’

‘OK, Dr York. Thank you.’

‘I’m glad you phoned me, Django.’

‘Yes.’ There was a pause. ‘Ben?’

‘Yes?’

‘And how is Cat?’

‘How is Cat,’ Ben had to think fast how to answer. ‘She’s up and down, Django. But She’s working at a bookshop and She’s enjoying that.’

‘A bookshop you say?’

‘Yes, She’s really taken to it. Very busy and enthusiastic.’

‘Good for her. Good for her. Is she also – well – OK?’

‘She’ll be OK, Django,’ Ben said carefully. ‘She’s still very confused. We’ll just bide with her, I think. You know how emotional she can be.’

‘Yes. Yes I do. And the others? Might you know?’

‘They’re OK too, as far as I’m aware.’

‘Good. Good.’

‘It’s all been a little – odd.’

‘More than a little odd, dear Ben. On paper, It’s downright preposterous.’

‘Well, you know those McCabe girls – they need to vent their emotions before they can settle down and consider hard facts.’

‘Yes. But the facts are very hard, Ben, for them. Very hard.’

‘I know. But rest assured we’re looking after them. Zac and Matt and me.’

‘Bless you all,’ said Django, ‘bless you all.’

‘Django – will you call your surgery now?’

‘I will.’

‘And We’ll speak later today?’

‘We shall. Goodbye.’

Ben sat and stared at his mobile phone. Ought he to phone Cat? But would it alarm her? Perhaps he should phone Pip and ask her the best tack to take. But Pip would no doubt be struggling with her own reactions. He wondered what would alarm Cat most – that he was phoning her, again, at work? That he’d had the call from Django? Or that there was some concern for the man’s health? Ben decided it might be prudent to wait until Cat had left work and he’d next spoken to Django.

Cosima and her pals were alternately gnawing on wooden spoons and bashing them, or their fat little hands, against a variety of Tupperware containers provided by Anna.

‘We could call them the Rhythm Method,’ Fen remarked, clicking her fingers as if the babies were jamming a catchy beat.

‘Hardly,’ Kate commented. ‘It’s a contradiction in terms. If us lot had kept up the tempo of our Rhythm Method, this little lot wouldn’t be sucking our kitchen utensils.’

Momentarily, Fen thought this was slightly harsh. But then she told herself it was just Kate’s manner. She was to let nothing detract from her excitement for tomorrow afternoon’s excursion.

‘We heard from Highgate School,’ Ruth was saying. ‘Josh is in in in!’

‘Good for Josh, it’ll suit him. We turned down Highgate, because Jacob’s more of a UCS boy, we feel,’ said Anna.

‘Fen, have you put Cosima down for Channing?’

‘Um. No. No,’ Fen said.

‘God – you must.’

‘Oh?’ Fen felt all the other women nodding at her.

‘Where have you put her name down?’

‘Well. Nowhere, actually. As yet.’

‘You are joking! You must have her down for nursery places, surely. The Avenue? Rosemount?’

‘I haven’t – as yet. I might not send her to a nursery,’ Fen said quietly.

They stared at her.

‘You’re mad!’

‘Or a liberal. Don’t tell us You’re a home-education type?’

‘Fen – honestly, you must start calling around. You owe it to Cosima!’

Fen looked down at her spoon-sucking daughter. ‘I suppose – but She’s only—’

‘No She’s not – She’s old! Believe me! I was phoning schools as soon as the pregnancy-test dipstick went blue.’

‘I’ve spent over two grand on deposits at various schools – but It’s money well spent, I reckon.’

‘Fen you really should – whose phone is that? Mobile alert! Mission Impossible ring tone!’

‘It’s mine,’ said Fen, wondering if ‘saved by the bell’ had ever rung truer, ‘It’s mine.’ It was a mobile number she didn’t recognize. ‘Hullo?’ she answered.

‘Hi,’ it was a man’s voice, ‘is that Fen?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hi – It’s Al.’

Who is Al? I Don’t know an Al.

Yes you do.

‘Al – with the flowers. On Bishops Avenue.’

‘Hi! Hi! Of course! Sorry – It’s a bit noisy. Hold on.’ Fen moved out of Anna’s sitting-room and into the hallway, turning her back on a particularly vile arrangement of orange amaryllis, red gladioli and yellow something-or-others. ‘Hullo? Al? Are you still there?’

‘I am. How are you?’

Oh you know, my mother popped in to see me after thirty years, I found out my uncle fathered my sister, I’ve been told my daughter stands to be denied a decent education and my partner and I live parallel lives under the same roof which I’m madly redecorating in my misplaced desire to fit in with a group of people I have little in common with.

‘I’m fine,’ said Fen. ‘How are you?’

‘Cool. I’m cool. I’ve been meaning to call,’ he said, ‘say hi.’

‘Hi.’

‘Hi.’

Fen could see Cosima. She loved watching her baby, unseen. Who cared about waiting lists and sodding private schools.

‘I was just wondering if you fancied a quick drink. Sometime,’ Al said.

‘A quick drink?’ Fen was about to add ‘What for?’ but she stopped herself.

‘Yeah – you know. If you were free.’

Free? Free from whom? Free for what? If there’s no such thing as a free lunch, does the same apply to a quick drink?‘Oh,’ Fen said, delighted, flustered, ‘well – I think so.’

‘Babysitting permitting, I guess.’

Now That’s good. His invitation is above board. He’s just being friendly, Isn’t he. And I’ll accept because there’s no harm in a quick drink. It’ll be nice. I’d like to go out for a quick drink. I Don’t get out much – as I like to say.

‘OK – thanks Al. That sounds great.’

‘Cool! When are you free?’

‘Actually,’ said Fen, glancing through the glass door at Kate, in all her sumptuous beige and stain-free white, preening her lustrous hair, ‘I’m free tomorrow, Al. I have babysitting – I’m going to the Chelsea Flower Show. We could meet afterwards, for a quick drink.’

‘OK, you have my mobile number now. Let’s touch base sometime tomorrow and take it from there. Hook up when You’re done with the flowers.’

Fen was helpless not to giggle a little. The last time anyone had spoken to her about touching bases was her second boyfriend who sent her a postcard of the Venus de Milo and a stick of Bazooka bubble gum with the priceless message: ‘Show us your bazookas! Second base? How about it!’

But It’s not what Al meant of course. Gracious no. Just touching base to hook up for a quick drink with a sweet boy I met laying flowers for his late sister.

‘OK,’ said Fen, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

She felt flushed. It was suddenly all rather thrilling to have a proper little secret. A tiny harmless one, but fun all the same.

‘Everything OK?’ Kate asked her.

‘Fine!’ Fen exclaimed. ‘Just an old pal. Might meet up for a quick drink after the flower show tomorrow.’ Kate glowered at her and in an instant Fen sensed the other mums look up, offended, but swiftly pretending not to have heard. Fen scooped up her baby and cuddled her whilst babbling sweet nothings.

‘Come on, gorgeous girl,’ she whispered, ‘let’s head home.’

Ben hadn’t heard back from Django and he was about to leave work. Cat was working late as the honchos from head office were in the shop and there was an after-hours team-bonding or book-binding or something. Ben felt irritated. With all aspects of the situation. He loved the responsibilities of his job, but not when they compromised his family life. Had Django even made the call to his GPs? Ben doubted it. This irritated him. And at what point would he be telling Cat of the call? This irked him. And the cause? This worried him. And how could the cause be any clearer if the old man won’t visit his GP? But what could Ben do about any of it at this precise moment? If he called Derbyshire, would Django even answer? Six o’clock. He’d probably be cooking. Ben didn’t want to make the call from home. Or from his mobile. It felt slightly disloyal to Cat to do so. But he wanted to go home; it had been a long day. It was that time of day when he sensed the smell of the hospital seep through to the fibres of his clothes.

Cat’s phone was switched off. Dovidels’ phone rang through to a chirpy message with opening times and website details. The phone at Farelymoor rang and rang. Ben persevered.

‘Hullo – this is Farleymoor 64920.’

‘Hullo Django, It’s Ben.’

‘Ben! And how are you?’

‘I’m fine. And how are you?’

‘I feel much much better, thank you.’

‘Did you phone your surgery? Django?’

‘I said – I feel much much better.’

‘Right,’ said Ben, rubbing his temples, pinching the bridge of his nose. You daft old man. ‘Right. Oh, Django – can I call you back in two minutes? there’s someone to see me.’ There wasn’t. But there was someone Ben wanted to see.

A few minutes later, the phone rang again at Farleymoor. That will be young Ben, thought Django. And though he really would rather not answer it, it was impossible not to. Ben knew he was there. And Django knew the wretched phone would just ring and ring until he picked up.

‘Farleymoor 64920?’

‘Hullo Django – sorry about that. It’s Ben.’

‘Hullo Ben. I’m cooking a stew. Pots of it. Sans beetroot.’

‘Good, good. That’s very good. Look, Django – I know how awkward all of this is for you. And I Don’t know your GP but I respect that you do. But I do know an excellent chappy down here. And he was just passing by my rooms while we were on the phone before. And I nabbed him and he’d be delighted to see you. He’s a he,’ said Ben. ‘He’s in his late fifties, I’d say. And he sees chaps like you all the time. He’s a dab hand, a first-class doctor.’

‘I see.’

‘He really is,’ said Ben, ‘He’s a specialist. A very nice man. I like him. You would, too.’

‘I would?’

‘Yes,’ Ben said, ‘you would. He’s what you’d class a “proper” doctor. You’d feel comfortable with him. Confident too.’

‘I would?’

‘Will you come, Django?’ Ben asked very gently, the tone of his voice full of the same soothing care and concern he’d invested the carefully chosen word ‘chappy’ with.

‘To London?’

‘To see my Mr Pisani,’ said Ben. ‘A quick consultation.’

‘Is he foreign?’

‘He’s Scottish,’ said Ben, ‘He’s excellent.’

‘I see. But He’s only a “Mr” not a “Dr”?’

‘He’s a consultant. Mr is far superior to Dr.’

‘I see.’

‘A day-trip,’ Ben said, ‘That’s all. The trains are marvellous. Frequent and fast.’

‘I haven’t been to London in years,’ Django said. ‘The girls have always come to me.’

‘I think you should come. I’m happy to accompany you to the consultation,’ said Ben, ‘or not. As you wish.’

‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ said Django after a while.

‘You have come to me in my capacity as a doctor,’ Ben said evenly. ‘I am bound by the Hippocratic oath.’

‘Perhaps I will come,’ said Django.

‘I think so,’ said Ben.

‘All right,’ said Django.

‘I will make an appointment and telephone you tomorrow. I’ll telephone you at this time. Then you’ll know It’s me.’

‘Yes. OK, Ben.’

‘Good. That’s settled.’

‘And Ben?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well – thank you.’

‘Don’t mention it, Django,’ he said, ‘It’s nothing.’ And Ben sincerely hoped that it was.

SEEDS SOWN

It wasn’t so much a case of Fen not being able to see the wood for the trees, more that she couldn’t see the flowers for the florid meanderings of her overactive imagination. It was a waste of a ticket, really. From the moment she arrived, Fen was planning her escape. She walked around the Chelsea Flower Show, her head nodding like a fritillary, while she pretended to listen to Kate’s ostentatious commentary. Scandalously, Fen barely noticed the displays. She was aware of the scale of it all, of a certain cacophony of colour and fragrance, but ultimately her senses were set aside, held in abeyance, until later. She didn’t actually have time to marvel at all this horticulture haute couture; she was too busy preparing for her next appointment. She’d been musing scenarios in her mind’s eye of the various ways to sashay into a bar, finally favouring her version of a classic Western – stranger enters the saloon and all fall silent. It was compulsive to envisage being the centre of attention, to imagine Al give a double take, bowled over, greeting her with an appreciative ‘Wow! I didn’t realize it was you!’ Fen couldn’t actually remember what Al looked like and she was rather hoping he couldn’t remember what she looked like either. After all, when they’d first met She’d been head to toe in frumpy mummy guise. Today, hopefully, She’d appear a vision in floaty bias-cut and dainty kitten heels.

God – hi, Fen. You look great. Let me buy you a drink.

She’d carefully blow-dried her hair and had spent as much time as Cosima had allowed her, to blend and blend the Mac and Bobbie Brown mainstays of her neglected makeup bag.

Fen? Blimey! I didn’t recognize you. What are you drinking?

While Kate went into paroxysms of wonderment for the Great Pavilion, Fen convinced herself that Al would be currently awaiting her call. She was to let him know when she was free, and he was to tell her where they were to meet; that was the plan. As she was pushed along by the throng, Fen was too busy musing over the best way to touch base with Al to notice the gardens, or that she was being vigorously poked and shoved by all those green fingers. Fen suspected Kate was well able to appreciate the displays and eagerly eavesdrop her call, but Fen thought She’d be far more conspicuous standing stock still frantically texting in the midst of all this magnificent flora. A man next to her sneezed. And sneezed again. And suddenly Fen had her motive. She began to rub her nose, to feign a look of discomfort entailing much blinking and nose-twitching.

‘Isn’t it stunning? Who’d’ve thought to bind akebia quinata through actinidia? Inspired!’ Kate gushed.

Fen realized she couldn’t even pronounce let alone identify the majority of the exhibits. ‘Kate,’ she sighed, ‘I hate to say this – but I think my hay fever is about to take hold with a vengeance.’

‘At Chelsea Flower Show?’ Kate looked at her, horrified, as if the salubriousness of the event surely counteracted such a vulgar affliction.

‘I can’t bloody believe it,’ Fen bemoaned after an impressive chain of sneezes. She blinked and rubbed her nose. ‘I’m going to have to go,’ she apologized, with a woeful expression.

‘OK,’ said Kate glumly, ‘OK. Come on then, let’s go.’

‘Kate – you needn’t!’ Fen rushed. ‘Please stay – I’ll be fine. My bloody hay fever shouldn’t spoil the day for you too.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Very.’

Both women quietly considered just then how Ruth would have been a far more worthy recipient of this spare, precious ticket.

As Fen fought her way out, she thought about flowers and gardening and pomp.

Give me a wild-flower meadow over formal planting any day; give me a thatch of heather on a moorside over topiary and edging. I’ve never been one for bouquets. I’m more of a daisy-chain girl. Pip and I once made one with daisies and buttercups that was almost two yards long. Django pressed the entire thing, between volumes of Encyclopaedia Britannica set out for weeks in a long line down the hallway. He even contacted the Guinness Book of Records about it. I bet he has it still.

For a while, Matt and I couldn’t decide between Cosima and Daisy as names.

I do not want to think of family today.

Fen aimed to come across as imperturbably casual to the point of downright cool when she phoned Al from a side street and said yeah, wine bar coffee shop whatever. However, her stomach was flipping, her conscience was goading and her handwriting was scrawled with adrenalin as she attempted to jot down the location of the bar Al suggested. And then she stood there, palms clammy, heart pounding, wondering how to kill time for the next hour.

You are on the King’s Road, Fen. Window-shop? Impulse buy? Full-on Retail Therapy?

Look, Daisy & Tom – their kids’ stuff is adorable.

But today Isn’t about babies.

At first, she was tentative; nipping in and out of L.K. Bennett as if she was being monitored on CCTV beamed straight to all who knew her. She settled into browse mode after circumnavigating the collection at Jigsaw, and in Karen Millen she relaxed a little more, gently running her fingertips along the racks of garments like a pianist from one end of the keyboard to another. Though nearly everything struck a chord with her, still she didn’t try anything on. It wasn’t the price tags, or the fact that all the pieces she fancied were in implausible shades of white, it was her perceived decadence of the situation that prevented it.

I shouldn’t be trying on organza cream shift dresses with bugle beads under the bust; I should be hurrying home to mash sweet potato with organic crème fraîche.

However, Whistles seduced her away from all thoughts of domesticity, luring her into a luxurious world lined with wafts of chiffon and silk, floating with sequinned butterflies and populated by retro imagery woven with humour and imagination into lovely skirts, groovy tops, heavenly knitwear and divine undies. So absorbed was she in the gorgeousness of it all, it was with some consternation that she noticed time had flown and she had five minutes to find the bar and no time to try anything on.

It felt as though a stampede of butterflies, sequinned or otherwise, had suddenly taken flight in her stomach, causing havoc with her ability to walk without tripping and interfering with the demure smile She’d planned. And so, with a slightly twitching physiognomy, she hurried into the bar. The first thing she noticed was the smell. It was overpowering; at once nostalgic and now faintly intimidating. When on earth had she last smelt that wine-bar smell: alcohol, cigarettes, olives in garlicky marinade, leather slouchy sofas? When? When? It was evocative – but unnerving – to realize it was not since her pre-pregnancy days. The Rag and Thistle, with its aroma of stale beer and fags partly soaked up by carpet and beer mats, was somehow a warmer, more welcoming smell. Similarly, the sounds at the Rag and Thistle were more affable, as if the carpet and the beer mats absorbed some of the volume and infused the interior with a convivial resonance, a hubbub of cheer. In this bar, however, with the obligatory stripped floorboards, the volume was unmoderated and the clatter and chatter of the clientele were staccato, loud and slightly inhibiting.

Fen was desperate to come across Al without having to search him out; she didn’t want to have to stand there, staring from clique to clique, strangers glancing back disinterested. She’d envisaged simply waltzing in, calm, confident and eye-catching, for Al’s eyes to alight in delight before she saw him. It appeared, however, that he had yet to arrive. Fen scanned the crowd again. No. No Al. She might not be able to remember precisely how he looked but she was quite sure that no one here just now was him.

‘Fen? Hi!’

Oh here he is. Of course. I remember now.

‘Sorry I’m late. Drink?’

He hasn’t said ‘Wow’ or anything. What shall I have? What’s the time?

‘Just a glass of white for me,’ said Fen.

‘Do you want to grab that table over there – with the two leather cubes?’ Al said.

Fen sat a little gingerly on a leather cube, which looked more stable than it felt, but was probably more stable than she thought. She wondered how many people toppled off them on a nightly basis, once balance was compromised by a couple of drinks. She’d be having just the one glass, she wouldn’t be wobbling anywhere. She wouldn’t even teeter. She had an image to maintain. And a baby to get home to.

She looked over to the bar. She’d define Al as ‘cute’ – a term men detested but women understood. She hadn’t remembered just how lanky, how boyish, he was. His jeans hung a little baggy, his hair was becomingly unkempt, his skin soft and young. Fresh-faced and cute. He was an attractive package and she really really mustn’t assess him as such.

‘Sauvignon, madam,’ he announced, beer slicking over his fingers from his glass as he sat down. Fen saw that he wore chunky Mexican silver rings on two of his fingers and one of his thumbs. She didn’t like jewellery on men; she didn’t like thumb rings at all.

‘Cheers,’ said Fen, diverting her gaze as she sipped. Revolting wine. Not cold enough. Never mind. Maintain eye contact, slide him a coy smile and ask what He’s been up to.

‘Oh, this and that,’ he replied. ‘Busy at work. Moving house.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘Now? In Camden. We’ve just taken on a house, five of us plus the occasional surplus body kipping on the sofa. It’s good – It’s a laugh.’

It sounded slightly unsavoury to Fen and she conjured an image of batik wall hangings, dog-eared posters of Jim Morrison, a chaotic fridge, forgotten washing-up and contrasting music reverberating from each room. She shuddered at her thought of what the bathroom might be like.

‘It’s not studenty,’ Al was saying, as if sensing Fen’s reservations. ‘we’re all a bit obsessed with cleaning, actually. It’s a gorgeous house – all polished floors and high ceilings. It belongs to Jed’s parents. They’re collectors. Anyway, what have you been up to? How’s your kid?’

Fen detested children being referred to as kids. ‘She’s wonderful,’ she smiled suddenly missing Cosima terribly. What was she meant to say now? What had she been up to? Was Al really remotely interested in her daily grind of cleaning and tidying, of wiping bottoms and shovelling organic mush into a little mouth, of stocking the fridge and socializing with people to keep herself from going mad? She doubted it. And she was hardly likely to tell him all about the Mother, the Uncle, their Affair and her Half Sister. In an instant Fen assessed that for this afternoon to work, for it to have the function she hoped for, truth and veracity were not essential. ‘I’ve been bloody busy,’ she heard herself saying. ‘I’m planning to go back to work.’

You are?

No.

‘Work?’ asked Al. ‘What do you do?’

Fen reckoned ‘archivist’ sounded dull but ‘art historian’ sounded pompous. ‘I lecture,’ she embellished, ‘in art.’

‘Wow! Where?’

‘Oh, the Tate usually,’ she said with nonchalance, ‘the Courtauld.’ Partly true. She’d studied at the Courtauld and had frequently given talks as a student to people visiting the Institute’s collection.

‘What do you lecture about?’ Al seemed impressed and genuinely interested.

‘The European Rappel à l’Ordre of the post-war years,’ Fen announced elaborately, simply repeating the title of one of her undergraduate courses, ‘and Fetherstone too.’

‘Who’s Fetherstone?’ Al asked, endearingly sheepish.

‘A student of Rodin. Late nineteenth, early twentieth century,’ Fen discoursed. ‘Famous – or notorious – for his exquisite feel for form, his intensely erotic subject matter.’

‘Cool!’ Al marvelled, his pupils dilating as he hung on Fen’s words and gazed at her lips. ‘I’ll have to come along to a lecture, then.’ Fen tossed her head and laughed and told herself to go easy with the exaggeration and embellishment. Instead, she turned to questioning him, flattering him, expressing great interest in all he said. And she took to touching his arm at times when he made her laugh. And laughed in excess of the cause. And licked her lips becomingly every time she sipped her wine. And lowered her eyes at opportune moments. And pouted now and then.

‘Do you have to get back?’ Al asked her eventually. ‘To your kid?’

‘Yes,’ said Fen, with a shrug.

‘Who’s looking after her? Do you have a nanny?’

‘No,’ said Fen, ‘my sister is.’

Al drained his beer glass. ‘Is it tough? Being a single parent?’

Something Fen couldn’t pinpoint, and hadn’t the time to analyse, made her not jump to Matt’s defence. It occurred to her only then that Al had never asked about the father of her child. But there again, she didn’t wear a wedding ring and She’d never mentioned Cosima’s father. Why wouldn’t he suppose she was a single mother? Fundamentally, why would a mother in a relationship take up an invitation for afternoon wine, flirting and flattery in a bar? She wondered what to do. To whom did she have the greater duty to set the record straight – Al? Matt? Herself? Cosima?

But can’t I just play a while longer? I’m not ready to go home. It’s fun, liberating. It’s just harmless acting. It’s not like I’m telling lies. Or doing anything wrong.

‘No, It’s not tough,’ Fen finally answered Al. ‘I’m very close with my sisters. I have two.’

Al nodded. ‘Shall we meet again?’ he said.

Fen looked at him. It was all appealing and a little dangerous and all the more tempting for it. ‘But I’m a frumpy old mum!’ she protested with a winsome pout and a flutter of her eyelashes. ‘I’m almost thirty-four!’

Al shrugged. His eyes sparkled. ‘I think You’re cool,’ he said. ‘I think It’s sexy that You’re a mum.’

‘I’ll call you – when I’m not so madly busy,’ Fen all but purred, standing, leaning to kiss him on the cheek and making sure her lips just caught the side of his mouth in the process.

Al didn’t say anything in response. But his eyes followed her as she left the bar.

He’s looking at my bottom, she thought, unsure whether to enhance her wiggle or screen it with her handbag. He gave her a wry, desirous smile when she turned to wave before she sashayed away.

No one has called me sexy for ages. I can’t even tell if I actually fancy Al – but I am turned on by the fact that he fancies me.

With a spring to her step, a sexy sway to her stride, she grinned her way along the King’s Road, tossing her head and tempering her smile into a pout every now and then. She felt like pouting, she felt coquettish. Someone found her sexy. How thrilling! She enjoyed catching sight of herself in the shop windows. Oh look, here’s Whistles. And look at that divine dress.

Did she dare?

Yes she did.

She didn’t have to spend money to waste time, or spend time to waste money. She could just try something on, take window-shopping one logical stage further. Flushed with anticipation, Fen headed to the changing cubicles.

She was crestfallen. How stupid had she been? It was as if her trip away from home to an area far from her stamping ground, her shrug from responsibilities, had falsely invested her self-image with extra inches in height and fewer pounds in weight.

Nothing bloody fitted.

She denounced herself for being too round of figure and too square of image. She felt she looked ridiculous. The confines of the clothing made her feel saggy and squidgy and unrefined. And so she stood; horror-stuck in the cubicle, clammy and depressed, confronting all the bumps she could see and a fair few she imagined.

‘I’m fine!’ she all but yelled to the sales assistant hovering.

What Fen couldn’t see was that if she tried a larger size, just one size up, She’d look wonderful. She couldn’t see that the dress suited a fuller figure anyway. Designers Don’t want bagginess in a forties-style tea dress; the cut craves curves and the material needs undulations to flow to its best advantage. But Fen was defiant that once a size 10, always a size 10. And if she didn’t fit a size 10, she simply wouldn’t be able to have the bloody dress.

If nurturing a foetus required padding to the hips, surely running around after a baby should take it off again? If hormones had encouraged her ribcage to expand during pregnancy, then why hadn’t hormones shrunk it back to normal after the birth? Ten and a half sodding months after the birth. Standing there, she scowled at her reflection, rounding her shoulders and relaxing her belly to compound her fears and loathe herself more. She felt resentful and out of sorts and dreaded leaving the changing room, the sparkle of the shop, the clear light of day.

I’m not sure it should be the fit of frock that makes you loathe yourself, Fen.

SEEDS NOT SOWN

‘Give us a hug,’ Pip cooed and clucked. She scooped up her niece and pretended to gobble her cheeks. The baby giggled. Pip gobbled some more. ‘You are scrumptious,’ she said, ‘but we’d better think of something to do before I eat you up.’ Pip and the baby regarded one another, as if considering various options. ‘I know,’ said Pip, ‘how about we pop over to Auntie June and save her the journey here?’ Cosima didn’t appear to object. ‘She left a message to say Tom had left his cricket stuff there, which he’ll need for tomorrow.’

For June and Pip, Zac had swiftly ceased to become part of their equation. June didn’t think of Pip as the wife of her ex who was the father of her child; Pip had no issue with June being the woman with whom Zac had a baby. Not for June or Pip the dropping-off of Tom with cordiality. Sharing Tom was easy because the women liked each other; to some extent, Tom was both central and yet oddly irrelevant to their friendship.

June cooed over Cosima, marvelled at how much the baby had grown, in much the same way as Pip fussed over June’s bump. ‘It’s not so much a bump,’ Pip said, ‘It’s a perfect medicine ball. So neat!’

‘I’m enormous,’ June remonstrated, ‘and I still have eight weeks to go.’

‘You’re gorgeous,’ said Pip wistfully.

‘I think I’m practically due on Cosima’s first birthday,’ June said.

‘Well, We’ll cancel the clown if needs be,’ Pip said, ‘and relocate the party to the labour ward.’

‘Or I could just set up my birthing pool in Fen’s back bedroom,’ June said.

‘Are you going for a water birth?’ Pip asked.

‘You must be joking,’ June said. ‘I’m going private this time so I can have all the fancy drugs available. I Don’t do pain.’

‘Listen to you,’ Pip chided in jest.

‘Believe me,’ June said, ‘Tom’s birth was a nightmare. This time, I Don’t want plinky plinky music, whale song and yoga – I just want drugs.’

Pip glanced from June’s bulge to Cosima and back again.

I wonder what sort of birth I’d go for?

‘Do you ever think about it?’ June asked.

‘About?’ Pip busied herself fussing over Cosima.

‘About having a baby,’ June said.

‘Zac loves having just Tom,’ Pip said.

‘But That’s not what I meant,’ June persisted.

Pip wasn’t sure if she wanted to answer fully or not. ‘Sometimes,’ she said. June said nothing. ‘Recently?’

June clapped her hands and grinned. ‘And?’

‘Zac loves having just Tom,’ Pip reiterated.

‘Have you asked Zac?’ June asked.

Pip shrugged. ‘Sort of,’ she said. June looked confused. ‘I think he thought I was joking. And then I think he thought I was drunk. And ultimately I think he thinks I’m barking.’

‘Well, he sounds complacent,’ said June. ‘You should keep the pressure on – you’ll make a great mum.’

‘I hate confrontation,’ Pip said, ‘and anyway, It’s probably just a hormonal thing.’

‘You know what,’ said June, ‘You’re right It’s probably hormonal but I for one think it’ll be a shame if you let it pass.’

Pip wanted to cry. This was the first She’d said out in the open and it was being met with such tender but unswerving support it was rather overwhelming. ‘The thing is,’ she said tentatively, ‘since the woman who is my mother barged back in, I’ve had something of a confidence crisis. Am I fit to be a mother? Say there’s some rogue part of our DNA that dictates otherwise.’

‘Rubbish, Pip,’ June said, not intending to sound so sharp but she was beginning to feel a little tired. ‘Look at Fen – She’s a fabulous mum. Your mother – literally – has nothing to do with you. I think you should go for it. And I think when that stuffy old accountant comes home all hassled from work tonight, you meet him in an outrageous negligee and you demand that he impregnate you with his finest.’

Pip looked utterly disconcerted.

‘Believe me,’ June continued, ‘and It’s not because I’m an over-heating, hyper-hormoned pregnant woman. Well, perhaps it is – but That’s no bad thing. But what I want to say is this – that urge to breed is one you must heed. Breeding is your raison d’être, Pip, It’s your right.’

Pip pushed Cosima’s buggy along Hampstead High Street. It was a glorious day and She’d toyed with the notion of taking the picnic blanket and lolling about on the Heath. But what swung it for the High Street were the shops. The shops provided one thing that the Heath didn’t. Windows. And reflections. And every shop she passed boasted back an image of Pip pushing a buggy. It was visible proof, as if it was needed, that it suited her. She proudly told the first admirer that Cosima was her niece. But when the sales assistant in BabyGap cooed over Cosima and asked Pip how old her daughter was, Pip told her ten months and agreed with the assistant that she was quite the most beautiful baby girl in the world.

And Cosima ate everything Pip offered her, even if it wasn’t orange.

And Pip could soothe the baby’s tears quickly.

And Cosima needed minimal lulling to drift off to a lovely afternoon nap. She didn’t need her Elvis for Babies CD which Fen had packed, nor flopsy bunny. A personalized rendition of ‘I Had a Little Nut Tree’ from Pip was all it took.

Pip let the answering machine take the call because she and Cosima were engrossed in Teletubbies and something extraordinary with the Tubby Custard machine was about to befall Po.

‘Shall I pick it up?’ Tom asked, looking up from his maths homework.

‘That’s OK,’ said Pip. ‘You crack on with your work, young man.’

It was Fen leaving a message to say she was running late and how sorry she was but She’d had a lovely day and would be there soon.

‘Never mind,’ said Pip to Cosima, ‘you can have tea with Tom.’

‘Am I her big cousin?’ Tom asked because he was stuck with his maths but knew that Pip was no use to him whatsoever. ‘Am I her big cousin officially? Or am I a step-cousin twice removed or something?’

Pip paused. ‘Well, let’s work this out. I think You’re her step first cousin.’

‘Will my new brother or sister be her step second cousin, then?’ Tom asked.

‘No, I Don’t think They’ll be cousins at all.’

Tom looked perplexed. This was becoming more complicated than the maths homework. ‘Of course they will!’ he declared. ‘It’s all about family.’

‘If I had a baby, then the baby and Cosima would be full cousins. I have you which makes you half a full first cousin. Step.’ Pip and Tom looked at each other, brows furrowed. ‘Or something!’ Pip said and they laughed.

‘Why do babies like eating such weird things?’ Tom asked.

Pip looked over to Cosima who was sucking the remote control. ‘Shit – That’s Bang & Olufsen.’

‘You said “Shit”!’ Tom whispered, impressed.

‘Don’t tell your father,’ Pip warned him.

‘If you had a baby, I’d have two half brothers or sisters, wouldn’t I?’ Tom mused. ‘I’d have brothers and sisters from all directions. That would be funny.’

Pip couldn’t think how to respond. ‘Why Don’t you have one, then? With my dad,’ asked Tom. Pip couldn’t think how to respond, but Tom seemed happy to wait. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘because he hasn’t asked me.’

‘Why Don’t you ask him?’ asked Tom.

‘I half have,’ Pip admitted and wondered if she should now backtrack.

‘I’m getting confused with all these halfs,’ Tom laughed. ‘Me too,’ agreed Pip.

Fen appeared slightly flustered when she arrived to collect Cosima, mumbling something about wanting to die in Whistles.

‘But how were the flowers?’ Pip asked. ‘Can you now tell your larkspur from your delphinium?’

‘What? Oh. The show. Was – great,’ said Fen, ‘huge. Amazing.’

‘Are you OK?’ Pip asked. ‘Want a cuppa?’

‘I’m just a bit – stressed,’ said Fen, looking very discomfited. ‘You know – Tubes and rush hour and escalators that aren’t working.’

‘Welcome back to the real world,’ Pip laughed.

‘To think I did the rush-hour thing every day,’ Fen remembered. ‘Madness.’

‘Would you like that cuppa?’

‘we’d better go – Cosima needs her supper.’

‘We fed her!’ Tom announced, triumphant. ‘She had scrambled eggs just like me!’

‘Scrambled eggs?’ Fen looked at Pip.

‘Was that OK? The eggs are free range.’

‘Well – yes. But did she eat?’

‘The lot!’ Pip said.

Momentarily, Fen felt put out, having had limited success with scrambled eggs. ‘Organic milk?’ she asked shyly.

‘Of course,’ said Pip.

‘You’re a star,’ said Fen looking at her sister with affection and at her baby with pride.

‘Any time,’ said Pip.

‘You’re a super star,’ Fen said, wondering if Pip really meant it when She’d said, ‘Any time.’

Zac returned to find his wife and son embroiled in a backgammon tournament; a pile of pennies at Tom’s side and a fraught expression etched on Pip’s face.

‘Hullo,’ he said, scanning his son’s impressive defence and two of Pip’s counters desperate for access.

‘Six, two,’ Pip muttered at the roll of the dice. ‘Blast and double blast, I can’t bloody move!’

‘That’s her fourth “bloody”, Dad!’ Tom informed Zac, Pip’s language obviously giving him far more pleasure than his victories or winnings.

‘I’d say a “bloody” is worth 10p, Tom,’ Zac said, taking off his jacket, loosening his tie, opening his post. ‘How’s your mum?’

‘She’s like a great big beached whale,’ said Tom, rather proudly.

‘Tom!’ Pip and Zac remonstrated.

‘But she says so,’ Tom protested, as if it were a standard description of her particular stage of gestation.

‘June looks wonderful,’ Pip told Zac. ‘I babysat Cosima today and we met up. She’s absolutely blooming.’

Zac regarded Pip. ‘Oh Christ,’ he said, with mock consternation, ‘You’re not going to go all broody on me, are you?’ He winked at Tom, planted an affectionate kiss on Pip’s forehead, bypassing her mortified expression, before heading to the kitchen to make coffee.

‘What does “broody” mean, exactly?’ Tom asked and Pip wished he hadn’t because she didn’t want to hear Zac’s reply.

‘Broody?’ mused Zac. ‘Broody is when hormones and BabyGap turn women into mad things.’

‘What exactly are hormones?’ Tom asked, knowing precisely where BabyGap was but not hormones.

‘you’ll learn about them in science, soon enough,’ Zac assured him.

‘Have you gone broody on my dad, then?’ Tom asked Pip though he was still unsure to what it precisely alluded.

Pip wanted to cry out, Yes! yes I have – I am seriously broody. But she did not. She assessed that the circumstances were inappropriate. And though part of her resented Tom’s presence, felt that it prevented her confronting Zac, she put the child’s best interests first.

What I want to say is, For fuck’s sake, Zac. I’m thirty-five years old and maybe my sodding hormones are hounding me. Most of the people I know have children. I would like to increase our family – a brother or sister for Tom, a baby for us. What the fuck is wrong with that? Why won’t you take me seriously? All you say is ‘Oh Christ You’re not going all broody on me?’

So why Don’t you talk to him, Pip? You who are so adept at being a shoulder, an ear, an embrace for the needs of others; you who can listen so well, mediate so constructively when it comes to the strife in other people’s lives. You’ve spent your life arbitrating other people’s discord, sorting out the ways forward from their crises, dispensing wisdom, advice, support and affection. You can gently coax others down off their high horse, you can enable them to see clearly without their rose-tinted glasses. But you have no faith in your ability to stand your own corner and proclaim what you feel. You have self-awareness in that you know what you want; but you lack the self-confidence to express it.

She can’t concentrate on her game. She thinks the right thing to do is to hide her hurt from Tom. It’s much easier to put Tom at the centre of her equation than herself.

‘I won!’ Tom proclaims. ‘Pip is such a complete walkover,’ he says to his dad and the two of them disappear to play PlayStation, leaving Pip on her own.

SEEDS IN A PACKET

‘You’re hot and you smell of – toast?’ Ben remarked with pleasure, in bed, spooning up against Cat, nuzzling her neck.

‘But I haven’t eaten toast,’ she said.

Ben took her hand to his nose. ‘Toast,’ he declared. He kissed the palm of her hand and flicked his tongue tip at the centre. Then he kissed her fingertips and sucked softly on her middle finger.

‘I’ve got a sackful of seed,’ he murmured, pressing up against her. ‘I’ve been saving it up for the last – Christ – week.’ Cat giggled. She travelled her hand down to Ben’s hard cock, experiencing a buzz of excitement between her legs which caused her to turn towards him and find his mouth immediately. His hands caressed her breasts and she began to moan softly as his finger nudged at her clitoris, dabbing her with her own expectant moistness.

‘What do you say, babe,’ he whispered, ‘want to mate?’ He grazed at the side of her neck, dipped his head down to tease her nipple with his tongue tip. ‘Want to mate?’

But Cat didn’t writhe in reply. She didn’t gasp the affirmative. His words had stilled her and his actions ceased to elicit a response.

And then she sighed. ‘I do feel horny,’ she whispered back, ‘but I Don’t want to mate. I’d rather fornicate.’

‘What You’re saying is that you want me to give you a good seeing to? You Don’t want to make love – you want me to shag you senseless?’ Ben gave a dirty laugh, his hands resuming a dexterous exploration of her erogenous zones. He rolled on top of her, his pelvis rocking as his cock probed its way between the lips of her sex. ‘You want me to fuck you, then?’

Yes, that was precisely what Cat wanted and when Ben talked crudely to her, she wanted it all the more. And harder.

‘Shall I fuck you?’ Ben asked, desirous and gruff, doing precisely that with eager, ravenous thrusts.

‘With strings attached,’ she whispered, gasping as he powered into her. She bucked against him instinctively.

‘Strings, hey?’ Ben said. ‘Tie you up? A little light S & M on a warm June evening?’

That’s not what she meant at all.

I meant, yes fuck me – but with conditions. But I’m so close. I’m so fucking close and my body is tingling with the anticipation of orgasm. It’s welling. Fuck. God. Ben. Oh Christ.

Ben felt Cat’s sex close around his cock, every pulsation pulling him deeper inside her, luring his sperm, starting to suck it from his balls up his shaft; nearing the point of no return.

‘Christ Cat,’ he panted as his thrusts automatically increased in pace, ‘Christ.’

But then Cat did something with her hips. And her knees. She’d never done it before and it took Ben by surprise, weakened as he was by being in thrall to his imminent orgasm. She levered him away and all of a sudden he was coming in the open, nowhere near her dark, damp gorgeous pussy. Instead he was spurting his load God knows where. In between her and him. Instantly, the orgasm became purely perfunctory. Not even as good as a wank. Simply as physical as a wet dream. A waste. He switched the light on, blinking, pissed off. He pulled the duvet off and regarded the sticky mess in Cat’s pubic hair, caught too in the fuzz of his stomach.

‘What was that all about?’ he asked, flushed and frustrated.

‘It’s not safe to come inside me,’ Cat said, disconcerted that Ben looked so displeased. She felt a nag of guilt over the greed for the quality of her own orgasm at the expense of his and it was spoiling the post-coital moment.

‘What the fuck do you mean, Cat?’ Ben objected. ‘What are you on about? Our sex life has been ruled by your charts and temperature.’

‘I’m not ready,’ Cat said gruffly, ‘not any more. Not without a condom.’

‘Cat,’ said Ben, sitting up, reaching for tissues, mopping at his belly, ‘I thought we wanted to start a family. Our game plan. We make decisions together.’

‘Bloody hell, Ben,’ she protested, ‘are you thick? In the light of recent events, why would I want to be pregnant?’ He stared at her, shocked by her aggression. ‘Parenting is a dangerous thing. Can’t you see that?’ she shouted. ‘Believe me. It’s not worth it. I should know.’

Ben waited a moment and spoke calmly. ‘Cat, That’s not an informed view – You’re very tired and too emotional.’

‘You cold bastard!’ Cat hissed. ‘can’t you see what I’m going through?’

‘Of course I bloody can,’ Ben said calmly, ‘but now You’re being a drama queen. Christ if ever there was a time to take the “sins of the fathers” and make something good from them, then this is it.’

‘Fuck off.’ She turned away from him abruptly. ‘You Don’t understand.’

That last comment hurt Ben the most. He had no desire to spoon against her or nuzzle up to see if she still smelt of toast. If only this sodding rented flat had a spare room. He switched off the light, plumped his pillow and made an irritated grab at the duvet. And when all was still, he sighed emphatically.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said, as if to himself, but loudly enough for Cat to hear. He sensed she was only pretending to be asleep.

They didn’t speak when they woke up. Ben didn’t wake Cat with his customary ‘Rise and shine, sleepy head’. He went to have a shower and didn’t pour her a cup of coffee, leaving the cafetière and its tepid contents on the table instead. Get your own mug.

‘See you,’ he said, already on his way out. Cat didn’t look up from the newspaper. She continued to read, continued to sip her lukewarm coffee long after Ben had gone. The newsprint was illegible because the bruise of tears impeded her sight and the coffee caught harshly on the lump in her throat. She struggled with her tears as she walked to work, biting hard on the inside of her lip during the managers’ meeting. She didn’t want to be on the information desk. Couldn’t she unpack deliveries instead? It wasn’t beneath an assistant manageress to unpack deliveries in the back, you know. But Jeremy wanted her up front and the customers did too. Cat muddled through the morning, hauling a weak smile to her face and disappearing to the toilet on her break for a private cry.

Pip would know what to do. She’d know what I should say. She’ll be able to tell me if I’m in the wrong, or a little right. She’s my big sister. I’ll listen to her. She’s the wisest person I know. She can tell me what to do.

In her lunch break, Cat phoned Pip. Privately, it rankled Pip to hear about loving husbands actively wanting to make babies. But she had to listen because it was her job and her youngest sister was sobbing at the end of the phone, pleading with her to tell her what to do. Over the years, She’d conditioned herself to stop what she was doing, put thoughts of herself to one side, whenever she received those calls from her sisters that said, Pip? Pip? I need you. Can you help?

‘I thought I was ready,’ Cat cried, ‘but I’m not. I Don’t even feel broody any more. I can’t figure out this whole mother–father business. I’m scared, Pip, and confused.’

Quietly, Pip considered her sister’s predicament. ‘I understand, I do,’ she soothed, because on an academic level, she did, ‘but how I see it is that you’ve been gravely let down by a total lack of communication within our family – and the only history about to repeat itself is precisely this.’ She paused. Why couldn’t she herself boldly practise what she so gamely preached?

This Isn’t about me. It’s about Cat.

‘Don’t let that happen, Cat. No secrets. We were kept in the dark – we weren’t even lied to. We were ill-informed and misled. But Cat, Don’t take that with you into your life. Don’t let that same lack of communication decimate what you have with Ben. It sounds clichéd, but talk to him.’ She paused again.

That’s what June told me.

‘Tell him how you feel. He’s your man, Cat. He’s your future. You can turn to him. You must.’

‘But He’s not speaking to me,’ said Cat, now smarting about the lack of coffee that morning. ‘He’s mad at me. We never row. It was horrible. I feel sick. Suddenly Ben and I want different things, Pip. We’re totally incompatible.’

‘It’s not about how compatible you are, Cat – It’s about how you deal with incompatibility,’ said Pip. ‘When did you last tell him you loved him?’

When did Zac last tell me?

‘I Don’t honestly know,’ Cat was saying, ‘but how do I start talking? And what do you think I should say?’

On the other end of the phone, Pip was pinching the bridge of her nose and trying to strip her mind of Zac so she could concentrate on Cat.

‘You have to do the right thing,’ she heard herself say. ‘You have to open up and lay yourself bare – if you can’t do this in front of your husband, then you are in serious breach of the trust and honesty you promised him when you married him.’

Which makes me a fucking hypocrite.

‘Shall I phone him at work?’ Cat pressed. ‘Shall I ask my manager for a break?’

‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘do.’

‘And tell Ben how I feel – even though some of it sounds daft?’

‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘you must.’

‘Say he disagrees? Say he objects?’

‘Say he doesn’t?’

‘Say He’s cross?’ said Cat.

‘Say he Isn’t?’

Cat paused. The notion of Ben’s love being just at the end of the phone, of his support and understanding being just a phone call away, of her being just moments from the comfort of his companionship, was thrilling. Suddenly, she wanted Pip off the phone.

‘Thanks,’ Cat said cheerfully. ‘I’ll phone him right now. Can I phone you again, though?’

‘You know you can,’ said Pip.

Pip hated herself for hoping that Cat wouldn’t phone her again. She didn’t want to listen to how the heart-to-heart had gone and she didn’t have the energy for further counselling. But Pip hated herself more for her intrinsic inability to take her own sound advice. How easy it was to see the right thing to do. Crystal bloody clear. Talk it through. Lay yourself bare. Show your soul and open your heart to the person closest to you, the person who transcends a need for blood ties to create a bond. How pathetic, she felt, to be fundamentally incapable of doing this herself.

Behind the information desk, Cat contrived to look important and busy. She wasn’t. She was utterly absorbed in the pleasure of planning the reconciliation. She hadn’t asked for a break because it was premature. She had to know exactly what She’d be saying before she phoned Ben. She had to be word perfect and her words needed to be honed for ultimate poetic and meaningful impact. He’d be in afternoon surgery. She couldn’t phone now, she needed the best forum and no time restraints for her soliloquy to resound. But say he was still pissed off and went to the pub instead of coming home? And say he was pissed when he then came home? She couldn’t endure another cold-shouldered night. She had to let him know that she was sorry, and soon. That there was an explanation. A text message could work – something sweet and slushy. But texts were somehow too easy to send. Who hasn’t used a text message to avoid having to talk to someone?

As she hung up from telling a customer’s answering machine that their books were awaiting collection, Cat thought about message services. About telegrams and messengers and couriers. She phoned Ben’s hospital and asked for the Sports Medicine department and when a female voice answered, Cat put on her most friendly, conniving voice.

‘Hullo? Is that Marjorie?’

‘Yes? Sports Medicine clinic – how can I help?’

‘This is Cat – Ben’s wife. We haven’t met but he speaks highly of you.’

‘Oh!’

‘Can you help me, Marjorie? I did one of those silly things – those over-emotional daft-cow things.’

‘Ah,’ said Marjorie, who had been no stranger to the syndrome in her younger days.

‘Ben has speaker phone, doesn’t he – is that how you announce his patients?’

‘Yes, That’s right, dear.’

‘Before the next patient can you tell him that his wife loves him and She’s sorry for being a madwoman and that she can’t wait to see him later?’

‘I can,’ Marjorie said with slight reluctance.

‘Oh,’ said Cat, forlorn, ‘is it something to do with hospital policy?’

‘No, dear,’ said Marjorie, ‘but can I reword it? I think I should say—In fact, He’s ready to see his next patient. You can listen in.’

Cat pressed the receiver hard against her ear, giving Jeremy who was loitering an irritated ‘Shh!’ before turning her back on him.

‘Dr York,’ Marjorie could be heard to say, ‘before I send in Miss Drew, I have been entrusted with the following announcement.’

Cat’s heart raced. Marjorie’s pitch changed, as if she was having to be heard across a football pitch. ‘Your wife wishes you to know that she loves you truly, and that she is extremely sorry for her behaviour. She would like you to know that she looks forward to your homecoming tonight – and that she would be pleased to talk through the circumstances.’

Cat couldn’t hear Ben’s response, but she fully approved Marjorie’s handling of the situation. ‘You’re a genius, Marjorie,’ she said, and she planned to send her some books in gratitude.

‘Cat!’

Cat turned to see Jeremy looking put out.

‘We do not, as a rule, take personal calls – let alone make them.’

‘I know,’ Cat beamed, ‘I’m sorry – there was a family crisis. It’s all sorted now. It won’t happen again.’

The manager thought she spoke of the personal calls.

Cat stopped beaming on her journey home. It struck her that nothing was actually solved. All She’d done, hopefully, was give Ben an inducement to come home, pacify his anger and open a door to communication. They still had to talk. And reach an understanding, an agreement.

But he wasn’t home and her confidence was instantly sapped. She started to allow herself to feel the wounded party. Why hadn’t he figured out why she might now be reluctant to start a family? Why hadn’t he been instinctively more supportive? Her mobile phone buzzed through a message.

U ok? Here 4 u. P xx.

Good old Pip, coming to the rescue. At least someone knows me inside out and understands.

‘He’s not home yet,’ Cat phoned Pip in a whisper, in case Ben should be just about to come in. She told Pip of Marjorie. She could sense her sister’s smile, her approval. ‘But suddenly I Don’t know what to say when he does come home. Say He’s still cross. Say he didn’t like my message? Say we can’t sort this out?’

‘If you look out your window, will you see him walk up the street?’

‘Yes,’ said Cat.

‘So, the sight of him will incite an emotional reaction in you. Act on it.’

I speak from experience. I could hardly bear to look at Zac when he came home half an hour ago. So I invented some urgent shopping. And I’m now advising my sister from the canned-goods aisle in Sainsbury’s.

‘You’re a genius,’ Cat told her. ‘Thank you. God, thank you, Pip.’

‘Call if you need me,’ Pip said, by rote. But Cat had already hung up.

Cat has been gazing out of the first-floor window for almost half an hour. She’s elaborately decided that if three red cars pass in succession, Ben will be the next pedestrian to walk down the street. But blue cars and white vans and the occasional candy-coloured scooter keep interrupting and there’s no sign of Ben. What a gorgeous evening. How lovely to see a couple of children playing hopscotch on the pavement. Clapham doesn’t seem so unattractive today and Boulder doesn’t seem so far away. The world seems smaller, more friendly, more manageable. Listen! That evocative jingle – an ice-cream van! When had she last had a gloriously synthetic whippy with a Flake? She can’t remember. But she heads out of the flat and down to the street. She’s second in the queue. She’s first. She’s being served.

‘A medium 99, please,’ she says.

And Cat sees Ben.

He’s turned the corner.

He’s only a hundred yards away.

‘Two!’ Cat says. ‘Make that two!’

Can Ben see me? Has he seen me yet? He has.

But is he smiling?

He is.

Cat walks fast towards Ben who is strolling along the street with his shirtsleeves rolled up, his jacket slung over his shoulder. All her words have gone, her memory stripped of the soliloquies She’s spent the day perfecting. All she can do, within yards of Ben, is brandish the ice cream She’s bought for him.

‘Look!’ she declares holding out the ice cream. Ben thinks she looks like the Statue of Liberty in jeans and a T-shirt. ‘I didn’t even take a bite of your Flake.’

‘Well,’ says Ben, ‘if That’s not a sign of your true love, then what is?’

Cat blushes and doesn’t know what to say and Ben thinks It’s funny so he dabs the tip of his ice cream against her nose. Then he kisses it off. ‘Thanks for your message,’ he says. ‘You’re a madwoman. But I’ve given Marjorie a promotion.’

They sit, busy licking, on the low wall outside their flat. Cat bites the bottom of her cornet, looks at Ben and then sucks until her cheeks pucker and the ice cream scoots down the cone. Her daft face makes Ben laugh.

‘I can’t believe you save your Flake until last,’ Cat says, knowing She’d never have the self-restraint to push the chocolate down the centre of the cornet and studiously eat around it.

‘I Don’t think I have a system,’ Ben says, ‘but I’m doing it because I know it’ll wind you up.’

‘Bastard!’ Cat says softly. She’s finished her ice cream now and she lays her head against Ben’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘Me too,’ says Ben. ‘I hate falling out with you.’

‘Me too,’ says Cat.

‘It’s not what we’re about,’ says Ben. He offers his cornet to her, He’s nibbled down so the Flake, somewhat phallic, stands proud. Cat takes a bite. It’s a beautiful evening. If they go inside, there’ll be the television to flick on, supper to discuss, post to open. If they walk on, They’ll hit that long patch of shade as the street bends right. So they decide to stay put, to sit on the wall and wonder what to say and who will speak first.

‘Do you not want to have a baby?’ Ben asks outright, because actually That’s the basic question he needs answered.

Cat looks uneasy. ‘No,’ she admits quietly, ‘I Don’t. Not now.’

‘Not now, not never?’ Ben probes gently.

It strikes Cat she hasn’t actually thought about it to this extent. ‘I’m so caught up in the mess of the moment,’ she admits, ‘I can’t see beyond the immediate future.’

Ben nods. ‘I know how awful all these revelations have been for you,’ he says. ‘Actually, I Don’t – I can only begin to imagine.’

‘It’s thrown into turmoil all my plans, all my previous beliefs,’ Cat explains.

Ben nods.

‘I’m not ready to be a mummy,’ Cat says sadly.

‘Because You’re not ready to accept your own parents?’ Ben suggests. ‘In retrospect, your childhood may not have been perfect, but it is over.’

Cat shrugs. ‘It’s all been so – shocking.’

‘I know. But you need to confront it all,’ Ben advises, ‘somehow. Stacey said the same, didn’t she? I Don’t know if That’s by soul-searching or full-on confrontation. You need to decide. But being in this vortex of bewilderment Isn’t good, Cat. If You’re stuck in a downward spiral, it figures you can’t move forward.’

Cat nods. Ben wonders whether to tell her about Django’s call. But he can’t really, the call was in confidence.

‘You have all these strands of your life, flailing around,’ he says. ‘You need to either tie them up, or cut them off.’

‘I know,’ says Cat, ‘but That’s terrifying.’

‘You need to face facts – quite literally,’ Ben says. ‘You should go and see Django – just you. Without me. No sisters to hide behind. Talk. Shout. Cry. I Don’t know. But you must have a million things to ask and he probably has a million things to tell.’

‘I can’t believe my father is alive,’ Cat tells him. ‘I can’t believe I am Django’s daughter. I Don’t want to see him, Ben. Should I have known? Shouldn’t I have wondered at least?’ Ben shrugs and places his hand over hers. ‘Now that I know where I come from, I Don’t quite know where I’m going.’ She pauses and rests her head on his shoulder. ‘That’s why I feel ambivalent about starting a family.’

‘I understand you may feel this is not the right time to have a baby just now,’ Ben sighs, because actually he’d truly love to have his family under way soon. He’s thirty-four years old, he feels It’s right, logical, that he should feel broody himself. ‘But I also need to know that you are open to change. And most of all, I need to know that, theoretically, I’m still the bloke you’d want to have a baby with.’

Cat jerks her head up from his shoulder and looks at him, shocked. How could big strong Ben doubt this?

Ben shrugs. ‘You have to hug me back, sometimes, you know,’ he explains.

She looks at him again and despite his strong physique, his handsome face, his silvering hair, just now he looks like a little boy. Cat stares at her knees, ashamed. Regards a smudge of ice cream on her jeans. ‘Of course there’s only you,’ she whispers. ‘My family begins with you.’

They sit on the wall and like the words.

‘But listen,’ says Ben, ‘I hate condoms. And pulling out is grim – and not sodding fair. Messy too.’

‘Blow-job?’ Cat says with meek coyness.

‘Swallow?’

She giggles.

‘The pill?’ Ben asks.

‘But I put on weight and got spotty last time,’ Cat says.

‘I still fancied you,’ says Ben.

And Cat knows that he did.

‘Perhaps,’ she says.

‘For the time being, hey?’ says Ben.

Cat gives a small nod and slips her hand into his. It’s a good enough answer for Ben.

BAD SEED

And where is she? The mother who ran off with the cowboy from Denver when her daughters were small, who reappeared with bombshells to drop thirty years later, has since returned to the United States. It’s now June and Penny has been home for a couple of weeks and though the weather is glorious, Penny hasn’t once been for ice cream. Not even a pink taster spoon. Though she’d love a sundae, nowhere but Fountains will do. Once tasted, never forsaken. However, she hasn’t felt like going there but she’d rather go without ice cream than compromise with a tub from her local store. And she’d rather go without than confront sweet Juliette and her hopes of hearing that closure was a magical thing.

The house was sparkling, the fridge was full, the washing was done and the garden was so tidy that short of untangling blades of grass with a toothcomb, there was nothing more for Penny to do. The silence in the house was deafening but a coffee morning with Marcia and Noni would be more so. So she drove. All the way to the state line. Then she drove back and sat in the drive and berated the lawn for still looking so manicured and thus unmowable. She sat in the car with the engine running calculating the hours and hours until bedtime. A beautiful home, spick and span, empty and soulless. She phoned her home number from her cell phone and listened to Bob’s voice on the answering machine. She phoned her home number again and cursed technology, denounced it as trickery that she could hear Bob’s voice so clearly when the man no longer existed. She knew she ought to re-record the message. Some might think it macabre to hear a dead man’s voice on it. And there was new information to record. She’d have to reword the message in the first person. No more ‘we’. But how could she wipe Bob’s voice away?

Penny started the car and headed out of town. She arrived at the intersection and turned right with a bit of a sigh and soon enough turned onto the mountain road. She wasn’t heading for ice cream, or Ridge, she’d just stop at the first village, Hubbardton’s Spring. There was an easy trail there that would take her to one of the most gorgeous panoramas in the vicinity. She drove through the village and along a no-through-route, parking up soon after the road petered out into an unsurfaced one. Her eyes were filled with the lushness of early summer; sumac trees and maples cloaked in such verdant hues it was difficult to imagine them ablaze in gold and scarlet and amber in a few months’ time. Her sensible summer sandals were soon filled with powdery earth and the occasional small stone, viciously sharp despite its size. She headed for the vantage point high over the river, the land then surging and swooping to the mountains. It was one of Bob’s favourite paths. Maybe he’d meet her there. She walked with hope though she chided herself an idiot for doing so. Wasn’t she done with retracing old footsteps? After all, wherever she went now, she could look behind and see the unmistakable truth: there would only ever be one set of footprints.

There was nobody there. Of course there was nobody there.

Penny scrambled down to the cluster of flat rocks and took a seat. The purity of the air, the vividness of the view, the reality of the chill and scuff of the rock on which she sat, infused her with the clarity she needed.

I guess there’s no point in mourning him any longer, because he’s not coming back. There’s only photographs and memories. I can close my eyes and try to recall the sight and sound and smell of him but I can’t hope to conjure him.

I need to draw the proverbial line under it all. Re-record the answering machine. Find different trails to walk. I need to keep on going. Move on. I guess that’s a positive thing to do – even if at the moment there seems to be a futility and finality to it which seems negative. If I can’t hope for Bob – if I admit he’s dead – will it somehow kill him off entirely? Death might be ultimately the simplest, truest thing we’ll ever know – but it’s way too complicated for the living.

People are coming. I can hear them. I want to curse them for stealing my moment. I want to tell them they’re trespassing. This is mine – take your picnic and your laughter some place else! But Bob and I often shared this hike with other people – friends and strangers – so I can’t expect Bob’s death to bequest it sacred, private land. I’ll go. I’ll nod at these people. Maybe I’ll even say, Hi, enjoy the view, it sure is pretty today. Perhaps I can smile at them too.

Penny could have gone home. Hubbardton’s Spring was pretty much equidistant from Ridge where Fountains was, and Lester Falls where she lived. But it was a fine afternoon. And there was nothing to do at home. And still there were hours until bedtime. Anyway, perhaps Juliette didn’t work Sundays. And with the trails now fully open, the parlour would be fuller anyway. Though there were more cars parked along the way, people were obviously out and about on the trails because Fountains was no busier than when Penny had last been in.

‘Well look who it is,’ said Juliette, rushing to the counter to have Gloria load a taster spoon with Coffeebanoffee. ‘So good to see you!’ she told Penny. ‘Sit! How was your trip?’ Juliette’s mousy little face, with her generous smile and button-black eyes, was alert with anticipation and affection. Penny fixed a beatific smile to her face which she hoped would tell the girl all she could possibly want to know. And shut her up. She sat at the table and chided herself for not ordering her ice cream to go; for coming here in the first place.

Juliette returned with the sundae and loitered, waiting for Penny to engage her in conversation or even invite her to sit. But Penny appeared not to notice her, so engrossed was she in a leaflet she’d picked up outside the gallery in Hubbardton’s Spring. When Penny noticed that Gloria was busy serving at the counter and Juliette had gone through to collect orders, she left the parlour and her uneaten sundae.

‘Hey – Penny? Wait up.’

Penny turns to see Juliette hurrying down the street, with her sweet smile and a warm wave and something held aloft in her other hand.

‘Hey Penny,’ says Juliette, a little breathless, ‘here. You hardly ate a bite.’ She hands Penny a polystyrene block encasing the tubbed-up leftovers of her sundae. Juliette regards her, tilts her head, frowns a little whilst smiling. A contradiction in terms, Penny thinks to herself, like so much of life.

Love blossoming from a bad seed.

‘You crying?’ Juliette seems perturbed.

Penny touches her cheeks and swipes away the tears.

‘I don’t know whether our relationship was blessed or doomed,’ Penny announces and is helpless to stem the flow of words streaming out. ‘I try and defend my actions, I try to justify that I was young, that it was the 1960s, that I was a crazy mixed-up kid, that I wasn’t in love with Nicholas anyway. But actually, what Bob and I did was wrong. Love blossomed from a bad seed – it screwed with the lives of others.’ She stops abruptly, gasping a little.

‘I think you have it wrong, Penny,’ Juliette says with a caring tilt to her head. ‘It’s not your fault Bob died – and it’s not your fault that you guys fell in love,’ and she touches Penny’s arm tenderly.

Penny feels surprisingly irritated. How bizarre to feel the need to defend the bad in herself. ‘But my dear, you really don’t know me,’ she protests in an accent more English than at any time over the last three decades.

‘Sure I don’t know the ins and outs – who does? But I’m a good judge of character,’ Juliette says, a little defensively, ‘and I sense you and Bob shared something beautiful.’

‘We did,’ Penny says flatly, ‘but at a high price. And I’m sorry, Juliette, but you are not a particularly good judge of character – you have me all wrong.’

‘Great love isn’t given to those not worthy of it,’ Juliette says. Then she quickly regards her feet and looks a little bashful. ‘That’s a song lyric by my favourite band, actually. But it says what I believe. You were lucky, you and Bob. You were blessed.’ She looks up and gives Penny, who is glowering, a little grin.

‘But those around us weren’t,’ Penny says stonily. ‘Juliette honey, I’m tired and I just want to drive home.’

‘Sure, sure,’ says Juliette, but still she loiters. ‘It’s just I didn’t like to hear you say you were a bad seed – you’re not, you’re what me and my mom call a good egg.’

Suddenly, Penny is disconcerted that her words have been listened to so earnestly but that the impression they’ve given is erroneous. And that this sweet young girl, troubled by the death of a useless alcoholic father, should have Penny so wrong too. Penny might once have been wryly amused at being glorified, but just now it seems immoral.

‘You draw a picture only from what you’ve heard,’ Penny tells Juliette. ‘Believe me there’s a whole bunch of stuff you wouldn’t want to know.’

Juliette looks a little taken aback. ‘But I like you.’

‘Juliette,’ Penny says, scrunching her eyes shut against the headache of it all, ‘if I told you I had three daughters – whom I abandoned when the youngest was just a baby, would you believe me? Would you like me then?’

Juliette balks. What a weird question. ‘Of course I wouldn’t believe you,’ she says.

‘Well, I did,’ Penny declares hoarsely. ‘I did the unbelievable, OK? I walked out on three little girls. And you know something, I actually never regretted it. Now you stand there and tell me that the love I had with Bob was a good thing. You stand there and tell me I’m not a bad seed. You tell me you like me now.’

‘But—’

‘I’m no better than your father – in fact I’m worse. He treated you bad when he was drunk and in some ways not accountable for his behaviour. I walked out on my children when I was stone cold sober.’

Juliette stares; disbelief and hurt and horror striating her face. Penny perversely welcomes the scorch of shame which cuts through her. ‘You know what,’ Penny mutters, ‘I have to go.’ And though Juliette stands there motionless, dumb-struck and bereft, Penny walks the short distance to her car, dumps the polystyrene container in a trash-can on the way and drives off without a backward glance.

What is one more person hating her? What is one more person to have let down? Join the queue, Juliette, join the queue.

Penny is still awake in the early hours of the next morning. She’s sitting in the dark, in Bob’s chair, wondering why. In the last twelve hours, she’s said goodbye to Bob at the vantage point near Hubbardton’s, she’s revealed the ugly truth of her life to Juliette and she’s re-recorded the answering-machine message. So why does she feel so anxious and fretful? Why is there no sense of peace, of relief, of lightness, of that oft-bandied term closure?

Penny knows why. She can’t achieve closure because the door cannot yet be shut. It is jammed with issues she must confront and own, see in black-and-white in the clear light of day, acknowledge out loud. Where she’d gone that previous afternoon, what she’d spoken of to Juliette, what she’d recorded into the answering machine, were single strands in a knot of loose ends which need to be untied.

STRAY CAT BLUE

Ben hadn’t asked Cat what she was going to do on her day off which, this week, fell on a Wednesday. He hadn’t asked and she hadn’t mentioned it because he seemed a little distracted anyway, somewhat stressed. He was sitting at the kitchen table, flicking through the newspaper as if every item of news irked him.

‘Everything OK, doctor?’ she asked, handing him a mug of coffee and then giving his neck a quick rub.

‘What? Oh, fine,’ said Ben. ‘It’s probably going to be a bit of a full-on day, babe. I may be home late.’

‘I’ll have your pipe and slippers waiting,’ she laughed, stroking his closely cropped hair; the flecks of grey catching glints of silver as she did so.

‘That’s my girl,’ he said.

‘Although you may have to fetch your slippers yourself – I might be late home too,’ Cat said.

‘Oh? Staff meeting or something?’ said Ben.

Cat shook her head. ‘It’s my day off,’ she said. She took a seat beside him, pulled the chair close so their knees touched. He looked at her: her cheeks were a little flushed, her eyes flitted with whatever she was on the verge of saying. She gave a quick shrug. ‘I’m going to go to Derbyshire. Just a day-trip.’

Ben stared at her, fighting hard to keep horror from his face. He must not let his dismay show. He must say nothing. He must smile and nod and instead say, Wow, babe, wow. He must fight the urge to say, Don’t! You can’t! Not today, Cat! He can’t warn her that today’s not a good day for a round trip to Derbyshire. Because then she’d ask why. And he couldn’t say, Because Django’s coming to see me. Because, as a doctor, he was bound by the Hippocratic oath. And anyway, just look at her, all flushed with the supreme effort of arriving at such a proactive and possibly tough course of action. How much late-night thinking had she done to come to this decision? How much soul-searching had she accomplished to be ready to go home and face her father? Ben loved her so much for her courage and her reckoning, but as full as his heart was for her, it bled for her too. Ben had been so anxious that Django might not make this trip – but suddenly he was hoping this would be the case precisely. Ben felt torn and compromised. He’d made the appointment on Django’s behalf and without Cat’s knowledge because he was worried about Django. Because he had thought it was the right thing to do. Just now, though, he wondered what right he had at all. He felt quite sick.

‘What?’ Cat said, her eyes darkening to khaki as her brow furrowed and she regarded Ben anxiously. ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’ She looked crestfallen, her lips pouting inadvertently.

‘It’s an amazing idea,’ Ben assured her, though his instincts goaded him otherwise. ‘I’m so proud of you. Sorry – I’ve just got stuff on my mind. Sodding politics with the Trust and the NHS. Budgets. Funding. Targets. Sorry.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Cat, ‘but you do think I should go, don’t you? It’s not so much a gut instinct I’m acting on – my gut is in a knot right now – it’s a carefully considered decision. The timing seems good to me. It feels like it’s the right thing to do.’

‘Have you told your sisters?’ Ben asked. ‘Are you going alone?’

‘I am going alone,’ Cat said, with slow, awkward nods. ‘I haven’t asked them along. I haven’t actually told them I’m going.’ She looked a little unnerved, trying to find twists of hair to bind around her finger though mostly it was too short and quickly sprung free. ‘Do you think I should have told them? Or asked them along?’

‘Not if you don’t want to,’ Ben told her while his mind sped through a variety of plausible suggestions to dissuade her from going. But it was too complicated. He needed more time to figure it all out. But Cat needed his advice. Now. ‘This particular side of the story is yours,’ he told her. ‘You need to act on what feels right.’

‘It’s a rare old thing for me not to feel I have to analyse such a momentous decision with Pip and Fen first,’ Cat said. ‘I was proud of myself for having arrived at it on my own.’

‘I’m proud of you, too,’ Ben repeated. ‘You’ll be even more proud of yourself when you step down from the train at Chesterfield station.’ And he wondered whether he should be phoning Django and alerting him. Ben’s sense of duty, always hailed as one of his key qualities, was today giving him a headache. He rubbed his eyes. Not a good sign to feel this knackered at only breakfast-time. He suddenly loved his own family for being so conventional and dull. He must phone his mother, it was a good couple of weeks since he’d done so. He wouldn’t phone Django. He couldn’t. Ultimately, it wouldn’t be fair on Cat. He rapidly justified that his duty to Cat was partly to ensure that Django kept the appointment he’d made for him.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to say,’ Cat was saying, ‘but I feel ready to talk. To listen. I just need to make sense of my past, Ben. I feel in limbo until I do.’

Ben put his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her face close for a kiss. ‘I hope you have a good day, babe,’ he said. ‘I hope it feels good to go back there, whatever you hear or don’t.’

‘Thanks,’ said Cat. ‘If you wait, I’ll walk to the Tube with you.’

We know Django won’t be there. But Cat spent the train journey alternately smiling and frowning as various scenarios came into her mind’s eye. She even laughed out loud at a fanciful scene in slo-mo, she and Django running down the platform into each other’s arms. Daft. She hadn’t even tried the Farleymoor number from her mobile phone, let alone announced her visit to him in advance. She didn’t want to give him a shock though she knew he’d be taken off guard. She anticipated his initial concern would be that he hadn’t prepared anything special for lunch. What was she going to ask him? What did she hope to learn? She gazed out of the window and watched the landscape rush past, slip seamlessly from one landscape into another. The flatness of the South-East, the uniformity of the Midlands, soon enough the rolling promise of the Derbyshire Dales.

She thought about phoning from the station. Then she thought about phoning from the cab. But soon enough she was within ten minutes of the house and if she phoned now, the adrenalin coursing through her would surely give her voice little more than a whisper. The house came into view, sitting solid and squat in the grounds, as indigenous to the locality and as comfortable in the landscape as the moor-land ponies or hardy little sheep.

‘Just here is fine,’ she told the cab-driver. She needed the walk up the drive to take deep breaths, plucking at the ivy which clustered along the drystone wall. If Django wasn’t looking out of the window, she’d have the chance to stand awhile on the doorstep and collect her thoughts. As she walked up the path to the front door, she could only fix her sight on her feet. Her teeth chattered. It’s June! she told herself, and it’s only Django.

No Django.

No one at home.

She’s been sitting on the great grey flagstone doorstep for some time, hugging her arms around herself. She’d envisaged a bear-hug from Django. It had been one of the driving thoughts that had got her here. She’d thought that no matter what she might say, or hear, that hug was a given. Only it wasn’t. Because Django is not here.

The courage Cat had summoned to make this journey, the pride and excitement she’d felt in a huge affirmative surge when she’d stepped from the train at Chesterfield station, have now dwindled into disbelief and deep loneliness and despondency. Where could he be? Cat circumnavigates the house, peering into all the downstairs windows. Were there no clues? A pot of jam is on top of the Racing Post on the kitchen table. Not much to read into that. The living-room is extremely tidy. The flip-flops that Fen was wearing on Django’s birthday, one broken, are on the bench in the utility room with other variously sized footwear neatly laid out to either side. The opaque window to the downstairs toilet is fixed ajar but though Cat squints inside, she can’t really see anything, certainly no pointers to the whereabouts of the master of the house.

I don’t believe this. Where can he be? Where does he go on a Wednesday? Dominoes is Thursday afternoon and he usually shops on a Tuesday and a Friday.

She taps on all the windows as she makes her way back round to the front door. She raps on that and calls through the letter-box. She has a long look through, but the hallway is empty of details.

‘Django!’ she calls. ‘Django!’ She waits and listens. ‘Where the fuck are you?’ she mutters under her breath because she knows Django is not here to admonish her language. ‘What am I going to do?’ she sobs, sitting heavily on the doorstep.

You could go to the Rag and Thistle?

But I wanted Django to myself. And if he’s not there, word will soon be out that I came looking. But that I didn’t stay. Stupid man for not having a mobile phone!

Are you not going to wait awhile? Write a note?

And say what? ‘Hi, Dad, I summoned every ounce of courage to come and see you. Oh well, never mind, I’ll try again tomorrow?’ No. I may as well just call a cab to take me back to the station. My gesture was meant to be momentous. But all that’s happened is that the moment has passed. It’s all been spoilt. It’s no good. I just want to go home to Ben.

If only Django had said yes to the answering machine Pip wanted to buy him, hey?

Whatever. It was probably a stupid idea of mine anyway. Perhaps I should’ve run it by Pip first.

A FISH OUT OF WATER

Django had always liked trains, but recently he liked them more so on account of Tom’s fervent and endearing obsession with them. As he boarded at Chesterfield station early that morning, Django thought of Tom, thought how much he’d like to see him that day, to tell him about the Virgin train ferrying him to London and back. Wouldn’t it be nice if Pip brought Tom to meet him at St Pancras? She might well have done so, had he not been Derek, the father of her youngest sister. Half sister. Anyway, they didn’t know he was coming to town. Only Ben knew. He’d sent Django the ticket. Django felt uncomfortable about this. He would reimburse Ben the price of the ticket. He had the cash on him. Most, though, he felt uncomfortable about the trip itself; he didn’t like London, he didn’t like hospitals and he didn’t like it that Ben felt it necessary to send him a ticket to ensure he’d keep the appointment.

As he settled into the seat, arranged the Telegraph and his Thermos flask in front of him, he tried to think of trains and tracks and north and south and not that he hadn’t spoken to his girls since Pip’s call to him over a fortnight ago. He curtailed the thought that told him he hadn’t seen them for a month. Customarily, their visits home were every two months or so. But, devoid of all contact, this one month seemed the longest separation yet. Django thought about Cosima, wondered if she was crawling by now, imagined Fen dressing her in sweet, pink cotton creations. Did Cosima have more teeth? Did they make her grin look different? He smiled sadly but gazed out of the window as if he was particularly interested in the passengers alighting at Derby station. And was Cat perhaps pregnant, Django wondered, taking a long time to pour a cup of tea from his flask, trying to counteract the careen of the train. How wonderful that would be – although no more wonderful than Fen having Cosima or Pip having Tom of course – just a blessed situation for all three girls.

‘The continuation of family,’ Django said quietly, ‘that’s what it’s all about.’ And he felt appalled that his family were continuing without him. And he felt appalled that the purpose of this trip was not to visit family but to see Dr Mr Pisani. And he felt extremely disconcerted that the emotion this raised was fear.

I am seventy-five years old. I am frightened.

At Leicester, a young girl came and sat opposite Django, smiling politely before burying her nose in a novel with a candy-coloured cover festooned with illustrations of handbags, high heels and squiggly writing. So squiggly that Django had to squint hard to read the words, wondering which was the author, which was the title.

‘Sandwiches, snacks, cold drinks, tea and coffee.’

The refreshments trolley was announced in robotic monotone by the stewardess, who was less trolley-dolly, more sturdy dinner-lady. Django had a good look at what was on offer because he could not believe that food could appear so un-appetizing. The girl sitting opposite bought a can of fizzy something, tapping the ring-pull sharply before opening it.

‘So it doesn’t go insane,’ she announced and Django realized he must have been staring. He felt a little awkward. Does aluminium have sanity to lose? Is this a technique that everyone knows about, instilled in all teenagers along with the importance of condoms and just-say-no when it comes to drugs? Why don’t the manufacturers do something about the design, if drinks go mad unless tapped sharply? Django knew his thoughts were meandering excessively so that his mind could be diverted from Dr Mr Pisani. He rummaged around in his old canvas knapsack, the one that Pip, Fen and Cat had each clamoured to use at some point or other during burgeoning teenage trendiness. He took out a Tupperware container and regarded the selection of sandwiches he had packed. The fizzy girl was looking too.

‘Carrot, cheese and Marmite,’ he told her, ‘or tuna, piccalilli and tomato.’

She looked at him as if he might be one of those dreaded loonies that seem to inhabit every carriage of every train journey one ever takes. Django showed her the sandwiches. ‘Would you like one?’ he offered. ‘They’re mostly organic.’ She shook her head though her gaze remained fixed on the sandwiches, intrigued. ‘Go on,’ said Django, ‘they’re easy on the calories and whatnots.’ She smiled meekly and shrugged, peering into the container and asking which were the carrot and cheese. Django felt a sense of triumph that she took one and, though she nibbled gingerly at first, finished the whole thing, inch-thick crusts and all. She offered Django a Malteser but he declined, saying forlornly he was watching his weight, which made her giggle.

‘I’m going to see my nan,’ she told him, unprompted. ‘She lives near Luton.’

‘I’m going to see my girls,’ said Django, ‘and their offspring.’

‘Are you a granddad then?’ asked the girl.

Django nodded proudly.

‘My granddad died when I was small and I don’t remember him,’ the girl said with regret, ‘though I tell my nan that I do, of course.’ Django didn’t want to talk further on this. He was now worried he’d tempted Fate and tampered with Fortune with his white lies to the girl. But what was he meant to say – that he was going by himself to St John’s Hospital so that Dr Mr Pisani could put a finger up his bottom?

‘Your beads are cool,’ the girl was saying.

Django touched the nibs of tiger’s eye and turquoise, strung on leather around his neck. ‘There’s a story behind them,’ he said. ‘It starts in New Mexico.’ And he set off on an extravagant elaboration of the truth which saved him from ruminating on whether or not he’d see his girls and their offspring ever again.

‘Ta for the sarnie,’ said the girl, as she disembarked at Luton, ‘and have fun with your family.’

‘Thank you,’ said Django, ‘you too.’

The train shuffled into St Pancras a quarter of an hour late. Django felt agitated; which was itself exacerbated by the unfamiliarity of the emotion. He observed people in his carriage, making calls on their mobile phones to alert whomever to the train’s delay. Django would have liked to have warned Ben, but he didn’t have a mobile phone. He thought of Pip offering him one as a birthday present and remembered denouncing them as preposterous, invasive and unnecessary. How his girls had laughed at him. Cat had said, Nonsense Django, you won’t have one because you know you won’t know how to make it work. And Fen had said, Yes yes, the apotheosis of mobile communication was via smoke signals at the reservation in North Dakota so do tell us the story featuring you and Chief Lone Hawk for the umpteenth time. And Pip had said, But Django, why don’t you have one just for emergencies. And he’d been comically huffy while they teased him relentlessly and laughed. They all laughed. How they laughed. Always laughter when his girls were around.

Now he felt anxious. Leaving the train, stressed passengers bustled and shoved. Django did not like London, the pace of it all intimidated him. He felt apprehensive about taking the Tube to the hospital, with two changes of lines and escalators and people rushing and being underground. And he was already fifteen minutes late, at least, though Ben’s ticket had afforded him plenty of time. He kept to his regular walking pace and attempted to wear an expression that said I know where I’m going, I’m savvy, don’t shove me – and there’s no need to stare.

When did buskers become beggars? I busked with Flint Maystone in Paris and we had a following. We made music. We were respected. I would go so far as to say we were the precursors of skiffle. But this isn’t busking, it’s begging and it’s threatening and how can someone so unkempt and unsightly dare to stare at me?

But the chanting, ranting beggar wasn’t the only person to stare at Django. Everyone who passed him gave him more than a passing, smileless glance. You’d’ve thought Django would have been more of a talking point, an eyesore even, in the calm backwaters of Derbyshire, than in the swirl of London where his physical eccentricities shouldn’t raise an eyebrow or bat an eyelid. However, right from the start, when he moved to Derbyshire in 1969, hirsute and kaftan-clad, with beads clanking and pony-tail flowing, they welcomed him for bringing moccasins and Pucci neckerchiefs, Astrakhan waistcoats and voluminous, embroidered flared denims to their dale.

However, on the Victoria line decades later, people steered clear of Django, as if he might bark, in case he smelt. To his consternation, he realized they held him in the same regard as they held the ranting stinking beggar on the platform. He hardly felt that a Liberty shirt, suede waistcoat and green linen drawstring trousers warranted such suspicion. Yet it made him suddenly fret that perhaps protocol dictated the wearing of a suit to see a consultant. Soon enough he was embarrassed, ashamed even, of his apparel, denouncing himself a stupid bugger and feeling miserable. Would Ben be disappointed? Would Ben have to apologize on his behalf? If he had a mobile phone, Django supposed he could have forewarned Ben of his sartorial gaffe. Perhaps Dr Mr Pisani would decline to see him. And then he could go straight back home again.

But Ben is delighted to see Django, mainly because he’d been quite convinced that he would not appear. He’s been loitering around the hospital’s main entrance and silently praises Django’s dress sense for holding him aloft from the crowd; a beacon of colour walking awkwardly amongst the drab bustle of everyone else.

‘How was your journey?’ Ben asks, guiding Django through hallways and corridors to his own office. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Scotch?’ Django asks hopefully. Ben laughs. ‘Is the tea plastic?’ Django asks. ‘Do you press a button for it?’

‘No,’ Ben assures him, ‘Marjorie makes it in a teapot. She insists. It’s why I gave her the job – that perfectionism.’

‘I should like a cup of tea,’ Django says and Ben calls through to Marjorie.

‘How are you feeling?’ Ben asks.

‘Oh, you know – a little like a fish out of water,’ Django confides. ‘I don’t like this town at all.’

‘And how are you feeling otherwise,’ Ben asks, ‘in yourself?’

‘Oh, you know,’ Django dismisses any gravity, ‘rather good for a gent of seventy-five. Can’t complain about a rickety hip, gammy knee and mischievous waterworks.’

Ben nods and smiles. ‘I didn’t know you have a gammy knee and rickety hip,’ he says conversationally, though privately this concerns him.

‘All that thigh-slapping to Lonnie Donegan,’ Django says, ‘all that toe-tapping to Namesake Reinhardt.’

‘Ah,’ says Ben. ‘I made the appointment under Django McCabe.’

‘Bless you,’ Django says quietly.

‘But do you know under what name your GP has you listed?’ Ben asks.

‘Well, Dr Sutton always called me Mr McCabe in the surgery and Django at the Rag and Thistle,’ Django tells him, ‘but that new young girl called me D. McCabe. So it could be the one, or the other.’

‘OK,’ says Ben, ‘don’t you worry. I’ll handle it.’ Ben looks at his watch. ‘Do you have any questions? About the appointment? I’ll come with you – all the way, if you like.’

‘Yes, thank you, Ben,’ Django says with a light laugh that belies the slight tremor of his hand when he raises the tea cup to take a sip. ‘Will you tell Dr Mr Pisani that you are my personal physician and anything he says to me he can say to you too? I’m no good with medical jargon.’

Ben nods.

‘Thank you,’ Django nods back.

‘Cat is well,’ Ben tells him, ‘but she doesn’t know you are here.’

‘Thank you,’ says Django.

‘And Fen and Pip are well too,’ says Ben.

‘Thank you,’ says Django.

Ben glances at his watch. ‘Well, I think we’ll mosey on over now,’ he says and Django is so thankful that he has Ben with him today.

Mr Pisani’s appearance surprises Django who had envisaged an elongated Frankie Dettori. The consultant is in his late fifties, short and round with a very shiny pate ringed by a smile of neatly slicked grey curls. He’s wearing a suit with an orange tie, has a wedding ring on his plump finger and looks like a bank manager. His accent is Scottish and his voice is quiet. Django likes him immediately though the imminence of the examination dampens much banter on his part.

Notes are taken. Information is given. Django tells Mr Pisani that Ben is his personal physician. Ben nods but also offers to leave the room, anticipating that Django might play down his symptoms if he is there. But Django says, Please stay, and he furnishes Mr Pisani with a host of details – apologizing intermittently about whether they are relevant or not. He admits that perhaps his hips and knees aren’t so much rickety or gammy as really fairly painful. His lower back too. And he adds that he has steered clear of beetroot so yes, he’s fairly sure it’s blood in his urine.

‘Prostate problems are common,’ Mr Pisani smiles as if Django has something akin to a simple cold of the gland. ‘Today, I’ll be determining if your prostate is enlarged. And if it is – which I expect it is – what the reason may be. Most chaps over the age of fifty have an enlargement, you know, and mostly it’s simply a benign condition. I’m going to take blood too. With those results – and the findings of the examination – we’ll be able to see what’s what and what to do.’

‘Righty-ho,’ says Django, looking to Ben for the nod and smile which he gives.

‘I think Ben has alerted you to the procedure?’ Mr Pisani asks with a sympathetic raise of his eyebrows. Suddenly, Django is concerned about the plumpness of Mr Pisani’s fingers, and wishes for a tall thin Frankie Dettori. ‘It may be uncomfortable – but it shouldn’t be painful.’

‘Django?’ Ben asks, noting the colour has drained from his face.

‘You will stay, won’t you?’ says Django.

Ben tells Django fascinating anecdotes about his time with the professional racing cyclists; he speaks quickly, jauntily and in great detail, maintaining eye contact with Django who is lying on his side. And, without asking, Ben takes his hand at the opportune moment, holding it firmly yet tenderly, talking at Django the whole time.

‘Thank you, Mr McCabe,’ Mr Pisani says eventually. ‘I’m done. Do dress. There are tissues there. Take your time.’

‘Can I help?’ Ben asks Django.

‘No, that’s OK,’ says Django. Ben sees he has a tear coursing its way down his nose.

‘You did brilliantly,’ Ben tells him as he pulls the curtain around to afford Django his privacy. ‘Take your time.’ Ben takes a seat and glances at Mr Pisani who raises his eyebrow and busies himself with his notes.

Oh Christ, thinks Ben.

‘Now,’ Mr Pisani says chattily when Django reappears and takes his seat, ‘generally speaking – generally speaking – an enlarged prostate ought to feel firm and smooth. Yours feels rather hard and knobbly.’

‘I see,’ says Django, though he doesn’t know quite what he’s meant to be seeing, or what Mr Pisani was meant to be looking for.

‘This may suggest something a little more serious than prostate problems,’ Mr Pisani continues, ‘which is why the blood test is important.’

‘OK,’ says Django. ‘You can take an armful, if you like.’

Mr Pisani smiles and nods and says a test tube will be plenty. ‘Now, you see the symptoms of both a benign enlargement and a malignant tumour are similar. And you have presented those symptoms. But a malignant tumour feels rather different to a benign enlargement.’

‘A malignant tumour?’

‘Most prostate cancers grow very slowly indeed, Mr McCabe.’

‘Cancer?’ Django stands up and looks at Ben in bewilderment. ‘Who said anything about cancer? It’s my waterworks. I’m just old.’

AL AND THE GIRL FROM PURLEY

Despite all manner of skewed rationalization, Fen felt uncomfortable and at a loss. In the past, at such times, there was always Derbyshire to escape to – even if only in the realms of her imagination – but now not even that seemed an option. She was hardly likely to phone Django, nor did she consider the cause of her discomfort an appropriate topic of discussion between sisters. What was she meant to say? She told herself her sisters wouldn’t understand – they’d go on about rocky patches and she didn’t want to be judged or lectured.

Fen had long had an idiosyncrasy of looking from one hand to the other when weighing issues which irked her, to assist her in making a choice. Some saw it as an affectation, but it had proved a fail-safe method for her. For the second time in his life, Matt unknowingly was being held in Fen’s left palm. Four years ago, a man called James Caulfield had been in her right palm. For a while she fought against having to choose, railed against her sisters’ accusation of immorality, disputed their allegation of duplicity. She’d made her choice only when she realized the love she felt for Matt was more ordinary, thus somehow deeper and more true. And she has never looked back, never wondered What if, never doubted her decision. But now Matt is unwittingly back in one hand, and this time Al – whose surname she doesn’t even know – is in the other; yet this time they weren’t unsuspecting pawns competing for Fen’s love. Love wasn’t coming into it at all. On the one hand, Fen feared love was lost from her relationship. On the other hand, she feared the lure of lust. Left, right. Love, lust. Right, wrong. Her scale of values was unbalanced and tipping dangerously in favour of Al.

The easiest way to keep guilt at bay and to give her feelings for Al credibility, was to blame Matt for the irritation she felt increasingly towards him. She begrudged his freedom to go to work but also resented him for not being around more, for not helping enough, for not spending quality time with Cosima. Yet when he did, his ways got on her nerves, he got in her way and ultimately, she didn’t trust him to be doing things quite right so she brushed him away, did whatever it was herself, felt put upon, then resented him. In Fen’s eyes, Matt couldn’t win, and she felt that this was his fault. She didn’t like the sound of him eating and yet she’d never noticed it before. At night, she slept with a pillow half over her head because the incessant sound of Matt sleeping kept her awake. She didn’t like the monotony of their communication; his daily question of ‘And how are my girls?’ set her teeth on edge – Fen didn’t like it that he lumped her and Cosima together, that he only half listened to her answer anyway while he opened post or checked the television listings in the newspaper. He didn’t seem to notice if Fen’s hair needed a wash and she was wearing stained clothing, or there again if she’d made an effort with mascara and had changed before he arrived home. She was aware that her friends and sisters would proclaim her lucky indeed to have a man who never judged her on her looks but Fen interpreted it as Matt not really noticing her at all.

Left hand, right hand. Good, bad. Right, wrong. Harmless, dangerous. Fen’s scales appeared to be peculiarly calibrated at best; at worst downright faulty. On the one hand, the marks Fen placed against Matt became blacker, on the other hand the warning signs she’d seen in Al became fainter. Taken together, their collusion was dangerous and deluded, exacerbated by the fact that it had been almost a week since she’d seen Al and she’d heard nothing. Al’s desirability increased the longer the message box on her mobile phone remained empty. The less he appeared to want her, the more she wanted to pursue him. These last few days, during which she’d consulted her phone with frustration and growing insecurity, and analysed the palms of her hands with increasing regularity, Fen had reinvented Al and invested him with much more bearing than his actual gaucherie. She reassessed his shared living arrangements in deepest darkest Camden as funky and intriguing, and in her mind’s eye he’d become far more buff and beautiful. She had transposed her previous image of him as a fairly nondescript young bloke, into a vision of an arresting enigma. When Matt attempted to travel his hands over her body last night, she’d initially flinched but then an image of Al’s hands came into view and even all the silver rings suddenly seemed achingly sexy. So she fucked Al while Matt made love to her. She squirmed away from Matt’s post-coital cuddle and then she’d put the pillow over her head to block out the warning bells as much as Matt’s breathing pattern.

Fen convinced herself that her self-esteem depended entirely on Al desiring her, that if she could just seduce him, her sense of her own femininity and self-worth would be restored. And, with her head under the pillow muffling any sound of chastisement or ridicule, she gamely justified that it would do her disintegrating relationship with Matt the power of good. She’d often read about stale relationships being rejuvenated by one or other partner having no-strings secret flings; heartening accounts of how people fell in love with their partners all over again in the aftermath of affairs. If she had a fling with Al, she’d see sense, wouldn’t she? A fling with Al would prove what Matt truly meant to her, wouldn’t it? A fling with Al would have a positive impact on her libido and this in turn would have a positive effect for Matt. Fen was convinced that if she had a fling with Al, she’d be doing everyone a favour.

But it had been three days since she’d seen him. And because it had been three whole days and because she’d heard nothing, Fen found it easy to transform Al from a bad idea best forgotten into an exciting challenge. She convinced herself that actually, hadn’t she told him that she’d be in touch?

1.12 p.m.

hey Al, ta 4 drinx. See u soon?

7.56 p.m.

If Matt had at least forewarned me that he was going to be home late, I wouldn’t be sitting here, feeling neglected.

8.00 p.m.

‘Oh, hi – is that Al?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Fen.’

‘Oh – hi Fen.’

‘I just thought I’d give you a quick call – I sent you a text earlier but I think I forgot to put my name to it.’

‘Ah.’

‘Anyway, just thought I’d give you a quick call. How are you doing?’

‘Yes – good. And you?’

‘Oh, you know, busy.’

‘Cool. Cool.’

‘Anyway – I’d better go, I suppose. I just thought – maybe meet up for a quick drink or something?’

‘Cool – I’ll give you a call.’

‘Great.’

‘OK, Fen – bye then.’

‘Bye. Oh. When? Ish?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Us fusty old mums need time to organize babysitters – so I was just wondering if you had an idea of when? You know – when you’d be calling and when we’d meet up?’

‘Oh. Soon. Next couple of days?’

‘Great. Bye Al.’

‘See you, Fen.’

That call was crap. Ought I to text him to rectify? Should I just compose one and see how it looks on the screen? Or should I sit on my hands and watch Grand Designs and keep shtum?

Who are you asking, Fen?

And by the way, where is Matt?

Matt is having an impromptu drink after work with an old mate, Jake, with whom he shared a flat and a certain level of rakishness in their twenties. Though their thirties have led them onto divergent paths, their friendship continues and they like to meet up every now and then and live vicariously through one another, just for the duration of an entertaining evening. Jake has taken to calling Matt ‘Daddy’, and Matt calls Jake ‘Twat’. They are in Soho and the area is buzzing. Matt hates to admit even to himself how long it has been since he last had a night out in town; he hadn’t thought he’d missed it, he wasn’t aware of having craved it but it’s reviving to be back here, heading through the colourful milling crowd to a bar, past shops specializing in everything from whisky to ship’s chandlery, gay paraphernalia to hip and costly trainers, from sushi to sex. The bar is new to Matt though Jake informs him it’s been open awhile, and is the place to drink and Where the fuck have you been, Daddy – it’s where all manner of media scandal and celebrity debauchery are often chronicled. Shut up, Twat, and buy me a beer.

While Jake orders, Matt quietly wonders if he looks out of place, whether it’s obvious that he’s more accustomed to slouching in front of the television with a ready meal and being in bed by midnight. He scouts other people’s clothing and footwear, feeling slightly faded and last-season in comparison; resolves to spend a lunch-time and a wage packet in Paul Smith the next day. Does he feel out of place? A little, just a little at the moment. But beer will help and make all equal.

‘They only do bizarre beer in piss-pale shades from places like Latvia,’ Jake apologizes, setting down two over-designed bottles in front of them. ‘Cheers anyway.’

‘Cheers mate,’ says Matt. ‘How’s it going?’

‘Madly busy at work,’ Jake rues, ‘and complicated as ever at play.’

Matt laughs. Jake lights a cigarette and offers one to Matt who falters for a moment and then takes one. He was only ever a social smoker but the arrival of Cosima stipulated a nicotine-free zone and now, the head rush he experiences after the first few drags is slightly disconcerting yet nostalgic and oddly liberating.

‘There’s this girl,’ Jake is saying, clasping the cigarette between his lips as he describes her assets crudely with his hands. ‘She’s a total babe – Suze – pretty young but bloody bright. Anyway, I thought she was just after a good time, you know?’

Matt nods sagely as if he does.

‘Suited me fine – absolutely. You know, finally a woman after my own heart – or rather, not after my heart but only my body. No-strings sex and the like. But the weird thing is,’ Jake continues, sotto voce, ‘increasingly I find myself wanting a bit more.’ Jake slaps the table and roars with laughter. ‘What the fuck is all that about then? Usually they harp on at me about mini-breaks and meeting my parents and bollocks, and here I am, toying with the idea of asking her to move in. Here’s me, pissed off if she hasn’t phoned all day!’

‘Bloody hell!’ Matt marvels, with a glug and a drag.

‘Bloody hell is right,’ Jake says darkly. ‘Wedding bells and babies.’

‘Have you talked to her?’ Matt asks. Jake answers him with a look of ridicule.

‘As I say, she hasn’t phoned all day,’ says Jake morosely, ‘but I’m damned if I’m going to call her.’

‘I meant,’ says Matt, ‘have you talked to her about – you know – how you feel? Longevity? The C word.’

‘Cunt?’ says Jake.

‘Commitment,’ says Matt. ‘Twat.’

‘Well. Almost. You see, what complicates it,’ Jake says, ‘is that Ellie is still on the scene – casually.’ Matt covers his eyes in mock distaste. ‘I mean, I never ring her, really. Well, not really,’ says Jake. ‘Sometimes I do – if I’m bored or drunk or both. And when she rings me – well, it’s a bit mad to turn it down, isn’t it?’

To Matt, Jake’s life sounds dictionary-definition mad. Momentarily, it all seems a little unsavoury too, unnecessarily complicated and way too tiring. It’s not a been-there, done-that derision Matt feels as he never quite subscribed to Jake’s low-level ethics, more it’s an uncomfortable feeling of what the allure can still be for Jake. Isn’t he bored after well over a decade of bawdiness? Oughtn’t he to have outgrown such philandering? Doesn’t he aspire to a more grown-up way of life? A quiet side of Matt is slightly insulted that his own lifestyle, the developments and changes, the achievements and differences, appear to hold little attraction for Jake. Though Jake usually asks after Fen, after the baby, after the mortgage and the mundanity, Matt detects a perfunctory edge before Jake deviates to humorous accounts of his own ongoing hedonism. Jake is a great raconteur – and that’s the point of such evenings. But Matt has to admit that the fact that their lives are now so disparate is also the reason that they now meet so infrequently.

However, alcohol is a great leveller. Once a certain level of inebriation has been reached, Matt finds he and Jake are blokes with equal charisma, wit and highly entertaining neuroses. So they drink and they smoke and they banter. They put the world to rights, they re-train the England soccer squad and they recite lengthy tracts from The Office. Jake confides that he had to be treated for chlamydia after a mad week in Aya Napa and Matt reveals that a baby and a sex life is a contradiction in terms.

‘Do you not fancy Fen like you used to?’ Jake asks, with slurred concern. ‘I’ve heard about this – it’s a syndrome, mate. Once you’ve seen what her vagina is really for, you can never see it as your playpen again.’

But Matt shakes his head.

‘Oh!’ Jake whispers. ‘Oh.’ He nods his head earnestly. ‘I’ve heard about that too,’ he says. ‘It’s another syndrome – that childbirth alters, well, the feel of the fuck. Like a familiar room with all the furniture moved around. Or, worse, gone.’

Matt laughs but shakes his head. Jake looks a little surprised that he’s wrong again.

‘Too tired?’ he tries.

‘Partly,’ says Matt.

‘Oh God – she’s not up the duff again is she?’

‘Hardly!’ Matt snorts. He contemplates the cocoon of ash lying pristine on his knee. He flicks it away. ‘I’m not getting it because Fen seems to have gone off me.’

‘Maybe she’s still – you know – sore?’

‘What, ten months on?’ Matt argues. ‘Mate – it’s like her opinion of herself has altered. She has this whole new identity. She loves being a mummy but she’s not that into being my girlfriend.’

‘She turns you down?’ Jake is appalled.

‘I guess,’ says Matt, ‘yes. And when we do have sex – I sense it’s more like she just wants a simple shag. An orgasm – and quick.’

‘Man,’ sighs Jake, ‘I’ve been searching my whole life for a simple shag.’

Matt shrugs. ‘You know what I mean.’

Jake doesn’t, but he nods anyway as he’s not particularly interested in developing this strand of the conversation.

‘You know something,’ says Matt, ‘I wonder if we hadn’t had Cosima whether we’d have split up by now.’ He picks at the label on the beer bottle. ‘But I also wonder if our relationship would have been better without having a baby. Terrible thing to think, really.’

‘Like you can’t have the one without the other – or you can’t have both? Or something?’ Jake asks, his eyes drawn to three girls ordering at the bar.

‘Something like that,’ says Matt.

‘Fantastic,’ says Jake. Matt frowns until he realizes he’s referring to the girls who are sending lascivious glances in their direction.

Usually, the point at which Jake starts to prowl is when Matt decides to bale out and go home. He tends to glance at his watch and calculate the maximum sleep he needs against the hours of sleep he’s actually going to have. This is when Matt usually slaps Jake on the shoulder and tells the girl, or girls, to look after his mate. And this is the point when Jake says ‘Goodnight, Daddy’ and feels a slight sense of relief that he’s free to continue the evening in his own inimitable way. This is when Matt goes home. As you’d expect. He’s a father after all. It’s not seemly to drink into the small hours; it’s irresponsible. So go home, Matt.

But Matt sees little point in going home. Fen will just say he stinks of booze and fags and forbid him from going anywhere near the baby and then reproach him for the fact that it all amounts to her being the one who’s always up at the crack of dawn despite her matchless tiredness. So Matt doesn’t go home because just now he doesn’t like who’s at home; what he likes more is the upbeat revelry of his immediate milieu. And he likes the girls who have come, pouting and posturing over to him and Jake. He likes the way one of them licks her lips while he’s speaking. She’s hanging on his words and his arm because she’s a little unsteady on her feet; not surprising, considering the combination of cocktail and the precarious height of her fuckme shoes. Matt doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about but she seems to find him scintillating and hysterically funny. When she throws her head back like that, her throat looks so lickable. He likes her pierced navel, there’s a sparkly dangly thing hanging from it. And look at the tantalizing wobble of her high, nubile – oh Christ – braless breasts.

What did you say her name was, Matt?

‘Are you married?’ she’s asking him.

‘Nope,’ Matt says.

‘Is your mate?’ she asks, trying to focus on Jake who has an arm around each of her friends.

‘God no,’ Matt laughs.

‘I’m so pissed,’ she complains, lolling into Matt’s chest.

‘Me too,’ Matt agrees, using it as an excuse to drape his arm around her and flop his hand down to the small of her back. If she brings her face up, he knows they’ll snog. In fact, he wants her to, so he strokes the small of her back and extends his fingertips beyond the unmistakable boundary to her buttocks. Up comes her face and in slips Matt’s tongue. He can taste Bailey’s and Marlboro Lights. For the first time in five years, he is sharing his mouth with a woman other than Fen.

‘Hey! Daddy!’ says Jake. ‘Let’s go to Eddie’s.’

Matt takes his mouth away from the girl’s though his hand keeps her clasped against him. ‘Who’s Eddie?’ he asks, wondering why Jake isn’t raising eyebrows at him, or looking remotely shocked, or even amused.

‘It’s this late-night drinking den in Dean Street,’ Jake says with a glance around, as if embarrassed to be in the company of someone who’s never heard of Eddie’s.

‘Why did he call you Daddy?’ the girl is asking Matt, who ignores her.

‘Nah!’ Matt says to Jake. ‘I’m going to head home.’

The girls with Jake look at their friend. ‘You coming to Eddie’s?’ they ask her.

‘Nah,’ she says, just like Matt.

Jake and the girls shrug, say a brief goodbye and head off.

So, Matt, are you going to head home then?

Yeah, I’ll just have one for the road first.

One what?

When it’s very late and you’re drunk and horny in a bar in Soho, where do you go? As Matt snogs the girl, he asks himself this question. They’re still in the bar, but they’ve found an enclave with a curved leather banquette. He’s bought them a drink which they haven’t yet touched. They’ve been groping at each other while sucking face; there’s a teenage randiness to it all which Matt is, literally, lapping up. He is sitting, legs spread, with a hard-on bulging shamelessly through his trousers. Every now and then, the girl sweeps her hand over it in a kind of maintenance check. Matt’s been feeling her breasts through her top and because it’s so skimpy and because she’s not wearing anything underneath, she’s as good as naked to his touch.

‘Let’s go back to yours,’ she suggests.

Matt looks at her as if she’s mad. But how’s she to know his child and the mother of his child are there? He’s told her Jake calls him Daddy because he’s the eldest. He’s told her he calls Jake Twat because he is one.

‘Can’t,’ he replies to her, ‘there are people there.’

She shrugs this off.

‘Where do you live then?’ he asks.

‘Purley,’ she says.

Even in his drunken state and despite his aching balls, Matt assesses that Purley is pointless. The taxis would cost a fortune. ‘Purley,’ he says. ‘Oh.’

‘There’s the loos here,’ she says. ‘They’re big and posh and this place turns a blind eye to people going in pairs.’ She taps the side of her nose as if she knows a secret and it takes a while for Matt to realize she’s alluding to cocaine.

‘Have you got any?’ he asks, actually feeling his desire for drugs is more iniquitous than the adulterous lust bulging in his trousers.

‘Ruby’s got the wrap,’ she says forlornly, ‘but I reckon your mate had most of it anyway.’

Matt thinks he’s probably relieved. At the same time, he’s slightly disconcerted that he didn’t realize Jake had been doing drugs that evening. That Jake hadn’t offered any to him. Though, in all probability, Matt would have refused. If this girl had in fact had some, would he? He’s too drunk to debate it. She’s winking at him, nodding her head in the direction of the toilets.

And off they go, hand in hand, no one is in the lead.

The cubicle is spacious; faux panelled with strangely subdued lighting. There’s loo paper on the floor and a Vent-Axia whirring away, affording a contradictory soundproofing of sorts. As soon as they’re in, with a giggle and a fast lock of the door, they’re snogging and fumbling and grappling and groping again. Matt has pulled her top to one side so he can see her tits in the flesh. They’re fabulous: sizeable but pert with keen dark nipples craving his attention. While he sucks, she ruffles his hair through her fingers, backs up against the wall and spreads her legs, guiding his hand up in between. He rubs his fingers ravenously against the gusset of her thong. She gyrates against him and his thumb probes under the material to the lips of her sex. She’s shaven. He’s aching, there’s a sackload of spunk which has been cramped in the holding bay of his balls for what seems like hours.

‘Have you got a condom, then?’ she asks. Matt frowns. ‘You’ve got to pull out then, all right?’

In spite of the alcohol, Matt’s inner voice is suddenly sharply lucid. The harder the facts of the imminence of infidelity, the softer his cock becomes. Man’s best friend. Warning balls. He’s far more grateful for his flaccidness than he is embarrassed by it.

‘Don’t worry,’ she says sweetly, glancing at Matt’s limp penis and she sits on the toilet and takes a pee. ‘Another time, maybe? Shall we go to Eddie’s?’ she says conversationally, while wiping herself with loo paper and righting her thong. ‘See if Twat and the girls are there?’

‘I’m going to head home,’ Matt says.

‘Will you see me into a cab, then?’ she asks.

And he does. And he says that of course he’ll call her though he’s aware that she’s not aware that she hasn’t given him her number nor asked for his. He flags down a taxi for her and watches it go. He finds that he’s now utterly sober. So sober that his mind is reeling with frantic theories on what constitutes infidelity. He doesn’t want a cab, he wants to walk and think and fast. As he marches up Wardour Street, weaving his way through all the people, he wonders if he just cheated on Fen. He justifies that he was drunk. He reasons that it wasn’t sex anyway, in the penetrative sense. When push was about to come to shove, he had not wanted it, regardless of the state of his cock. But had what he had done amounted to being unfaithful? Was it possible to rank degrees of infidelity and if so, how far down the scale had he just stooped? He’d snogged another woman, had a grope and a feel. So his heart hadn’t been in it, his mind hadn’t been on it, his dick hadn’t been sucked and his conscience had remained firmly trothed to Fen. But the urge had been there and whose fault was that? Could he blame Fen? Or had he only himself to blame? Or should he marvel that his love for her had caused his inner voice to yell out, Stop? He crossed over Oxford Street and walked briskly along Tottenham Court Road, feeling slightly hostile towards the pockets of pissed-up people for whom a night out in town was still young and promising. Despite the crowds of people, no one but him had any thoughts of home so he flagged a taxi with ease.

‘Good night out?’ the cabbie asks him chirpily, having passed comment on the weather, the traffic conditions and Ken Livingstone.

‘Crap,’ Matt says, glowering at his reflection in the window.

‘Coming home empty-handed are we?’ the cabbie chuckles. ‘Your powers of persuasion let you down tonight?’

Matt looks up, straight into the eyes of the cabbie staring back at him from the rear-view mirror. ‘Quite the opposite,’ Matt says. ‘She was up for it. I wasn’t.’

‘Heart strings not plucked, then?’

Christ will he not just shut up!

‘My heart’s at home,’ Matt says while wondering why he hadn’t shut up, himself.

‘Ah,’ the cabbie sighs, ‘so you knocked temptation back to touch. Good for you, mate.’

‘I had a touch,’ Matt mumbles, ‘it didn’t feel good at all.’

‘Precisely,’ says the cabbie, ‘so it was good for you.’

CAT OUT OF THE BAG

The last thing Matt felt like doing, two days later, was to go out again. However, the choke of guilt, the nauseated regret, became more severe in Fen’s presence. When he was at work, he longed to be at home, as if he imagined Fen and, to a lesser extent Cosima, suddenly unprotected without him there. When he was apart from her, he desperately needed her in sight – even if this meant apologizing to her photograph which he carried in his wallet. He stroked the image with the tip of his little finger, proclaiming to her that he’d never drink again, that he’d see no more of Jake, that he’d re-focus his eyes for Fen alone. What had happened was nothing, just stupidity; it had felt vile, a lesson had been learnt. Or so he kept telling himself. Yet in Fen’s company, he couldn’t even meet her eye, so convinced was he that he wore his sin as a sandwich board, guilt writ large all over his face. All he could do was feign tiredness as the cause for his uncommunicativeness, close himself off by watching The West Wing on DVD, while Fen made much of doing all the tidying up, all the cooking and all the laundry. When Matt did glance at her, hoping to bestow a loving, affirming smile, he found himself flinching away, as if her top was emblazoned with You fucking bastard how could you. So, though a part of Matt felt he should go home directly, to silently beg her forgiveness and declare his utter steadfastness and enduring loyalty, when Ben phoned and suggested they meet at the Mariners, Matt embraced the opportunity to be distracted from both his atonement and culpability.

Ben had beers waiting for them.

‘How’s life?’ Zac asked. ‘Pip told me about Cat’s non-trip up North. Is she OK?’

Ben took a visibly deep breath. ‘She’ll be fine,’ he said, ‘but I have to tell you both something and it’s about Django.’ Ben looked from Matt to Zac and saw the same look of surprise and enquiry. ‘He’s told me to tell you. It’s not nice. The long and short of it is he came to the hospital for some tests and he has prostate cancer.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Matt, closing his hand over his eyes.

‘Cancer?’ said Zac. ‘Jesus.’ Ben let the news sit with them a moment. ‘Hang on,’ said Zac, ‘he was down here? In London? When?’

‘The day that Cat went up to Derbyshire,’ Ben said, shaking his head. ‘Last Wednesday. I made an appointment and sent him a train ticket. It was the only way I could be sure he’d have it looked into – he wouldn’t go to his GP. And I’d noticed some signs a while ago – before all the Derek–Mother shit.’

‘Does Cat know now?’

‘No. He didn’t want anyone to know. And now he wants me to tell you. And us to tell them.’

‘Christ,’ Zac and Matt said in unison.

‘Poor sod,’ Matt said sadly. ‘What’s the prognosis?’

‘It’s difficult to say at this stage,’ said Ben. ‘It’s not uncommon and it’s usually very slow growing – sometimes the effect of the treatment is much worse than the symptoms of the cancer itself. Often sufferers can live out a normal lifespan. However, he has pain in his hip, leg and back which suggests it may have spread to the bone. He’s only had a physical exam and blood tests. Now he needs an ultrasound, then we’re into the territory of biopsies and scans. The results will take a while but they’ll show the grade and stage of the cancer.’

Matt and Zac sat silent and shocked. ‘I can’t believe this,’ Matt said with audible alarm.

‘What treatment will he have?’ Zac said.

‘It depends on what the tests reveal,’ Ben said. ‘It’s not my area. But I know around one in twelve men are diagnosed with this illness. He may have had it for years – it tends to be without symptoms in the early stages.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ Matt rued again. ‘What are we going to do about the girls?’

‘I have no sodding idea,’ Ben sighed, ‘which is why I thought we should meet. Cat is up and down at the moment.’

‘Fen too,’ said Matt.

‘And Pip,’ said Zac.

‘Is he OK?’ Zac asked. ‘You know, psychologically?’

Ben smiled sadly. ‘Beneath the neckerchief and dodgy trousers, there’s an ill man of seventy-five. And unfortunately, the tests are pretty unpleasant.’

‘Is he coming back down for the tests?’ Zac asked. ‘Perhaps we could arrange for him to see the girls then?’

‘He’s been referred to his local oncology department,’ Ben said.

‘He needs support,’ Matt said, ‘he needs his girls.’

‘So what are we going to do about them?’ Zac asked. ‘I could tell Pip,’ he offered, ‘then she could tell the others? She’s suggested to them that the three of them should go up to Derbyshire soon, anyway.’

Matt nodded but Ben shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I know their traditional dynamic is to look to Pip for advice – but that dynamic was turned on its head by the mother showing up and the Derek business and the whole parentage thing. I speak for Cat, of course,’ said Ben, ‘because I think somewhere, deep down, she just can’t help fearing that she’s slightly less of a sister to your two than they are to each other.’

‘Which is horse shit,’ Matt assured him, backed up by Zac raising his glass.

‘I know that,’ said Ben. ‘It’s stupid, I know, but it’s where her mind is at just now.’

‘They should know at the same time,’ Zac said. ‘I could do a dinner gathering and we could tell them all together.’

‘I don’t know,’ Matt said. ‘It’s going to be such a massive thing – we don’t know how they’ll react individually. And then there’s Cosima – if we’re round at yours, Fen will have half her mind on how the baby is.’

‘Good point,’ said Ben, ‘and I think Cat might feel a bit compromised – like we’ve engineered a situation. She’s very particular about her comfort zone at the moment – even if it is behind the closed doors of our rental place in Clapham.’

‘The thing is, we are going to need to engineer it,’ said Zac.

‘Meticulously,’ Matt agreed.

The three men sipped their beer contemplatively, half their thoughts directed to Django, half to their girls. ‘I reckon we tell them separately but at the same time,’ said Ben. ‘We agree on a time, and specific information – perhaps down to the very wording.’

Matt and Zac nodded in agreement. ‘I think we also let them know that we met to discuss this,’ said Matt, ‘that it’s what Django wants. And that they’re each hearing the news at the same time in the same way.’

‘OK,’ said Zac, ‘this is good. We also need to decide which order they’ll phone each other. I know it sounds contrived but our McCabe girls have a tendency to leap on their emotional high horses and bolt. We can’t have them all in a scatter – they’re going to need each other.’

‘Agreed,’ said Matt and Ben.

‘You find in traumatic situations, those involved need assistance in deciding what to do and how to do it,’ said Ben. ‘Cat is still insecure, somewhere, about the dynamic between her and her sisters. Perhaps she should make the first call. I’ll have her phone Pip – and then Pip can phone Fen?’

Matt and Zac nod. They’ve gone off their beer.

‘This is crap news,’ Matt said forlornly. ‘Really horrible.’

‘It’ll be the making or the breaking of them,’ Zac agreed.

‘As a family,’ defined Ben, ‘as well as individually.’

They dreaded being grilled by the girls when they arrived home because it had been settled that nothing would be said until 9 p.m. the following evening when the situation would be revealed according to the information advised by Ben, the precise wording honed by the three of them.

When Zac arrived home, Pip was watching a cable health channel about having babies, but she zapped over to E4 hurriedly.

‘How was your evening?’ she asked casually, reducing the volume.

‘Fine,’ Zac said, ‘but you carry on. I have a little work to do.’ And he disappeared with his laptop to sit on the edge of the bed, feeling winded and sad.

Matt came home to find Fen already asleep. He spooned up gently against her and mouthed ‘Sorry’ over and over again into her hair.

‘You reek of booze,’ she muttered sleepily, hitching her shoulder up a little to block him out.

Cat was full of beans when Ben returned because Jeremy was leaving to run the Basingstoke branch of Dovidels and had intimated to Cat that she should apply for his post.

‘Everything’s looking up,’ Cat exclaimed, giving him a hug.

THE TEN O’CLOCK NEWS

Fen’s morning started very well indeed. It was warm enough to dress Cosima in a broderie anglaise sundress with matching puffy knickers and frilled cloche hat which Matt’s mother had bought her. The baby looked adorable and her matchless beauty in her mother’s eyes made the day seem even more balmy. There were new gurgles, from which Fen could deduce a private language of sorts and she conversed with her daughter enthusiastically, not caring how daft she might sound. Cosima was also trying out a commando slither pre-crawl and Fen could not be more proud had her baby stood up and danced a jig. Strolling along to Musical Minis, chortling to Cosima in gobbledygook, pointing out the red letter-box, the nice mister postman and the big yellow truck, Fen felt her mobile phone vibrate through a message. She retrieved it from the back pocket of her jeans, the pair she’d been able finally to fit back into today, oh joyous day, for the first time, not minding that they felt comfortably snug.

Hi f – drinx 2nite? Al

Feeling comfortingly smug, Fen spent the next half-hour composing various answers whilst singing the tunes at Musical Minis by rote. Her walk home had her weigh up which order was best – phone Pip to check babysitting was possible, or text Al first to accept and then work through babysitting options later. Her sense of maternal duty was far stronger than her sense of adventure so she called Pip first.

‘Shouldn’t be a problem at all,’ said Pip.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind coming to mine, though?’ Fen double-checked. ‘I’ll be able to give Cosima her supper but then you’ll be in charge of bath, bottle, bed.’

‘No probs,’ said Pip, ‘we’ll flood the house, drink the fridge dry and have a pillow fight. Who’s this friend?’

‘Oh, just Al – we meet up every now and then.’

‘Have I met her?’ Pip asked.

Fen realized that if she denied Al a gender, she could further avoid revealing her agenda to Pip. ‘Probably,’ she said casually. ‘Thanks – you’re the best auntie in the world.’

‘You mean the best auntie north of the river,’ Pip laughed. ‘Have you spoken to Auntie Cat?’

‘Yes, we had a chat yesterday when the boys were out,’ said Fen.

‘I think she sounds a bit brighter,’ said Pip.

‘I agree,’ Fen agreed.

‘We really should think about making a trip home,’ said Pip, ‘the three of us together.’

‘You’re right,’ said Fen. ‘Tell us when.’

The morning had not been going well for Matt and just before lunch-time, it became worse. The network at the office was still down, the art editor had thrown up in the corridor, the printers were breathing down Matt’s neck and the news about Django was playing on his mind. So when he saw it was Fen bleeping through a text message, what he really hoped for was the tonic of sweet nothings. After all, it had been her speciality in their courtship days – daft e-mails and cute texts and the occasional soppy card sent by snail-mail to work. Old-fashioned and romantic was the girl he’d fallen for. He had to admit, sadly, that since having Cosima, if texts came from Fen at all, they were usually asking what time he’d be back and could he detour via Marx+Sparx. What Matt needed just then was a thnkng of u F xxx. What he read was something else.

havng drinx w/ old pal Al this pm – wont b late. Pip bb-sittng – don’t rush! F x

Matt swivelled in his chair and racked his memory for an old pal called Al. Then he re-read the message and wondered why just the one kiss. Then he thought, Shit! she can’t – not tonight, sorry Al – and he phoned Zac directly.

‘Slight problem,’ he said to Zac. ‘Fen’s organized a drink with some old friend and has roped Pip in to babysit until I’m back.’

‘Damn,’ pondered Zac. ‘How can we prevent this without suspicions being raised?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Matt. ‘It’s so rare for Fen to go out anyway. Any ideas?’

‘I could call Pip,’ Zac said, ‘think of something that makes babysitting not possible – make her let Fen down?’

‘Great,’ said Matt. Then he paused. ‘No it’s not. We can’t have anything come between the sisters today – and you know their potential to strop and sulk with each other.’

‘God, you’re right,’ said Zac, who privately didn’t want anything to come between him and his wife at the moment either. Recently she’d been not so much distracted as frosty.

‘I’ll phone Ben,’ said Matt, ‘and get back to you.’

‘I was just about to call you,’ Ben responded calmly to Matt’s concern. ‘Panic not – Cat called to say she’s working a late shift to impress some honcho or other from head office – so let’s just change mission time to 10 o’clock?’

‘Twenty-two hundred hours,’ Matt said through his fist to sound like a war film fighter-pilot, ‘roger that.’

‘Will Fen be back by then?’ Ben asked. ‘And sober?’

‘Nowadays she is practically asleep by 9.30 and decrees more than two glasses of spritzer to be anathema to motherhood,’ Matt said. ‘You wait and see – Cat’ll be the same.’

Privately, Ben hoped Cat wouldn’t keep him waiting too long on that front. ‘Listen,’ he said to Matt, ‘hope it goes well.’

‘Yes,’ said Matt, ‘for you, too.’

‘We’ll touch base later,’ Ben said.

‘We will,’ said Matt. He phoned Zac. ‘Sorted. We have a later kick-off set for 10 o’clock.’

‘Good,’ said Zac, ‘thanks for that.’

‘Bizarre, isn’t it,’ Matt said darkly, ‘to make light of it is the only way I can deal with it at the moment. Because actually, I’m fucking dreading it.’

‘Me too,’ Zac agreed. ‘God – me too.’

‘Speak later,’ said Matt. ‘Good luck.’

Matt and Zac and Ben sat there, in their offices, their working day stretching ahead replete with other people’s problems. Ben had a wincing queue of twisted ankles and torn ligaments clamouring for his attention; Zac had corporate clients shirking millions of taxable pounds onto his shoulders; Matt had the irate printers and the hacking wafts of his art editor’s vomit to deal with. But it all seemed like child’s play in relation to the task and trauma of the evening to come.

‘She’s eaten loads,’ Fen said proudly, delighting in her sister’s obvious adoration of her daughter. Pip took Cosima from Fen and pulled what her family call her Guppy Face. Cosima glanced at her mother, as if to double-check this gurning lady was indeed funny, as if to seek parental go-ahead to chortle at this fish-faced auntie. Everything was making Fen laugh today and she and her baby squeaked with delight as Pip ran through her entire repertoire of animal impersonations, from chameleon to tortoise to two-toed sloth.

‘She’s so gorgeous,’ Pip declared mistily, stroking Cosima’s silk-fine hair.

‘I know,’ Fen cooed, ‘she’s the best little girl in the world.’

‘You are so lucky,’ Pip said while giving Cosima an affectionate squeeze.

‘I made a list,’ Fen said, with apologetic guilt, glancing towards the sheet of paper on the kitchen table. Pip raised her eyebrow. She could see it was densely written and awash with asterisks. ‘Humour me?’ Fen implored.

‘If it says, Check milk temperature – I’ll be offended,’ Pip said.

‘Of course it says, Check milk temperature,’ Fen said, ‘and the bath temperature too—’

‘Use the inside of my wrist for the former, the outside of my elbow for the latter,’ Pip mocked before Fen could say just that. ‘Go and get yourself ready,’ Pip chided, ‘or you’ll be late. I think I have met Al.’

‘Yes?’ Fen said vaguely. ‘We’re not that close – just fun to meet for a quick drink every now and then. We’re hardly bosom buddies.’ And suddenly an image of Al getting to know her bosoms simultaneously horrified yet thrilled her and she hurried away to change.

Pip couldn’t decide whether to continue cuddling Cosima or to flop to the carpet and play with her. It was 5.30, just a precious hour and a half to fit in games, baths, bottles and bedtime cuddles. Fen was certainly indulging in a long shower. ‘Hope she doesn’t take all the hot water,’ Pip said to Cosima, ‘because I’m going to make you a great big bubbly bath.’ She had to admit Cosima didn’t seem remotely bothered and smelt good enough to eat anyway.

When Fen reappeared, Pip was quite taken aback. She hadn’t seen her sister look like this for a long time. And she looked great. Her hair was glossy, having been blow-dried to perfection, and she’d eschewed her customary pony-tail to wear her hair loose and lovely. Her make-up was subtle but meticulous. She was in a dress Pip was sure she hadn’t seen before though quite when Fen had taken herself shopping she didn’t know. And wasn’t it just a week or so ago that she’d endured that unsuccessful trip to Whistles?

‘You look amazing,’ Pip said. She frowned. Odd to make so much effort for someone who was hardly a bosom buddy. ‘Is that dress new?’

Fen nodded guiltily. ‘You can borrow it if you like.’

‘Well, you look particularly gorgeous –’ Pip said and though she’d intended to finish the sentence there, the niggle at the back of her mind made itself heard, ‘– for a quick drink with someone you only see once in a while.’ Just then, Pip couldn’t work out if her sister feigned not to hear or did not deign to comment but she did note that Fen did not want Cosima’s dribbly kisses or sticky fingers anywhere near her frock. ‘Doesn’t your mummy look pretty!’ Pip cooed to Cosima, trying to hand the baby over, but Fen busied herself with a glass of water. ‘Where are you meeting?’ Pip asked, because it was a reasonable question. She set Cosima down at Fen’s feet.

‘Some bar in Camden,’ Fen replied, stooping awkwardly to stroke her baby’s head whilst tucking the fabric beyond her touch.

‘Why Camden?’

‘Oh, Al suggested it,’ said Fen casually, ‘it’s his stamping ground.’

‘Well, that sounds like your cab,’ Pip said airily though she was awash with the information confirming Al as male. ‘Have a great time – and don’t worry about Cosima.’

‘Thanks,’ said Fen, gazing reflectively, momentarily guiltily, at the baby in her sister’s arms. ‘Thanks. Nighty-night gorgeous girl.’

Pip marvelled that Cosima waved to her mummy all by herself. It seemed just the other day that her chubby little arm had to be held aloft on her behalf. It felt so nice to have the weight of the baby hitched on her hip. Once she closed the door, she went to the mirror, delighted that the sight looked as natural as it felt.

‘So,’ said Pip, taking the baby upstairs, ‘so Al’s a “he”. If your mummy tried to hide the fact from me, what can she have told your daddy?’

Pip trusted the veracity of her vibes in the same way that Fen trusted the palms of her hands, and just then Pip’s vibe was one of warning. Her instinct to protect kicked in, but she wasn’t sure who warranted it first or the most. Cosima? Matt? Or in fact Fen? If she was to protect Cosima from a misbehaving mother, if she were to protect Matt from abandonment, and both Cosima and Matt from potential heartache, she should reach out to Fen first. But Fen was being evasive, Fen was being deceitful, Fen wouldn’t look her in the eye and give her a straight answer. Fen had everything to hide and thus nothing to confide. Though Pip felt very angry with her sister she felt impotent too; if her sister felt beyond reproach it was because she’d carefully taken herself out of sight and far from earshot, down to Camden for a secret rendezvous with some bloke called Al.

‘She’s made me an accessory to her crime – roping me in to babysit,’ Pip said in a sing-song voice. She mounded bubbles on Cosima’s head. ‘Poor Cosi. Am I facilitating this – unwittingly or not – whatever it may be?’ She sponged the baby gently. ‘It’s bad enough your mummy is using me – it’s worse that she’s consciously deceiving me too. But would I feel differently if she had asked outright, if she’d said, Cover for me, Pip? Would I have covered for her then?’

Pip smiled at the baby. One of a clown’s skills is to multi-task, to juggle whilst singing, to converse solemnly whilst limbs veer off on an energetic mime of their own, to talk to the audience earnestly whilst concentrating on sleight of hand, to tell jokes with a straight face, to appear to be doing one thing yet enabling something else to be happening. So while Pip bathed the baby and sang about the AllyAllyOh, she thought about Fen. And Al. As much as she wanted to denounce her, she had to consider how lovely Fen had looked. It was so much more than the sum of a gorgeous frock, clean hair and careful make-up. She glowed on account of her demeanour. Pip had to concede that Fen appeared hearteningly, refreshingly ebullient.

‘I remember that Fen,’ Pip said nostalgically, ‘but I’m worried about this one.’

Fen was right on time and momentarily she wondered whether to tell the cab-driver to go on a little, so she could walk back and not risk arriving before Al for a second time. But then she reasoned that if Al was there already she’d be denying herself his company. So she went in. And of course Al wasn’t there yet.

She bought herself a tonic water because she wanted to pace herself and anyway, she could always say it was vodka and tonic. The bar was painted purple and, with the dark red plush booths and tea lights everywhere, the interior seemed far more convivial to a winter setting than the gorgeous June evening. Fen told herself that perhaps she’d simply brazenly suggest they have a quick one here and go on somewhere else.

I only want a little bit of fun; I hope to take home something I can call upon and remember when I’m feeling frumpy or weighed down by the drudge of the day – something to raise a private smile when it’s most needed. Isn’t everyone entitled to a small, risk-free escapade? Don’t little secrets go a long way? I can feed my soul without hurting a soul.

She checked her phone. No messages. Al was now ten minutes late. And her tonic water was nearly finished.

Here he is.

‘Shit – Fen, I’m so sorry,’ Al flustered. ‘I just completely – well, anyway, I’m sorry. How are you? Can I get you a drink? What’s that?’

‘Don’t worry!’ Fen implored him, dismissing his apologies as unnecessary. ‘No problem! I was late myself! I’d love a drink – vodka and tonic, please.’

She snuck a glance at him while he ordered. He looked different to last week. Shorter, younger, plainer. That ghastly, cheap, tinny jewellery. Momentarily, Fen felt disappointed, as if all her efforts were somewhat unwarranted. But when he brought her drink over, set it down, kissed her cheek as he sat and commented on how nice she smelt, she called herself a daft cow and told herself to have fun because she was in control.

And she did have fun. She had fun because she could not afford for the evening to be anything but. She contrived to come across as lively and feisty and before long, she believed that she was. She ignored it when Al said things that were slightly puerile or rather dull and she tried not to waste time feeling irritated by him drumming along to music she didn’t know, his index fingers chopping the table edge, his top teeth biting down on his bottom lip as if he were in torment. Her job was not to judge Al, but to present herself. So she tossed her hair and dipped her head coyly and licked her lips lasciviously and fluttered her eyelashes becomingly. It didn’t really matter what she thought of him, just as long as she could weave some kind of spell that had him craving her. She knew to flatter him, to pout a little while he spoke, to laugh in excess. And to touch him. Every now and then she laid her hand on his arm, his wrist, nudged his knee. When he teased her about her not knowing some new band or other, she flicked his chin with her finger. And he caught her hand and while he held it for a suspended moment, she had the presence of mind to raise her eyebrow cockily and belie the welling adrenalin causing her stomach to flip.

‘Shall we go on somewhere?’ Fen asked because a football match was now being shown on the plasma screen and Al’s eyes were drawn to it. He looked at her. ‘Silly game,’ she said.

‘Go back to mine?’ Al suggested, a little drunk by now. ‘My place is just around the corner.’ Fen stood up as her answer, smoothed her dress and jutted her bust just within the ambivalent side of perceptibly.

After the gloom of the purple interior, the bright evening was dazzling. A small voice told her to suggest a walk along the canal, a snack at an outside table, an ice cream from Marine Ices, but Al’s hand around her waist led her away from such thoughts.

I won’t stay if there are batik bedspreads as wall hangings.

There aren’t.

I won’t stay if there are lads lolling about.

There are lads lolling about, watching the football, but they appear not to notice Al come in. Or you.

I’ll go if the kitchen is grimy.

It is surprisingly spruce.

I’ll say I’m fine if he offers me a drink.

He’s handing you a glass of wine whether you’ve asked for it or not.

Well, I won’t drink it.

Al is rolling a joint.

And I won’t be smoking that.

‘Come on, let’s go upstairs.’

Not if it’s to your bedroom.

Well, you never know, Fen, perhaps the house has a delightful roof garden and that’s where he’s taking you.

But he isn’t because it hasn’t.

And remember, no batik bedspreads – I’ll leave directly if he has one on his bed, let alone on the wall. Same goes for joss sticks. And Jim Morrison posters. Or Che Guevara. Or that Andy Warhol banana.

Where do you stand on mattresses-on-the-floor?

I hate those.

Al has one. But it is covered with a Conran bedspread.

That’s different, then.

Be careful Fen.

She tinkers with his things, peers at photos of strangers she’ll never meet but who grin alongside this man in whose bedroom she’s mooching. Al is sitting on a pine trunk, having problems lighting the joint. She’s planning to take a drag without inhaling. She never liked weed, it always made her feel discombobulated and queasy. She’s intending to say something funny, like, I only do Class A drugs. But then she worries this might run the risk of him or his friends brandishing wraps of cocaine or handfuls of E.

‘Fen?’

Al was looking at her in a dopey haze, offering the spliff. She saunters over but soon realizes that to puff without inhaling is harder than it seems. Oh well, one drag won’t hurt. One drag and that’s it. God it is strong.

She smiles and goes away to look at an abstract print. This is the wrong thing to do as the trompe l’oeil of prismatic colour exacerbates her headrush. She’s pretending to look at old concert tickets, Blu-tacked to the wall, but actually she’s staring at the white paint in between. She feels a little nauseous. Silently, she vows not to touch spliff from this day on if only the nausea would please just abate.

Al is behind her. He has slipped his hands either side of her waist. The surprise of him there, his lips at the back of her neck, have straightened her head and she finds she can close her eyes and concentrate on his touch without feeling dizzy. He’s travelling his hands, down her hips, around the front of her thighs, inner thighs, oh God even inner more. He’s missed out her stomach and gone straight for her breasts. He’s now sucking and kissing at her neck and he’s turning her to face him. Fen is suddenly terrified. Does she really want to kiss him? She hasn’t time to figure it out because his tongue is in her mouth and she keeps her eyes closed and momentarily envisages Brad Pitt because she’s not sure she wants the reality of kissing a bloke called Al whom she hardly knows. Luckily, the weed has fired Fen’s naturally vivid imagination and she finds Brad is an excellent kisser. It’s thrilling to feel his hands caressing, groping, being led by his excitement for her. With her eyes closed, she sucks Brad’s ear lobe and grazes his neck with her mouth while he undoes the zip of her dress. The dress falls away and Fen keeps her eyes shut because she’s conjured an airbrushed and idealized image of her figure in her mind’s eye and she daren’t open her eyes and find her physique causing anything other than awe and delight. But Brad is gorging on her breasts and searching for a way underneath her panties, so she needn’t worry. Fen is wet and suddenly she wants to be fingered and sucked and fucked and she’s so hot and turned on and slightly woozy that she no longer cares if it’s Brad Pitt or Al.

And then a mobile phone rings and she knows that it’s hers. She’ll let it ring out. It does. They’ll leave a message. No, they won’t – they’re ringing again. Sod off. They ring again.

‘Shit, sorry, I’d better just see,’ says Fen, opening her eyes, locating her bag, catching sight of Al’s reflection in the mirror and feeling immediately shy. She goes over to retrieve her phone, holding her crumpled dress against her body.

‘Hullo?’

‘Fen – hi sorry, it’s me.’

It’s Pip.

And here’s Al, slipping his hand down the front of her knickers and tugging cheekily at her pubic hair. Fen glowers at him in the mirror but he closes his eyes, bites her shoulder and works a finger through the lips of her sex.

‘Can you hear me OK, Fen?’ ‘Yes.’

Fen is turned on by the sight of her body being ravished by this person. It doesn’t matter that he’s not Brad Pitt any more. What matters is that he’s not Matt. He’s secret. She spreads her legs, permits him easier access.

‘Is everything OK, Pip?’

‘Well,’ Pip says, ‘I wouldn’t have phoned – but I can’t seem to settle Cosima.’

Fen tries to still Al’s hand, grabs at his wrist. She’s doesn’t want to be fingered in the same breath as talking about her daughter. She steps aside and is vaguely aware that he’s now unbuttoning his trousers.

‘What do you mean?’ she asks Pip.

‘Well she just seems restless, a little fretful.’

‘Is she hot?’

‘A little.’

‘Shit. OK. I’m on my way.’

Fen shrugs apologetically to Al who is standing there with an impressive hard-on which she considers probably looks bigger because his body is so thin and hairless. Nothing like Brad Pitt. Or Matt Holden.

‘My kid,’ Fen shrugs and instantly detests herself for referring to Cosima as such, for all but blaming her baby for coital interruption. Al is absent-mindedly caressing his cock and Fen wonders, a little pathetically, whether he’ll wank in her honour once she’s left. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘I’m really going to have to go.’

She dresses and as she does, she looks at a framed photo of a young woman.

‘That’s Kay,’ he tells her. Al is still naked, his cock now at half mast. It seems disrespectful, really.

Fen looks at the photo. She was pretty, his sister. And as she sees herself out, she thinks how death distorts. She knows she was enamoured with the idea of Al because he was this brave boy who’d faced tragedy head-on. She loved the sight of him placing his flowers around the tree-trunk; his story. But she knows now he is rather immature, a bit boring actually, and a little too puny for her taste.

She heads out into the street, flags down a cab mercifully easily and phones Pip to tell her fifteen minutes. Fen gazes out, her head rests lightly against the window, being juddered; as if she needed physical discomfort to bring her to her senses. Yes, she feels guilty for the pleasure she’s just had, the illicitness of it, the excitement and attention. She feels badly for Matt and she fears Cosima’s unsettled state is directly attributable to her bad behaviour. But Fen’s anxiety runs deeper too and it occurs to her that it is rooted in something far more ominous.

Is history repeating itself? Is this what my mother went through? Did her cowboy come riding by just when she was becoming stifled by the drudge of it all?

But did he lure her away or did she seek him out?

Pip tapped the phone against her lip. It was difficult to know what to do.

Should I wake Cosima in ten minutes or so? Or is that too cruel?

Because, in reality, Cosima had actually been sound asleep since Pip laid her in her cot after her bottle two hours ago.

Matt came in half an hour after Fen. He’d left the bus early and taken a long walk to settle his nerves and ensure he was word perfect. He was dreading being the harbinger and he was dreading seeing Fen distressed, yet he hoped it might engender an opportunity to put his arms around her and hold her close. That she might feel safe. Protected. If she’d let him.

‘You’re back early,’ he said.

Fen nodded. ‘Pip couldn’t settle Cosima.’

‘Is she OK?’

‘She’s fine – she was fine by the time I arrived back. Probably tummy troubles or something.’

‘Did you have fun with your friend?’

Fen looked at Matt and wondered if fun can only be fun if it’s still fun in retrospect, in the aftermath. She nodded because she didn’t want to say yes out loud. Because if she did she’d be saying to her partner’s face, Yes it was fun to have some bloke I’ve met three times finger my vagina and fondle my boobs.

Matt looked at his watch, as if Fen’s answer was a long time coming. ‘Ten to ten,’ he said. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘Please,’ said Fen, ‘thank you. I’ll just pop upstairs and take off all this stupid make-up.’

‘You look nice,’ said Matt. ‘I like your dress.’ Shit – how long does make-up take to remove? More than ten minutes? Matt had no idea. ‘Leave it on!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look nice.’

Fen found this touching. But she was desperate to remove the knickers tacky with the juice of infidelity. ‘I’m just going to the loo,’ she told him.

‘You feeling OK?’ Matt asked. Timing was everything but he really didn’t want to ask her outright, Number One or Number Two.

‘Just a bit tired,’ said Fen.

When she came back downstairs, a cup of tea and a biscuit were waiting. And so was Matt.

When Pip arrived home from Fen’s, Zac was already there, engrossed in some scintillating spreadsheet or other on his laptop.

‘You’re back early,’ he commented, glancing up.

‘Fen came back early,’ Pip said tonelessly.

‘How was Cosima?’ Zac asked, squinting as he pulled the cursor around the screen.

‘Cute as a button,’ said Pip.

‘Did it all go smoothly?’ said Zac.

‘Of course,’ Pip said defensively.

‘She is a poppet,’ said Zac, ‘a real little munchkin.’

Pip looked at her feet. ‘I want one,’ she said quietly.

Zac laughed a little. ‘Oh God, one night’s babysitting and you’re all broody on me again!’ he declared, returning his attention to his work.

‘Oh will you just fuck off,’ Pip stormed.

Zac looked up, startled. He’d been joking – hadn’t that been obvious? Because hadn’t she been joking too? It was some sort of shared joke, wasn’t it? ‘Pip!’ he began to remonstrate.

‘I’m sick of you not taking me seriously! I’m fed up of you demeaning how I feel,’ Pip said and she flounced off to the bedroom with a slam to the door.

Zac was dumbstruck. He was amazed. He was worried – hadn’t he discussed with Ben and Matt to keep the girls calm and enveloped with love and support? Most of all he was bewildered; Pip’s words were in some ways irrelevant to the violence with which she’d expressed them. Pip rarely raised her voice. She loathed arguing; even mundane bickering upset her. She avoided confrontation and was the person to whom others turned for assistance in deflecting situations. Pip was the least argumentative, least aggressive, most easygoing person he’d ever met. That’s why he’d married her. She was also, in his eyes, so beautifully readable. That’s why he loved her. But this he hadn’t seen coming. And try as he might, it seemed illegible to him. But it was ten to ten and Django mattered most. Further discussion or shouting or whatever would just have to wait.

Cat floated in at quarter to ten. ‘I’ve had the most brilliant day,’ she beamed.

‘Are you hungry?’ Ben asked her.

‘Nope.’

‘Have you eaten?’

‘Nope – I’m too excited to eat.’

‘You ought to eat, babe.’

‘Oh be quiet, you fussy old doctor.’

‘Cup of tea, then?’

‘That would be nice.’

‘And then you can tell me all about it,’ said Ben, glancing at the clock and hoping Cat could do so within ten minutes.

At 10 p.m. on 15 June, Ben put his finger over Cat’s lip and said, ‘That’s wonderful news but you need to sit down. Babe, I need to tell you something.’

At 10 p.m. on 15 June, Matt switched off the TV and turned to Fen and said, ‘Fen, I need to tell you something.’

At 10 p.m. on 15 June, Zac had to deny Pip her post-argument privacy. He went into the bedroom and sat alongside her. With tenderness and scorching regret, he put his arm gently around her. ‘I need to tell you something, Mrs,’ he said.

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU HEARD THAT DJANGO MCCABE HAD CANCER?

In all his purple splendour, with his eternally optimistic smile fixed across his plastic face, Tinky Winky gazed kindly up at Fen. He was lying at her feet, she was sitting on the sofa, her hands clasped together tightly in automatic supplication. Matt was at her side, stroking her arm, her leg. It was ten past ten. Fen bent and picked up Tinky Winky, Cosima’s favourite Teletubby, and hugged him tight. She pressed her nose to his head. He smelt of her baby. Just then, she gained more comfort from him than from Matt.

Is this my fault? In some horrible skewed scheme of things, I think it probably is. I feel sick. I shouldn’t think of Django and Al in the same context but it all makes horrible sense if I do. Isn’t this what they call karma? Or else, divine retribution? Of course I must have my comeuppance for all that stupid, stupid stuff with Al – but why does it have to be via Django?

‘Is prostate cancer terminal? Where is the prostate exactly?’ Fen turned to Matt, her eyes fixed warily at his groin. ‘What does it do – can you live without one? Like an appendix or gall bladder? Is that what they’ll do – chop it out? But they will be able to fix him, won’t they?’

If I feel I am being punished, how must Django be feeling?

‘He’s on his own,’ Fen continued, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘He hates doctors and hospitals.’ She looked at Matt, seeing worry and tenderness written all over his face. ‘He’ll be redefining cancer “a spot of the lurgy”,’ she said with a sad laugh. ‘He’ll tell us not to worry. What has he ever done to deserve this?’ She stood and paced the room, clutching Tinky Winky to her breast like a prayer book. ‘I think I know that he never meant to hurt anyone,’ she said, ‘so he changed his name from Derek and had a fling with his brother’s wife. But he is a brilliant parent – he couldn’t have been a better father to us, to Cat. His love was perfectly equal.’

‘I know,’ said Matt, ‘I know. It seems so unjust, Fen. He’s always looked after himself, what with his cooking and his love of Derbyshire air. He’s one of the good guys.’

‘Please don’t let him die,’ Fen pleaded, bursting into tears. ‘I don’t want this to be happening. I want Cosima to grow up knowing her Django Gramps. I can’t believe we’ve been so horrible to him. We have to go up there, immediately. It’s our turn to care for him.’

Matt went to her and pulled her into his embrace. She sobbed, knocking her forehead against his chest again and again. Snotty and tear-stained, she took deep breaths. ‘If he could see me now he’d be saying, “Stop it with the sobbing, you’ll ruin the carpets.” Fuck, Matt, I’m terrified.’

Matt offered his arms to her but this time Fen stepped back and turned away, burying her face in Tinky Winky’s tummy and sobbing anew.

I feel as if I don’t deserve the comfort of Matt’s arms, as if I’ve forfeited my place within his embrace because I’ve abused his trust and sullied our love for a pathetic fumble with that stupid Al. What sort of mother was I to Cosima earlier this evening? I have to change, for her sake. But actually, this isn’t about me at all. It’s about Django. And Django has to make it through, for her sake too.

‘Pip’s going to phone you,’ Matt was saying, ‘in a little while – once Cat has phoned her. We had to contrive it this way – it’s why I met up with Ben and Zac yesterday.’ And he told her about Django coming to London which made her cry; of Ben arranging for the consultation, that Django wanted the boys to tell his girls.

‘He hates the city,’ she cried. ‘He must have been so anxious. He must be feeling so alone.’

I can’t believe this is happening. And I can’t believe it’s still the same evening that I faffed around with Al. All that seems unreal, now; distant and past. Totally over and done with. Thank God Pip phoned me when she did. In some ways, she’s always been there to pull me or Cat out of harm’s way, to steer us clear of trouble.

‘Pip will be phoning soon,’ Matt said, and Fen shuddered at how close Matt seemed to her thoughts. ‘Then you’ll be able to decide what to do.’

‘But even if we band together, can we help Django? Are we a match for cancer?’ Fen whispered. ‘Cancer happens to other families, Matt. Not ours.’

Pip was frowning so hard her head ached and the corner of her eyelids twitched.

Zac just said something like Django has cancer. I think I heard him right. But Django can’t have cancer because I saw him a month ago and he looked as fine then as he has looked for the past however many years. And Django can’t have cancer because he isn’t the type. He’s fantastically robust. You wouldn’t believe he’s seventy-five.

‘But the most ill he’s ever been is a head cold, which he cured overnight with his concoction of Caribbean Hot Sauce, brandy and an egg yolk whisked together and served in a Babycham glass,’ she said, a tone of protest to her voice. ‘He made the concoction for me once – just before my A-levels. I swear my cold went before the glass even touched my lips. For Christ’s sake, Zac – Django McCabe found the cure for the common cold. He can’t have cancer.’

She looked at her husband, sitting beside her on their bed, and all the wariness and annoyance she’d harboured for him over the last month evaporated. Suddenly, she doubted she had the strength or the nous to fulfil her role as Great Looker-Afterer and she knew that, without having to be asked, her husband would take on that role. She knew that as soon as her tears came, Zac would be there, solid and close. She began to cry, lowered her head and crumpled into Zac who was there for her at once. She sobbed for a couple of minutes before physically pulling herself together.

‘It’s fine. It’s fine,’ she said loudly, sniffing away her fragility. ‘If Django does have cancer or something, then he’ll sail through it and no doubt discover some history-making, Nobel-prize-winning potion in the process. It’ll be the new penicillin. It’s all going to be OK.’

‘Ben says that prostate cancer is not uncommon,’ Zac said.

‘Then it won’t stand a chance in someone as rare as Django,’ Pip said.

‘Ben said often it is slow growing and the man can live out his normal lifespan in spite of it.’ Zac matched her optimism because he sensed it was what she needed.

‘And he certainly won’t tolerate the ignominy of losing his trademark pony-tail during treatment,’ Pip continued, almost brightly. ‘I can just see him in a hospital gown, brandishing a Thermos of home-made soup, saying to the doctor, “Blast me with whatever but don’t touch the hair, son.” Can’t you?’

Zac said yes he could, and he chuckled because he knew the sound of it would be a relief to Pip.

‘He’ll be fine,’ Pip declared. ‘Everything will be OK. It’s a nasty, nasty shock. It’s a terrible way to reunite us all, but reunite us it will.’

‘Cat’s going to give you a call, then you’re to call Fen,’ Zac explained because he deduced that facts and the opportunity to be proactive was what Pip wanted. ‘We discussed it last night, Ben, Matt and I.’

They’ve thought it all through, the boys, bless them.

‘Django McCabe will give cancer an unceremonious boot,’ Pip said. ‘Come on, Cat, ring me won’t you? I think I’ll make a cup of tea. Want one?’

‘I’ll make it, Mrs,’ said Zac, kissing his wife’s shoulder.

‘We’ll go up to Farleymoor at the weekend,’ Pip said, ‘and sort everything out.’

‘Babe?’ Ben looked at Cat who was standing as motionless and emotionless as a wax statue. She could hear him, but it sounded as though he was in a different room. She couldn’t locate his voice or his presence and it felt safest to just keep standing still and staring straight ahead.

I’m sort of speechless and thoughtless. I can only compute facts at the moment.

I have been made manager at work.

Django has cancer.

‘Babe – prostate cancer is not uncommon. It may have no great effect on Django’s lifestyle or lifespan.’

Ben says prostate cancer is common.

‘And I’m sorry, Cat, that I just couldn’t tell you of his phone calls to me, of his trip down to St John’s.’

Django came down to London on a train and went back home again.

My father is Derek McCabe.

The man who is my father has cancer.

I haven’t seen Django for a month.

I thought I never wanted to see him again but just over a week ago I yearned to see him. Only he wasn’t there because he was down here, with my husband, who helped him learn he has cancer.

‘It broke my heart to know that you were going to Derbyshire, that he wouldn’t be there. That there was nothing I could do about it.’ Ben put his hands on Cat’s shoulders and kissed the top of her head. She was stiff to his touch. ‘Babe?’

‘I have to be at work an hour early tomorrow,’ Cat said.

‘You need to phone Pip, when you’re ready. Then she’s going to phone Fen. We arranged it that way, the guys and I. With Django’s approval.’

‘OK,’ she said, picking up her mobile phone and pressing the speed dial for Pip, whose number Cat currently had no chance of recalling otherwise.

TESTING TIME

The McCabe girls usually let BBC Radio Four pass the time when they made the journey to Derbyshire by car. That Saturday morning, though the radio was on and Ben was doing the driving, it was no more than a background sound to the lengthy loaded silences. What they wanted to tune into most were Ben’s pragmatic facts about what Django was facing.

‘So he may have had it for a long time?’ Pip asked from the back of the car.

‘Yes. Quite possibly,’ said Ben, nodding at her from the rear-view mirror. ‘Actually, a large percentage of men over eighty have a small area of prostate cancer.’ She nodded back at him.

‘But Django is only seventy-five,’ Fen said. Ben looked at her too, but unlike Pip by whom she sat, Fen didn’t meet his eyes. She was frowning intently at her hands.

‘Many men can live out their normal lifespan without it causing any problems,’ Ben said though he immediately regretted the joint sigh of relief from Pip and Fen. False hope could be a cruel thing. Also, despite being a level-headed scientist, Ben had always feared that Hope without Fact tempted Fate. ‘But we are still unsure of what’s what with Django,’ he continued. ‘He needs more tests. The results can take a couple of weeks to compute. There are all sorts of treatment possibilities, sometimes they even opt not to treat – and nothing drastic happens.’ Ben had repeated the facts so often over the last few days he hoped his voice still sounded convincing.

‘That’s good, that’s positive,’ said Pip, leaning forward and nodding at him assertively. ‘When can he have these tests? Can we bring him to your hospital? I suppose I’m asking if you can organize special privileges?’

‘There are excellent urology and oncology departments local to Chesterfield,’ he said. ‘He’s already been referred and tests have been set up. It’s better for the patient to be closer to home.’

‘Has he had them? These tests?’ Fen asked quietly, disturbed by the thought of Django, on his own, being probed and scanned.

‘I don’t know – he was due to have some yesterday,’ Ben said, trying again to encourage her with eye contact but she continued to look down, her hands now tight fists in her lap. ‘I tried to phone a couple of times but he didn’t answer.’

‘Maybe now he’ll buy a mobile phone,’ Pip said, with a woeful laugh.

Ben was acutely aware that Cat had not reacted, let alone spoken and they were now just north of Junction 24, the eight mammoth cooling stations sighing out steam in slow motion. He glanced at his wife sitting beside him and wondered how much of the conversation she’d listened to. Though she appeared to be gazing out of the window, obviously it was not at the view. Much as Ben was fond of her sisters, and hoped they found comfort in his honest answers, so he also wished he had Cat to himself that journey. Over all others, his duty was to her. This he did not feel was an obligation of marriage, but a reason for it. In Cat he’d found a person other than himself, or anyone he had ever known, whom he wished always to put first. For Fen and Pip, cancer might well cure the situation between them and Django, and Ben understood that by genning up on details and prognosis, they might feel better equipped to make their reacquaintance. What could be more shocking than cancer of a loved one? In the scheme of things, didn’t cancer cancel out all other ills?

For Cat, though, cancer had been thrown into a mix already clouded by complex fears, mistrust, hurt, shock and disbelief. Ben wondered whether, for Fen and Pip, Django’s cancer in some way provided an easy way out, an excuse to move away from the disruptive revelations of the previous month; that cancer rewrote all scales of gravity. Django’s cancer could also redefine their roles as nurses, and not accusers. In a bizarre twist, cancer might just make everything better. Ben felt that for Cat, however, cancer was confusing the ambivalence she was entitled to feel. If she wasn’t yet ready to accept the shock of her parentage, the untruths she’d grown up believing, the hurt and the deception – then she certainly wasn’t going to be prepared for the hard facts of cancer.

Suddenly, Ben resented her sisters for not being aware of this. Then he asked himself if he would still feel it was worse for Cat than for her sisters, was Cat not his wife? The truth was, he didn’t want to talk about cancer any more because privately his concerns for Django were more grave than he was prepared to reveal before the tests were done. He was beginning to feel tired and irritated by the drive. Why couldn’t Cat take the wheel?

Because she never did.

When the two of them were in the car, it was always Ben who drove. A silly little quirk of marriage, of their dynamic, he’d never really thought about until just now. He didn’t really mind. He was glad to be able to do something.

‘He’s going to die, isn’t he?’ suddenly Fen sobbed. ‘Oh God, he’s going to die.’

‘Fen shut up and stop that,’ Ben snapped. ‘You’re being hysterical and that kind of thinking is no good to anyone.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ Fen gasped, and she turned to Pip. ‘Do you think everything will be OK? Pip?’

Pip had to gather her thoughts. It struck her that Fen was reacting in much the way she would have expected Cat to. Yet Cat, sitting in the front passenger seat, was currently doing the deeply thoughtful gazing out of the window more usual for Fen. It was as if the events of the past month had transposed her younger sisters’ traits. It was Cat guarding her emotions now, and Fen spewing out hers. ‘It’ll be fine,’ Pip told Fen in the tone of voice she’d often employed for her youngest sister. ‘It’s a nasty shock. Can you imagine Django as a cancer patient?’ She waited for Fen to shake her head. ‘Nor can I. It doesn’t happen to people like him.’

‘We were just this ordinary bunch, this normal family,’ Fen said croakily, ‘and in a matter of weeks, it’s all fallen apart.’ She thought of Matt and Cosima at home, suddenly praying hard that her other little family would never fall apart, shuddering violently at how close she’d come to ripping them asunder herself.

‘We have to hold it together,’ Pip said, misreading Fen’s shaking. ‘That’s the point of family – one is duty-bound to hold it together to prevent it falling apart.’

I am duty-bound to hold it together to prevent it falling apart, Fen said to herself.

She gazed at the back of Cat’s head, the soft auburn spikes of her hair, the gold butterflies at the back of her ear lobes fixing her earrings. ‘Is it harder for you, Cat?’ Fen asked her gently, leaning forward between the front seats. ‘You know – because of—’ She paused. ‘What we found out.’

‘He’s just my biological father,’ Cat said quietly, her voice sounding new and emphatic after two hours of silence, ‘and that can’t mean much because Christ, we didn’t even suspect, let alone know, until a few weeks ago.’

‘Pit stop,’ Ben announced, deciding to pull in to the services at the last minute. There was so much stress and emotion and anticipation in the car it was now making driving difficult. Part of him was dreading the weekend, part of him wanted to take Cat back to Boulder for good, far away from her first family so that he and she could settle down and make a new one of their own. He felt slightly burdened though it had been his decision to accompany the sisters, his advice to Zac and Matt that they stay at home with their children, his offer to be the chaperon, the doctor-on-call. He loitered behind the sisters as they made their way in to the services. He observed how Pip had put her arm around Cat’s shoulder, that Fen’s arm was around his wife’s waist. And the sight released a surge of relief.

She’ll be OK. They’ll all be OK. Whatever happens, they have each other. They always will.

‘Stop!’ Cat suddenly said, anxiety riding high in her voice, as the car pulled along the one-in-ten drag to Farleymoor. Ben pulled over to the verge. The girls staggered from the car, allowing the sight of the dip and roll of the ancient and familiar dales to calm their nerves, the sweet soft air to fill their lungs and steady their minds; while goose grass, licked with flashes of silver as the sun and the wind played on it, whispered comfortingly against their legs.

‘Why don’t you three walk the last mile,’ Ben suggested. ‘I’ll drive on. And pave the way.’

Django peered at length and with theatrical curiosity into Ben’s car. He stroked at his non-existent goatee and frowned. ‘Are they dieting?’

Ben laughed. ‘They wanted to walk the last bit.’

‘Dragging their heels?’ Django asked.

‘Steadying their nerves,’ Ben said diplomatically.

‘It’s nice to see you,’ Django told him, ‘but I’m wondering whether you are here as intermediary or physician?’

‘I have many caps to wear this weekend, Django,’ Ben said. ‘Chauffeur – currently.’

‘You’re very skilled,’ Django told him, ‘and you are of course most welcome, bless you. But your services as intermediary and physician won’t be called upon. You see, I’m feeling dandy. Furthermore, I’ve made curried trout for supper. And Eton Mess. It’s their favourite. Guaranteed to break the ice and melt hardened hearts.’

From the garden, they could see the curve in the road as it started its long, meandering descent to Two Dales. And just then the sisters came into view as they mooched their way closer.

‘It’s funny how it never changes,’ Django said. ‘Whatever their age, wherever they’ve been, it’s always Pip leading the way, Fen bringing up the rear and Cat, protected, between them.’

‘Cat’s extremely nervous,’ Ben told Django, his wife’s welfare his main consideration.

‘I’m sure she is,’ said Django, ‘but there’s so much ground to cover and most of it is a wasteland there seems little point in revisiting.’

‘But they need to know,’ Ben told him, a little irritated by Django’s whimsy.

‘If they ask,’ Django said.

‘They might not,’ Ben said, polite but firm, ‘but still they need to know. It’s part of the point of this weekend – you must realize that.’ He paused. ‘How were the tests?’

‘Tests?’ said Django. ‘I’m feeling dandy, my boy – and look, here come the girls.’

The girls were now walking up the drive. Pip. Fen. Cat lagging behind. The disruption to the familiar order perturbed Django. The pace was less their usual brisk walk, more a reluctant amble, and that vexed him too. And as he watched the girls approach in this awkward, unnatural arrangement and faltering gait, he sensed it was mostly down to him to realign it all. If only life could be like jazz. If only he could gather together these disparate components. If only he could make a sweet chord from discordance, a new melody from dissonance. Perhaps he could.

The girls stood before him.

‘Hullo, chaps,’ Django smiled. ‘Cup of tea?’

It was incongruous; to drink tea so politely, in such silence, when the tea was so uncouthly strong and served in the great clunking stoneware mugs Django had made during his mercifully brief foray into pottery in the late seventies. But they sipped away and smiled awkward half smiles while waiting for the scald on their tongues to subside.

‘Well, I think I’ll unpack,’ said Ben but immediately the girls left the table too, which had not been his intention at all. He’d assumed he’d simply be on-call, in any capacity, but he had hoped this meant waiting in the wings, a step removed, while the action played out elsewhere. Django took the teapot and poured out the amber-coloured dregs into the curry sauce, desperately annoyed at the nag of his bladder. He dropped a mug on the floor, yet not even the flagstones could break it. Django wondered if he was allowed to read into this – that something rather old and odd-looking should be so strong and resilient. He’d made the mug himself. He looked at his hands, glanced around the kitchen to check he had no audience, and then he pressed his hands hard against his heart, his brow, his groin.

Cat watched Ben unpack. ‘I wish I’d never come,’ she whispered.

Ben nodded, shook the creases from a shirt and hung it on the back of the door. ‘I’m sure, babe,’ he said, ‘but you need to stay open. Don’t close yourself off, OK?’

‘His birthday and all that – it seems a lifetime ago,’ Cat said.

There was a gentle knock on the door and then Fen came in. ‘You OK?’ she asked Cat.

Cat shrugged. ‘You?’

Fen shrugged back. ‘I thought it would be easier, I thought there’d be tears and hugs and we’d all know what to say. It’s all so formal. And awkward.’

‘I wish I hadn’t come,’ Cat confessed. ‘I thought everything would seem magically clearer, everything would be fine. But it’s not.’

‘We have to be here,’ Pip, suddenly in the doorway, spoke strongly and a little irritated. ‘Of course it’s awkward. Come on. We need to go downstairs and help.’

‘In a sec,’ said Fen and she turned to Ben. ‘Does your mobile have a signal? I want to phone home.’ Ben handed his phone to Fen. There was no signal and she looked crestfallen.

‘Come on,’ Pip said to Fen, ‘let’s go downstairs. You can use the normal phone. But we’ll lay the table first.’

‘Isn’t all of this freaking you out?’ Cat asked her.

‘Of course it is,’ said Pip, ‘but we have to do something about that. That’s why we’re here, remember.’

When Pip and Fen had left the room, Cat went over to Ben, laying her head against his chest. ‘I don’t even know where to look, let alone what to say,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t seem to look him in the eye. It might make me cry and I don’t want to. And I might see that I have his eyes and I don’t think I want to see that either.’

‘Yet,’ Ben qualified gently.

Matching cutlery had never really been a priority in the McCabe household, nor had the resultant assortment ever been particularly noticeable. Food was the all-important element of mealtimes at Farleymoor, and though the laying of the table held some ritual, the lively clatter of crockery and cutlery was in anticipation of the repast itself. Cutlery was a means to an end, a way to expedite the passage of food from plate to palate. It was mostly irrelevant whether it was steel from Sheffield or silver from Harrods, ivory stems or antler handles; as long as the pieces could prong, scoop or cut.

That Saturday night, between silences as thick as Django’s Christmas gravy, the cutlery provided a cacophonous and alien soundtrack. On account of each piece being unique, no two clinks or clatters were the same. No one had noticed this before, but they all tuned in to it now. The racket was irritating, so annoying that everyone tried to scrape and clang their cutlery the loudest to obscure the sound of the others and perhaps signify their own unrest as well.

‘And how is little Cosima?’ Django asked Fen who nodded her answer while making much of chewing concertedly. ‘Good! Splendid. And how is young Tom?’ Django asked Pip who, for some reason, smiled her answer to Ben. ‘Super!’ said Django, turning his attention to Cat. ‘And I hear congratulations are in order, Cat.’

‘I’m not bloody pregnant,’ Cat retorted with her mouth full, which in the first instance irked Django far more than the facts of her answer or the sentiment by which she expressed it. ‘I meant your promotion,’ he said. She shrugged, as if it were no big deal, as if he should expect her to be capable of such accolades.

The grating scrape of cutlery; the grate of non-communication anathema to this kitchen, this family. Ben asked for another helping, not because he was still hungry but just to break the awkward silence. In the most stinging indictment Django had yet been savaged by, each girl left part of her meal on her plate.

Django fetched the Eton Mess and placed it with justified pride in the centre of the table. Pip patted her stomach as if she were full, Fen burped politely into her napkin as if she didn’t fancy it anyway and Cat wouldn’t even bring her eyes to glance at Django’s trademark triumph of a dessert. He sat down heavily and, with a great sigh, placed his head in his hands. And there they all sat, in a suspended moment of extreme unease. The silence was choking but with a cough, Django cleared his throat and let rip a roar the likes of which the girls had never heard and could never have imagined.

‘Enough!’ Django slammed his hand against the worn wood of the table. ‘Enough. My name is Derek McCabe – it’s a ghastly name and there should be a law against it. I have three daughters one of whom is biologically mine. I have cancer.’ He rose. ‘With regard to your blood lines, on my gravestone I want it said that I was a good father to my three girls,’ he almost bellowed. ‘You can punish me and condemn me for the details I withheld; put me in the proverbial stocks and pelt me with how rotten you think me. It was naive of me to believe I could protect you – but then all parents wish to protect their offspring so the whole bloody lot of us must be fools.’ He shoved his chair back. ‘You tell me – any of you – that our life thus far was not better for turning a blind eye to the finer facts of biology and fore-names.’ He smote the table. ‘Pip – you dish up, I need the lavatory. Bugger the Eton Mess and bugger my blasted bladder.’

When Django came back after an infuriating and unsuccessful trip to the toilet, the Eton Mess was still intact, or as intact as a smash of meringue, gluts of fruit and great clods of cream defining this dessert can be. He looked around the table. Poor Ben, mortified, at the periphery of his comfort zone. The girls, looking glum, staring at their laps. Slowly, Pip stood up and Fen lifted her eyes and Cat raised her head a little. ‘It’s your job,’ Pip said to Django with humility, ‘you’re head of our family.’ And she held out the serving spoon. Before Django took it, he turned his attention to Fen, who could only mouth ‘Sorry’ on account of the choke of emotion tightening her throat. Then he looked to Cat, whose tears bounced on her plate like hailstones.

‘Don’t do that, dear,’ Django chided her softly, ‘it’s the best china. And the recipe does not call for salt. Just sweet things.’ A glance back at Fen and Pip showed their tears had started to fall too.

‘Dear God,’ Django exclaimed softly, ‘I’m about to do that ghastly Hollywood thing and tell you all how much I love you, how I never meant to hurt you.’

Oh Christ – mass hysterics, thought Ben, we so don’t do this in my family.

Django went to Pip, took the serving spoon from her hand and embraced her tenderly; then went and stood behind Fen’s chair and bent down to kiss her forehead over and again before pulling Cat to her feet and straight into the warmth of his bear-hug.

But nor do we do this, Ben thought enviously and he moved quietly from the kitchen, taking his dessert into the garden, leaving the McCabes to their ways.

Bolstered by brandy and heartened by After Eights, the girls shyly gathered around Django’s armchair in the drawing-room, as if he was about to read a story though it was the truth only that they craved and that finally he was prepared to give. With the apologies and declarations of love now fulfilled, a spew of questions surfaced, though it was only Fen and Pip who could voice them.

‘Was it a shock, that she came back?’ asked Pip.

‘Yes and no,’ Django told them. ‘We’ve had no contact and yet I must admit to an inkling that at some point, she’d show up.’

‘Did he know?’ Pip pressed. ‘Our father?’ She glanced at Fen and then, apologetically, at Cat.

‘No,’ Django said emphatically, ‘he did not.’

‘So how can you be sure?’ Fen asked abruptly, having slipped her hand into Cat’s.

‘Unlike me, my brother wasn’t very good at maths,’ Django said nostalgically. ‘Perhaps I would have told him – when the dust had settled. When a little more time had passed. But life was back on an even keel – Battersea had been left, we were all happy here together. And within two years, he was gone.’

‘Is it really really as you’ve always told it?’ Fen asked, a little accusatorily.

‘It really really is,’ Django said.

‘About everything?’ Fen pressed. ‘About all of you?’

Django nodded. ‘Though with hindsight, I suppose one can see that she was on this mission to find herself and all that transcendental nonsense which, in the 1960s, we simply accepted as right-on and far-out. Nowadays I reckon one would call her a crazy mixed-up kid.’ There was a pause as the girls tried to tag this description to the woman in her early fifties they’d met for the first time just over a month before.

‘Did you actually have an affair with her?’ Pip asked. ‘A love affair?’

‘No,’ Django admitted, ‘not technically.’

‘Just a fling,’ Cat commented sadly.

‘But did you love her?’ Fen asked, unnerved by the thought of a reckless one-night stand. She glanced at Cat but could not decipher the emotion that dulled her eyes.

‘In a make-love-not-war zeitgeisty kind of way – yes, I suppose I did,’ Django said and he could feel Cat’s eyes burning into him. He looked at her and nodded again. ‘There was a lot of love around,’ he continued, ‘between everyone in those days.’

‘Did you think she’d come back?’ Pip asked. ‘At the time?’

Django looked upset. ‘Of course I did!’ he declared. ‘Gracious, she had three beautiful beautiful babies.’

‘Did you think she’d come back for all of us?’ Fen pressed, squeezing Cat’s hand and half hoping her sister would hear that she’d asked the question as much on her behalf as for herself.

‘Of course I did!’ Django said, a little impatiently. He paused and continued in a softer tone. ‘I was mortified that she’d left – but soon enough I dreaded her returning. I didn’t want to lose you three. Especially not after my brother passed away.’

‘Was it a shock? When you realized about me?’ Cat asked. They were her first questions and her voice rang out. Django, Fen and Pip looked at her, though just then she remained unable to establish eye contact with any of them.

‘Well, yes it was. Goodness me, yes,’ Django told them all. ‘Although I didn’t know until after she’d left. She told me in a letter. A letter that was unopened for days on end because I was so busy running around after you all.’

‘But why did she leave?’ Cat asked urgently. ‘Why did she leave us? Did she say? Do you still have the letter? Why didn’t she come back for us? All of us?’

What could Django do but shrug? What could he say but, ‘I don’t know, girls. I don’t have that answer. You’d really have to ask her that.’

TIME FOR TESTS

After an exhausted sleep in which thoughts of their mother and thoughts of cancer were banished, the family reconvened at the breakfast table where the cutlery could no longer be heard, but could be seen making swift work of the stack of panffles and maple syrup. The C word was now horribly anticipated, but none of the girls could bring themselves to articulate it. Yet it was the news of Django’s cancer that had facilitated this return home and they were leaving later that day.

Ben was acutely aware of this fact. And he was eager that the issue be broached with sufficient time to do it justice.

‘How are you feeling, Django?’ he asked, as conversationally as such a loaded question could possibly sound.

‘I had the most dreadful procedure on Friday, truly ghastly,’ Django replied in a similar tone, and he pointed his steak knife at Ben. ‘You medical men are an imaginative and sadistic lot. Pass the syrup. Thank you, Fen. They trussed me up, Ben, they trussed me up.’

‘A TRUSS?’ Ben asked.

‘Yes,’ Django regarded the girls. They’d stopped eating. They looked terrified. ‘As you know, I don’t trust technology and I’m not one for all these new-fangled gizmos. It was a camera,’ he muttered, shaking his head, ‘at the end of a medical hosepipe.’ Fen laid her hand over his wrist. He gave a little shrug. ‘Not one for the family photo album,’ he said robustly.

‘You’ll be fine,’ Pip said.

‘What’s next?’ Ben asked.

‘Toast?’ Django offered. ‘Fresh tea?’

‘I meant for you, at the hospital, test-wise,’ Ben clarified.

‘Let’s see – tomorrow, it’s something about “ice”,’ Django said.

‘Isotope bone scan?’ Ben asked.

‘That’s the one,’ said Django benevolently, as if he’d been quizzing Ben on his med school revision. ‘It all sounds increasingly Ridley Scott to me.’

The sisters stared at Ben intently.

‘OK,’ said Ben, ‘OK. I’m the doctor so you can all listen to me. The bone is perhaps the most common place for prostate cancer to spread to. This scan can detect abnormal areas of bone. A mild radioactive liquid is injected into a vein in the arm and because abnormal bone absorbs more than normal bone, the radioactive stuff shows up as highlighted hot spots.’

‘I could bag myself a role on Doctor Who,’ Django said brightly, ‘or audition as the new ReadyBrek boy.’ But Fen had now begun to cry. The sudden sound of her distress rang out the truth about Django’s alarming situation. ‘Poppet,’ he tried to protest but when he looked over to Pip for assistance, he saw that she hid her face behind her hands and a glance at Cat showed her tears falling steadily if silently.

‘The scan is just diagnostic,’ Ben told them, his arm around Cat.

‘But what if it diagnoses horrible things?’ Fen sobbed. ‘We’ve only just got each other back. We want to rebuild our family, not have it taken away from us.’

‘I’ve always worried that the more they look for the more they find,’ Pip said, working hard not to let her voice crack.

‘Girls,’ said Django, ‘it’s probably just a spot of the lurgy. I have all my faculties. I just cannot take a pissing leak.’ No one laughed. No one said, Language, Django.

‘Did they warn you that after the injection you have to wait a good two or three hours before the scan can be taken?’ Ben asked Django.

‘No,’ said Django, a little unnerved. ‘I can’t remember. Perhaps they did.’

‘Nothing sinister,’ Ben assured him, ‘just a lengthy process – so take a book.’

‘I’ll stay,’ Cat announced suddenly, decisively. ‘I have a day off tomorrow. I’ll come with you, Django.’

With the car packed and ready to leave later that day, Fen and Pip shuffled around and loitered, having final drinks of water and double-checking the rooms upstairs.

‘I could stay too,’ Pip offered.

‘And me,’ Fen added quietly though she was now desperate to see her baby.

‘Thank you,’ Django said, his hand at his heart, ‘but much as I love the image of arriving at the hospital with my entourage, my bevy of beauties, I think you two should be back with your families tonight.’ Pip asked him over and again if he was sure, and then she asked the same of Cat. Fen didn’t want to ask if Cat and Django were sure because actually she was missing Cosima so much she felt sick.

‘I’ll call, as soon as there’s anything to call about,’ Cat told them, transformed into a capable nurse, currently in the arms of her doctor. ‘I’ll call you anyway.’ While she hugged her husband, Fen and Pip said goodbye to Django.

‘Oh Django,’ Fen whispered, letting him make her feel better in his arms.

‘Behave,’ Pip told him, giving him the tight hug and brisk kiss to each cheek she gave to Tom when she took him to school. ‘Do what the doctors say.’

‘She’s so bloody bossy,’ Django said to Fen.

Fen suddenly felt great affection for her sister. ‘And we love her for it,’ she said. Pip looked a little embarrassed. Fen linked arms with her. ‘Sit in the back with me?’ she asked. ‘Even though Cat won’t be in the front.’

‘I have dominoes tonight,’ Django tells Cat as they wave the others off.

‘Big Brother is on anyway,’ she tells him, ‘and you don’t have a video recorder. Anyway, I’m all talked out for today.’

‘Me too,’ says Django, ‘me too.’

They feel awkward but strangely excited to be in such close proximity, to have the opportunity to spend quality time, alone together. It is almost easy to forget the reason why Cat is staying on in Derbyshire.

When she first saw the hospital the next morning, Cat was pleased that Django was having the tests done there and not in London. In contrast to the vertical sprawl of the London hospitals, and the unfriendly busyness of Ben’s in particular, this place was welcoming. Set amidst dunes of neatly tended lawns, a series of low buildings constructed in the buff-coloured local stone sat peacefully and spaciously, a little like the sheep that grazed the hills just beyond the perimeter fence. Cat wanted to say how she hated hospitals, hated the smell, that they made her feel nervous, but wisely she changed her perspective and wittered on about the landscaping and the architecture instead.

‘Prince Charles opened it,’ she marvelled, reading from a brass plaque.

‘Well then!’ Django declared, implying the Royal Family wouldn’t waste their time opening hospitals not at the cutting edge of medical excellence.

It still smelt like a hospital, though. And the sights and sounds were indisputable too. The rubbery squelch of the staff’s sensible shoes against highly sheened linoleum; the rumble of trolleys and the clatter of wheelchairs; the whistle and cheeriness of the porters ferrying patients. The universally familiar typeface pointing out departments. Cat wondered whether an element of acting was an integral part of a nurse’s training. Like barristers. As if facts and procedures could be dressed up or played down through their performance. But the kindness of the matronly nurse who led Django through, delivered in broad Derbyshire vernacular replete with affectionate monikers, was genuine in its down-to-earthiness. She might as well have been serving him chips in a café in Matlock as preparing his arm for radioactive fluid. And whether Django had been seventy-five, seventeen or seven, she’d still have addressed him as ‘ducky’.

And Django was injected. And the wait began. Initially, Cat eyed him vigilantly, as if she’d be able to detect when the liquid came across something sinister, but soon enough the tedium kicked in and disparate topics of conversation were mused over in varying degrees of detail. After they had spent ages trying to remember the various teachers at the girls’ school, there was a lengthy and loaded silence.

‘Do you – did you ever – oh never mind,’ Cat mumbled but she dragged her eyes to Django.

‘Did I what?’ he asked her gently.

‘Doesn’t matter. Nothing. Feel differently towards me than Fen and Pip?’ Cat whispered. Django took a sharp intake of breath.

‘It’s just Fen says a parent’s love for their child should, by definition, be supreme,’ Cat explained in a small, guarded voice.

Django took time to answer. ‘Well, I must be an exception to the rule because I have never distinguished between the three of you.’ He paused. ‘Would you say that makes me a bad parent?’

Cat twisted her fingers and wished she’d not veered from their mild and mundane nattering.

‘Did I distinguish between you?’ Django rephrased it. ‘Do you think I should have?’

‘I’ve always felt an equal,’ Cat qualified, ‘but it’s difficult – it’s difficult to wonder whether I shouldn’t have. Whether I should have at least wondered.’

Django turned in his chair to face her head-on, wincing as he moved. ‘Blasted ancient bones. Sometimes I’ve wondered, if your mother hadn’t left, whether you’d have been told earlier.’

Cat thought about this. ‘Would you have told me later, then – would you have told me ever, if she hadn’t come back last month?’ Then she gestured around her. ‘With all of this now on the agenda?’

‘I,’ Django paused, ‘actually, no – I don’t suppose I would. I don’t know, Cat. With this cancer business, might I have told you?’ Django shook his head. ‘I don’t know. What’s important in all of this? I don’t know. I sway from thinking it matters not one jot, to it mattering a lot.’

Cat nodded but she didn’t understand.

‘I would hate Fen or Pip to think I ever loved them less,’ Django said, sounding weighed down and tired, ‘because the truth is, I simply couldn’t have loved any of you more.’

Cat waited for the information to reach her brain, though she knew it might take a while longer, weeks, months even, for it to settle comfortably in her soul.

‘I suppose you girls ought to think of it as you are my daughter and they are my adopted daughters.’ Django paused. ‘Take Tom – he’s about to have a baby brother or sister made by his mother and her new husband but I don’t think he’ll ever doubt that he’s loved equally. And if Zac and Pip ever have a child, I can’t imagine that Tom would feel they had more love for their offspring.’

‘I hear what you’re saying,’ said Cat, rubbing her forehead. Over the last month she found she could only spend limited time on the subject before a headache encroached. She felt like a soaked sponge; she’d absorbed so much that she was clogged; if she wasn’t careful much of the cherished information would start to leak because she did not have the capacity to hold so much, as yet. ‘So who was this Django Reinhardt?’ she asked, needing to veer off at a tangent.

Django sighed, partly with relief, partly with pleasure, partly with comfort that this topic was one he could happily and knowledgeably discourse on for the duration of this radioactive trip.

‘Django Reinhardt was the stuff of legend,’ he began as if starting a biopic, his voice animated in contrast to the hush with which he’d previously spoken.

‘When are we talking?’ Cat asked.

‘Well, he was born in 1910,’ said Django, ‘to a gypsy family. He was a banjo prodigy by the age of nine, horribly burnt and partially paralysed by a fire in his caravan when he was eighteen.’ He checked to see that Cat looked suitably alarmed. ‘Because of his handicap, he had to invent a technique to play at all – he’d use a whalebone collar-stiffener as a plectrum and a two-fingered method with sudden explosions of strumming.’ Django gave a brief air-guitar demonstration, which made Cat laugh. ‘His discovery of jazz – and his friendship with Stephane Grappelli, the great violinist, resulted in a musical marriage which gave birth to a new sound. He wouldn’t play tunes straight. Gypsy music delights in improvisation and embellishment so Django and Stephane would take the melody of a dance or song as a starting point – “Sweet Georgia Brown”, or “Jeepers Creepers”, or “Ain’t Misbehavin”—’

‘I know those!’ Cat interrupted, feeling proud rather than embarrassed that other waiting patients appeared to be listening in now. ‘The house used to ring out with them.’

‘His guitar had a voice that was near-human,’ Django said dreamily. ‘Everyone wanted to play with him. From trumpeter Bill Coleman, to trombonist Dicky Wells, to harmonica player Larry Adler and, just before the war, the mighty Duke Ellington.’

‘I’ve heard of him!’ Cat said proudly, aware that an elderly man sitting opposite was nodding to himself.

‘Of course you have,’ said Django as if it was the most basic part of anyone’s education. ‘After the war, Dizzy Gillespie.’

‘I’ve heard of him too!’ Cat exclaimed.

‘I would jolly well hope so,’ said Django, sharing a raised eyebrow with the pensioner opposite. ‘During the war, in occupied France, American jazz records were banned but the musicians set up a Resistance of their own – putting out hundreds of jazz records but with camouflaged titles. Silly Huns never cottoned on. After the war, Django and Stephane reunited in London and reformed their old quintet – at the BBC’s request. Their apotheosis was to famously rerecord the Marseillaise – which had been banned from the airwaves for many years. Django Reinhardt’s ultimate triumph, in his final recording, was to reconcile jazz with the electric guitar. And then he died.’

‘When?’ Cat asked, shocked at the bluntness of the end of the story, horribly aware that they were sitting in a hospital, desperate to be distracted away again.

‘In 1953,’ Django told her, ‘on May 16th.’

‘That’s your birthday,’ Cat noted sadly.

‘He was only forty-three years old,’ said Django McCabe even more sadly.

‘Poor Django,’ said Cat. Quietly, she sat and thought to herself that if her Django hadn’t had his career cut short by the demands of three small girls, he’d probably still be living in Paris, a life as colourful and creative as his namesake. She glanced at him. She knew every whisker on his extravagant sideburns, every furl and kink of his pony-tail, every dint on his forehead. And she knew that Fen knew them too. As did Pip.

He gave himself to us, he did. Entirely. I don’t know anyone as well as I know him. Not even Ben, I suppose. I’ve had a lifetime of knowing Django.

She linked her arm through his. ‘Hum me your favourite Django Reinhardt tune,’ she asked him, laying her head against his arm; closing her eyes as the vibration of his humming ‘Georgia On My Mind’ travelled through to her heart.

I can’t believe you’re my father. My real father. My own dad. My very own daddy. The thing is, you’re so nice to share. Pip and Fen might never be able to say ‘my real father’ in connection with you – but they’ll always be able to say ‘our very own father’.

Say it out loud, Cat.

I can’t seem to.

‘All right petal, time for your photo shoot.’ The nurse had appeared, accompanied by a porter with an empty wheel-chair. Momentarily, Cat thought she spoke to her. It seemed very odd to refer to Django as ‘petal’.

‘Your limo awaits,’ said the porter, giving the wheelchair a twirl.

‘I can walk,’ Django objected.

‘We’d rather you didn’t, duck,’ the nurse chided amicably.

‘I pride myself on a smooth ride,’ the porter protested, with a wink to Cat. ‘You’ll not find finer in the whole of Derbyshire.’

‘Can I come?’ Cat asked urgently, not wanting to leave him, or be without him.

‘Only room for one,’ the porter said, ‘and I don’t do pillion.’

‘I meant—’

‘I know,’ the nurse said.

‘Can she come?’ Django asked.

‘Of course she can,’ said the nurse, ‘as far as any of us can go. Come along ducky. How are you feeling, Mr McCabe?’

‘Please,’ he said, easing himself down into the wheelchair, ‘call me Django.’

Cat insisted that she drove the 2CV back to Farleymoor though Django was a notoriously annoying passenger, stamping on imaginary brake pedals and gasping when corners were not taken at the angle he would have chosen.

‘Mirror, signal, manoeuvre,’ he muttered under his breath at regular intervals.

‘It’s a beautiful afternoon,’ Cat said, when they arrived back in Farleymoor, ‘shall we go for a walk?’

‘I’m a little tired,’ Django said.

‘Are you feeling all right?’ Cat asked. ‘You look a little pale – not the Chernobyl glow we were expecting.’

‘Just a little tired.’

‘Sit in the garden,’ Cat told him, repositioning the ancient Lloyd Loom chair. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea.’

By the time she came out, Django was fast asleep. She sat on the grass, listening to him breathing, the occasional extravagant, gruffled snore that always made the sisters laugh. Pip tape-recorded him once.

Cat looked at him. His mouth was slightly open, the deep laughter lines around his eyes a map of his life. ‘Dad,’ she said quietly.

‘Daddy.

          Dadda.

                    Pops.

                         Da.

                              Papa.

                                   Pa.’

None of them actually suited him. Tellingly, nor did he awaken.

‘Derek,’ she said softly. Certainly not. On he slept.

‘Django,’ she all but whispered.

‘Yes?’

He could only ever be Django, really.

‘Sorry – did I wake you?’

‘Heavens, what’s the time? How long have I been asleep?’

‘About an hour,’ Cat told him. ‘I can make this into iced tea,’ she said, tapping the teapot. ‘My train leaves in a couple of hours.’

So iced tea it was.

‘I’ve ordered a cab – I don’t want you driving,’ she said, ‘but I can stay, Django, if you like. I’m sure work will give me dispensation.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Django said. ‘What’s a bit of radioactivity? I can drive you.’

‘No,’ Cat insisted. ‘You can – but you won’t.’

He shrugged.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she said, shyly.

‘Of course,’ Django said, clenching his jaw on a yawn.

‘Maybe when you’re not tired,’ Cat wavered, thinking better of it.

‘Ask now,’ he told her.

‘Do you think it’s a bit ominous,’ she asked, ‘that I wasn’t really born of Love? That actually, I was the result of Adultery? A brief fling?’

Django sipped his tea silently. ‘Don’t be overly biblical and sanctimonious, Catriona,’ he said crossly.

She plucked at the grass and thought about it. ‘Sorry,’ she said after a while.

‘Let me ask you something,’ Django said. He was feeling supremely tired now, a little nauseous too. ‘Should I not expect you to love me more than Fen or Pip love me?’ He let the concept hang. ‘You’re my daughter after all, aren’t you? You’re my real daughter, my proper daughter,’ he tapped her quite briskly on the shoulder. ‘Don’t you think you ought to love me the most?’

Cat was simultaneously taken aback by his challenge and humbled by the astuteness of the remark. She felt immediate remorse. She’d so rarely been chastised by Django and neither had Pip or Fen. Their family dynamic had hardly ever necessitated it.

‘None of us could love you more,’ she proclaimed, relishing the new sense of clarity. Her smile grew from her soul and she could see the positive effect it had on Django. ‘I’m ashamed to admit that we tried to love you less – last month,’ she revealed, ‘but we couldn’t do that either.’

VT 05154

An early symptom of Django’s cancer was to effectively kill off the anger and hurt that Fen and Pip had each experienced towards him since his birthday. It was as if the diagnosis packed up the past and placed life gently on new ground with a firmer footing. Cancer would define them, all of them. They would become nicer people for it. In the meantime Fen and Pip decreed that whatever had happened BC – before cancer – was largely irrelevant. They would pull together; life was too short, family was everything. Cat did so want to flow with their energy but unconditional love and trust were still in a holding bay, guarded by a self-protective wariness. She found herself both chipping away at it but building it back up too.

For Ben and Matt and Zac it was quite simple, really. Men for the most part are blessed with the ultimate take on the situation. Say less. It’s not Neanderthal, it’s genius. A variant on the theory that it takes a multitude of muscles to frown, but only three to smile. It was far easier to be nice than to be at loggerheads, it was far nicer to just feel love than argue about the vagaries of it. Love wasn’t a matter of equality after all, but of equilibrium.

However, though Fen and Pip felt a welcome sense of relief at the warm waves of harmony and support, Cat’s feelings of unease and dissatisfaction were contagious and before long a gnawing realization crept in that fundamentals remained untreated, unfixed.

So, though Fen acknowledged her present disinclination to even think about Al or anyone like him was due to her overriding concern for Django, the fact that she had been indisputably courting infidelity, could not be explained by Django’s cancer. Similarly, though Pip now welcomed Zac’s embrace and found great comfort in his calm and level-headed assessment of her uncle’s illness, she knew too that joining forces on Django’s behalf cleverly waylaid them from tackling the impasse existing in their marriage. As for Cat, if she split her time on a purely practical level between being a nurse and a bookshop manager, if she focused on jazz with Django and cancer with Ben and ISBNs with head office, then she reasoned she would have no time for the needling concerns about her own sense of self.

Mothers, daughters, lovers, liars – who were they? And how might Django’s illness shape who they could become? In the clear light of each new day, questions yet to be answered came more and more to the fore. Questions to face head-on and answers not to be flinched from. They were prepared, at last, to question themselves. And at last they felt prepared to seek answers from somebody else too.

‘What will Denver be like at this time of year?’ Pip asks Cat.

‘Hot,’ Cat says and she doesn’t need to say Why? It’s of sudden comfort to her that the telepathy gifted amongst sisters obviously extends to half sisters too. She’s always had it with Fen and Pip. The more recent discovery of specific DNA wasn’t going to alter it. ‘Lovely,’ she says, ‘but hot.’

Fen looks from left hand to right, from Cat to Pip, and lets her gaze rest on her daughter who is grabbing at Pip’s rug in a bid to get onto her knees. ‘I’ve never left my baby for more than a few hours,’ Fen says quietly, attuned to their thinking.

‘Could you leave her for a few days?’ Pip asks tentatively, burning a knowing look at her sister.

Fen locks eyes with her. She shrugs. She nods. She shrugs again.

Pip turns to Cat. ‘Could the shop spare you for a few days? Do you have any holiday entitlement?’

Cat shrugs and then she nods.

‘Django will have an address,’ says Pip. ‘Who’s going to call him?’

‘You are,’ say Fen and Cat together.

Django isn’t surprised by the request. But he won’t tell them he is relieved until they’re back home again. ‘OK. Hold on. It’s in my address book. Where’s my address book?’ The telephone receiver is clattered down as he rummages around for some time. Pip raises her eyebrows to her sisters who listen in and smile. ‘Here’s my address book,’ they can hear him say in the background because he’s momentarily forgotten to retrieve his receiver. He picks it up. ‘Hullo? Hullo? Are you still there? Ericsson. Here we are. Mrs P. Ericsson. 84 Emerson Street. Lester Falls.’

‘Thanks,’ says Pip, about to change the subject, as if the intended trip is no big deal.

‘Vermont,’ Django adds, ‘VT 05154.’

Pip’s pen hovers, frozen. Fen mouths, What? What! ‘Pardon?’ Pip says.

‘It’s a zip code. VT 05154.’

‘I know it’s a zip code,’ says Pip, ‘but what’s it doing in Vermont?’ Cat and Fen now crowd around the telephone, which irritates her. She’s trying to concentrate and figure it out. She brushes them away as if they’re children.

‘Because your mother lives in Vermont,’ they all hear Django clearly say, however, ‘she never moved.’

‘You said Denver,’ Pip objects and Cat backs away now, feeling deflated at possibly more twists to the tale.

‘I did not,’ Django is saying carefully. ‘Your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when you were small. But you’ve never asked where they lived. And they lived in Vermont. Never moved.’

LESTER FALLS

They didn’t expect rain. Nor did they anticipate Lester Falls to be so plain. Pip knew better than to expect the maple trees to be ablaze with fiery foliage in June, but she had hoped for pretty weather-boarded houses, Adirondack chairs on porches, the odd covered bridge or white wooden church; it was thus difficult not to feel hard done by with this incessant drizzle in a rather nondescript town. Especially after an arduous three-hour drive from Boston. For Fen, picture-postcard perfect scenery had been an imperative notion when it had come to packing her suitcase and leaving her eleven-month-old baby; her ache for Cosima was now manifest in the gut-hollow, throat-ripped perpetual threat of tears. Cat found herself resenting her sisters for organizing the trip in the first place and she lagged behind, sulking to herself darkly that it must be easier for them than for her. With Fen close to tears and Cat glowering to herself, it was down to Pip to jostle maps and leaflets and figure out what they should do and where they might stay. Privately, she cursed her mother for not living somewhere more picturesque and she cursed her sisters for standing around gormlessly leaving everything to her. She remembered the quote on the mug Fen had bought her last Christmas which said that an older sister helps one remain half child, half woman; just then, Pip wished her younger sisters would opt for the grown-up identity.

‘We should have stayed in Boston,’ Cat said sulkily. ‘A little retail therapy would probably be far more curative than some misguided fact-finding mission with some woman we don’t even know.’

‘We shouldn’t have come in the first place,’ Fen muttered, staring at outdated fashions fastidiously displayed in a shop window. ‘What do we hope to achieve anyway? We don’t even know what we want to say. We’d have been better off spending time in Derbyshire with Django.’

‘For God’s sake you two!’ Pip snapped. ‘We’re jet lagged and we’re nervous. But we’re here. So let’s find somewhere to stay – and something to eat. It’s lunch-time.’ She stomped off with Cat and Fen mooching behind her.

There’s little a great cup of coffee can’t soothe. Especially when served by a friendly soul in the comfortable surroundings of a genuine diner. Combined with a sturdy plateful of eggs and grits to raise blood sugar levels and stave off tiredness, Cat and Fen felt revived and able to assess their surroundings and consider their options with Pip.

‘We don’t know where exactly she lives,’ Cat said, squinting at the map.

‘Or if she’s even here,’ said Fen.

‘Please God let her be out of town,’ Cat said. ‘Then we can justify a weekend’s shopping in Boston.’

‘If she isn’t here, I might just fly back home, actually,’ said Fen, brightening at the possibility.

‘I’ll ask the waitress if she knows where Emerson Street is,’ Pip said.

‘Don’t mention her name!’ Cat rushed.

The waitress, who had ‘Betty’ embroidered on a pristine pale blue gingham uniform, was sorry to be unable to help, but she asked the short-order chef who scribbled down directions on a paper napkin.

‘Is it walkable?’ Pip asked.

‘Joe – lady here wants to know if it’s walkable?’

Joe came right out of the kitchen, appeared to evaluate the age and fitness of the girls and nodded. ‘I reckon. About a half-hour. Who you looking for?’

The girls paused.

‘Oh, no one, really,’ Cat said.

‘You guys on vacation?’ Joe asked. ‘In Lester?’

‘Just passing through,’ Pip said lightly. ‘A friend of a friend of a friend lives on Emerson Street – we thought we’d look her up.’

‘Who’s that?’ Joe asked.

‘Um. A Mrs Ericsson?’

Joe thought hard. ‘Nope. Can’t say I know her. You know her, Betty?’

‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking – but no, don’t think I do. Say, are you from England?’ the waitress asked with breathless awe.

‘Yes,’ the girls told her.

‘That is just so nice,’ Betty enthused. ‘I could listen to you speak all day long.’

Automatically, the girls found they rounded their vowels and used choice adjectives, much to her delight. After more coffee and flattery, Lester Falls seemed less dull and their hostility lessened too.

‘Well, thank you so much,’ said Pip, ‘that was simply super.’

‘Indeed!’ said Cat. ‘Splendid coffee.’

‘Have a nice day!’ Betty said.

‘Cheerio,’ said Cat.

They strolled along Main Street. The rain had stopped, revealing the town to be less dreary than first impressions suggested. The shops were old-fashioned but quirky, the façades comfortingly indicative of small-town America, as portrayed in so many of the films the sisters had seen. A promising landscape was now impressively visible beyond the town. The mountains so thickly forested that they appeared to be clothed in thick green bouclé sweaters.

‘We’re in the lie of the Green Mountains here,’ Pip looked up from the guidebook. ‘Vert Mont – Vermont! Do you see?’

‘Shall we walk then?’ Fen asked tentatively. ‘Joe said it would take half an hour.’

‘But say she is in,’ Cat said. ‘We don’t even know what we’re going to say.’

‘Let’s find somewhere to stay first,’ Pip said.

Sitting tightly together on one of the beds in the family room they’d found in a decent guest house on a pretty street a short walk from the centre of town, the McCabe sisters pored over the local phone directory. They’d missed the entry initially, forgetting that Bob was most likely a diminutive of Robert, but had then found the entry for R. Ericsson. The address was the same as that which Django had provided and gave the girls a bizarre sense of triumph, as if they were veritable sleuth-hounds. Pip jotted down the telephone number. Then they stared hard at the entry again, as if utter concentration might suddenly provide fly-on-the-wall privilege, some sort of telepathy or more clues.

Pip looked at her watch. ‘Shall we mosey on up there now,’ she suggested lightly, ‘you know – just in time for tea?’

‘We have another three days, remember,’ said Cat and Fen felt herself lurching to the verge of tears at the thought of four more days until she’d actually be home. ‘We could look around the town and get our bearings.’

‘Find somewhere for supper later,’ Fen agreed.

‘This is not a holiday,’ Pip said impatiently. ‘We’re here on family business. Now come on.’ She picked up the car keys and led the way.

Pip crept the car along Emerson Street. The houses, modern but unexceptional, were set spaciously along it, fronted by steeply pitched gardens making the buildings appear more squat than they actually were. Under their breath, the sisters spoke out the house numbers, falling silent when they came upon their mother’s home. Though it fitted well with the style and scale of all the other houses they had passed, its blandness took them aback. Fen felt embarrassed that she’d actually thought along the lines of Bates Motel. She realized how, deludedly, she had been expecting something else; presumed that somehow she’d instantly recognize the house where their mother lived. Something more sinister. Something a lot less ordinary. Pip stopped the car at the bottom of the drive and they looked up.

‘Doesn’t look like there’s anyone at home,’ said Fen though she could not base this theory on fact.

‘Might as well come back later,’ Cat said, ‘or tomorrow.’

‘God almighty, you two,’ Pip sighed, ‘come on.’

They walk up the drive.

They loiter by the front door.

Then they turn on their heels and walk briskly back to the car.

Unseen from an upstairs window, Penny had watched them arrive and now she’s watching them leave. And they’ve gone. She goes downstairs and sits heavily in Bob’s chair. What could it possibly mean? It was a sight she has never envisaged, never even thought about, never hoped for, never dreaded. What on earth should she make of this? What on earth is she meant to do? What on earth do they want? Why didn’t they ring the bell? Why didn’t she open the door anyway? she asks out loud, again and again. But no one answers.

‘We could head off to Boston,’ Cat suggested, once they were back in the guest house.

‘Or we could just go home,’ Fen said. ‘Do you mind if I do that? You two hit Boston, by all means.’

‘We’ll call her,’ Pip said and Fen glanced with resentment at the phone book still lying in the centre of Pip’s bed. ‘We can’t go without trying a bit harder,’ she told her gently. ‘We’ve come this far. And spent a fortune.’

‘How about we phone the number at 9 p.m. tonight, and if there’s no answer, we pop up there again at 9 a.m. tomorrow and if she still isn’t there, we head back to Boston and Fen can make the 9 p.m. flight?’ Cat said.

‘Cat o’ nine tales,’ Pip laughed.

‘We can send her a postcard, or something,’ Fen said quietly, looking from one palm to the other.

‘Are you missing Cosima dreadfully?’ Cat asked.

Fen nodded. ‘You have no idea how much.’

‘But Matt’s mum said everything was fine when you last phoned home?’ Pip said.

Fen nodded and shrugged.

‘Weird to think that Cosima’s other grandma is just a couple of miles away,’ Cat remarked.

‘Weirder to think it’s our mother just a couple of miles away,’ said Pip and they stared at the phone book. ‘Right, I’m calling her now.’

‘What if she answers?’ Cat gasped as Pip lifted the receiver. ‘What will you say?’

‘What if it’s an answerphone?’ Fen asked. ‘Will you leave a message?’

Pip was already dialling. ‘Answering machine,’ she said, hanging up.

They stared at the phone.

‘What did it say?’ Fen asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Pip said, ‘I hung up on “Hi”.’

‘Can I listen?’ Fen asked. Pip shrugged, phoned the number and passed the receiver over to Fen who glued it against her ear and tried to detect clues from the wording of the message, the timbre of her mother’s voice. She hung up in a hurry before the beep.

‘I suppose I ought to as well,’ said Cat and Pip dialled the number again. Cat listened hard; though she’d heard the voice only once before, it sounded strangely familiar.

Hi. You’ve reached Penny Ericsson. Can’t take your call right now. Leave your message after the tone and I’ll call you as soon as I can.

‘Hullo – who is this?’

The voice rang through before the anticipated beep. Cat was so taken aback that one hand was paralysed to the receiver, the other frozen in mid-air where it had been hovering over the phone’s cradle. The voice filtered out of the receiver, tinny and faint yet filling the room.

‘Hullo?’

Fen stared at Cat wide-eyed while Pip mouthed, Say something Say something whilst holding out her hand for the receiver.

‘Hullo? Who is this?’

Cat cancelled the call.

They sat in silence, staring at the phone with trepidation, as if their mother might suddenly materialize from it, like some wicked genie.

‘She was there,’ Cat whispered, ‘she’s there right now.’ She looked at Pip. ‘Please don’t make us go back up there tonight.’ She held her hand out for her sisters to observe how it trembled. Fen took it and held it between hers. Pip sat and wondered what they should do next.

It was like a skewed take on Postman’s Knock – the resultant addled adrenalin rush caused by the near miss. Derring-do mixed with jet lag and crisp cold beer in a local bar, combined to ensure a lively evening for the McCabe sisters. They picked at peanuts and at the labels on the beer bottles and giggled at the details of the day.

‘It’s all very Enid Blyton,’ Fen said, chinking her beer bottle against her sisters’.

‘Woody Allen, more like,’ said Cat, with a long drink.

‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t turn Stephen King,’ Pip laughed and she put down her bottle and laid her hands on the table as if they symbolized facts. ‘Right. We know that she’s here but she doesn’t know that we’re here. Do we phone first or just front up?’

‘I wonder if she was in all along, this afternoon,’ mused Fen, ‘spying on us stalking her.’

‘We didn’t ring the bell,’ Cat said, ‘but perhaps she traced our calls. Do they have 1471 in America?’ she wondered, hiccing softly.

‘The thing is,’ said Pip, ‘what do we want to say? What is it that we want to hear?’

Tracing the paths of the condensation on their beer bottles, tracing the pattern of the wood grain on the table, making patterns out of peanuts, they could draw no conclusion.

If Pip had been subconsciously looking for any excuse to confront her middle sister, that night it was presented to her on a plate, or rather in a beer bottle, in the guise of four studenty local boys offering to buy them a drink. It wasn’t as if the boys loitered with intent. Or made a pass. Or even flirted harmlessly. They didn’t ply them with alcohol, just the one friendly round of beers. They weren’t suggestive in their conversation; if anything they were refreshingly artless in their questions. After all, three English girls were something of a novelty and buying them a drink bought an evening’s entertainment. They asked about the Queen. They asked the girls to say ‘squirrel’ and ‘bath’ and ‘pasta’. They asked how old were the houses in which they lived. Though Fen’s smile and easy chatter was harmless enough, to Pip it seemed otherwise. With her beer goggles on, she computed simple facts into complex danger signs. She fused the tone of Fen’s laughter, the slant of her smile and the glint of her eyes, into the image of a trollop warranting chastisement.

‘Nice guys,’ Fen commented as the boys left the bar.

‘You can tell whose daughter you are,’ growled Pip.

If this was a saloon in a Spaghetti Western, loaded silence would have met Pip’s verbal gauntlet. But in this bar in Lester Falls, time didn’t stand still and the din did not abate and Pip’s haughty expression was somewhat diffused by the dim lighting. Both Cat and Fen had to squint at her and say, What? because the beer and the bar and the bizarreness of what they thought they’d heard were so distorted.

Pip looked at Cat. ‘Why not ask her what babysitters are for?’

Cat looked at Pip, confused. ‘What babysitters are for?’ she asked and Pip nodded gravely. Cat turned to Fen. ‘What are babysitters for?’ she asked ingenuously, with a conspiring twitch of her face to signify she thought Pip odd.

Fen took a long moment to answer, in which time Pip’s point struck her sharply. ‘Tell her they’re to alleviate the oppressive humdrum a frumpy mum can just occasionally be choked by,’ Fen told Cat whilst glaring at Pip.

Cat looked at Pip. ‘She says they’re to – oh fuck it, did you hear all that? They choke humdrum frumps and stuff.’

Pip folded her arms and levelled a stare at Fen, whilst speaking to Cat. ‘Tell her, Oh! Really! I thought that was the function of someone called Al!’

It was well below the belt but it winded Fen all the same, a single spasm deep in her diaphragm forcing her breath into her constricted throat. ‘Fuck you,’ Fen whispered which was easy enough for everyone to lipread.

‘What’s going on here?’ Cat asked, her gaze leaping from one sister to other. ‘Have you fallen out? Have I missed something? Who’s Al?’

‘Al’s your sister’s bit-on-the-side,’ Pip announced.

‘That’s not true!’ Fen protested.

‘Who is Al?’ Cat repeated. ‘What’s happened?’

With her hands in her lap, Fen looked deeply into her beer bottle as if hoping for a magical kaleidoscope to transport her away, willing the neck of the bottle to widen and reveal Narnia, Wonderland, anywhere. But it didn’t. It didn’t even say Drink Me any more. Fen pushed the bottle away and slowly she looked up at her sisters with a smile soft and beatific which she hoped might miraculously solve the issue and change the subject. But it didn’t.

‘Fen!’ Cat implored. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Leave me alone,’ Fen said feebly as she stood heavily from her stool and made to leave the bar. Almost at the door she stopped. What was the point of this? Storming out would only make her look worse. These were her sisters. Really, she needed their support, not animosity. After all, as the only feeling she harboured for Al was regret, there could be no harm in divulging that at all. Her sisters’ friendship was imperative; she hadn’t been through life without it and just then she could not contemplate going forward without it. As she made it to the door, she was accosted by the memory of a quote on a tea towel Pip had once bought her, which decreed that anyone who didn’t know how a woman could both love her sister and also want to strangle her was probably an only child.

‘Sorry,’ Fen said, with searching eye contact, as she returned to the table and sat back down for her comeuppance.

‘What’s happened?’ Cat pleaded. ‘What did you do?’

Fen glanced from one hand to the other and then she looked up. ‘There is this bloke called Al,’ Fen told Cat apologetically and with a clear shrug of confession to Pip, ‘but nothing happened really.’ She stopped at her words; glancing back over her memory of the time in Al’s room and wondering just what defined something or nothing; what precisely was infidelity. Penetration or intent? Wandering hands or simply straying thoughts? She remembered how she’d deludedly hoped a quick dalliance with Al would provide positive memories that would titillate. But there, in the bar in a one-eyed town in Vermont, the thought of what she’d done, what she’d been on the verge of doing had Pip not phoned her that fateful night, sank a leaden spear of shame right to her core. She dragged her gaze to meet her sisters’.

‘I almost cheated on Matt,’ she confided with a meek nod and a sad shrug.

‘What’s “almost”?’ Cat asked aghast.

‘I met some bloke,’ Fen admitted, ‘a bloke called Al and he was flirty and young and the opposite of Matt. And I was flattered and tempted. More than tempted. And thank God Pip phoned when she did because if she hadn’t I probably would have.’

‘Would have what?’ Cat asked. ‘Phoned Pip?’

‘Had sex with Al,’ Fen admitted. Suddenly, she realized that she could fob off her sisters with this limited version of events, but not herself. It was time, at last, to change tack and face facts. ‘I have to admit, I practically did,’ she revealed forlornly. ‘If we’re talking all the other bases, I’d passed Base 3. We were on the home straight when Pip called.’

‘You’re joking!’ Cat laughed, because Fen’s terminology seemed so adolescent and the notion seemed so preposterous. Fen? Fen being fingered and having her tits groped while she fiddled with the cock of a bloke called Al? Fen who had embraced to the hilt the all-consuming responsibilities of being a mother at the expense of even a night out at the Rag and Thistle? Fen, the conventional, stay-at-home mummy with lovely Matt providing for her and her perfect daughter?

‘I’m not,’ Fen said, her eyes downcast as she hid behind her fringe.

‘Not what?’ said Cat.

‘Not joking,’ Fen declared.

‘But you’re not allowed to do that!’ Cat protested.

‘I lost sight of that fact,’ Fen admitted, ‘but I swear to you, it stares me in the face every time I look in the mirror.’

‘Do you no longer love Matt?’ Pip asked carefully, her tone more level, her look softer.

‘Of course I do,’ Fen said, suddenly realizing she couldn’t even consider answering the question any other way.

‘But who is this Al?’ Cat pressed.

‘I don’t really know,’ Fen admitted, ‘just someone who wasn’t Matt. Someone with whom I could be more than just me.’

As they walked back to the guest house, Cat and Pip wondered why their sister should think there was anything wrong with just being herself. While Fen just thought there must be something wrong with her. None of the other new mums she had met had gadded off with flower-laying toyboys. The only new mum of whom she knew who had behaved in a similar fashion was her own mother. And Fen and her sisters were in agreement that there must have been something very wrong with her. Fen’s last thought on the matter, before she was distracted by the flashing red button on the phone in the room, was to pray that her wayward detour had been temporary and to thank God that it hadn’t taken her away from her baby.

But had the woman who had taken herself away from her three babies decades ago, now tracked them down?

Cat, Fen and Pip stared at the flashing red light.

‘Could be Ben,’ said Cat.

‘Or Matt,’ said Fen.

‘Or Zac,’ said Pip.

But there was no message. Just a long recorded silence.

Probably one of the boys.

Playing silly buggers.

Cat looked at her watch. ‘If it’s 10 o’clock here, it must be three tomorrow morning in proper time.’

‘Proper time?’ laughed Pip, putting an affectionate arm around Cat.

‘Check your mobile for messages,’ Fen told Pip, who had the only tri-band phone between them. ‘Just in case it’s for me.’

Pip took her phone from the bedside drawer where she’d placed it on top of their passports and next to the complimentary copy of the bible which was alarmingly covered in lilac suedette.

The envelope icon signified a message.

‘It’s just a text from Zac,’ Pip told them, opening the message.

Hope all ok. Just 2 say Tom has baby bro!!! Nathan Oliver, 7lbs 13oz. Evryone doing just fine!!! Z xx

‘What does he say?’ Cat asked.

‘Pip?’ said Fen, because her sister’s face had dropped.

‘What? Oh,’ said Pip, ‘nothing really.’

‘Sweet nothings?’ Cat smiled.

‘Something like that,’ Pip said, switching off the mobile and putting it back by the purple bible.

The girls were exhausted. It had gone three in the morning proper time, and they’d had a day beset by travel, jet lag, strange towns, their mother’s front door and their mother’s voice. Cat and Fen shared the kingsized bed, falling asleep within seconds of each other, within minutes of clambering in. Pip turned away from them in her queen bed. Hot tears seeped silently from tired sore eyes.

Evryone doing just fine. Evryone doing just fine. Welcome little Nathan. But I’m not fine. I’m not doing just fine at all.

Those three silent calls. Penny guessed it was them, her daughters. Her three girls, silent for almost three decades. She surprised herself by hoping that it was. They just wanted to listen, didn’t they? Who dialled last? Who was it who hung up on ‘Hi’? She had traced the call, to put a place to the number. Brook Barn Inn. She knew exactly where that was. It was a decent enough place. She had spent the remainder of the afternoon and all evening meandering around the house, walking in and out of rooms that had seen no person other than her for seven months. She went to bed early but couldn’t sleep. Nearing midnight, she dressed and drove into town. Parked her car, switched off the engine and just gazed and gazed at the Old Lester Inn; wondering what she should do.

PLASTIC TUBING

‘Are you awake?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is Cat awake?’

‘Yes I’m awake too.’

‘Sodding jet lag. It’s not even seven o’clock.’

‘I bet that diner will be open by now.’

‘What day is it – is it Saturday?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘It is Saturday. We arrived in Boston Thursday night – then came up here yesterday morning. So yes, today must be Saturday.’

‘Perhaps the diner won’t open so early on a Saturday.’

‘Only one way to find out.’

The diner was open and Cat, Fen and Pip were greeted by Betty the waitress who, bizarrely, had ‘DeeDee’ embroidered on her uniform today.

‘The English Roses return, Joe!’ she called through to the back before fussing around them, wiping an already gleaming table and straightening the napkin dispenser and cruets. ‘You take a load off, girls,’ she said. ‘What’ll you have? Did you meet with your friend?’

The sisters exchanged glances; if they couldn’t refer to her as their ‘mother’ they certainly couldn’t refer to her as their ‘friend’.

‘She wasn’t in,’ said Pip, deciding to gloss over the ambiguity by polishing her vowels. ‘Frightful shame.’

‘Frightful shame!’ the waitress repeated, marvelling at the words, not the matter. ‘Well, if you’re kicking around today, there’s a lot of fun to be had round here. There’s the Falls for a start – if you guys like hiking that sure is one pretty place. There’s also some quaint villages near by – Hubbardton’s Spring and Ridge – just like you see on the postcards, though most of the postcards are taken in the fall so don’t go expecting those colours. And if you like to shop, you head over to Manchester – the finest outlet village. Puts New York in the shade, I’ll say.’

Cat’s glance to her sisters was sufficient to say that she for one rather hoped the house on Emerson would be empty again today. She found herself looking at the waitress’s left breast as coffee was replenished. ‘I say,’ she said plummily, ‘I hope you don’t think me rude – but yesterday you were Betty, today you’re DeeDee.’

The waitress looked at her bosom, as if to check herself who she was. ‘You’re right!’ she said cheerily, and busied away to collect the girls’ breakfasts from the grill, piping hot and delicious.

After a leisurely breakfast, though coffee was topped up and more pleasantries were exchanged with the waitress, they were no nearer finding if she was DeeDee or Betty. Fen and Cat called goodbye to Betty, Pip called goodbye to DeeDee, all three said see you tomorrow.

‘Bugger Boston,’ Cat remarked as they walked up Main Street, ‘let’s just do a day-trip to Manchester. When Betty said “dickny” do you think she meant “DKNY”?’

‘Or do you think we’ve been mispronouncing the brand?’ Fen challenged and she and Cat laughed in mortification.

‘Ralph Law-rn,’ said Cat.

‘Ralph L’Ren,’ Fen said.

‘Sad thing is, I don’t possess a single item from Ralph or Donna,’ said Pip. ‘I’m not what one would call a designer clown.’

‘So let’s go to Manchester!’ Cat said.

‘Or we could just catch an earlier—’

‘Hi.’

It was Penny.

Right in front of them.

Sunlight bouncing off her glasses and flashing platinum through her short, silvering hair; her slim, wiry frame appearing to fill the sidewalk. Fen glancing sharply behind herself, as if looking for an escape route; Cat staring at her mother’s feet, ten toes with neat nails; Pip stepping forward just slightly but able to raise her eyes only as far as her mother’s tiger’s-eye pendant.

‘Hi,’ she says again, this time with an awkward shrug. Pip can feel Cat and Fen looking beseechingly at her.

‘Hullo,’ says Pip.

‘Fancy seeing you here,’ Penny says with what would have been a wry smile though her nervousness and the intense sunlight make it appear more of a grimace and a squint.

‘We’ve just had breakfast,’ Pip says, cringing inwardly. Since planning the trip, she’s prepared many a soliloquy and rehearsed varying degrees of acerbic wit and biting truths. Not once has she practised the line ‘We’ve just had breakfast’.

‘You have plans for today?’ Penny asks, steering clear of the undisputable fact that the girls can only be in Lester Falls on her account.

‘We were going to go to Manchester,’ Cat says shyly, addressing her mother’s feet. ‘Shopping.’

‘Nice,’ said Penny, as if this was reason enough to have Lester Falls as their base.

‘Perhaps a walk to the Falls,’ Fen says, glancing over her shoulder again though that’s the opposite direction to the Falls.

‘Real pretty,’ Penny says, as if a hike to the Falls could indeed be the sole purpose for crossing the Atlantic to this little town. ‘You could come for lunch,’ she says, ‘if it fits your day?’

The sisters regard each other in silent consultation.

‘Could do,’ says Pip, noting half a nod from Fen and a small shrug from Cat.

‘Good,’ says Penny, wondering what they like to eat. She’s never been much of a cook. Never attempted the eccentric fusion cuisine of Django McCabe. ‘You vegetarian or anything?’

‘What – having been brought up by Django?’ Fen says to Penny’s sandals – she remembers distinctly they are the same she wore that morning in Derbyshire.

Penny surprises herself by smiling easily. ‘So, shall we say noon? I live on Emerson Street.’ She pauses. ‘But you know that.’

The sisters consider their mother’s slightly cryptic allusion.

‘Hey, Penny!’

A young woman, much their own age, has approached and she’s smiling at their mother, regarding them quizzically.

‘Oh,’ Penny flusters, and Cat can see that her toes curl slightly, ‘Juliette. Hi.’

‘Haven’t seen you for a while,’ Juliette says warmly. ‘How you doing?’

‘Fine,’ says Penny, acutely aware that the last time she saw Juliette was when she stormed away from her, ‘just fine. Real busy.’

‘Oh,’ says Juliette, ‘cool.’

There follows a pause so pregnant Penny fears she is on the verge of bellowing in discomfort. Juliette is looking from the girls to Penny, and back again. Smiling sweetly, genuinely friendly.

‘I’m Juliette,’ she says to the sisters, with a childish little wave. ‘Hi.’

The sisters respond with awkward hand-raising of their own.

‘Pip.’

‘Fen.’

‘Cat.’

‘Well, I gotta go,’ Juliette says, with polite reluctance. ‘Sure was nice to meet you all,’ she smiles at the girls. ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ she says to Penny, touching her hand. ‘We miss you.’

And there they stand for a mammoth moment or two longer.

Penny, a woman who feels she has no right to introduce herself as ‘mother’.

And the three sisters who can’t yet bring themselves to be known as her daughters.

Pip walked a large, aimless loop. Fen and Cat followed.

‘Christ, are we sure about all of this?’ Fen asked, standing stock still. ‘Isn’t it just too bizarre to be having lunch with her? Too quick? Too – I don’t know – normal? Too friendly, too accepting?’ Pip sighed as she thought although Fen didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I don’t know about you two but I don’t feel prepared. I’ve run through so many scenarios in my head these last few days and in all of them, I’m this empowered woman brimming with erudite proclamations and condemnation. But now I feel very, very small.’

Pip looked ahead. ‘Look, we all feel weird – her too, no doubt – but we’re here and this is an opportunity and we have to take it, whatever the outcome.’ She paused, tying and retying her pony-tail while she thought. ‘If we don’t – if we blow her out – imagine how you’ll feel once you’ve returned home. Jesus – I’ve said it before, it’s not a holiday. It’s not a social engagement. It’s necessary. It’s a summit.’

‘What do we do about Django? Say she asks?’ Fen asked. ‘Are we going to tell her?’ She looked at Cat who appeared lost in thought.

‘I think we avoid lies,’ Pip said, reflecting on it. ‘After so much dishonesty, the plain truth will do. But let’s not volunteer information. If she asks directly how he is, then we’ll answer directly. Agreed?’

Fen nodded. Pip looked to Cat who was still avoiding eye contact or comment. ‘Cat?’

‘Whatever,’ Cat muttered. ‘I’m not hungry,’ she said, thinking fast that she could find if there was a flight from somewhere to take her to Boulder.

‘That’s totally irrelevant and you know it,’ Pip snapped.

‘But we don’t know her at all,’ Cat said, cross with Pip for her reaction.

‘What we do know is that she ran away with a cowboy from Denver when we were small,’ said Pip. ‘Here’s our chance to find out why.’

In their fantasies, over the years, they’d created an image of their mother that was far from flattering. They’d never quite given her form – a stereotypical warted wicked witch seemed too contrived – but they’d created the world in which she lived. Most damning of all, they’d given her a world with no style. With the cowboy-from-Denver situation always to the fore, they’d positioned their mother in a poor and tacky version of Dynasty. An ostentatious driveway in a boring flat land. A preposterous fountain flanked by disparate figures from antiquity, poorly copied and made from resin. Fake Corinthian columns and disproportionate pediments. White leather sofas. Reproduction furniture with ubiquitous claw-and-ball feet. Lots of gilt. Lots of guilt. Uniformed staff, who all secretly hated her, addressing her as ‘ma’am’. The cowboy himself, laughably repulsive in a rhinestone-encrusted ten-gallon hat; corpulent, porcine and with a gait dictated by gout.

But how reality can let a daydream down. For a start, they had to relocate their fantasy from a dull and nondescript landscape to America’s lush and hilly smallest state. Then, on entering Penny’s house, the girls were immediately shocked and humbled by the utter contrast to their fantasy. Their sense of control of the situation was compromised. Reality was staring them in the face and they had to swallow hard and meet it eye to eye. No stuffed bison heads. No rifles, crisscrossed, above vulgar stone-clad fireplaces. No white leather anywhere. No staff. Most poignantly: no cowboy. But how they could feel his presence, how noticeable this man was by his absence. The house was tidy and clean, the furniture simple with a slightly dated Scandinavian feel; but no amount of messiness or belongings could change the haunting feeling that this was a lonely house; a place, a space, essentially designed and designated for two.

‘Shall I show you around?’ Penny offered. The four of them had been gathered in the hallway for some time, taking silent interest in each other’s footwear whilst practising what to say. ‘We built this house in ’74.’

It was the same in every room; the house and its contents seemed to be putting on a brave smile, a bit of a show. Crisp linen, pretty curtains, handmade cushion covers and warmly worn rugs were easy on the eye in a futile bid to keep the solitary sadness from view. Everywhere appeared airy and light but a pervasive sense of melancholy cast metaphorical shadows which were long. Following behind Penny, Pip wondered whether this was their mother’s home or her purgatory. Fen thought of their childhood house at Farleymoor; the scamper and warmth there, the welcoming dishevelment, the flow of company; the ring of home. The last room Penny took them to was the sitting-room, with its picture windows presenting a painterly and flawless view to a nicely tended garden rolling gently down to a thatch of trees that swathed its way up to the skirts of the hills beyond.

‘Take a seat,’ Penny said. ‘Can I fix you a coffee? Something soft?’ and she hurried off to the kitchen to compose herself and gaze quietly out of the window at the hire car of her daughters who were currently making themselves comfortable just across the hallway.

Cat stared at the chair. It was truly monstrous, the clumpy wood lacquered until it looked plasticized, embalmed even. She couldn’t help but admit to herself that it was the sort of piece that Django would declare marvellous. She turned her attention to other features: the low table in burr oak laden with three neat piles of large-format coffee-table books; framed photographs on the mantel that would need to be seen up close; a large selection of board games piled on the lowest shelves either side of the fireplace; a chess set on an occasional table, its players standing to attention as if a game was imminent. Cat would have liked to peruse the photographs but a perverse desire to appear in Penny’s eyes not remotely interested in her life kept her sitting on the sofa, looking at the chair.

‘So,’ said Penny breezily as she came into the room with a tray, ‘here’s your juice. I mixed cranberry and apple. And some cookies.’

Everyone sipped awkwardly and nibbled self-consciously.

‘We were looking at the chair,’ Fen said at length. ‘It’s – unusual.’

Penny regarded it for a moment. ‘It’s revolting,’ she colluded, ‘but it was Bob’s most favourite possession. And though I found it easy enough to give all his clothes to the mission without so much as a sentimental sniff to his shirt collars – the chair, well, I just couldn’t do it. I had to keep it.’ They all looked at the chair, as if willing it to talk. ‘Try it,’ Penny said to Fen, ‘go ahead.’ Fen glanced at her sisters, then balanced her cookies on the rim of her glass and went over to sit down. ‘Well?’ Penny enquired.

‘It’s not designed for my shape,’ Fen said diplomatically.

‘I’m more of an Eames lounger girl,’ said Pip, when Penny gestured for her to try. Cat avoided eye contact.

‘My mother used to say every pot has its lid,’ Penny said, ‘so, perhaps every backside has its chair.’

Pip considered this. Then she thought about their maternal grandmother. ‘When did she die? Your mother?’ she asked.

‘When I was fourteen.’

‘Your father?’ Pip asked.

‘When I was very young.’

‘Do you have any siblings?’ Pip continued to probe.

‘No, I have not.’

‘Any other children?’ Fen asked.

‘No,’ said Penny, ‘I have not.’

‘Stepchildren?’ Pip asked.

‘Nope,’ Penny said, seemingly engrossed in massaging her cuticles, ‘none. That’s it. No family left.’

Pip thought to herself that if this was Hollywood, there’d be soaring violins and group hugs to accompany them proclaiming Hey! We’re your family! We never stopped loving you! Love means never having to say you’re sorry! Oh Mom, it feels like we’re home! But the thought held no attraction and she reminded herself that this was not a journey to reconciliation, it was a fact-finding mission.

‘I don’t know if I was the lid or the pot,’ Penny was saying, her thumb playing anxiously over her fingertips, ‘but whichever I was, Bob was certainly the other.’

‘We thought you lived in Denver,’ Cat said, speaking for the first time. ‘I lived in Denver for three years. We thought you lived with a cowboy.’

‘Bob?’ Penny looked incredulous. ‘A cowboy?’ She mused this over. ‘I mean, he looked the part, when I first met him, in his blue jeans and his boots and his buckle belts and boot-lace ties. And he was from Denver. But he wouldn’t know one end of a horse from the other. He never got close enough anyway, on account of his asthma.’

‘Oh,’ said Cat.

‘All these years you’ve been thinking I’ve been living with John Wayne on a ranch out west?’ Penny started to giggle. It was Fen’s giggle – Cat and Pip could detect it in an instant and they both glanced automatically from their mother to their sister; intrigued, disturbed. ‘Oh my!’ Penny continued. ‘Would he have loved that.’

‘Was it something to do with asthma?’ Pip asked. ‘How he died?’

‘No my dear, he had cancer,’ said Penny. The sisters looked at their laps and said sorry. And then they privately hoped that Penny wouldn’t ask after Django because they didn’t want to say the cancer word out loud. They hated saying the word. It was impossible to say it without a hush. And that seemed to dignify the dreadful disease. And anyway, his results weren’t in. They didn’t want to jinx Django.

Penny had crossed to the mantelpiece and selected a clutch of photographs. She passed them around. They studied the pictures, looked hard at Bob. He did not look anything like they’d imagined. The photos showed a tall, slim man in sensible V-necked sweaters, with a tidy slate-grey beard, round spectacles, silver glinting hair neatly clipped short beneath a smooth, tanned pate. Smiling. Easy, open, attractive smile. In most pictures, his arm was warmly around Penny. He looked normal and nice and Pip was surprised by how easy it was to tell Penny so. Cat wanted to say that he looked nothing like Django but she didn’t. She felt slightly offended that there was no physical similarity at all. Instead, she focused on an old photo, from the seventies perhaps, in which Penny could well have been Pip, the same tilt of the head, the identical sparky smile.

‘If he wasn’t a cowboy,’ Fen said, ‘what did he do?’

‘We had a business,’ Penny said. ‘We were very good at it. Tubing.’

‘Tubing?’ Fen looked disappointed.

‘Yes,’ Penny confirmed, ‘plastic tubing. Bob Ericsson sure was the king of plastic tubes and components! Now would you look at the time – I’m going to fix our lunch.’

For the first time in their lives, Pip, Fen and Cat did not act like sisters; they did not huddle together to confab and support. They didn’t even look at each other. They sat in their own heavy spheres, with thoughts spiralling nearly out of control. It was like having nothing to cling on to after a lifetime of clutching at straws which, when looked down, had opened onto a fantasy world of imaginative exaggeration and convoluted details. All of which had been comforting in their negativity. Yet in the space of an hour, the McCabe sisters had had to let the vulgar cowboy go, and the revolting ranch and the obsequious staff and all the rhinestones with him. Plastic tubes now replaced their hollow straws. They had a face to put to a name and the face was friendly. And though they’d been staring at their mother, noting all the details of her face, computing all her mannerisms, what they could see most vividly was her sadness and loneliness. It was all a bit disconcerting. A great love had been lost, and it was this love which defined this woman – not them. It was clear they never had done. The bluntness of this hurt. But the fact that a great love had existed also gave the protagonists qualities that Pip, Fen, Cat and even Django had spent their lives denying them.

Penny had started to sing. They could hear her. They didn’t know the tune. But the sound broke their hermetic isolation from one another.

‘I’ve just realized – we’ve probably never asked Django much about her or her cowboy because our family folklore of “Your mother ran off with a cowboy from Denver when you were small” had served as an answer in its own right,’ Pip said. ‘And I suppose we’ve always held her and the evil cowboy as somehow responsible for our father’s death – like they caused the heart failure.’

‘But there was never a cowboy,’ Fen said flatly, ‘there was just plastic tubing and now there’s just a lonely widow. Who’s currently cooking us lunch.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ said Cat and her voice was hoarse, ‘and I no longer want to be here.’

‘We’ll go after lunch,’ Pip said.

‘Yeah right,’ Cat muttered. ‘I want to go now. Not after lunch.’

‘Well we can’t,’ Pip whispered in a hiss.

‘Why the fuck not?’ Cat whispered back.

‘We can’t,’ Pip said.

‘Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!’ Cat objected. ‘You two bloody stay then – I’m not.’

‘Cat!’ Pip said.

‘Fucking hell, Pip,’ Cat said, ‘just because I can’t be as big as you or react in your controlled way.’

‘Calm down, for goodness’ sake,’ Fen said.

‘It’s hard enough dealing with what I do know,’ Cat said. ‘It’s like with Django – you two want to know all about the tests and the treatment and the prognosis. I don’t. OK?’

‘I know it’s difficult,’ Pip started.

‘Don’t patronize me,’ Cat said, pointing her finger. ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll wait by the car. Or I’ll go back to the hotel. I don’t know. But I’m not staying here.’

And she left.

And when Penny heard the front door shut, she wondered if they’d all gone. She felt almost jubilant to find that two of her three wanted to sit at her table and eat lunch with her.

‘Cat’s just—’ Pip paused.

‘It’s OK, honey,’ Penny said, ‘you don’t have to explain for her.’

But Pip felt duty-bound to. ‘It’s sort of hit her the hardest, perhaps,’ Pip said, ‘on account of her not knowing about – well, her father.’

Fen was suddenly terrified Penny would say, Ah and how is Django? and she didn’t want her to so she changed the subject urgently. ‘Gorgeous bread!’ she exclaimed.

‘Bob’s favourite,’ Penny revealed and from then on she talked only about Bob. She said she’d map out Bob’s route to the Falls for them. She asked how the guest house was – because Bob had always said that the town lacked a really good hotel.

‘He’d say, “If you build it, they will come”,’ she reminisced.

It was more exhausting than tedious – Pip felt obliged to nod sympathetically at every mention of this woman’s late husband. They’d long finished eating but they remained at the table, which Bob had shipped over from Denmark where he used to do a lot of business, so Penny said.

‘Well, we ought to make tracks,’ Fen said after a coded glance to Pip.

‘Perhaps we’ll take Bob’s route to the Falls tomorrow,’ Pip said, standing, ‘if we decide not to take an earlier flight home.’ She gave Fen a little smile.

‘When you due to fly?’ Penny asked.

‘Monday evening at the moment,’ Fen sighed.

‘The red-eye? You know, Bob swore by Melatonin to combat jet lag. Wait – I’m sure I still have some.’ Penny disappeared upstairs, leaving Pip and Fen to stare at each other and shrug.

‘Thank you for coming,’ Penny said, giving Pip a pot of pills. ‘It’s nice for me to talk about Bob. Feels like I can honour his memory by recalling the minutiae – like I’m bringing him back to life by describing him to folk who never met him.’ She paused, consumed by some deeply private thought. ‘Too bad you never met him.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Pip heard herself say, edging across the hallway towards the door.

‘Thank you,’ Penny said, opening the door and shivering a little though it was a warm soft breeze which trickled in.

Fen stopped at the threshold. ‘How old was he?’ she asked. ‘And had he been ill for very long?’

‘He was seventy,’ Penny said, ‘and he’d been ill five months.’

‘Five months!’ Fen exclaimed. ‘That’s terrible.’ She thought of Django and felt panic.

LOVE AT LONG DISTANCE

‘Marjorie? It’s Dr York’s wife – it’s Cat. I’m sorry for phoning reverse-charges. I’m in a phone box and I want to speak to my husband.’ She began to cry. ‘I want to speak to Ben.’

‘My dear, he’s consulting at the moment. The Saturday evening clinic is very hectic.’

‘But I’m phoning long-distance.’

‘Are you all right? Is everything OK? Is this an emergency?’

Cat cried silently while Marjorie said Hullo? Hullo? down the phone.

‘How long will Ben be? How long will Dr York be – do you think?’

‘Is it an emergency, dear? I can call through if it’s an emergency.’

Cat thought about this. And she thought about her husband, with some rugby player’s prize tendon in his hands. ‘It’s not an emergency,’ she had to sadly admit, ‘I’m just lonely. I miss him.’

‘Can I take a number for you?’

‘This is a pay phone,’ Cat said, ‘in Vermont. I can’t remember the stupid place I’m staying.’

‘And when are you coming back?’ Marjorie asked in her best soothing voice.

‘We fly Monday night.’

‘That’s lovely and soon,’ Marjorie enthused.

‘But I miss him now,’ Cat stammered, crying again. ‘Is he almost finished? Do you think?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Marjorie. ‘All these sportsmen with their strains and pains from today’s games. Why don’t I send him a nice message for you – like that other time.’

Cat brightened a little.

‘I could say, “Dr York, your wife says absence is making her heart grow fonder,” or something along those lines.’

Cat thought about it. ‘Will you tell him I called, Marjorie? Tell him I miss him. Tell him I love him. Tell him it’s rubbish here. But tell him I’m fine. Tell him I can’t wait to see him.’

‘I’ve written it down,’ said Marjorie, ‘word for word.’

‘And tell him that for me, family means him,’ Cat said. ‘Tell him I love him.’

When she stepped away from the hood of the pay phone and turned to consult her whereabouts on the edge of town, Cat saw that the hire car with her sisters in the front seats had pulled up and was waiting. As she regarded them, tears still wet on her face, Pip wound down the driver’s window.

‘Hullo my pretty girl,’ she said in a commendable Bill Sykes voice. ‘Want to come and see my kittens and puppies?’

Cat was at once helpless not to giggle.

‘Get in the car goddammit!’ Fen leant across Pip, drawling in a deep American accent, as if they were about to start a cops-and-robbers chase. ‘Get in the goddam car goddammit.’

So Cat got in the car, drying her eyes on the way.

For there is no friend like a sister,
      in calm or stormy weather,
    to cheer one on the tedious way,
    to fetch one if one goes astray,
    to lift one if one totters down,
    to strengthen whilst one stands.

NO-BRAINER

Bob’s route was certainly scenic and the view from the Falls was postcard wonderful the next morning. Fen stood with her eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head, breathing deeply, the air feeling thinner, finer, than down in town. Cat murmured that Ben would love it.

Pip thought to herself how Tom would too. ‘They look like Hornby model railway hills,’ she said, gazing at the spread of tree-clotted hills, ‘like great big sponges dipped in green poster paint.’ Her voice faltered.

‘Are you all right?’ Fen asked her, eyes still closed.

‘Yes,’ Pip said, with some busy blinking, ‘I’m just tired. Yesterday is seeming more and more bizarre. I’m fine. Fuck it.’ But then she squatted down and took her hands to her face, her shoulders heaving with her tears long before she made a sound.

‘Pip!’ Fen dropped down beside her and put an arm around her back.

‘Pip don’t cry,’ Cat implored, crouching to the other side of Pip.

It was horrible to see Pip cry because she so seldom did. She was, after all, the great Mopper of Tears; a role neither of her sisters felt they could fulfil anywhere near as well. Pip had goose bumps on her forearms. It had been T-shirt weather on the lower part of the hike but the breeze at the top was insistent in its chill. Fen rubbed her sister’s arms.

‘Don’t cry,’ Cat continued to plead, as much for her sake as for her sister’s. ‘What’s wrong?’

Pip gave one vigorous sniff, then took the sensible deep breaths she always advocated to others. In through the nose, out through the mouth, in through the nose, out through the mouth. She cleared her throat, stood up with her hands in the small of her back and had a good stretch. ‘Fuck it,’ she said, her voice now strong and surprisingly indignant, ‘fucking hell.’

Cat and Fen looked at each other, a little bewildered. Something was coming and they couldn’t anticipate what.

‘I think she truly believes we’ve come all this way to offer our condolences on the death of her husband,’ Pip laughed caustically. ‘Don’t you remember, Fen? When she thanked us for coming and said how nice it was for her to talk all about Bob to folk who’d never met him? Do you realize, she never once asked us a single thing about ourselves?’ She put her hands on her hips and glared at her sisters. ‘She’s a self-centred old bag!’ Pip rarely spoke ill of anyone, let alone with such a crude insult, and the sound of it was so out of character that Fen burst out laughing. ‘It’s not fucking funny,’ Pip seethed, ‘it’s fucking sad. The whole thing. Our whole history. The fact that we’ve spent a small fortune coming out here. What’s the prize?’ She looked from Cat to Fen. ‘Do you feel better? Either of you? Do you think it was a good idea? You were right yesterday, Cat. I should have followed you out instead of sitting politely and being Miss Maturity, Mrs Stupid Fucking Level Head, Mrs Pathetic Giver of the Benefit of the Doubt.’ And with that she marched off.

‘For fuck’s sake, Fen,’ Cat said under her breath, ‘what are we going to do?’

‘Come on,’ murmured Fen, automatically stepping into the role as next-eldest and leading the way after Pip.

Pip stomped down from the Falls. ‘I’m starving,’ her only comment, called over her shoulder. Fen and Cat shot each other worried glances as they tried to keep up. She headed directly for the diner, which had provided their hearty breakfast for hiking a few hours earlier, and slumped down at the table they’d appropriated as their own these past three days. DeeDee, embroidered as Betty again, was delighted to see them so soon, charmed by the flush of their reddened faces.

‘Joe – the hikers are back!’ she called through. ‘My, you girls must have made quick work of our Falls,’ she marvelled while cleaning their table unnecessarily, straightening cutlery and presenting the menu though it already stood to attention before them, laminated and clasped between two steel blocks. ‘No specials today, on account of it being Sunday, but if you need refuelling, you’ll be wanting the burgers. We make them ourselves and the beef is from the Holstein herd just up at Brook Farm.’

‘Sounds super,’ said Fen, with an anxious look at Pip.

‘Super duper,’ Cat added, for Betty’s pleasure.

‘We’ll have three, then,’ said Fen, ‘and a pot of strong tea too, please.’

Cat and Fen sat next to each other. Then leant across the table and took Pip’s hands in theirs.

‘It’s OK,’ Fen said to her.

‘Pip,’ Cat all but pleaded again.

‘Fucking hell,’ Pip growled under her breath. ‘The point is – I didn’t cross the frigging Atlantic in search of an apology and it may have been a bit hopeful to even expect an explanation. But Christ, to be asked nothing?’

Fen wondered what to say. Should she try and calm Pip or bolster her? ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I know. I can see exactly what you mean. I now know all about tubing – but she hasn’t a clue I have a sodding MA from the Courtauld Institute.’

‘I told her I lived in Denver for three years,’ Cat said, ‘but she didn’t ask me a thing about that.’

Pip buried her head in her hands and tugged hard at her hair. ‘It’s amazing we’re as normal as we are,’ she said hoarsely, with a burst of hollow laughter. The burgers arrived and she took great snatching bites. ‘Christ, this is fucking delicious,’ she said. ‘Sorry about my language.’

‘You swear as much as you fucking like,’ Fen encouraged her, anything to restore her sister.

With blood sugar levels raised, stomachs full and nerves settled, they took stock of the situation once more.

‘You say we didn’t come here for an apology,’ Fen said to Pip, ‘but you know what, I think we are entitled to an explanation.’

‘I sort of wish we’d never come,’ Cat said quietly, ‘but I suppose I’m pleased we are actually here. Thing is, I don’t know what I came for – and I’m not really sure what it is I’ll be taking home with me.’

She looked at Pip intently, willing her to respond. ‘I mean, I’m sorry for her loss,’ Pip said in her more usual voice, ‘it must be ghastly – but for God’s sake I don’t even know if she was interested in telling us apart. I tell you something – we’re not going home until we’ve had our say.’

‘Are we going back?’ Cat whispered. ‘To the house on Emerson?’

‘Yes,’ Pip declared. ‘God, don’t look so scared, Cat – you’re coming too this time, all the way. She’s only human. We should use this trip to bury the mystique of her, once and for all.’

From the outside, the house on Emerson Street looked as empty as it had on their first visit. But to the sisters, they sensed it was brimming with information. They rang and they knocked and Penny seemed quite pleased to see them on her doorstep.

‘Hi! How were the Falls?’ she greeted them. ‘Did you take Bob’s route?’

All the confrontational power, the burning right to feel cross and cheated which Pip had amassed, simpered away in an instant in the presence of this woman. For the first time in her life she stood on a precarious threshold, wishing her younger sisters were in front of her, and not behind.

‘Won’t you come in,’ Penny asked.

But Pip eyed the open door with suspicion. Bob was in there. This amazing man who looked so nice and who had loved their mother with all of his great big heart. Instinctively, she knew if they went in and sat in the kitchen and said yes to tea or coffee or cranberry and apple, they’d be back in Bob’s space where the hurt and the anger that were justifiably theirs would be banned from the home of this widow. Pip reminded herself of her manners, her sense of decorum; both fastidiously instilled by Django.

‘Are you OK?’ Penny asked her, looking to Fen and Cat who both avoided her gaze. ‘Are you OK, all of you?’

Pip was distraught at her emptied mind, her stupid silence. But suddenly Fen was alongside her. ‘I have a daughter,’ Fen proclaimed with slicing calm. ‘Cosima is eleven months old.’ Fen locked eyes with Penny. ‘I have chosen to leave her for four days and five nights. You chose to leave us full stop.’

Fen observed Penny bristle and though she remained motionless, Fen could detect her pull back. ‘It must seem that way,’ Penny said, a guarded hostility edging into her voice.

‘How did you do it?’ Fen asked, genuinely flummoxed, slightly incredulous. ‘I just don’t know how it is possible, what with all the hormones and the love. Christ – the love! I’ve never known such love! It’s so exquisite it’s almost painful. The emotion I feel for my partner is strong and stuff, but the emotion I feel for my child is. Is. God. It’s primal.’

‘You must be a very good mother,’ said Penny, an unidentifiable tone to her voice.

‘She is,’ Cat parried in her sister’s defence, ‘she’s amazing.’

Fen shrugged. ‘I’m all right,’ she reasoned, ‘but I’m nothing special and that’s the point. I’m just a normal mum – slightly neurotic, a bit dippy, mostly tired. But you see, I actually don’t really care about why you left – it’s irrelevant. You ran off with some cowboy from Denver, or the tube man from Vermont – the rest is history. But I’ve come here – I’ve left my baby thousands of miles away – because I would like to know how. How did you do it?’

Penny did not look discomfited and it irked Fen. In fact, it seemed her mother was thinking about these questions for the first time herself.

‘How did I do it? I guess I felt I had no option,’ Penny said at length. ‘This man was my destiny. Being a mother – glaringly – was not. A man in my situation might have doubted himself to be the real father, on account of not feeling paternal. A man in my situation might have questioned DNA, might have said Are you sure I’m the father. But I couldn’t exactly say, Are you sure I’m the mother – though actually, that’s how I felt. My body conspired against me. Babies born to the wrong person.’

The sisters were too hurt to respond.

‘Did you ever think of us?’ Pip finally spoke. ‘Did you never miss us? Did you never waiver? Or wonder?’

‘No one ever challenged me,’ Penny told them. ‘You three were never a challenge – you were, all of you, good as gold. You ate, you slept, you were never ill or fretful. You weren’t demanding, you didn’t need me. It was easy. Nicholas never tried to stop me. Derek never tried to stop me. No one begged me to stay. It didn’t seem to matter to any of you if I stayed or if I went; I wasn’t needed. I never felt I made much impact on your lives. But I changed Bob’s from the moment he set eyes on me. And that changed me. I found my calling. Does that make sense?’

‘So if we’d been colicky nocturnal babies who didn’t eat, things might have been different?’ Fen posed, thinking of her little daughter’s peculiar appetite for all things orange. She remembered how Cosima loved to lie, stomach down, over the boughs made by her mother’s arms, like a little leopard in a tree. She recalled her own pure panic when Cosima’s temperature rocketed to 104. She thought how, right at this very minute, on the other side of the ocean and the other side of the day, Cosima would be fluffy and fragrant and snuggly in her babygro, ready for bed. ‘I don’t need to feel needed,’ Fen qualified. ‘I’m a mother and by definition, that’s a sometimes thankless task.’ She paused. ‘But I don’t need to think about the level of love I have for my child. It overrides all else.’

‘The primal love you speak of – I felt too,’ Penny continued, gently insistent, ‘but I felt it for Bob. That was birth in its truest sense for me – I was born anew when he touched my soul.’

‘Oh shut up with all the Hollywood bullshit waffle,’ Pip snapped. ‘Can’t you see we haven’t come all this way to hear about Bob. We’ve come for plain, honest answers.’

Penny, visibly affronted by Pip’s vitriol, motioned to the house. ‘Won’t you come inside? Please?’

‘No!’ Pip said.

Penny sighed. It appeared her daughters had not liked her initial and most honest explanation. In fact, they hadn’t believed her. ‘It was the sixties,’ she tried. ‘I was eighteen and I popped you out, 1, 2, 3. It happened so fast, so easily. I don’t know. I don’t know. Would they call it post-natal depression these days? I don’t know.’

‘Were any of us conceived out of love?’ Cat asked. ‘Did you create any of us intentionally – or were we just the inconvenient consequences of some 1960s recklessness?’

‘Well—’

But Cat needed to continue. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘most of my friends’ parents got through the 1960s just fine, with little more than photographic evidence of a dodgy dress sense for proof.’

‘I hadn’t time,’ Penny said slowly, ‘or maybe I blocked it out. Who knows. It was such a long time ago. I was so young. So caught up in the shock of the new. I’d never been out of England, let alone on an aeroplane. I filled my every waking hour with Bob.’

‘Did you not miss us? Did you ever miss us?’ Fen challenged her but Penny’s face wore no emotion. ‘Christ – did you even think about us?’ she pressed.

Penny thought about it. ‘Occasionally,’ she said quietly, nodding.

‘And?’

‘I just occasionally thought about you.’ Her voice was quiet.

‘You do know our father died of a heart attack quite soon after you left?’ Pip declared.

‘A heart attack?’ Penny looked confused.

‘Did you ever regret it?’ Cat asked. ‘Do you have any regrets?’ She wanted to ask her if she regretted her fling with Django. But what if she quickly nodded to that too? It would be such a searing indictment of Django. And wouldn’t it mean she regretted Cat’s birth too? And wouldn’t Cat then have to live with the notion that she was never meant to be? So she said nothing. She stared at her mother, hoping to compel the woman to look straight into eyes that were just like Django’s.

Penny looked from Cat to Fen to Pip. She looked to the middle distance and her face crumpled a little as she shook her head apologetically. ‘No regrets – not as such. Though I am sorry – but I guess that doesn’t help.’ The sisters stood, staunchly unmoved. ‘How can I explain it?’ Penny flailed. ‘I don’t see it as a sacrifice because it never felt like I had a choice to make. The kids round here have an expression they use when something is glaringly obvious. And for me, back then, it was a no-brainer. Bob came along and everything made sense. Sure, on paper, my actions appear inexcusably wicked but, I don’t know, it made perfect sense to me back then. Even now. I can’t explain. I don’t expect you to understand.’

Penny took a step back. ‘If I was evil,’ she said hoarsely, ‘if I’d done wrong then surely the natural balance of the world would ensure I wasn’t entitled to a smudge of the bliss I was blessed with?’ She felt so tired. She wanted to shut the door and sit down and be on her own. ‘Perhaps not all women are cut out to be mothers. Maybe I’m just not maternal,’ Penny said, starting to close the door. ‘Perhaps there’s a flaw in my genes; something missing. But anyway, it appears you three have not inherited it. So there you go. You’re the lucky ones. Go ahead and hate me if it helps you bury your past and reclaim your lives. I guess we’re strangers, you and me. We always were.’

The three sisters stand side by side. Their mother’s door has been shut in their faces. Though their limbs are touching, they stand distinct and alone; each constricted by hermetic self-sorrow.

My mummy never loved me.

My mummy never loved me.

My mummy never loved me.

FREEDOM TRAIL

To be homeward bound the next morning seemed all that mattered. It mattered more than delaying their departure from Vermont with a last breakfast at their little diner. Instead they boarded the first bus to Boston hungry but desperate to be on their way, to turn their backs on Lester Falls and Emerson Street. To head home. But they arrived in Boston with a day to get through and even for Cat, shopping held no allure. In the end, Pip suggested they walk the Freedom Trail, not because she was particularly interested in Paul Revere and John Hancock, but because it gave them a red line to follow and she didn’t have to think. They meandered and mooched and didn’t really take in the culture or the sights. They were wasting a day but they felt there was little else they could do with it. They idled at Rowes Wharf before taking the water shuttle across to Logan airport, still managing to arrive at the airport with three hours to spare.

Penny, however, had arrived a whole two hours before that. The girls didn’t see her but she watched them, waiting until they turned away from the check-in desk, before she approached. She could hear Pip suggesting to the other two that they might as well go through passport control immediately. Penny thought to herself how easy it would be to turn away; they’d be none the wiser. Perhaps it would be for the best to go now because all of a sudden she wasn’t entirely sure what had possessed her to make the trip anyway. It wasn’t as if she had anything new to say. If she went now, she could catch the bus that would go to Lester direct. And she’d be home at just past her usual supper-time. It made sense. She didn’t like cities and she disliked airports more. She’d come on a whim anyway, and perhaps it was common sense to turn on her heels and just go. She observed Cat, Fen and Pip from behind, thought how nicely cut their hairstyles were. Pip’s neatly French-braided, Fen’s light and loose, Cat’s softly cropped. And then it struck her that, regardless of their colour being natural or not, she actually couldn’t recall the hues of their childhood locks. Cat had been practically bald when she left anyway. But had Pip always had such beautiful glints of caramel? Had Fen’s hair been spun with threads of gold from the start?

Something is catching in Penny’s throat. And whatever it is has now transferred to her eyes and charged her tear ducts. Passport control is just yards away. And if she doesn’t go now she’ll have to say something. But if she goes now, she’ll never see them again. Maybe that is for the best. They’re fumbling with their tickets and passports. If they drop something, they’ll see her. If they don’t, they’ll be gone from view in the next moment or two.

Pip is moving.

‘Wait!’ Penny cries.

The sisters turn. They turn and they stare. They weren’t expecting to see Penny Ericsson again. Not at the airport. Certainly not with tears running down her face.

‘Hi,’ she offers them, ‘hi.’ She dips her head and sobs, buries her face in her hands and half hopes that when she next looks up, these three girls will have gone.

But they’re standing here still.

‘I,’ Penny falters, ‘I took the bus.’ It doesn’t really mean much at all, but it is a short enough sentence for everyone to cope with. ‘I didn’t know which flight you were on.’ This was true. ‘British Airways!’ she marvels, as if the airline is indicative of the girls’ affluence. ‘Very nice.’

‘We’re early,’ Cat says but though she’s glanced at Pip, it seems her eldest sister has yet to find her voice.

‘Oh,’ Penny enthuses, ‘it’s so good to be early. It’s a great idea. You get the good seats, with the leg room. You get to shop and relax. Good for you. Good for you.’

‘Actually,’ Pip says, ‘we just want to be on our way. We just want to go home.’

Penny stops, a little startled. ‘I’m sure,’ she says, ‘I’m sure you do. To your families and your children.’

‘I don’t have children,’ says Cat.

‘I have a stepchild,’ says Pip, ‘he’s called Tom. He’s nearly ten years old.’

‘He’s a lucky, lucky boy,’ says Penny, with such feeling that some of it seeps over to Pip.

‘Thank you,’ Pip mumbles. ‘I feel I’m the lucky one, though.’

Penny is trembling visibly. ‘Anyway, I guess I’d better go,’ she says. ‘Just wanted to wish you a safe journey, and all.’ And she turns and starts to walk away.

‘Wait!’ Fen calls when Penny is precariously close to being beyond earshot. Penny stops and faces them again; this time they move towards her. Fen’s hand baggage feels heavy, cumbersome; reason enough to walk slowly, with stilted gait. ‘Why did you come today?’ Fen asks, busy with the straps of her bag.

Penny is swiping away tears as if they’re as irritating as midges, she’s rubbing at her nose as if something has gotten right up it. ‘Oh,’ she waves the air dismissively, ‘you know.’ But the look on Fen’s face tells her that no, she doesn’t know. Penny considers inventing a pal who works at the airport – but what a lame and crazy thing that would be to say. She falters, then she broadens her shoulders and nods emphatically. ‘I guess I just wanted to say I’m glad that you girls have had a good life.’

‘All things considered,’ Pip says bluntly, ‘yes, we have.’

‘You’ve been so well brought up,’ Penny compliments them.

‘That’ll be Django,’ Fen says pointedly, ‘on account of our father’s heart giving out not long after you’d gone.’

Penny frowns. She takes a moment, then she nods. ‘Yes, sure,’ she says, ‘his heart.’ She rocks gently on her heels, begins to talk with her hands in lieu of words. ‘I came here to find you,’ she says, her voice breaking, ‘to tell you I lied. I lied. I wanted you to know that, actually, I have thought about you. I have thought about you over the years, but in deep, dark privacy.’

Her daughters glance at each other and then regard her non-committally.

‘I was never made to be a mother and I never told Bob I was one,’ she confesses and she lets the huge fact hang, lets it resound in the departures hall; declared out loud and never to be denied. ‘I never told Bob,’ and she shook her head sadly at herself. ‘He never knew I had three daughters.’ She can see these three daughters of hers balk at this. ‘I met him when we were still living in Battersea – I’ll bet you don’t remember that house? The wallpaper on the ceiling in your room? Floral – yellowy beige? I hardly ever went beyond Battersea but I had to go to Victoria – there was a clinic there that I’d heard of, I guess now they call such places Well Woman or Family Planning. I wanted the pill. But when I got there I just couldn’t face going in. And I walked around and I was hot and upset and I went into a hotel and ordered Earl Grey tea. And Bob was there.’ She shrugs, as if it had been the simplest turn of events, as if he’d been waiting there for her all along. ‘There was Bob. That was it.’

Pip, Fen and Cat regard her. They don’t have words just now.

Penny sighs. ‘Your life is the richer for having not had me – I assure you,’ she tells them, sounding quietly defiant. ‘But my life – my life has been the poorer.’ Her voice is now hoarse, as if the honesty has taken all her energy. She takes a moment and continues brightly, bravely. ‘Look at you!’ she marvels in a whisper that is sandpaper yet silk. ‘Look at you! Such very fine women. You beautiful beautiful girls.’

I’m so proud of you. She mouths the words. So proud of you.

Again, the sisters stand side by side but in their own closed-off spaces. Penny has no voice now. She presses her fists against her heart. She opens her mouth but no sound comes out. Her lips move and her daughters can read what she says.

My beautiful, beautiful girls.

Then she shrugs and begins to back away. She raises her hand in a small, motionless wave and forces her quivering lips into a semblance of a smile while she watches as Cat cautiously raises her hand too. Fen is gazing at her, tears slicking down her cheeks. Pip’s head is downcast but she flickers her eyes up to meet her mother’s and though there’s wariness, there’s no hostility now.

Finally, Penny has to turn. She has to go. The scamper and whirl of an international airport takes her away. She goes without telling them that actually their father died of liver failure because he was a drunk – and not heart failure as they thought. It was her gift to them; to Django too. And it could also be part of her penance. She goes without telling them that she loves them, because she doesn’t think they’d believe her and she didn’t know herself until that morning when she rushed for the bus to Boston.

RED-EYE

The red-eye flights which leave the east coast of the US in the evening to arrive at the crack of UK dawn, offer a peculiar phenomenon of time travel. The flight isn’t a long one but each hour it gains, as it races to catch up with GMT, is an hour lost in the lives of those on board. All around Fen, Cat and Pip, fellow travellers were desperate to sleep, eschewing the in-flight entertainment, the meals, to busy themselves with towelling socks and eye masks and fluorescent plugs of foam which, despite moulding and compacting, soon appeared to ooze uselessly out of their ears. Seats were cranked back to the maximum but still allowed only a paltry degree of recline, and small excuses for pillows were wedged around already cricked necks. With thin, static-creating blankets offering a little privacy, but not much in the way of warmth, passengers prayed for sleep and tried not to think that beyond those curtains boastfully closed at the front of the cabin those who never flew cattle class were prostrate under cotton-covered quilts and already fast asleep.

Though there had been an exasperating two-hour delay, and though it was now midnight in Vermont, or 5 a.m. GMT, the McCabe sisters couldn’t sleep. Just then, time wasn’t one coast or the other, time wasn’t passing in minutes or hours, nor was it night or day, not even yesterday or tomorrow, in this hinterland up in the sky. In a twilight zone of sorts, life seemed suspended at 40,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. A little like the sensation of jet travel itself. Allegedly, the plane’s ground speed is over 600 miles an hour, yet everything feels quite still. It’s the same with the sound of flying; it’s a little like a dog whistle, neither noisy nor soundless but there, unmistakably, all the while.

In a dimmed cabin, illuminated sharply here and there with the overhead reading lights, the McCabe sisters sat. After thrashing around with the blanket and the pillow and the freebies that were meant to assist her flight experience, Cat now read Fen’s magazine; the eye mask propped atop her head making chaos of her hair. Pip and Fen were doing the Times quick crossword, having shared the paper and pored over every page as though it was a link with a country they’d been far from for years.

‘Makes world go round,’ Fen mulled, ‘four letters.’

‘Axis?’ Pip suggested.

‘A X I S,’ Fen spelt, somewhat unnecessarily, out loud. ‘It fits.’

But it didn’t. Because 4 down had to be ‘pompous’ on account of 13 across being ‘Israel’.

‘Shit,’ said Fen, ‘something O something something. Makes world go round.’

‘Pole?’ Pip said, her mouth busy with a Murray Mint which, along with the round tin of boiled square sweets dusty with sugary powder, was confectionery she’d never normally choose yet always bought for travel.

‘Pole,’ Fen mused, ‘yes, I see. Like North and South. Well, it fits. I’ll put it in lightly.’ Her biro scribbled out A I X and she wrote P L E in small, light, neat letters.

‘Poles don’t make the world go round,’ Cat piped up. ‘It’s gravity, isn’t it? What’s a four-letter word for gravity?’ They thought hard but had no answer.

‘Doesn’t the earth rotating have something to do with the moon?’ asked Fen ingenuously, never much of a scientist or astronomer. ‘That’s four letters, second letter O.’

‘Hang on,’ Pip challenged, ‘is there a question mark after the clue?’ Fen confirmed that there was. ‘Ah,’ said Pip, ‘then it’ll be a Funny. You know – not a straight answer.’

They pondered what could make the world go round in only four letters, second letter O, that was amusing.

‘Got it!’ said Cat. ‘Money makes the world go round! D O S H.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Pip laughed, while Fen’s biro was poised, ready to scribble out and reinsert.

‘Let’s do 17 down instead,’ said Fen, ‘and come back to it.’

A few clues later, they were still none the wiser. Something O something something. They gave up, and did a quiz in Cosmo instead: ‘Apron Strings or Fur-Lined Hand Cuffs – domestic dominatrix, or just dull?’ Maybe it was a quirk of altitude to reveal more at 40,000 feet than at ground level, but much to everyone’s surprise, it transpired Cat was the most adventurous of the lot, even by Cosmo standards.

Pip shared out her powdered sweets. ‘Love!’ she suddenly proclaimed. ‘L O V E. LOVE makes the world go round. Second letter O.’

‘Genius,’ Cat declared, ‘love makes the world go round.’

‘Love makes the world go round,’ Fen nodded, writing in the letters to complete the puzzle. ‘It would be nice if it did,’ she said thoughtfully. She looked from sister to sister and shrugged sadly.

It was probably that quirk of altitude again, of being neither here nor there in time or space; the opportunity of this strange non-Newtonian moment. ‘Do you know what I think?’ Cat said, leaning in from her window seat to regard Fen. ‘I think that you’re a bit too in love with the fantasy of being in love.’ Fen looked taken aback. ‘Remember that Shakespeare sonnet you read at my wedding? About love not changing?’

‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,’ Fen quoted softly.

‘Well, you see old Will may be a genius in some respects – all that iambic pentameter and a zillion plays – but actually, I think he was wrong with the Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds bit.’ Cat paused as if she was guilty of the most appalling blasphemy. ‘People do change and love has to change with them; it’s logical that the process of love goes through changes too, and we have to adapt.’ She stopped to give a little shrug. ‘I think you’re probably frustrated that you don’t feel that heady rush for Matt any more, that the butterflies don’t rampage around your stomach every time you look at him or he touches you. That instead of floating around the still point of the turning world you now trip over toys strewn over the floor and argue at midnight over whose turn it is to stack the dishwasher.’

Fen’s downcast eyes revealed this was obviously the case.

‘But I think you’ve misread the situation as having fallen out of love with Matt,’ Cat defined. ‘You just need to put on your glasses and read it a little more carefully. I read somewhere that being in love is just a cocktail of chemicals which course through the body for the first twelve months – natural amphetamines. Which is why the sensation is so addictive.’

Quietly, Pip wondered when her little sister had become so wise, but then she had to consider that Cat was thirty-two years old and married to Ben. And she’d lived abroad, not knowing a soul, for four years, striding out in an alien territory, finding friends and making a happy life for herself. She smiled at her fondly.

‘Matt gets on my nerves,’ Fen was admitting sadly, drawing Pip’s attention back. ‘He irritates me. In that stupid, clichéd, lid-off-the-toothpaste kind of way. I think I’ve always known that Matt is the one, but for a while, one wasn’t enough.’

‘You’re bored,’ Pip defined.

‘Our life is boring,’ Fen agreed. ‘I think I’m boring. I’m a woman of no substance. And you’re right about the dishwasher, Cat.’ It felt safe to talk, as if what was to be said would stay there, in no man’s land, in no time, sealed in a bubble of altitude. Fen looked from one palm to the other. Talking out loud verified the situation; but it made her feel both a little disloyal to Matt, yet greedy for support. ‘I’ve gone off sex with him,’ she admitted, ‘it’s so predictable. I have to shut my eyes and fantasize. But that stupid thing with Al – it wasn’t about sex, it was about me being bored and feeling hard done by because of it.’

‘I think we have too high expectations of sex,’ Pip suggested. ‘Our society is over-sexualized. Something essentially private has become so public – all those sex scandals to read about, from politicians to pop stars, emblazoned everywhere, from the red-tops to the broadsheets, from Heat magazine to Marie-Claire. What was seedy and underworld has become everyday. Sex shops on the high street. Pole dancing and Pilates sharing gym space. Porn now a middle-class pastime. Desperate Housewives. Footballers’ Wives.’ She gave a shrug. ‘It’s easy to think everyone’s having more sex, better sex, than you.’

‘Well I still fancy Ben,’ Cat confided, making it personal, ‘but I constantly fantasize. God, if I open my eyes when we’re having sex, I’m quite surprised to see him, my husband, not Johnny Depp. Or a Viking. Quite disappointed, actually.’

‘A Viking?’ Fen shrieked.

‘Sometimes I leap forward a few centuries and allow Henry the Eighth to overpower me in the maze at Hampton Court,’ Cat admitted and she was absolutely serious, ‘codpieces, serving wenches – the lot.’

‘Bloody hell, Cat!’ Pip marvelled.

‘Don’t tell Ben.’

‘So you’re advising me not to close my eyes and think of England,’ Fen mused, ‘but of Nordic pillagers and fat dead monarchs?’

‘Whatever takes your fancy,’ Cat nodded with a wink. ‘Actually, what I’m saying is you have the power to improve your sex life.’

‘Is that a quote from Cosmo?’ Pip asked. Cat stuck out her tongue. Pip raised her eyebrows and turned again to Fen. ‘And on a purely practical level, your life simply can’t be the same as it once was, not now there’s a baby added to the equation.’ Fen looked at her sharply. ‘Because you’re a perfectionist, Fen, it follows that you’re not very tolerant,’ Pip defined diplomatically. ‘I mean, in some respects it’s great to have such high standards, but in others it’s your biggest hindrance.’

Cat nodded. ‘You’re a brilliant mother and Cosima is a credit to you, but if Pip, or I, or Matt don’t dress her or feed her or play with her or put her down quite like you do, it doesn’t mean we’re doing it wrong – just differently. And your way probably is better – but that doesn’t mean we’re doing it badly—’

‘And Cosima doesn’t seem to mind,’ Pip added, ‘as long as she’s dry, fed and cuddled.’

Fen, sitting between them, momentarily felt persecuted. But she couldn’t flounce off because there wasn’t the leg room. And she couldn’t block her ears with the foamy plugs because she’d already dropped them on the floor. She’d just have to sit still and work out how to lessen her discomfort. A little shift, here and there. ‘Deep down, I know,’ she said at length. ‘Deep down I think it’s a matter of identity and how mine has changed – beyond my belief and beyond my control. An identity crisis, if you like. Suddenly, I’m a stay-at-home mum.’ She stopped abruptly and stared at the clasp on the drop-down tray. ‘I don’t think it suits me,’ she said quietly. Her sudden honesty, her clarity of her situation, surprised Cat and Pip. ‘I was never a thrustingly ambitious career woman,’ Fen said, a little wistfully, ‘but I did love work, and my role, and my world in which I excelled. God, I used to be asked to lecture at the Tate Frigging Gallery! I’ve had papers published! I have a double distinction at Masters level from the Courtauld Institute!’ She stopped abruptly. ‘How can I say all this – with such longing?’ she whispered aghast. ‘It’s a terrible insult to my little baby.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Pip said cautiously, ‘it’s about you – not Cosima. Not Matt. You only think Matt is boring because actually you find your life now a little dull in comparison to how it was. And because you perceive that to be a loaded thing to admit, so you pass the buck and shift the blame.’ Pip could see from the wince on Fen’s face that the nail had been hit square on the head. ‘But a fling is not the answer,’ she continued sternly. ‘It’ll only make you feel worse. You need a deeper embrace – and to feel it, you need to embrace what you do have.’

‘I know, I know. God, I can’t believe I tried to liven it up by fooling around with that idiot, Al,’ Fen said darkly.

‘Don’t call Al an idiot,’ Cat now joined in, ‘it’s not his fault. He didn’t know. It was about you. He was just the antithesis of Matt. That was the initial attraction for you – and ultimately, his downfall too. Thank God.’

Fen dropped her head at the weight of the truth. She nodded sadly. ‘It wasn’t so much that I felt bad about myself, more that I’ve lost sight of who I am. I wanted to feel more than just Cosima’s mother. No one looks at me any more – when I open the door to you, or Matt – whoever – you don’t even look at me; attention is focused downwards, to where Cosima is. I don’t want attention taken from her, my God she’s so amazing she’s worthy of day-long marvelling – but I feel I’ve ceased to exist beyond being her mummy. And after that, I’m Matt’s long-term partner. So where’s Fen gone?’ She stopped, as if about to physically search. ‘Can she still hold her own? I suppose that’s what I went looking for with Al. A little excitement that came not from Matt, not from Cosima. Something naughty but essentially harmless that would make me feel good.’

‘Chocolate makes you feel good,’ Pip mused, ‘but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for you.’

‘Did you know that those loved-up hormones I was talking about are the same as those released during high-risk sports and eating chocolate?’ Cat revealed. ‘That’s why it’s all so addictive.’

‘Cat,’ Pip digressed, ‘how do you know all this stuff?’

‘My husband is a doctor,’ Cat said. She grinned. ‘And I have subscriptions to Marie-Claire and Cosmo!’

‘You know how you can feel like a fat lump after a chocolate binge?’ Fen said. ‘Well, after Al, I felt like a stupid old slag.’ She looked miserable. ‘You could say I’ve totally gone off chocolate.’ She still looked miserable. ‘You could say, I’ve learnt my lesson. I’ve had my fill.’ She glanced at her sisters for approval. ‘I have learnt my lesson, you know.’

‘Why don’t you go back to work?’ Cat suggested brightly. ‘It gives you a buzz and you love it. It’s your world and you’re brilliant at it.’

‘But what sort of mother will that make me?’ Fen protested, defensive and distressed.

‘A working mum?’ Pip said. Fen shook her head vehemently. ‘Cosima is a credit to you,’ Pip said kindly. ‘That baby is a sweet, easygoing, gorgeous and secure little person. She’s not going to feel abandoned.’

‘In fact, she’ll probably love being socialized,’ Cat said. ‘She won’t notice that you’ve gone.’ But Fen’s glare said that, at 40,000 feet, this was the wrong thing to say to a woman who hadn’t seen her child for four days and five nights.

‘Maybe I just need to learn to fall in love with Matt again,’ Fen said sadly, ‘but it seems very contrived. And I’m not sure how to go about it.’

‘He’s just a little older, a little more squidgy than when you first met,’ said Cat, ‘but that’s all. It’s not just Shakespeare who got it wrong, Ali McGraw was full of crap too – all that love means never having to say you’re sorry bullshit,’ Cat said, echoing her mother’s sentiments about that film, not that she was remotely aware of this fact. ‘It’s a prerequisite of love that we do humble ourselves when we’re wrong, when we’ve been mean; that we say sorry to those we love – because often it’s those we love most who are the easiest for us to hurt. Bizarrely.’

The sisters sat and thought. ‘I tell you something,’ Fen said, ‘and I can’t believe I feel this – but I actually envy our mother a little.’ Cat and Pip looked unsettled. ‘No! Not that she buggered off and abandoned her children,’ Fen hastened. ‘I envy her the scale of the love she had. It was omnipotent. Call me a daft romantic or a deluded fantasist or whatever, but I wish I could have that.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Cat said quietly. ‘I want to detest her but I have to admit, hers is an awesome and tragic love story. And I can’t believe I can say I feel for her – but I do.’

‘She has no happy ever after,’ Pip said pensively. ‘Love is nothing without honesty,’ she continued, ‘and she never told Bob about us. Fucking hell – can you believe that? I’m still reeling from that one. She was hardly who even he thought she was. God, we all have little secrets from our partners, elements of our privacy we don’t want to reveal. But not telling him about three daughters is slightly more shameful, more loathsome, than going to base three with some studenty type.’

Fen looked at Pip with gratitude for making light of her transgression, for placing it far down the scale of iniquity in comparison to their mother. ‘You didn’t buy anything for Tom, did you?’ she changed the subject.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ said Pip.

‘Buy something from the airline mag,’ said Cat, leafing through it.

‘No,’ said Pip, ‘no – I mean I don’t know what to do. With Zac.’

Cat looked horrified and Fen looked dumbstruck. Their sister looked distraught.

‘We’re at the most almighty impasse,’ she told them, ‘and to be honest I’m starting to worry that we won’t get through it.’

‘What’s happened?’ Cat gasped.

‘What’s happened?’ Fen asked Pip tenderly, her hand on her sister’s arm.

‘He doesn’t want children – and I do,’ Pip shrugged.

‘You want children? Since when?’ Fen asked, stunned.

‘A few months,’ Pip said. ‘It surprised me too. I don’t know if it’s the tock of my biological clock, or a surge of hormones, but yes, absolutely, I want a child.’ She paused. ‘But Zac just laughs at me and says, No you don’t.’

Fen was astonished. ‘Zac?’

‘Oh, and I found out, on Friday, that June has had the baby.’

‘While we were here – there?’ Cat asked. ‘Why didn’t you say? Wow that’s wonderful!’

‘In theory, yes,’ said Pip, ‘but it’s killing me.’

‘What did she have?’ asked Fen.

‘A boy,’ Pip said, ‘seven pounds something. Nathan. A baby brother for lucky, lucky Tom. And yet I feel hollow – hungry – all I can think is it should have been me.’ She stopped. ‘I want a family. I’m in my mid-thirties. I have to ask myself, why does Zac not want one with me?’

‘Why doesn’t he?’ Cat asked. ‘What does he say?’

‘Say?’ said Pip.

‘About not wanting to have a family with you?’ Fen asked.

‘When I say I want a baby he just laughs and says no I don’t,’ Pip said.

‘But when you’ve asked him, specifically, why he doesn’t want a family with you,’ Cat paraphrased, ‘what on earth are his reasons?’

Pip stopped. ‘I haven’t exactly asked him that – in so many words, precisely.’

Fen and Cat looked at each other. ‘Why not?’

Pip thought about it. ‘He’ll just laugh it off.’

‘That’s what you think,’ Cat said, glancing from one sister to the other. ‘Bloody hell you two, after a lifetime of taking your advice and respecting your pretty astute theories, can I now just tell you both to practise what you bloody preach? You have an aversion to confrontation, Pip – that’s why you always immerse yourself in being the Great Looker-Afterer – because if you busy yourself helping others with their problems, you needn’t consider your own. But you have to confront Zac – he’s your husband after all. It’s your duty.’

It felt odd yet strangely comforting to Pip to be told what to do, especially by her little sister. ‘I’m worried he’ll say no,’ Pip admitted, ‘and then I’ll be stuck, with no options. Because I do want children.’

‘With Zac?’ Fen asked.

‘Ideally,’ said Pip.

‘Breakfast!’ the air hostess announced.

‘Breakfast?’ the girls were disorientated.

‘We’ll be landing in an hour and a half,’ the hostess said helpfully. ‘Lovely tail wind.’

‘I can’t believe we’ve talked this entire flight,’ Fen bemoaned, wondering how a bread roll could be so cold without actually being frozen. ‘I ought to have slept. I’ll be useless in a few hours.’

‘Well, we have Bob Ericsson’s Melatonin, remember,’ Pip said, unable to spread the pebble-hard pat of butter. ‘It’s in my hand luggage.’

‘What did you get from the USA?’ Cat jested, putting on an accent. ‘Oh just some jet-lag pills from my absentee mother’s late husband.’

‘She doesn’t have a happy-ever-after,’ Fen said. ‘Amor did not vincit omnia for Penny.’

‘So let’s make sure it does for us,’ said Cat, with a nudge.

The reality was that the sisters didn’t actually know or remember the grown-ups as they were thirty years ago. The muddle was of their making and ultimately one of them had run away, two had died and one had kept huge secrets because he thought it was the right thing to do for the girls themselves.

The cabin lights are on, the window blinds are up, the day blazes outside the jet windows. It is morning, unmistakably. Britain will be off to work. Their mother will be sound asleep. Django will be making porridge. Matt will be kissing Cosima and rushing out the door. Zac will be telling Tom to get a move on. Ben will be oversleeping because there is no alarm clock as good as Cat.

They are back on terra firma, on home ground, in the here and now, and they must go their separate ways.

‘Everyone will want to know everything,’ Cat rues, ‘but I don’t really feel like revealing much. It feels private.’ She turns to Pip. ‘But what if Django asks?’

‘Direct question, direct answer,’ Pip shrugs, ‘but it may be prudent to be economical with details.’

‘I wonder if his results are through,’ Fen says. ‘No one’s said anything to us on the phone.’

‘It’s been a mad, extraordinary time, of late,’ says Cat.

‘It’s been life-changing,’ Fen qualifies.

‘Everything will be fine,’ Pip tells them.

And they believe her.

‘Everything will be fine,’ Pip says again.

‘Will it?’ Fen asks her. ‘Will I?’

‘Django too?’ asked Cat. ‘And you?’

The McCabe line-up is back on its more usual footing.

‘Everything,’ said Pip. ‘We’ll all be fine.’

RETURN OF THE NATIVES

Fen adored Matt’s mother, Susan Holden; a sparky yet maternal woman, energetic and independent but also warm and calm, who had been widowed before Fen met her. She was perhaps the only person from whom Fen was happy to take advice on child-rearing; but Susan also seemed only ever charmed by Fen’s zealous love of Cosima. Fen never had any criticism of Susan’s techniques – they were as good as her own. Almost. Susan instinctively unfurled the frill from the elasticated legs of the disposable nappies and Fen felt no need to double-check this, as she still did when anyone else changed her baby. Susan knew exactly how long to immerse a bottle in a Pyrex jug of boiling water and though the temperature of the milk was always spot on, still she verified it with a dab to her wrist. She wouldn’t dream of saying, Why don’t you get a microwave, it takes six seconds to warm a bottle. Susan never said ‘Shh!’ to the baby – a sound Fen herself could not abide – but used the more soothing hush and coo to far greater and more expedient effect. And if she watched her son, sweetly cack-handed, feed the baby yoghurt with the wrong kind of spoon and no wipes to hand, she’d throw Fen a conniving look which said Men! Aren’t they useless, the silly sods! She was unstinting in her praise for Fen. But there again, Susan had always longed for a daughter. Now she had a granddaughter too. She felt that, between her and Django, Cosima would have a colourful yet balanced experience of grandparenting. And she liked the way that Fen ensured every weekend in Derbyshire was balanced with a weekend in Gloucestershire with her. Susan thus appreciated how important it was that Fen’s homecoming was just right. The house was spotless and so was Cosima and when Fen came in, Susan diplomatically disappeared to boil the kettle, allowing Fen and Cosima to reunite in utter privacy.

‘She missed you,’ Susan stressed to Fen, who had eventually appeared in the kitchen clinging to her baby almost as much as the infant snuggled against her. ‘She missed you very much. You could tell. She didn’t pine – she was happy enough – but look how happy she is to have you home.’

Fen’s eyes were wet and her heart swelled. ‘Has everything been OK? Did she eat OK? Sleep through? Nappies nice and regular? Afternoon naps?’

‘Everything like clockwork,’ Susan assured her. ‘Look, I jotted down a little résumé of each day so you can catch up on all the intricacies.’

‘You are a brick, Susan,’ Fen said sincerely.

‘Now there’s a term I haven’t heard for a while,’ Susan laughed.

‘It’s a Django-ism,’ Fen said. ‘Is there any news, do you know? Results?’

‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ said Susan.

‘Any day now,’ said Fen solemnly.

‘Well, you’re all going to Derbyshire this weekend, aren’t you?’ said Susan.

‘Cosima’s first birthday,’ Fen smiled. ‘Are you sure you can’t change your Ladies’ Guild thing and be with us?’

‘I can’t, my dear,’ Susan apologized. ‘Normally I wouldn’t think twice – only it’s our annual dinner and it is for charity. And I can’t be doing with being the butt of consternation or gossip – not at my age, and not in a village as small as mine.’

‘OK,’ said Fen. ‘Perhaps we’ll come to you the following weekend, then?’

‘Lovely. I think all women should be entitled to prolong their birthday celebrations – I’m glad to see you’re priming Cosima already,’ Susan said.

Suddenly Fen realized she had no idea when her mother’s birthday was. Nor was she sure of her precise age. And she felt she’d really quite like to know the day, that she ought to know the day – not to send cards, but just so that she could acknowledge, at some point, Today is my mother’s birthday. Just so she’d be able to say with authority, My mother is fifty-something.

‘And how was Cosima’s other grandmother?’ Susan was asking, astutely casual.

Momentarily, Fen was confused. But Susan was quite right; on paper Cosima had two grandmothers, on paper Penny was a mother and a grandmother. ‘She was –’ Fen paused. What was she exactly, this Penny Ericsson? ‘She was – there,’ Fen said thoughtfully and Susan sensed this was information enough at this juncture.

‘Matt missed you,’ Susan told her.

Fen felt her face being scanned for a response. ‘He probably didn’t notice me gone,’ she said and she was surprised to hear by her tone that she alluded more to her own inconsequence, than any derogation towards Matt.

‘Oh, he did,’ Susan assured her. ‘I think it did him good.’

Fen pressed her lips against Cosima’s fat cheeks. ‘I missed him,’ she said quietly. ‘It did me good too. I can’t wait to see him.’

‘If you can stay awake,’ Susan remarked. ‘Go and have a power nap – just an hour or two of restorative oblivion. Cosima can take me to feed the ducks.’

‘Are you sure?’ Fen asked.

‘Of course I’m sure,’ Susan said. ‘She’s no trouble at all. She’s an absolute pleasure to look after.’

‘Thank you,’ said Fen.

‘Say, See you later, Mummy. Say, Sweet dreams,’ Susan cooed on Cosima’s behalf.

‘See you later, little baby,’ Fen said, with a little wave. Then she turned and went upstairs to bed with her share of the Melatonin.

Pip felt slightly insulted by Tom’s clothes, strewn around her home in the most unlikely of places. She wondered if she’d been deluded or just unreasonable to hope that her husband and her stepson might at least have tidied the place for her return, even if a bunch of flowers or just a welcome-home note were beyond their imagination. She loaded the washing machine, checked the fridge and wrote a shopping list, made the bed and tidied wet towels from the bathroom floor. If she went to Sainsbury’s now, the washing would be ready to hang out by the time she was home. She could then put another load in and take a quick nap before collecting Tom from school. Was Tom staying over that night too? Was June back home now? She could phone Zac and enquire. There again, she could phone June. Or she could just ask Tom when she saw him. But Pip’s mind was too befuddled by travel and tiredness to make a decision. And anyway, she didn’t need to know just yet.

In the supermarket, perusing the aisles a little absent-mindedly, a peculiar selection of items in her trolley, Pip stopped and stared. It struck her that there was an almost charming paradox about condoms being placed next to home ovulation kits, pregnancy tests sharing shelf space with tampons, KY jelly and cracked-nipple balm tube by tube. It brought to Pip’s mind those adverts for pregnancy tests – they never showed the result on the dipstick that was causing the beautiful couple to hug each other in such joy. Were they pleased it was a false alarm after an unprotected shag? Or were they celebrating the outcome of careful planning for a family? She picked up the ovulation kit and wondered, very privately, about buying it, about getting to know her biorhythms and her hormonal peaks and troughs. But she put the pack back hurriedly and rushed away from the section, as if her not lingering a moment longer could somehow banish the thought of tricking Zac and absolve her of momentary, improper intent.

As June lived in Swiss Cottage, just a stone’s throw from Sainsbury’s at the 0₂ Centre, and as Pip didn’t feel quite so tired any more, she decided that she might as well take a circuitous route home.

June’s mother answered the door. ‘Pip – how lovely. Is Tom with you?’

‘No – he’s still at school,’ Pip told her, suddenly wondering if her timing was off kilter. She checked her watch. Almost 2 o’clock proper time, as Cat would say. ‘I’ve just been to Sainsbury’s. Just thought I’d pop by. Just got off the plane, actually.’

June’s mother smiled benevolently. ‘They’re sleeping,’ she apologized. ‘I don’t want to wake them – but June will be so sorry to have missed you. You will come in later, won’t you, when you bring Tom back?’

‘Of course,’ Pip said, not quite knowing if she was disappointed not to be having Tom at her place that night, or whether she was apprehensive about having Zac to herself. ‘Can’t wait.’

‘He’s absolutely gorgeous, the little mite,’ June’s mother said proudly.

Pip drove back with tears streaming down her face. ‘It’s just jet lag,’ she berated herself.

She hadn’t seen the note but once she sat down with a cup of tea having put away the shopping, hung out the washing and put the next load in, she found it pride of place on the coffee table.

Welcome home, Mrs.

Would you mind doing the school run – and taking Tom back to June & Rob’s?

See you later. Sainsbury’s delivering 5–7pm.

I’ll cook.

Missed you.

Z xx

Pip sipped her tea and traced the marks of Zac’s kisses. And then suddenly she was waking with a start and thinking Christ almighty, I zonked out for two hours and I’m going to be late for Tom.

‘He blows bubbles, my baby brother,’ Tom tells her.

‘Is he gorgeous?’

‘He has yellow runny poo,’ Tom marvels.

‘How’s your mum?’

‘She says she has udders,’ Tom reveals, ‘and there’s a milking machine she’s borrowed from the hospital. No one is allowed in the room when it’s on.’

‘It’s so exciting for you all,’ Pip says, glancing in the rear-view mirror at Tom who is gazing proudly out of the window with a great big grin on his face.

‘My baby doesn’t half burp,’ Tom says.

The first thing Pip thought was that June looked as tired, as disoriented, as she felt. The second thing Pip thought was that baby Nathan Oliver was more tiny, more perfect than she could possibly have imagined. Just then he appeared to be the most beautiful newborn baby in the world.

‘Do you want a cuddle?’ June asked her.

Pip smiled and put her arms around her.

‘Not with me, you daft cow, with the baby!’ June laughed.

Pip cradled Nathan. She remembered this feel from Cosima – that the bundle could be so tiny and yet feel so heavy, so full of life, so enormously and wondrously and terrifyingly precious. She brushed her lips along the crown of the baby’s head, the feel of peach fuzz hair mingling with the incomparable fragrance of a newborn accosting all five of her senses at once. She looked at June, her smile spreading. ‘He’s absolutely gorgeous,’ she said.

‘Hug him some more,’ June said. ‘I’m sure I told you there’s some tribe somewhere that hug each other’s babies the whole time – apparently it increases fertility like you wouldn’t believe.’

Pip thought about ovulation kits; about surreptitious enhancement of fertility. But this wasn’t the same. Zac would expect her to be cuddling the baby. After all, he’d probably already cuddled Nathan too.

June nudged her. ‘Seen Zac yet?’

Pip shook her head.

‘Here,’ said June, ‘have another cuddle with Nathan before you go.’

There were two messages on the home phone when Cat arrived back. One was from Ben, saying he’d left a message on her mobile too, to say he’d forgotten about a talk he was to give to a local hockey team and he’d be back late. The other was from her assistant manager at Dovidels, apologizing profusely, knowing she’d be jet lagged, but they were short staffed and Lorna Craven was visiting the store and was there any chance Cat could come in. She phoned both back and told them not to worry, she’d see them later.

Lorna Craven was high up in head office but subscribed to a hands-on approach across all the stores and was popular with the staff because of it.

‘They tell me you’re just back from the US?’ she said to Cat, having praised her for the commendable figures last month.

‘That’s right,’ Cat said, ‘family business. I took it as holiday, though. And I don’t have any other plans for time off for the foreseeable future.’

‘Everyone needs a break,’ Lorna reassured her, ‘though family business can seldom be classified as a holiday.’

Cat raised her eyebrow in agreement.

‘I thought your family were in the North somewhere?’ Lorna commented.

‘They are,’ Cat said. She paused. ‘They are.’ It was on the tip of her tongue. She could bite it back, or she could let it tumble. ‘My mother lives in Vermont now,’ she said, surprising herself how easy that had been.

‘I see,’ said Lorna. She tipped her head and regarded Cat. ‘You’re doing a great job here, well done.’

‘Thanks!’ beamed Cat.

‘We’re opening a store in Sheffield – at Meadowhall – do you know it?’

‘Of course I know Meadowhall,’ Cat laughed. ‘I grew up in Chesterfield – Meadowhall was the closest thing to paradise and teenage bankruptcy for me and my sisters.’

Lorna laughed. ‘Do you still have family in Chesterfield?’

‘Yes,’ Cat said, ‘I do.’ And for the first time she wondered how to refer to Django. Everyone who’d ever known her knew him simply as Django; he’d needed no further clarification. But Lorna didn’t know anything about Cat, really. ‘Our father lives there,’ Cat told her because it felt right and sounded good and, in essence if not on paper, Django would always be as much Fen and Pip’s father as her own.

‘You wouldn’t have plans to move back to the area, would you?’ Lorna asked and before Cat could say, God no, my sights are set on Tufnell Park, Lorna added, ‘Because I would give serious consideration to you running the Meadowhall store. It’s going to be our flagship. Coffee shop, events hot spot – the lot.’

Cat stood and stared. She wondered if she’d heard right or whether jet lag was now playing tricks on her. She wondered, for one ghastly moment, whether the foam ear plugs were still protruding like fluorescent slugs, from her ears.

‘Think about it!’ Lorna said cheerily. ‘Now let’s go through the next month’s forecast. Then you ought to go home – you must be exhausted.’

‘My mother gave us some Melatonin,’ Cat said, clicking the computer into action.

FEN MCCABE AND MATT HOLDEN

If only Matt and Fen could have known each was as apprehensive about their reunion as the other. If only they could have been privy to the information that they both had tampered with the parameters of fidelity but regretted it deeply. And then have such information magically erased from their memories. It is easy to forgive, not so easy to forget. But in some ways, to live with the guilt, to stomach it and suffer it, to learn from it, guards against further transgression. They’d had five days and five nights apart, they’d been separated by a seven-hour flight and several time zones, but in their souls it now felt that they’d made it across a sea far darker and more inclement to be back home together again.

‘Welcome back, cowgirl.’

‘Howdy, partner.’

What on earth possessed me? each thought as they kissed hullo and hugged that it was good to see you. What on earth possessed me to turn away from the love of my life?

In their eyes, each other was staggeringly incomparable to the dalliances of their momentarily misplaced desire. What on earth possessed me? I won’t be doing that again. Christ, I almost lost my mate.

‘You need to keep her awake,’ Susan said. ‘She needs to stay up until her proper bedtime or her sleep pattern will be disrupted for days.’

‘It is her proper bedtime,’ Fen said. ‘I was just boiling the kettle to warm her bottle.’

‘I wasn’t talking about Cosima,’ Susan said, ‘I was talking about you. And I was talking, actually, to Matt.’ She turned to her son. ‘Take Fen out for a nice spicy curry. I’ll babysit.’ Both Fen and Matt sensed that his mother was choreographing the situation, that she had some innate sense that they needed a little time and space to slot back in together, that she sensed their separation had lasted longer than five days and five nights. To be a mother is to be granted a sixth sense. To be a good mother is to use that gift wisely. To use that gift wisely is to have the child’s best interests at heart, however old the child. As Fen gave Cosima her bedtime bottle, she thought that perhaps her mother hadn’t been granted that sixth sense. As she said goodnight to her dozy baby, she wondered whether her own mother had simply been not a very good one. As she put on a little make-up to mask the jet lag, she wondered if, in fact, her own mother did have a sixth sense and had somehow known intuitively that her daughters’ best interests did not feature her. Maybe she had been a good mother in that respect. But spiralling theories could not produce definitive answers and, actually, it didn’t really matter. It didn’t matter at all, really, any more. Because Fen knew that her own little family was in the safest of hands.

Fen slips her hand into Matt’s as they meander back home. Usually, a curry means heads down and eat. Tonight, though, they ate only at opportune pauses in the conversation.

‘Can you believe our little girl is going to be one year old?’ Matt marvels.

‘I hope we have Django’s results by then,’ Fen says. ‘Then it can be a double celebration.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Matt says. ‘I wonder if he’ll want to know all about your trip. All in all, was it a good trip, Fen?’

‘It was,’ she says. ‘I feel I have answers now, whether or not they were given directly.’

‘Do you think you’ll see her again?’ he asks. ‘Keep in touch even?’

‘I don’t know,’ Fen thinks about it, ‘I don’t know. At the moment, I can’t answer that. I’m still not quite sure what I feel or what I want. We all reacted so differently. I think Cat, ultimately, probably accepted her more. Pip, though, still feels pretty raw. And me? I don’t know, Matt. I feel a bit indifferent.’

Matt nods thoughtfully.

She takes her hand from his and puts it around his waist, slowing her pace. ‘I think what the trip did for me was finely tune my desire to provide the best for my own little family. For Cosima,’ she stops. ‘For you, Matt.’

He kisses her forehead. ‘That’s nice to hear,’ he said.

She hangs her head. ‘I haven’t been very nice, have I? For a while.’ Her voice quiet but audible.

Matt is about to protest, but he decides not to. ‘I don’t think I have either,’ he says instead. ‘I didn’t know it was going to be so tough – so baffling.’

‘And I didn’t know it was going to be so all-consuming, so exhausting,’ Fen says.

Matt gives her pony-tail a gentle tug. ‘We’d be pretty daft if we were to let the best thing that’s happened to us – as individuals – cause discord for us as a couple. It’s not about choosing the one we love, it’s about then loving the one we’ve chosen.’

Fen nods. ‘You’re so right.’

‘We’re publishing an article to tie in with the Picasso/Braque exhibition,’ Matt says. ‘It’s a good piece. One thing struck me so deeply – Braque said it about Picasso.’

‘He said, “We were like two mountaineers, roped together” – that’s what you’re going to say!’ Fen interrupts.

Matt looks at her, impressed. Then his expression softens and he regards her more quizzically. ‘That’s us, Fen,’ he says, ‘you and me. We’re in this together. There’s nothing we can’t surmount. As for the view from the top – I only ever want to share it with you.’

‘I was starting to fall,’ Fen’s voice wavers, ‘I was dragging you down with me.’ She turns to Matt and folds her arms around him. ‘I’m so sorry. But it was never my heart that grew cold – just my feet. For an unfathomable moment.’

‘Me too,’ he says to the top of her head, ‘me too.’

There they stand, locked in an embrace in the middle of the pavement blocking the way like a couple of teenagers. Passers-by must drop down from the kerb to pass them, but they can’t help but smile as they do so. Fen and Matt make a lovely sight.

They walk on, holding hands and swinging their arms, feeling so much lighter for love flowing between them. Fen stops. Matt turns to face her. She looks upset. ‘How do you feel about me perhaps going back to work?’ she asks.

Matt regards the lines and the squares of the pavement and the furrows of Fen’s brow. ‘I think it might be a really good idea,’ he says measuredly. ‘Not because of the money,’ he hastens, ‘but for you. Cosima will be fine, you know.’

‘I know that now,’ Fen tells him, ‘but more importantly, I now know I’ll be fine too.’

‘Course you will,’ Matt encourages her. ‘You’ll be more than fine.’

‘I suppose until quite recently – well, until right now – I still felt that we’re umbilically attached. My little girl and I. You could say it’s actually been me with the separation anxieties, not the baby.’

‘Yes, that’s a very valid point,’ says Matt sweetly, ‘but don’t misinterpret your maternal qualities, Fen. Don’t do yourself a disservice.’

‘I would like to go back to work,’ Fen says, ‘for me. I suppose I romanticized the image of me as a full-time mum. But actually, I think I need to work.’

‘I think you’d be a happier bunny for it,’ says Matt, ‘and anyway, you couldn’t be a better mummy. Do it for you.’

Fen’s eyes are downcast. ‘Have I been awful?’ she asks him.

‘Not awful,’ he says, ‘not really.’

‘Not really?’ Fen pursues. ‘Or not really awful?’

Matt laughs and pokes her. ‘Not really awful,’ he clarifies and kisses her on the forehead.

‘Becoming a mother has been so monumental. I’m different now from the woman who didn’t have a child.’ She pauses. She looks at Matt intently. The father of her child – beautiful man. ‘I’m worried. Am I as nice as that carefree girl you fell in love with?’

He tips his head and regards her quizzically. ‘I see only the girl I am in love with,’ he says. ‘I have eyes only for you.’ He kisses her tenderly and Fen’s eyes close in gratitude and relief and happiness. ‘Come on,’ he says, slipping his hand into the back pocket of her jeans, giving her bottom a friendly and affectionate squeeze, ‘let’s go home.’

‘I was thinking of asking Pip if she’d look after Cosima on the days I go to work,’ Fen says.

Matt thinks about it. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘The occasional day now and then is one thing – but she has her life too.’

‘But she loves babies.’

‘So she might then have her own, soon enough.’

Fen glances at him, wonders whether to confide but decides she should honour her sister and moves away from the topic.

‘Perhaps you could ask around the other mums,’ Matt says, ‘nanny-shares and the like?’

Fen considers this. ‘I will,’ she says. ‘Good idea.’

Fen is wide awake at three in the morning. She lies in bed, aware of Matt sleeping peacefully beside her. She spoons up against him. The smell of him, the feel of him, so familiar.

I suppose, for a while, stupidly, I saw monogamy – and domesticity – as suffocating my ability to fly and be colourful and carefree. I feared it would sap me of my individuality. But the truth is I’m not carefree, I have huge responsibilities and commitments and whereas momentarily I wanted to shirk them, actually I want to embrace them, venerate them – and never abuse them again. Life is too short, families are too fragile. You are my One. Crappy pop songs and bad poetry hail love to mean two become one. But look at what you and I did, look what our love did – we two became three.

‘Matt?’ He doesn’t wake. He smells so nice. He feels so good. Fen’s arm is around him, it’s as if he’s sitting on her lap and it’s nice to have him there. ‘I’m sorry.’ She thinks about why she is so sorry. ‘I probably gave you leave to doubt my love for you,’ she says. She nustles against his hair. She kisses the back of his neck. ‘Madness,’ she says. ‘I love you.’

Matt continues to pretend to be asleep.

PIP AND ZAC HOLMES

Pip was apprehensive about seeing Zac. It had taken her sisters to make her see that she’d need to broach the subject because her husband didn’t realize the enormity of it for her. However, he was running late and she was starting to feel very tired and rather emotional. She had been taken aback by how hard she found it to take her leave of Tom at his mother’s house. It had been a lonely drive back up Fitzjohn’s Avenue and once she was home how she craved the happy distraction of Tom rambling on about the personal hygiene of his teachers, the vomtasticness of school dinners and the outrage of so much homework. There was nothing to do. No one to talk to. Just an awful lot to think about. Pip was immensely fond of June and she’d loved cradling baby Nathan but just now she deeply resented June the apparently effortless perfection of her family and she loathed herself for feeling this. She was appalled that she should think June had more than her fair share.

Zac’s dilemma was whether to wake his wife or let her sleep. He stood and looked at her, curled up on the sofa, the remote control tucked under her chin, her lips parted and slightly squashed by the conked-out angle in which she’d fallen asleep. She looked young, childlike almost; peaceful. Perhaps he should leave her be. But he knew her theory on jet-lag management and, though she might be temporarily grumpy with him in her grogginess, he reckoned she’d ultimately thank him for waking her. He tried as gently as he could, by tucking her hair behind her ear, by laying his hand on her shoulder and giving it a little shake. Then he whispered her name and gave her buttock a friendly tap. But still she slept. He decided to start cooking but not even wafts of garlic or the clatter of pans roused her. He watched a little television, laying her bare feet in his lap and lightly fiddling with her toes, but she didn’t stir. So, with the supper simmering and the wife slumbering, he cranked up his laptop and did a little work.

‘Something’s burning!’ are Pip’s first words to him.

‘Fuck!’ is his back to her.

The pan is such a mess and Zac looks such a hungry, sorry sight, that Pip can’t help but laugh a little.

‘I’m starving!’ he protests. ‘I can’t believe I find spreadsheets so fascinating to the exclusion of everything else including my house burning down. I’m a sad fuck,’ he rues. He peers in the pan. ‘A hungry sad fuck.’

‘No, you’re not,’ says Pip, about to surprise herself, ‘you’re lovely.’

Zac is quite startled by this; he’s become quite used to Pip guarding the affectionate, demonstrative side of her nature. ‘Thank you,’ he says, coming back through to the sitting area. ‘You’re not too bad yourself.’

They look at each other, waiting to see who will smile first, who will talk next.

Pip does both. ‘We had a mad trip,’ she says, ‘but it was a good thing to do – though it didn’t feel as such when we were in the thick of it.’

‘What’s she like?’ Zac asks. ‘And would you like me to refer to her as your mother or by her name?’

‘Let’s call her Penny,’ Pip says.

‘What’s Penny like?’ Zac asks.

‘She’s all right,’ Pip says. ‘I sort of wanted her to be evil incarnate, but she’s not. She’s not actually a bad person. I can now allow her that fact.’

‘That’s good,’ Zac says, ‘that’s closure, I suppose.’

‘Actually, it feels like the opposite,’ Pip says, ‘which is why I still feel so unnerved, I suppose. There’s an opening now. I don’t know how much contact we’ll have. But she really is at the end of the phone or just a plane journey away. I can put a face to her. I will see her again – I don’t know when. But there will be a time. And I don’t think I mind.’

‘That’s very noble,’ Zac says, with genuine admiration that flatters Pip.

‘More importantly, is there any news of Django?’ Pip asks.

‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ Zac says, ‘but we’re up there this weekend, aren’t we – for Cosima’s birthday? Talking of news and birthdays – did you get my text, about the baby?’

‘I did,’ Pip says, ‘thanks.’

‘He’s adorable,’ Zac says.

‘I know,’ says Pip, ‘I saw him this afternoon – when I took Tom back.’

‘Oh,’ says Zac, following it with a little awkward nodding.

‘Yes,’ says Pip, busy with her lips, glancing all around her.

‘He’s adorable,’ Zac repeats, ‘isn’t he?’

‘Absolutely adorable,’ Pip says, ‘and Tom is made up.’

‘Isn’t he just,’ says Zac.

Go on, Pip! Go on! The scene is primed for a heart-to-heart. You’re calm and Zac seems amenable. Say something!

But Pip is now flipping through the Evening Standard and she can’t see that Zac is staring at her, hoping to catch her eye. ‘Nothing on the box,’ she says, having spent an inordinate amount of time scouring the TV listings.

‘And nothing to eat,’ says Zac.

‘What shall we do?’ Pip asks, happy for Zac to suggest a takeaway and a DVD.

‘We could get a takeaway, watch a DVD,’ he says.

‘OK,’ Pip responds.

‘Or,’ Zac says, sitting on the edge of the coffee table and cupping her face in his hands, ‘or we could just go to bed and make a baby.’

Pip’s immediate reaction is that it can’t possibly be as easy as this. Surely the wrought confrontation she’s been planning, dreading, needs to be played-out. There needs to be some level of workshopping, surely, at the very least. Angst. Tears. Proclamations. Soul-baring. Heart-beating. A fight. Should she say, Are you sure? Should she say, You don’t really mean it, what’s changed your mind? I thought you thought I was joking? But you said your family is complete with Tom? You’re just saying this to keep me happy/keep me quiet?

But luckily for Zac, and ultimately for Pip too, she’s a bit too zonked by all the travel and the enormity of the last few days to decide which sentence to deliver. So, she just sits and gawps and Zac swells more at this sight than when she sat and gawped at the Tiffany box with the platinum-set princess-cut engagement ring four years ago.

‘Have you gone all broody on me?’ she asks wryly.

‘Yes, I suppose I have,’ Zac nods. ‘I want a baby with you.’

‘No you don’t,’ Pip says, trying not to grin, but Zac knows she’s teasing him.

‘Yes I bloody do,’ he tells her.

‘Was it hugging little Nathan?’ Pip asks.

‘Oh God, June’s been on at you with her tribal fertility theories,’ Zac laughs. ‘To be honest, while you’ve been away, I just had a long think about it all.’

‘Zac,’ Pip whispers, her hand on his cheek, loving him so much.

‘I wish I’d realized you were serious earlier,’ Zac says. ‘We’ve missed out on a lot of mating opportunity.’

CAT AND BEN YORK

Cat was watching ER when Ben arrived home. She wasn’t so much watching it, as staring at the television with a slightly glazed expression.

‘You’re still up,’ he remarked. ‘Aren’t you knackered?’

‘Is Melatonin safe?’ Cat asked him.

‘Yes – it’s just not licensed here,’ Ben told her, ‘though I’d argue it’s better for you than Temazapan or Valium. Did you buy some in the States?’

‘Penny gave us Bob’s,’ Cat told him.

‘Penny gave you Bob’s?’ Ben repeats, raising an eyebrow. ‘Did she give you anything else? Say – an explanation for why she buggered off with the cowboy in the first place?’

‘He wasn’t a cowboy,’ Cat said, ‘he was the king of plastic tubing. And she did, actually – she did give an explanation of sorts. She wasn’t nearly as scary as I expected. Just sad, really.’

‘Do you mind if we switch this off?’ Ben said, glancing at the television. ‘It’s too much like work – but my hospital is not nearly as exciting and my staff are nowhere near as good-looking. I find it a bit depressing.’

Cat laughed. And then bit her lip and tipped her head to her shoulder which Ben knew to herald a request of some sort.

‘What is it?’ he teased. ‘What do you want? Oh Christ – how much did you put on the credit card?’

‘Nothing,’ Cat protested, ‘it doesn’t matter. Nothing.’

‘Nothing on the credit card?’ Ben was aghast. ‘You?’

Cat nodded. ‘Honestly,’ she told him earnestly, ‘we didn’t shop, we didn’t have time.’

‘So what were you going to say?’ Ben probed.

Cat thought about it. And then she reckoned that it was such an unexpected and probably daft, impractical and altogether bizarre thought, that she’d be wise to say no more. It was probably just the jet lag speaking anyway. Or Lorna Craven.

‘How are you, babe?’ he asked her. ‘So it was a good trip to make?’

‘Yes, it was,’ she said. ‘I feel a lot more settled. The trip quashed the drama, the mystique. I used to think it was something to fear, to be ashamed of, to run from and yet, I suppose, to be slave to as well. But actually, I had nothing to do with anything. It’s just a bit of a sad story, really, but it’s a story in which I now realize I actually played no part.’

‘I’m so pleased for you,’ Ben said tenderly.

‘Pip seemed to have the hardest time, but there again, she’s always taken on the role as mother so I suppose meeting the real one was a little like coming face to face with her nemesis,’ Cat said thoughtfully. ‘I had a bit of a hissy fit on one day but after that passed I felt a lot more rational. Fen came out with some cracking one-liners – becoming a mother has made her so much more powerful than she gives herself credit for.’

‘Do you think she looks like you?’ Ben asked.

‘I can see Pip in her,’ said Cat, ‘or her in Pip.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, I have Django’s eyes, remember. Is there any news, Ben, with his tests?’

Ben shook his head. ‘I’m sure there will be by the weekend, though. We’ll all be there together.’

Cat was pensive. ‘Ben. It’s just.’ She floundered for words. ‘I don’t want to know – if it’s bad, the news. I’ve thought about it. My feelings for Django are so fragile, so new, so promising. I don’t want that to be taken away. I’ve only recently found him. I can’t cope with even the thought that I won’t have him for ever. It sounds pompous but this trip to the States, it was about my identity. Not just mine – my sisters’ too. But I see myself for who I am – a young woman with my life ahead of me. I want to live it to the full. I want happy times to outweigh sad times. Those around me – my mother, my father – there’s been such sadness and weird stuff. I sort of feel sorry for Penny, for my mother. The time I spend with Django I want to be happy, quality time. Does that sound naive? Does that sound deluded? I don’t want dark clouds looming when I’m with him, I want only sunshine.’

Ben took a moment and then nodded. ‘I understand,’ he said, ‘but you know he wants me to know all the details, the facts and the figures?’ Cat nodded and shrugged. ‘I respect your wishes. And I respect his.’

‘Thank you, Ben,’ she said. ‘It’s funny – my family is certainly unconventional. But it’s such a relief to finally feel that I don’t come from bad stock or from damaged genes.’

‘So if there are no hereditary implications,’ Ben said, ‘are you ready to make babies?’

Cat laughed. ‘Dr York, is that as good as your bedside manner gets?’

‘OK,’ Ben said, ‘OK. But I’m actually serious here. You can’t deny male broodiness. It exists. It’s medically proven. I should know. I’m the frigging doctor – and a broody one. Would you like to have a baby? With me?’

Cat didn’t laugh, but she did smile at her husband. ‘A family is a very nice idea,’ she announced, which was good news to her as well as to Ben, ‘but can we wait a year or two? I only want to have a family with you – but I’d like a year or two to get my career under way first.’

Ben considered this quietly. ‘I won’t tamper with your pill, then, not for the next year or so,’ he said, with a theatrical sigh. She kissed his chin, his lips. ‘Now go to bed,’ he told her. ‘You look absolutely washed out.’

At 3.15 the following morning, the three McCabe sisters are wide awake. When Matt perceives Fen to have finished her declarations, he pretends to wake from a deep sleep and finds her very keen to seal her words with slow and exquisite love-making. Zac and Pip substitute the familiarity of rampant sex for the fascinating business of procreation and fall asleep in each other’s arms, sticky but hopeful.

In Clapham, Cat lies in bed, awake, and thinks about sex. Sex, she thinks, is about more than just making babies. It’s about happiness. About communication on a higher level than language. It’s about love.

It’s about lust!

She turns on her side and gazes at her husband sleeping. She feels horny. She touches his lip lightly with her fingertip and he gruffles and turns away from her. The sweep of his beautiful back. Slowly she takes her lips to the gentle slope of his shoulder-blade and presses against it. Then she licks her lips and takes her mouth to his skin again. She runs her hand along his arm, his muscles, his strength. She finds his hand, his fingers are sleep soft but she feels along the length of each one. She takes her hand back up to his chest, strokes him and hovers her hand lightly over the little smattering of hair he has there. Carefully, she feels down his stomach. Then along his thigh, as low as she can reach. Does she want him to wake? She’s not sure. She’s enjoying having him all to herself. She kisses his neck and flicks her tongue over the soft bud of his ear lobe. She feels his arm again, his chest. Down to his stomach. His fingers – still limp. And she takes her hand down lower. And finds his cock straining and erect. Fascinating, she thinks to herself, it has a life of its own. Women often chide a man for thinking with his cock – but I rather think a man’s cock thinks for him.

She encircles his penis and tugs it gently. Still Ben sleeps soundly. She goes beneath the covers and very carefully takes the entire length of him in her mouth. She doesn’t know whether to feel a little insulted that not even a surprise blow-job can rouse him. Though he is certainly aroused. She comes back up and spoons against him, her hand loosely around his erection. She lies there, in the stillness and the silence, loving him.

‘Is that it?’ Ben suddenly says.

And now he’s turning onto his back and plugging her mouth with his tongue before she can say, You sod, you were awake the whole time. His hands are everywhere. He pinches her nipple lustily and she gasps. He burrows between the lips of her sex to find her oozing with expectation and desire for him. He fingers her, nudges at her hardening clitoris and she moans and she could come there and then but suddenly his hand is away and he’s brought it up to her mouth where her tongue and his lick her juice from his fingers.

‘I am going to fuck your brains out now,’ Ben murmurs and Cat is too turned on to answer him back, to use her voice for anything other than panting. Hot and sweaty, they giggle and grunt their way through a rude shag.

TO THE BONE

After Ben’s phone call at lunch-time, Matt and Zac spent the rest of the day saying ‘Shit’ and ‘Fuck’ at regular intervals until it was time to meet at the Mariners.

‘Glorious day,’ the landlord enthused.

‘Was it?’ Matt remarked, realizing he’d taken no notice of the weather, no notice of much else at all.

‘It’s a shit day,’ Zac sighed as they took their pints and awaited Ben, ‘just awful.’

Ben arrived soon after, draining his pint to quench his thirst and prepare his voice.

‘As you know, Django has requested that I am fully briefed by his doctors,’ he started, ‘and today we have been told that the grade of cancer in Django’s prostate is high: 8–10 and the stage of the cancer is T4. It’s not good. There’s secondary cancer in the bone – as was feared. It is anticipated that it will spread to the lymph nodes too.’ He rubbed the bridge of his nose and winced audibly. ‘It’s not good. Not good at all. We have nothing we hoped for – nothing that we told him, or the girls, to stay positive for.’

‘No treatment?’ Zac asked.

‘There is treatment,’ Ben said, ‘but no cure. He’ll be offered radiotherapy – as a palliative treatment. It’s very effective at alleviating symptoms like pain, especially in the bone. There’s some discussion of hormone therapy – reducing his testosterone levels can slow down the growth of cancer cells and can even shrink the tumour and minimize the spread but they need to know more about the spread of the cancer to decide whether treatment is viable.’

‘More tests?’ Zac said.

‘Scans, mainly,’ Ben explained. ‘They could operate and remove all or part of the testicles – but I doubt they’d do that for Django considering his age and the stage and grade. Then there are drugs given as injections or pellets under the skin of the abdomen, or as liquid injected into the muscle every month or so. Or there are hormone therapy drugs in tablet form.’

‘Those sound better,’ Matt said. ‘He’ll find a way to integrate them into some recipe or other.’

Ben smiled only briefly. ‘There are awful side effects,’ he said. ‘Sexual impotence, loss of desire, hot flushes, weight gain, tiredness. Even breast swelling and tenderness.’

‘Christ almighty,’ Zac said angrily, ‘if the poor bugger hasn’t suffered enough indignity, enough worry and enough discomfort already.’

Matt spread his hands on the table. ‘Look, whatever treatment he goes for, this thing is going to kill him – is that what you’re saying?’

‘In a hard, hard nutshell, yes,’ Ben sighed.

‘Django McCabe has terminal cancer,’ Matt said, to make quite sure he had the facts. ‘And there’s nothing that can be done apart from alleviate the symptoms? How the hell am I going to tell Fen?’

‘It’s for Django to,’ Ben said, ‘though I know for a fact that Cat won’t want to know specifics. Will Fen? Will Pip?’

‘You know Pip,’ Zac said softly.

‘Look,’ Ben said, ‘when we go up tomorrow, we’ll see how he’s taking it and perhaps we, as a family, can gauge how to proceed.’

HARD FACTS AND WHITE LIES

Fen had bought a book for Cosima’s first birthday. She’d bought her many other gifts too, predictably, but she felt the book was the central present. She bought it because she liked it though it was arguably beyond the intellect of a one-year-old. Even for a bona fide art historian with a double distinction from the Courtauld Institute, the illustrations were beautiful and accomplished: exquisitely gentle, unwhimsical and somewhat melancholy. Coupled with this, Fen found the tale simultaneously heart-rending yet uplifting – the lonely little beaver who thinks the echo of his own crying is the sorrow of another and sets off across the great lake to see, befriending a clutch of other lonely souls en route. Something about the book struck a chord with Fen and she made Matt read it, cover to cover, who said, Very nice, dear, and returned to his issue of GQ.

There was something of the little beaver in each of the McCabe sisters; something of the echo in those who loved them.

When you are sad, the Echo is sad … When you are happy the Echo is happy too.

Thus, when they tumbled out of their convoy on a clammy Saturday morning in July, and bounded over to Django like excitable puppies, what could the man do but allow his depleted cells to become bolstered by their happiness.

‘Do they know?’ Django asked Ben, out of earshot of the others.

‘We haven’t told them yet,’ Ben said.

‘But you have told the menfolk, like I asked?’

‘Yes,’ said Ben, ‘I did. Everything is your call, Django. We’re here for you. Here to help.’

Django thought about it. ‘Let’s see how things progress. There’s a birthday to celebrate. And tales from their trip to be heard. And why would I want to risk losing their laughter, those expansive smiles, all this happy love by imparting gory details and gloom?’

‘How are you feeling?’ Ben asked.

‘No worse. No better. A little tired, perhaps – but I do find this heat rather enervating. I ache and I creak and I wake up on the dot of 5.15 each morning.’ Django paused, then he slapped Ben on the shoulder. ‘But other than that, not too bad for a cancerous old septuagenarian. Now come along. I’ve made Pimm’s. I had no mint but there was parsley in the garden so I’ve used that instead. Let’s gather the troops.’

Quite conversationally, after the hors d’oeuvres and whilst serving the main course, Django dished out details of his illness whilst spooning out the fisherman’s pie which also had kidney beans added for their gorgeous colour, plus a little chicken for extra protein. ‘Good news, the radiotherapy will put paid to the aches and pains. Potatoes, Cat? It’s just a bit of a bugger about the other bit – but as Ben said, it’s quite possible to live a normal life, to enjoy just as long an innings, in spite of it.’

The McCabe sisters looked from Django to Ben. Ben read the situation in an instant: he knew that Django was tinkering with the truth just as he tinkered with recipes – all the essential items were used, but in quantities Django had decided were best, with one or two added ingredients to make the flavour uniquely his own. Django’s way with cancer was going to be like his way with food. Django would justify to himself that it was a little like jazz, a collection of notes to make into a scale for which he had the freedom, the right, to tinker with the emphasis and the order.

But though the girls had an ear for jazz, medical information was clangorous to their ears. They didn’t quite understand what they were hearing, nor whether they should turn to Ben or Django for further information.

‘Do you have the results?’ Pip asked.

‘When did they come?’ asked Fen.

Cat said nothing. She couldn’t. Her heart pounded in her throat. Don’t let him have results yet. I don’t want facts. I just want to have hope.

Django peered at the potatoes, as if making his selection required utter concentration. He spooned them onto his plate, added a dollop of HP Sauce, motioned to Matt to replenish his glass with Pimm’s and then he turned to the girls as if he’d forgotten what they’d asked. ‘Oh,’ he said vaguely, ‘that they can treat my old bones with radiotherapy which will very much help with the discomfort I sometimes experience.’

‘Has it spread?’ Pip asked. ‘Is it not just prostate cancer – is it in your bones too?’

‘It’s spread a little,’ Django said.

‘What’s the buggery bit – about the prostate?’ Pip persisted.

‘The buggery bit about the prostate?’ Django said, as if trying to recall. ‘Oh – that. Yes, my prostate’s in a sorry state. But it’s a bit like your appendix. Or the Monarchy. Not really needed.’

‘Can they treat it?’ Pip urged.

‘As Ben said,’ Django said diplomatically, with the swiftest of conniving glances to the doctor, ‘sometimes it’s not worth it – the treatments and the side effects are worse than the symptoms of the cancer. And the cancer mightn’t impinge on my lifespan anyway. Now come on, Fen, Cat – you haven’t touched your celeriac. I mashed it with cottage cheese, the pineapple-y variety – is it not nice?’

Ben follows Django through to the kitchen, under the pretext of carrying the pile of plates and empty bowls, all of which have been scraped pleasingly clean. Django is rummaging in cupboards and drawers, muttering. Ben puts his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

‘Yes, yes,’ Django says, a little irritated. ‘Ah, here are the little sods.’ He brandishes the jar of morello cherries.

‘OK,’ says Ben. But his hand is staying put. ‘You sure?’

Django thinks about this. ‘I’m choosing not to use the word terminal. When the girls are sad, I am sad. When they worry, I worry. More importantly, when they are happy, I am happy. And however long I do have, I may as well have a gay old time of it.’ He pauses, tips his head and regards Ben. Echoing the affection of his son-in-law, Django places his hand on Ben’s shoulder. ‘But thank you, Ben,’ he says. ‘The girls – they all seem different. Not just happy and effervescent and back to their old selves – but as if they are proud to be in new selves too. It must have been a good trip to the States. It must have been a good thing to do. It would be most fitting if good is what ultimately comes out of it all. My lot screwed it up – but Cat, Fen and Pip are ironing out the creases very nicely. Could you fetch the ice cream from the freezer?’

But before Ben can do this, Django puts his hand on his shoulder again. ‘Ben – have I in some way contributed to my condition? I don’t mean to sound bonkers or melodramatic but if health is not just about what we put into our bodies but what we do with them, if health is a state of mind—’ He trails off to clatter around the cutlery drawer. ‘Just deserts,’ he murmurs.

‘Teaspoons will do fine,’ Ben says helpfully.

‘No – not desserts,’ Django smiles. ‘I’m wondering whether my deeds and my actions have somehow contributed to my downfall.’

Ben puts the ice cream down on the counter firmly. ‘Django,’ he says, ‘cancer is cancer. It’s an insidious, revolting affliction. It’s rogue cells. Bastard things. They have no conscience. They certainly don’t differentiate between victims. There’s no proof that reprobates are struck down more than the virtuous. And my God you have far more bloody virtues than you have sodding faults. There’s nothing you could or could not have done. It’s not your fault. It’s just fucking bad luck, Django.’

Django’s eyes are tear stung. ‘You do swear a lot,’ he tells Ben with a fond cuff to his ear.

Cosima spent her first birthday picnicking in the grounds of Chatsworth House. Her father and her Uncle Zac spent her first birthday urging her to walk.

‘Her knees are too fat,’ Ben laughed warmly. ‘Look at them – they look like scones. And look at those rolls of flesh around her thighs. A mini sumo wrestler!’

‘Fuck off, Ben!’ Fen protested, firing cornichons at him.

‘Language, Fenella,’ said Django.

‘I’m teasing,’ Ben said. ‘She’s glorious. Absolutely glorious. She’s a credit to you. Skinny babies don’t bear thinking about.’

‘Talking of babies,’ Django said, ‘how is Tom – what news of his little brother?’

‘He’s so gorgeous!’ Pip drooled, her accent becoming alarmingly like Tweetie Pie. ‘His weeny teeny toes!’

Django flung Zac a very obvious look of sympathy.

‘Pip is currently stuffing herself with alkaline foods and God knows what because she’s decided she wants a girl.’ Zac paused. ‘I’d quite like a girl too,’ he said wryly. ‘I wonder if cousins warrant a discount from South Hampstead High School for Girls.’

‘But we haven’t put Cosima’s name down!’ said Fen, after a pregnant pause and a jubilant wink to Pip.

‘Are you trying for a family?’ Django’s eyes danced from Pip to Zac.

‘Absolutely,’ Zac told him and the pleasure which crisscrossed Django’s face was priceless.

All eyes, with eyebrows raised, were suddenly volleying between Cat and Ben. Ben just grinned but Cat lobbed asunder whatever foodstuffs were still on her plate.

‘Leave me alone!’ she protested, sticking out her tongue. ‘I’m younger than you lot! I assure you Ben and I will pop them out – when we’re ready. But I want to give my career a chance, I really do.’

‘I’m hoping to go back to work,’ Fen announced casually, plucking at grass while a flickering across her face belied an immediate need for approval, ‘in the autumn, perhaps.’

‘That’s wonderful!’ Pip said.

‘Good for you,’ said Cat.

‘Part-time,’ Fen quantified.

‘Well done darling,’ Django said, ‘it’ll suit you.’

‘I know,’ Fen said, ‘I see that. So keep your ears open for a good nanny, everyone.’

‘I’ll ask June,’ said Zac.

‘Someone at work is bound to know,’ Cat told her.

‘I could always help out in the interim,’ Pip offered.

‘Thanks,’ said Fen, having a surreptitious glance from palm to palm, ‘thanks, you lot.’

‘Hey – did you know they’re opening the flagship branch of Dovidels at Meadowhall?’ Cat said to no one in particular. ‘Lorna Craven from head office told me.’

‘Meadowhall, hey,’ Django said. ‘I remember when Meadowhall was just that – all fields.’

‘Django!’ Pip and Fen groaned.

Ben observed his wife looking pensive and with an awkward blush.

‘Excellent hospitals in and around Sheffield. And the outlying area,’ Ben said casually, to no one in particular.

‘It’s weird, isn’t it,’ Zac says to Ben and Matt, sharing more Pimm’s, this time with courgette in lieu of cucumber, ‘it’s a fucking awful time, really, shit news, horrible things to come – but it’s been a blazing weekend. Really happy. All of us.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Matt concurs. ‘This will probably sound trite but I just want to say, Aren’t families great.’

Ben chinks glasses with them. ‘It’s been a good weekend,’ he agrees, ‘but more than a weekend. I don’t know – it feels like we’re approaching this truly privileged time. Many families aren’t granted this – loved ones are taken suddenly, violently, by cars or heart failure. Or worse. But we have hindsight before the event has happened – we know from the tragedy of others not to let this man go before we say goodbye. That he’ll never wonder how much he was loved. That we – the girls – his friends – will never rue not saying all there was to be said. Managed well – and advances in medicine mean it can be managed well – Django can have a good death. When that time comes.’

‘When will it come, Ben?’ Zac asks.

‘Level with us,’ says Matt.

‘I don’t know,’ Ben says. ‘I’m not just saying this – truly, I don’t know. I don’t think it will be a sudden, steep deterioration. But the process has started. We’ll have to see. He’ll make this Christmas,’ he pauses sadly, ‘but perhaps not the following one. There’s a general reluctance to specify possible time remaining, because it can only sound like a death sentence – when you’ll die, instead of how much life you can still live.’ Ben pauses. ‘I think Django’s take on it is robust – and I think he’s kept our girls firmly in his heart by plying them with ambiguity.’

‘You don’t feel we’re pulling the wool over their eyes?’ Matt wonders.

Ben shakes his head. ‘No, I think we follow Django’s lead.’

‘Pip will read up on it,’ Zac says. ‘If she wants to – can she speak to you?’

Ben nods. ‘It seems what Django wants them to know is that though there’s no cure, it’s quite possible to live a normal lifespan in spite of it.’

‘I tell you,’ says Zac, ‘if ever a man will truly live until he dies, it’ll be Django McCabe.’

‘Hear, hear,’ says Ben.

‘To Django McCabe,’ Matt toasts. ‘Long may he live.’ And they chink their mugs of Pimm’s together.

SUNDAE

‘Maybe I’ll just sell the house and move to a nice condo in Florida. Somewhere near Marcia’s place. Buy new things. Have a yard sale before I go. Give you away for free,’ Penny Ericsson says to her late husband’s chair. She crosses to the mantelpiece, but instead of looking at the photos, she raises her eyebrow at her reflection in the mirror.

‘Or maybe I’ll just stop talking to myself, stop it with the pie-in-the-sky planning and just go into town and do my grocery shopping.’

It was the hottest July on record. It was a day for ice cream. It was the day that Penny felt able to return to Fountains ice-cream parlour. Juliette welcomed her as if she’d only been in the day before.

‘Hey Penny,’ she said, ‘take a seat. I’ll be right there.’

Penny perused the menu. There were new additions but she fancied old favourites. ‘I’ll have a scoop of Banudge-nudge, a scoop of Chippy Chippy Bang Bang and a scoop of Fudge Fantasia.’ She stopped, not because she was deliberating over toppings, but because she was suddenly thinking of Derek McCabe and his imaginative take on food.

‘Excellent choice,’ Juliette said. ‘Toppings?’

‘Hot chocolate,’ said Penny, ‘and Lucky Charms.’

‘Coming right up.’

Penny sat and gazed down the street, the heat haze wavering the vista.

Juliette returned soon, presenting the sundae with a triumphant smile. ‘Enjoy!’

‘Thank you, my dear,’ Penny said. She paused. ‘It’s nice to see you again, you look very well.’ She unfurled the long-handled spoon from the paper napkin and toyed with the ooze of toppings.

She was aware that Juliette was about to speak. ‘I’m getting married!’ Juliette announced.

Penny looked up. ‘That is just so nice,’ she said with genuine warmth. ‘Congratulations, my dear.’

Juliette took this as an invitation to sit down and tell Penny all about the proposal and to sketch out her ideas for frocks on the paper napkin. Meanwhile, Penny made headway into her ice cream, feeling obliged to take small, polite mouthfuls though it was so delicious she wanted to wolf it down. She’d started doing that at home, on her own. Sometimes, when she was very hungry, she’d scoff directly from the tub or container or foil tray. Sometimes, her supper was so hot, she’d have to stand there with her mouth agape, fanning her hand at the food scalding her tongue. Occasionally she’d even given out a great appreciative burp. She had no audience, after all. Now that her appetite had returned, she realized how hungry she had been feeling.

‘Last time I saw you,’ Juliette said, ‘I wasn’t engaged.’

‘That’s lovely,’ said Penny, thinking that Chippy Chippy Bang Bang was possibly the closest thing to ambrosia she’d ever tasted.

‘You were with the three girls,’ Juliette continued.

Penny stopped mid-mouthful, a glob of ice cream electrifying her sensitive gums.

‘Were they your daughters?’ Juliette asked shyly.

Penny waited, using her tongue energetically to calm the flare from her teeth. She nodded. ‘Yes, they were my girls.’

Juliette beamed. ‘How neat that they came over.’ She touched Penny’s forearm. ‘Did you talk it all through? Did you make amends? All that crap about you being a bad mother,’ Juliette chided gently. ‘I knew you were nice. I told you so.’

‘You’re very sweet,’ Penny said, feeling very uncomfortable.

‘Bet your phone bill is mighty big, what with all those long-distance calls,’ Juliette laughed.

It occurred to Penny that she didn’t have any contact numbers for her daughters. She did have Django’s number. But actually, was there any point in phoning him? And if she did find out her daughters’ numbers, whom would she phone first? More to the point, what would she say? What would they say? Reluctantly, she had to admit to herself that she’d already said everything, really, that day at Logan airport. And she knew that she’d relinquished any right to contact when she’d left them all those years ago. It was quite possible that she would never see them again.

MOVING ON

Ben glanced at Cat who was spooning through her cornflakes as if searching for a more tasty one elsewhere in the bowl.

‘Are you OK?’ he asked.

‘Hmm?’ She looked up. ‘Pardon?’

‘Are you OK?’ Ben repeated. ‘You seem miles away.’

‘Oh, I’m fine,’ said Cat, ‘just thinking about work and Django and Django and work.’

Ben gave Cat a kiss and headed for the door. He paused and returned to her.

‘Pinch, punch,’ he said, doing precisely that. ‘August 1st?’

‘Oh,’ said Cat, rubbing her arm. ‘Ouch.’

‘You’re meant to give me a slap and a kick for being so quick,’ Ben told her, ‘or at the very least, a poke in the eye for being so sly.’

‘Ben,’ said Cat, who did usually biff and bash him on the first of each month, ‘do you think someone ought to be with Django when he has his first radiotherapy next week?’

‘Well, what does he say?’ Ben asked though he knew what Django had said, having spoken to him about precisely that the day before.

‘He says no,’ said Cat.

‘Let’s go up a couple of days after that, at the weekend,’ Ben said. ‘We’ll probably be of more practical use to him then.’

Cat brightened.

‘The sales will be on at Meadowhall,’ Ben told her, with a wink.

Ben thought about it again all that day. And the next. And he thought about it intermittently throughout the following week, even talked to colleagues and superiors, all of whom listened intently. He thought about it as he drove up to Derbyshire, two days after Django’s first session of palliative radiotherapy. But it was only when Cat dragged him around Meadowhall that he knew he had thought about it thoroughly and enough.

All angles. Pros and cons. For and against. On the one hand, and on the other. He’d considered everything to arrive at an informed decision about which he was more than content, he was actually fairly excited.

He’d choose his moment.

‘This is where Dovidels’ flagship store is going to be,’ Cat told him as she tried to peer through some unremarkable boarding.

This was his moment.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Ben, peering through the gap as well, ‘about leaving St John’s.’

Cat looked at him, alarmed. ‘Why?’

‘Because I fancy a change—’ Ben started.

‘A change? But what would you do? You’re a doctor – you’re a specialist!’ Cat exclaimed, aghast.

‘A change of scene,’ Ben said. ‘Same job – well almost – different hospital.’

‘But why?’ she pressed. ‘You like St John’s, don’t you? The department? The staff? Your colleagues?’

‘I do,’ Ben said, ‘but an interesting opportunity has been put my way to do something similar elsewhere.’

‘Where?’

‘Sheffield.’

‘Sheffield?’

Ben shrugged. ‘Makes sense,’ he said, ‘in terms of my career. But of course, you have to feel happy with it.’

‘It makes perfect sense in my career too!’ Cat enthused artlessly. ‘Lorna Craven from head office as good as offered me this very store as my own.’ And she began to pat the boarding affectionately. ‘Best of all, we could be nearer to Django,’ she declared, ‘nearer home.’

‘You won’t hanker after Tufnell Park, then?’ Ben teased her.

‘I tell you something, Dr York, we can multiply our Tufnell Park pounds by three round these parts.’ Cat took a step back, crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes, as if envisaging what the Dovidels shop front could look like. ‘What a coincidence,’ she marvelled guilelessly, ‘how very serendipitous.’

Not really, thought Ben, for whom Cat had long been an open book. And his best ever, all-time favourite read at that.

CHRISTMAS

‘Bugger the brandy butter,’ Django said as his family gathered around on Christmas Eve. ‘This year we’re having good old tomato ketchup with everything.’

Tom wrinkled his nose in delight at the deliciously revolting thought of ketchup and Christmas pud or, better still, ice cream and ketchup.

‘Did you forget the Bisto?’ Pip asked.

‘Bugger the Bisto!’ Django declared. ‘When did you ever, ever, know me not to make my gravy from scratch. Bisto, she says, Bisto!’

‘She has a thing about Bisto,’ Tom said darkly. ‘It’s a mad pregnant-woman thing.’

‘She makes it up in a mug and drinks it like tea,’ Zac colluded with his son, ‘by the gallon.’

‘It’s just a craving,’ Pip shrugged, ‘it’s only natural.’

‘She even drinks it at breakfast,’ Tom said, with a lively repertoire of throwing-up faces for emphasis. ‘That’s so not natural.’

‘Anyway, I’ve brought my own Bisto,’ Pip told them, ‘so what’s with the ketchup, Django?’

‘Lycopene!’ Django announced. ‘A wonderful antioxidant to be found in the humble tomato but the potency, the bioavailability increases when cooked. So, it’s out with the HP and in with the ketchup – I have it with everything now. Ben, I read that Lycopene is twice as potent as the better-known anti-cancer betacarotenes, and one hundred per cent more bioavailable.’

‘It sounds about right,’ Ben confirmed.

‘Ketchup it is then,’ Django declared.

‘Will ketchup make you better then, Django Gramps?’ asked Tom.

Django gave the boy a smile and ruffled his hair. ‘It makes me feel better,’ he told him, employing the gentle ambiguity which his friends and his family had come to respect as his right over the last few months.

‘Can I help?’ Cat asked. ‘Anything I can do? Squirt the ketchup, or something?’

‘Everything bubbles and simmers,’ Django told her. ‘Everyone relax and enjoy. Christmas is coming and the family is here. Supper will be in an hour or so. Don’t chew that, Cosima – it’s very old. Django Gramps found it in Alaska. In 1965.’

‘I’m lucky, aren’t I?’ Tom announces to Pip who has brought him up a glass of water and a torch, at bedtime.

‘Are you? In what way?’

‘Some people – actually, what I mean is some children – have rubbish families. Like Tom B in my class – he’s having a divorce. And Alex doesn’t see his dad at all, hardly, now he lives not in London with a new baby.’

Pip tips her head to one side. ‘We are lucky, aren’t we?’ she says warmly.

‘But isn’t it strange, then, that here’s you and your sisters with that mum who ran away with the cowboy, and here’s me with two lots of dads and mums – but we’re all the happiest bunch I’ve ever known in my whole life.’ Pip smiles and Tom welcomes her ruffling of his hair. ‘Because did you know something? Ed’s parents have done a divorce too and Ed told me that they try and out-present each other. At first I thought, Wow cool. But then he was really upset and actually told me he hates it. He even hates the stuff they buy him, he says. Can you believe that? Even hates his bike.’ Pip makes sure she looks suitably stunned. ‘Ed says all those gifts are like bribes. He said they’re called guilt-trips. He says “Can’t buy me love”.’

‘That’s a song,’ Pip tells him, ‘do you know it? It’s by the Beatles.’

‘The Beatles are cool,’ Tom tells her, ‘everyone knows that.’

‘Did you know Django actually worked with them for a short while?’

‘No way!’ Tom exclaims.

‘Yes way,’ Pip laughs, ‘you can ask him all about it tomorrow.’ She kisses him. ‘Night night, Tomtom.’

‘Night, Pippity.’

Pip hovers in the doorway. ‘If I said “I love you” would you squirm and puke?’

Tom takes a moment. ‘Nah. You can say it, if you like.’

‘I love you,’ says Pip.

‘And I “el” you,’ says Tom.

Fen snuggled up to Matt later that night. She knew if he kissed her forehead and then kissed the bridge of her nose immediately after, he was feeling horny. If he kissed her forehead twice in succession, he was tired. If he kissed it once, and kissed nowhere else, there was something on his mind. Two kisses it was: one to her forehead and one to the bridge of her nose.

‘Wait!’ she giggled a whisper and slipped out of bed, tiptoeing from the room which, in an old creaky house like that on Farleymoor, was a pointless exercise really, laughably futile actually. Matt grinned in the dark. What on earth was she up to? He was full – dear God don’t let her be raiding the fridge for whipping cream. Or ketchup. Fen returned and padded back to the bed. She ripped back the quilt and straddled Matt, his hands on her hips as he attempted to lever her into position.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ she chided, twisting her body away from him. The room was extremely dark, there was no moon, no street lamps, no night lights. ‘Merry Christmas, big boy,’ Fen whispered coyly and Matt could feel something caressing his balls, tickling up and down the shaft of his cock. His pelvis rocked in response to his desire. What was it? A feather? Some as yet unidentifiable foodstuff? Something from under the Christmas tree?

‘Ouch!’ That didn’t feel so nice, it felt as though his prick had been pronged, something scratching his balls. ‘What the fuck is that?’ he asked.

‘Mistletoe, silly,’ Fen giggled, ‘it’s Christmas.’

‘How do you feel?’ Zac asked Pip, who was sitting bolt upright in bed, staring straight ahead, while he wrapped Tom’s presents on the end of the bed.

‘A bit indigestiony,’ Pip admitted.

‘Nothing that a nice mug of Bisto couldn’t cure?’ Zac asked. ‘Would you like me to make you a mug? I have to go downstairs to nibble the biscuits Tom left for Father Christmas.’

‘Oh Zac, would you?’ Pip said gratefully. ‘You won’t mind it stinking the room out?’

‘How can I mind,’ Zac said, ‘when Santa’s bought me a Rolex Oyster?’

‘But Santa hasn’t bought you a Rolex Oyster,’ Pip told him sadly.

‘I’m teasing,’ Zac said. ‘I don’t believe in Santa. But do you think you could make your next craving camomile tea or something?’

Pip sipped her gravy and Zac wrapped presents. Pip marvelled how someone so precise with figures and percentages could make such a hash of papering a parcel. ‘Zac,’ she said, ‘fold in, fold in, turn up. Here, hold my gravy, I’ll do it.’

‘Can you believe this time next year a little person will be celebrating Christmas with us?’ Zac mused.

Pip smiled. And then she felt very sad. ‘I pray that we’ll all be here, all of us.’

Zac took her hand. ‘He looks well, I thought. No different to when we were here a month ago.’

‘He seems tired, though, don’t you think?’

‘Christmas is a tiring business,’ Zac levelled, ‘when you’re making it for a big family. He seems very happy, to me.’

Tom and Cosima were sharing Cat’s old bedroom. Cat and Ben weren’t staying at the house at Farleymoor. They now had their own little house in Darley Dale, just twenty minutes away. But they would be back in time for breakfast with the family the next morning.

‘Funny isn’t it?’ Cat says, jolting Ben from the verge of slumber.

‘Hysterical,’ he murmurs sleepily, hoping if he agrees she’ll say no more and let him drift off to sleep.

‘What’s hysterical?’ Cat asks and with all the movement on the mattress and rearrangement of the duvet, Ben can sense she’s propped herself up and is staring hard at the back of his head.

He rolls onto his back with a sigh. Then he turns towards her. ‘Are you about to put the light on?’

‘Yes,’ says Cat, doing just that. ‘What’s hysterical?’

‘What’s funny?’ Ben counters.

Cat is diverted. ‘Oh. I just meant it’s funny how everyone is up at the house, and you and I are snuggled up here. Yet this – more than any place I’ve ever known – this is home. This is my home.’

Ben wonders why this is funny. But he swiftly decides not to ask.

‘It’s also funny how I thought I had everything meticulously planned – and this time last year Darley Dale was way off my map,’ Cat says, beguilingly incredulous. ‘Isn’t it funny how a year of chaos can actually organize itself into the life that’s right? Totally be beyond one’s control.’ She pauses and then smiles, her eyes closing with the surge of emotion. ‘I love this place,’ Cat enthuses. ‘I love this place, Ben. I know it’s higgledy-piggledy and the water is sometimes brown and there’s that damp problem in the sitting-room and you clonk your head on the beam in the hallway and this bedroom is barely big enough to take our bed – but I love this place passionately. I can’t believe anyone other than us has ever lived here. It’s our home.’

‘I don’t mind that beam,’ Ben says, ‘and we do have a preposterously large bed.’

‘It’s about full circles, I suppose,’ Cat muses, hovering the palm of her hand lightly over the surface of his cropped, silver-flecked hair to get that velvety feel. ‘Because you see it’s only now that I know I could never have settled here – less than five miles from my childhood home – unless I’d done the London thing as a single girl and then had a stint out in Colorado as a newly-wed and then returned to the UK all blasé about what was best for us. And the whole time I was destined to be here. It’s here that I feel my most centred.’

Ben smiles at her. ‘Welcome home,’ he says lovingly.

‘I suppose it’s a similar thing with Django,’ Cat muses, to herself as much as to her husband. ‘I couldn’t love him as unconditionally as I do now – had I not had that dreadful period of absolutely loathing him.’

Ben is pleased finally to have the opportunity to elaborate. He’s waited for this opening since the day after Django’s party. ‘And perhaps you couldn’t have come this far in accepting the woman on your birth certificate had you not gone out to find her, stood right there in her territory and felt OK about her and, most importantly, felt good about yourself,’ Ben says. ‘Our parents do define us. And if we like ourselves, then it means that they’re not so bad after all.’

Cat is thoughtful. ‘You’re so wise,’ she says and she gazes at him with dreamy affection.

‘And hunky,’ Ben adds with a frown.

Cat biffs him with a pillow. She wriggles back down and settles her head into her pillow with a tired, happy sigh. ‘Merry Christmas, Dr York,’ she says and she touches his cheek.

‘Merry Christmas, babe,’ he says.

‘Boys,’ Django said late morning after the mountain of ripped wrapping paper and redundant packaging had been cleared away, the presents stacked into individual piles at well-spaced positions around the room, ‘why don’t you go for a blow-through. The girls are going to help me with the lunch. Cosima, you can be an honorary boy.’

‘Turtle,’ Cosima cooed, which had been her first word and remained her favourite.

‘You can be an honorary turtle then, poppet,’ Django said. ‘Tom, you can lead the expedition. You can take my gnarled old cane – no, not that one. That one is from Selfridges. The other one – it was given to me when I was trekking in Tibet. If anyone can unearth its mystical powers, it’s you.’

They stood on the flagstone doorstep, Django and his girls, and waved the party on their way; Tom stomping off at a good pace, the men following behind, Cosima sitting proud on her Uncle Zac’s shoulders while Ben picked up one pink welly and Matt the other.

‘Shall I lay the table?’ Pip said.

‘I usually do that,’ said Fen.

‘We’ll do the table later, I need you three in the kitchen with me.’

They are in the kitchen, humming to a CD of Christmas carols that Fen bought from the motorway services. There is food on every available surface, including the window sill and the top of the fridge, and the Times Atlas of the World is lain across an opened drawer to provide another surface still.

‘Now I want you to know, that the thing to remember about parsnips is they’re plain. They even look plain. If you enliven something plain, you forget it was plain in the first place. Like Plain Jane at school – pop a lovely hair band on her et voilà.’ The girls give each other their secret he’s-nuts look that they’ve honed over the years to being all but imperceptible to anyone else. ‘And so it is with parsnips,’ Django continues. ‘Ginger is the key. I always add a little ginger to parsnips. Ginger root, mind you, not that powdered excuse.’

‘God, I quite feel like chewing ginger root,’ Pip murmurs.

‘Well, if there’s any left, you can,’ says Django. ‘And I always like to use this knife for the parsnips. And I find this angle works best. You try, Cat. Now you, Fen. Pip – your turn. Good stuff.’

The girls break into a pseudo-operatic chorus of fa-la-las for ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ and Django conducts them momentarily with the soup ladle before noticing the time. ‘Carrots and broccoli,’ he says. ‘There’s a secret here and it’s to do with texture. Broccoli can be alarmingly woolly – but I find if you add a little lemon juice to the water in which you steam it, pas de problemo!’

The girls nod earnestly and then sing along with ‘Good King Wenceslas’.

‘Carrots!’ Django declares above their din. ‘Brown sugar elevates this humble but highly hued vegetable above its common status as horse fodder.’ The girls keep singing but they give him the thumbs up.

‘Have you a secret for sprouts that stops them smelling like farts?’ Cat giggles.

‘Catriona!’ Django objects. ‘We don’t do sprouts in this family.’ The girls consider this. It was true. ‘I think I’ll sit down for a moment,’ Django says and makes his way, a little falteringly, to the chair.

The girls hurry round.

‘Are you OK?’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘What can we do?’

‘I’m fine,’ says Django, ‘it’s just the excitement.’

‘But you look in pain,’ Pip says.

‘Just a few aches and gripes,’ Django says. ‘Don’t read into it – I am seventy-five. What did I want to say? Ah yes, roast potatoes. Roast potatoes.’

And it suddenly strikes the girls hard in their hearts that, actually, they’re not helping Django prepare Christmas dinner. This isn’t a cookery lesson. This is not about this Christmas or past Christmases, this is about Christmases yet to come. This is the passing down of family recipes, the imparting of knowledge, the handing over of experience and quirks, the conveying of preference and methods in the sincerest hope that family traditions will continue. The room rings far louder with the resonance of this, the solemnity of such responsibility, than it does with ‘Silent Night’.

‘Don’t cry,’ Pip whispers to Django who is dabbing his eyes furiously.

‘I’m not crying, darling,’ he says, ‘it’s just the onions. It’s just the onions. The buggers. When it comes to onions, my advice is to suck a spoon and chop them in water.’

With the children sound asleep upstairs, their new favourite toys propped up on the bedside tables so that they can be viewed and adored on waking, downstairs it is time for the McCabe yuletide tradition of The Great Ring Round. This is the one occasion in the calendar when Django McCabe cannot be prised off the telephone and it is the one day when the telephone company realizes he is a viable customer after all. Bibi is phoned in Paris, Toni is phoned on the shores of Squam Lake, Rayner is rung in Sausalito. They call Babs Chorlton down the road and then Jim McKenzie up in Glasgow. Django bestows Christmas cheer and chatter before passing the caller to Pip, Fen and Cat; going through the ages, over the years. Gregor and Ferdy stay on the phone for over half an hour. The Merifields laugh and say, Why are you phoning us, McCabe, we’ll see you tomorrow for Boxing Day drinks. Django shouts down the phone to make himself heard to Vauxhall Vinnie who is now rather deaf. This year, sadly, there are no Bebop Boys left to phone. Joe and Jack go through their own tradition of asking the McCabe girls to tell them about each and every present and what exactly it does. Everyone adds the word ‘healthy’ in wishing Django a happy new year.

‘I’m all talked out,’ says Cat, popping an After Eight into her mouth.

‘I don’t think Joe and Jack quite got what an iPod is all about,’ says Pip, ‘though personally, I thought I explained it pretty well.’

‘It was so nice to speak to Bibi,’ says Fen. ‘I don’t think I’ve spoken to her since your birthday.’

‘Just one more phone call,’ Django declares, to groans all round, ‘then I promise you, I’ll put the thing in the broom cupboard.’

‘But we’ve done everyone,’ Pip declares.

‘I thought we might phone your mother, actually,’ says Django. The girls fall silent. It’s one thing to honour the requests of a dying man, to learn his way with roasting potatoes, it’s another to agree to a potentially bad idea. But Django reads their minds. ‘It’s not a bad idea,’ he says quite firmly, ‘it’s the right thing to do.’

Penny had refused Marcia’s invitation to Christmas lunch; it was her first on her own and she wanted to spend it at home, not for any maudlin self-indulgence, but because she and Bob had never made a big fuss about Christmas anyway.

She is eating her lunch, direct from the foil container, when the phone rings.

‘That’ll be Marcia,’ Penny murmurs, ‘hoping to change my mind. Well I’ve eaten now – but perhaps I will join them for cards this evening.’ She walks over to the phone.

‘Hullo?’

‘Penny? It’s Django.’

‘Django?’

‘In England. United Kingdom. Derek McCabe.’

‘No – no, Django is fine. Django is good. My goodness.’

‘I’m phoning long-distance – can you hear me?’

‘Yes, I can hear you. I can hear you just fine.’

‘We’re all here, all of us, in Derbyshire, as per usual. We thought we’d give you a tinkle. To wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year.’

Penny is speechless. But being speechless scares her because she knows Django hates telephones and he might misconstrue it as a fault on the transatlantic line. She must speak. She must. ‘My,’ she says, ‘my. That’s very nice of you. I wish you a merry Christmas too. You – plural.’

‘This line is very clear, isn’t it?’ Django marvels.

‘Yes it is,’ Penny agrees.

‘And how are you?’ Django asks. ‘This time of year – I imagine it can’t be easy.’

‘Thank you,’ Penny says, ‘but you know it’s OK – it’s better than I thought. I’ve just had my lunch. It was tasty. And I’m going to play cards with friends tonight.’

‘You are on your own?’ Django queries.

‘Yes,’ Penny says, ‘I am.’

‘That’s not right, not on Christmas,’ Django says. ‘Well I’m jolly glad we phoned now, I most certainly am.’

‘I’m OK, Dango,’ Penny says and she cringes because although she wanted to say Django she started saying Derek instead. ‘And how are you?’ There’s a pause. ‘Hullo?’

‘Still here,’ says Django, ‘I’m still here. I’ve had a spot of bother, but I’m still here.’

‘Are you OK?’ Penny asks.

‘I feel fine,’ Django assures her. ‘I’ve had a very happy day. I’m passing you over – we have a tradition on the McCabe Great Ring Round, we go through the ages – so you’ll have Pip, followed by Fen, followed by Cat.’

‘Hullo?’ says Pip.

‘Hullo Philippa.’

‘Merry Christmas.’

‘And to you. How are you?’

‘I’m pregnant!’

‘Oh! Oh! That’s just wonderful news. When are you due?’

‘Late June – a week before Fen’s daughter turns two.’ A pause. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m great, thank you.’

‘Would you like to speak to Fen?’

‘I’d like to speak to you a little longer,’ Penny says, ‘if I may.’

‘Oh, OK.’ A pause. ‘How are you, then?’

‘I’m great. I’m great. How nice to hear from you.’

‘Yes. And you too. Merry Christmas – I hope you have a happier year ahead.’

‘That’s kind. Will you – well, will you let me know about the baby?’

‘Yes,’ says Pip, ‘of course I will. I’m passing you on to Fen now. Bye bye.’

‘Goodbye, Pip.’

‘Hullo,’ says Fen.

‘Merry Christmas, Fenella.’

‘And to you – and a happy new year. I hope it’s a good one.’

‘Thank you. And how are you?’

‘I’m fine. Cosima is eighteen months old. She speaks a little. She says “turtle” quite a lot, actually.’

‘How extraordinary! How endearing. Your first word was “apple”. Pip’s was “goody” and I’m afraid I don’t know what Catriona’s was.’

‘Oh. Quite.’ A pause. ‘How is the weather?’

‘We have snow, we have a white Christmas. It’s picture perfect. And how is it with you?’

‘It’s a little overcast. But quite mild, actually.’ A pause. ‘Would you like me to pass you on to Cat, now?’

‘I’d like to speak to you a little longer,’ Penny says, ‘if I may.’

‘Oh yes. Of course.’

‘What have you been up to?’

‘I’ve gone back to work, part-time, I’m enjoying it immensely.’

‘Good for you. That’s great.’

‘Thanks. And you?’

‘Oh, I’ve been painting the house. And hiking. And I went to Florida with my friend Marcia – she has a condo there. Boy was it hot.’

‘That sounds good,’ says Fen. ‘I’m going to pass you on to Cat now. Have a very merry Christmas – and a lovely year to come.’

‘Thank you, Fen, thank you,’ says Penny.

‘Hullo,’ says Cat, ‘Merry Christmas and a happy new year.’

‘Well thank you, Catriona – and I wish you the same. How are you?’

‘Great – busy. Ben and I moved to Darley Dale. I’m heading up a new flagship bookshop near Sheffield and Ben is Dr Big in sports medicine at the local hospital.’

‘My, you girls – you have so much to be proud of. What achievements. It’s wonderful.’

‘Thank you.’ A pause. ‘It’s nice to be nearer to Django.’

‘Is he unwell? I get the feeling he is.’

‘He is.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Penny trails off. She doesn’t want to hear that it’s cancer. But she suspects it is. She feels her instincts are heightened, having lived through Bob’s cancer. ‘What have you done today – what is Christmas Day like for you?’

‘Oh, we’ve cooked and eaten and unwrapped an obscene amount of presents.’

‘Good for you!’

‘And phoned all our friends,’ Cat thinks for a moment, ‘and family.’

‘Is Django still there?’ Penny asks.

‘Yes – do you want a word?’

‘A word is exactly what I want,’ Penny tells her. ‘Goodbye, Cat. And merry Christmas. To you all.’

‘Hullo?’ says Django.

‘Hullo Django,’ says Penny. ‘I just wondered – I don’t know why I just wondered.’ She pauses. She laughs a little. ‘But I just wondered if perhaps you remembered what Cat’s first word was?’

Django pauses. ‘Garden.’

‘Garden,’ Penny marvels, ‘that’s lovely. Well I guess I ought to let you go.’

‘OK.’

‘Thank you so much for calling me. I’m quite – I’m quite. I’m overwhelmed.’

Django looks around the room. All eyes are on him. ‘Maybe next year we can entice you over,’ he says.

Penny is speechless but again she fears Django might presume the line to be dead.

‘Oh my,’ she says quietly, ‘well. That is some invitation.’

‘Good!’ Django declares as he smiles at his girls. ‘That’s settled then.’

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No matter how deeply I love my characters and believe in them, I must reluctantly admit to spending most of my working life with people who don’t actually exist. However, behind the scenes, I am blessed with a dynamic and crucial support network helping to bring my books to life. Sincerest thanks go to my team at HarperCollins – especially my esteemed editor Lynne Drew. My agent, the inimitable Jonathan Lloyd, thank you – your percentage is my pleasure. Dawn Gobourne (and Hilary, Germaine and Ana) at Haringey Library Services – thanks for making my working days so happy and cosy. Mary Chamberlain, my eagle-eyed copy-editor, and Sophie Ransom, my tireless publicist – thank you both for your patience and your attention to detail. I’d also like to extend my gratitude to Bex Lane, Jerney de Vries, Naina Patel, Sue McMillan, Souki Hartigan, Sue McCormack and Sarah Henderson for enabling me, in so many ways, to write this book.

The Holistic Cancer Care Centre, James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough (in memory of David Sutcliffe 1937–2005).

Praise for Home Truths:

‘An eye-poppingly sexy start leads into a family reunion laced with secrets. Tangled mother/daughter relationships unravel and tantalising family riddles keep you glued to the end.’

Cosmopolitan

‘An engrossing emotional drama that’s sure to feature on bestseller lists.’

Eve

‘You’ll laugh, cry, then laugh some more.’

Company

‘Freya North manages to strike a good balance between drama, comedy and romance, and has penned another winner in Home Truths … touching, enjoyable.’

Heat

‘Extremely skilful.’

Daily Telegraph

Praise for Freya North:

‘Freya North has matured to produce an emotive novel that deals with the darker side of love – these are real women with real feelings.’

She

‘Tantrums, tarts, tears and text-sex … what’s not to love about this cautionary tale for true romantics?’

Heat

‘A distinctive storytelling style and credible, loveable characters … an addictive read that encompasses the stuff life is made of: love, sex, fidelity and, above all, friendship.’

Glamour

‘Passion, guilt, envy, love and sex, topped with lashings of laughs. Freya North has done it again, only better.’

Daily Express

Read on for an extract from Freya’s latest – and unforgettable – bestselling paperback, The Way Back Home

When I was …

When I was born there were already other children at Windward. None was beyond toddling age and, as such, we were grouped together pretty much like the clumps of perennials in the garden, or the globs of paint on a palette in one of the studios, or the music which drifted from the top rooms – discordant notes that, as a whole, wove together into a quirky harmony of sorts. We were who we were, the children of Windward – a little ragtaggle tribe further defining the ethos and eccentricity of the place.

I wasn’t born in a hospital. I was born at Windward but I wasn’t born in my home. I was born in Lilac and George’s apartment with Jette assisting my mother, ably helped by all the other females there at the time, whether permanent or itinerant, mothers or girls, lesbians, lapsed nuns and even an aged virgin. I know all about a woman called Damisi who was visiting at the time though, it seems, no one really knew where her connection lay. She was a doula, apparently, and I know the story off by heart – how she had all the women breathing and bellowing to support and inspire my mother to relax. It worked – I know I was as easy a birth as it’s possible to have, slipping out into the Windward world to a backing track that was practically a bovine opera. Some of the other children heard – how could they not – and often, they mooed at me. I didn’t mind – it seemed my own special herald. However, when I first heard a similar sound emitted by a cow it scared me senseless.

When I was five, Louis, who was always very old but never seemed to age, hosted my birthday party in his apartment. We didn’t know he knew magic. He took pennies from behind all our ears – it was probably the first time any of us had coins of our own. He gave me a piggy bank to keep mine in – to start saving the pennies, he explained. I thought I had to save the coins from some fate that would otherwise befall them.

When I was ten, my birthday party was a disaster. I’d been at the local school for three years, been to the parties of my classmates – pink and proper, simultaneously joyous and lively and yet fastidiously organized. That’s all I wanted – a party like that. A neat cake with the right number of candles. My parents got it wrong. There were only nine candles. Someone – probably my mother – had put a tenth one in, but had decided that it was incorrect. Ten? That’s wrong. That small dent in the beige icing of my lopsided, inedible cake was to me a sinkhole of indifference. It struck me then that perhaps not everyone loved everyone.

When I was fifteen –

When I was fifteen something terrible happened.

CHAPTER ONE

Oriana

To Oriana, it seemed so small. So ridiculously and unnervingly small that she felt compelled to rub her eyes. It had to be an illusion – the truer, more sensible, more realistic proportions would surely be reinstated after a good blink. But there it was still, nestled in a fold of land which looked soft enough to be made of fabric. Like biscuit crumbs in a scrunched napkin, there was the small town outside which she’d grown up. She pulled the hire car in to the verge. She didn’t want to get out, she wanted to avoid familiar smells that might make it seem real. She didn’t want to hear anything that might say well! welcome back, duck. She wanted to believe that she had no history with this mini place and no need of it. It looked silly, being so small. Not worth a detour. Certainly not worth a visit. Not worthy, even, of a drive right through. This wasn’t Lilliput. This wasn’t romantic. This was Nowhere. Nowhere, also known as Blenthrop, Derbyshire. The worst thing about this bastard place striking Oriana as being so small was that it made the rest of the world feel so vast. And suddenly she felt isolated, acutely alone and terrifyingly far away from the place she’d called home for so many years, the place she’d left only the previous day. God Bless America, she said under her breath though she knew she’d never go back.

Driving to her mother’s house was easier because she’d never lived there. There was little to recognize, nothing to flinch at; she was unknown and that was preferable to intrusive welcomes and waves, however warm and well meaning Blenthrop folk might be. The further she drove from her childhood home, the longer the space she could finally create between her ears and her shoulders. As she relaxed a little, the car seat felt more comfortable and her headache lifted. Really, jet lag had nothing to do with the tension and now that the anxiety had dissipated, Oriana let the genuine tiredness billow over her the way her mother used to waft her duvet when she was a little girl, giggling in bed waiting for it to land. They call it a comforter in the United States, she thought. My mum’s gone all sheets and blankets because she says it makes the bed look ‘properly made’. My mom – the all-American girl who’s now as small-town English as they come.

The tiredness, the tiredness. Should she pull over? Half an hour left to Hathersage. Open the window. Turn the radio up another notch. Drink Coke. Pinch yourself awake. Pinch yourself that you really are here again, eighteen years on. Kick yourself, wondering if it’s a stupid idea, really.

Oriana’s mother didn’t know what to do. Her daughter was sleeping and though she’d told her mother not to let her, under any circumstances, what was Rachel to do? Her daughter, wan and sunken-eyed, too thin. Rachel looked in at the front room. Oriana was curled embryonically into a corner of the sofa, her hands tucked tightly between her thighs, the tips of her socks hanging limply a little way off her toes; the heel of her right sock was twisted to her ankle, as if her shoe had wanted to cling onto her feet. Her hair looked lank and flat and her lips were chapped. She wasn’t wearing earrings. She’d spilled something on her top. This wasn’t jet lag, Rachel sensed. This was exhaustion.

Rachel had done that trip back to America often enough since she herself emigrated from there aged nineteen. She knew well that, though jet lag made you feel discombobulated, it didn’t make you look like that – how Oriana had looked on arriving an hour ago. When Rachel had opened the door to her daughter, she read in half a glance all the unrevealed secrets and sadness that had slipped unnoticed between the lines of her sporadic emails. On her doorstep, Rachel saw how the crux of it all was suddenly writ large over Oriana’s face, her general scrawniness. The details, however, remained concealed. She was shocked. How could she have known nothing? She was ashamed that, once again, a mother’s instinct had failed her.

‘I’ll give her another ten minutes,’ Rachel said, unsure.

‘That’ll make it forty winks,’ Bernard said. ‘I’ll be popping out now. Just round the block.’ And he kissed his wife who, just then, really did love his habit of explaining life with sayings and clichés. Bernard Safely. Had ever a person had a more appropriate surname?

‘Two shakes,’ Bernard told her though they both knew that his walk around the block would take far longer than two shakes of a lamb’s tail. She watched him through the bubbled-glass panel of the front door as he walked away. The distortion made him appear to have no bones, amorphous as jelly. Her ex-husband, Oriana’s father, referred to Bernard as spineless. Through the warped glass, he did indeed look so. Rachel felt disloyal. She rarely thought about Robin these days. She supposed she’d have to, now Oriana was back, even if she didn’t want to. She’d see him in her daughter’s crooked smile, her high cheekbones, the way her gaze darted away while she talked but focused fixedly on whoever spoke to her. Father and daughter both had the ability, without realizing it, to make one feel simultaneously inconsequential and significant.

‘Oriana Taylor,’ Rachel said quietly and then, in a whisper, ‘Oriana Safely.’

It didn’t flow. It didn’t work. It would never have worked. She’d always be Oriana Taylor, daughter of Robin. The Robin Taylor. Would they mention him? She and her daughter had managed for eighteen years to skirt issues as if they were dog mess on the pavement.

Malachy

An ex-girlfriend had described it as Saturn Returns. Malachy hadn’t a clue what she meant. That dream you have, she’d said, you might not have it often but it’ll always recur – like Saturn Returns, with similar cataclysmic fallout. It makes you introverted and horrid to be around.

He’d ended the relationship soon after. She was a bit too cosmic for Malachy and she talked too much anyway. If he had the dream, the last thing he needed was a load of astrobabble bullshit. A warm body cuddling next to him, soothing him, taking his mind off it – that’s what he required. Saturn Returns. She never knew that a prog-rock band of that very name had formed in his childhood home, exploded onto the music scene for a couple of years in the late 1970s and then finally imploded back at the house in 1981. He never told her, even though the band had jammed in the very place where Malachy currently lived.

Last night, the dream had once again hijacked his sleep, apropos of nothing. In the woods, with his brother Jed, their teenage bodies of twenty years ago encasing their current souls. They were out at summer dusk, shooting rabbits. A large buck running away, stopping, turning and facing him. Delicate eyes and soft silver pelt conflicting with the anomalous fuck-you gesture of lope-long ears rigid like two-fingered abuse. Malachy pulled the trigger and smelt the saltpetre and heard the harsh crack and felt the kick and experienced the extreme pain as half his world went dark.

He’d often wondered whether the rabbit was some kind of metaphor. He’d tried to analyse why in the dream he didn’t shout for help; why his brother was there only at the start. And he never knew whether he killed the rabbit, the little fucker. The pain cut the dream short, always. And he always woke up thinking, but it didn’t happen like that, it didn’t happen like that. And he’d be cranky and introverted for a good while after because he knew that he’d much rather it had happened like in the dream.

Stupid dream. Malachy left his bed and showered. Dressed, he snatched breakfast, yesterday’s post in one hand, toast in the other. What he really wanted to do today was write his novel, not go to work. Business was slack this time of year – early March, thick frost, too cold for tourists, too close to Easter for more hardy holidaymakers; too close to Christmas and Valentine’s and Mother’s Day for locals to fritter any more of their money. The irony was Malachy could very well not open the gallery because, after all, he owned it – but the fact that he owned it compelled him to keep it open, never take time off, never get sick. Tuesday to Friday, 10 till 6. Saturday 10 till 5. Summer Sundays 11 till 2. Closed Mondays. If the gallery was as quiet as he anticipated, he’d work on his novel from there today. He left the apartment, glancing guiltily at the house. He ought to do the rounds, really. He hadn’t done so for a couple of days.

Paula de la Mare waved at him, before she hopped into her car, belting down the drive. Malachy followed, absent-mindedly creating acronyms from the letters on her car’s registration plate. At the bottom of the drive, she turned right, taking her girls to school. Malachy followed her a little way before joining the main road into Blenthrop.

Some idiot had dumped litter in the doorway of the White Peak Art Space; yesterday’s chips lay like flaccid fingers in the scrunch of sodden paper. He rummaged in his satchel for something suitable like a plastic bag. Phone. An apple. Slim leather diary (he refused to use his phone for anything other than calls). A tin of pencils, a spiral-bound notebook and a flashdrive. He had no plastic bag. The toe of his shoe would have to do. He shoved the takeaway detritus into the gutter and opened up the gallery.

It was always the weirdest feeling. It never diminished and it engulfed Malachy the moment he entered. The immediate stillness and quiet of the space contradicted by the undeniable sensation that, up until that very moment, they’d been alive; the paintings, the sculptures. If he’d turned up a minute earlier, or sneaked in through the back, he was certain he’d have caught them at it. Now, as every day, they were just figures frozen into their canvases, others quite literally turned to stone, bronze or, in the case of Dan Markson’s work, multicoloured polymer. It was like the characters in his novel – Malachy sensed they existed without him but whenever he returned to the manuscript, he found them exactly where he’d left them.

In the gallery, he straightened a couple of frames and adjusted the angle of a spotlight that was glaring off the glass of a watercolour. There were few emails to respond to and within the hour Malachy felt justified in inserting the flashdrive and clicking on the folder called ‘novel’, selecting from within it the file called ‘novel10.doc’.

‘Tenth draft in only fifteen years.’

He said it out loud, with contrived loftiness, laughed and took the piss out of himself, receiving the abuse well. All residual effects of the dream had gone, the details were forgotten. Until the next time.

Jed

None of his girlfriends knew this, but whenever Jed had sex in the morning, he always had Ian Dury playing in his head. He’d grown used to the soundtrack. It wasn’t a distraction and it didn’t irritate him; it was a brilliant song after all – as sexy in its funk as it was funny in its lyrics. It had started with Celine. She had been French, intense and passionate, and when she’d purred in his ear in the middle of his sleep, wake up and make love with me, that’s what kicked it all off.

Jed knew his current relationship was on the way out; from fizz to fizzle in eight months. It had been as awkward as it had been depressing last night, to be the only non-conversing table in a packed and buzzing restaurant. They checked their phones, ate, gazed around the room, checked their phones again, eavesdropped on other people’s conversations and barely looked at each other. Fiona went to bed when they arrived back at his flat. I’m tired, she’d said, as if it was Jed’s fault. He’d sat up late, finishing off the red wine he’d opened the night before, even though he’d forgotten to put a stopper in it and it really didn’t taste very good. Jed had thought, I’m too young to be one of those couples that go out for dinner and don’t speak. And then he thought, I’m too old to be frittering away time on a relationship like this. I have a headache, he thought, collapsing into bed and drifting to sleep before he could remember to kiss her goodnight let alone check she was even there.

But he woke, horny. It was natural, chemical. Ian Dury was goading him to have a proper wriggle in the naughty, naked nude. He sidled up to Fiona, his cock finding the soft dale between her buttock cheeks to nestle in. Unlike Ian Dury, however, it wasn’t lovemaking he wanted. Just a fuck. She moved a little, her breathing quickening as he ran his hand along her thigh, up her body, a squeeze of her breast before venturing downwards and between her legs. She was warm and moist and she let him manoeuvre her so that he could work his way into her from behind. No kissing. She had a thing – paranoia – about morning breath, which initially he’d found charming, then irritating but today just useful, as he didn’t want kissing and eye contact. He just wanted to come because soon enough she’d be gone.

She dumped Jed in a stutteringly over-verbose phone call that lunch-time. It’s not you, it’s me. I just need some space. Let’s just be friends. It’s fine, he kept saying, I’m fine with it. I agree. If something of such little substance was finally over, it really didn’t warrant this level of analysis or justifying. Don’t worry, he told her, don’t worry. I feel the same.

‘You feel the same?’ She sounded affronted, as if her self-esteem was dependent on him being crushed.

Jed sensed this. ‘I mean,’ he qualified, ‘if you’re sure. Take all the time you need.’

‘I’m sure,’ she said.

‘OK,’ he said, ‘OK.’ And for her benefit, he dropped his voice a tone or two. ‘Take care,’ he said.

‘You too,’ she said. ‘Friends?’

‘Friends.’

He had too many of these ‘friends’ with whom he had mercifully minimal contact. None had truly made the transition from girlfriend to friend. None had even re-formed into useful booty calls. Ultimately, none meant that much to him because none was the one who got away. He hadn’t seen her for such a long time, not since she moved to America a decade and a half ago.

CHAPTER TWO

Nine o’clock. Oriana felt pleased with herself. Apart from a vaguely recalled period of wakefulness in the small hours and despite the nap that her mother had tricked her into taking the previous afternoon, she’d slept through the clash of time zones and she’d slept well enough for it to feel truly like morning. There was no need to count the hours backwards and figure out what the real time was. She accepted that nine in the morning, GMT, was now the true time in her life. She looked at the dressing gown her mother had laid out for her. It was white towelling and had the crest of a hotel embroidered in navy on the breast pocket. My mum has become one of those people who actually buy the hotel robe. She didn’t know whether she should laugh or cringe at this. She did know she’d rather get dressed than put the thing on. This wasn’t her home and it wasn’t a hotel and she wasn’t comfortable mooching about in borrowed towelling robes. She opened the bedroom door and listened hard. The house appeared to be empty but still Oriana padded quietly, self-consciously, along the corridor to the bathroom. She thought, this is the type of carpet I fantasized about as a child. The colour of butterscotch and as softly dense and bouncy as a Walt Disney lamb. And the bathroom itself; warm, bright and spotless, with hotel toiletries placed neatly on the sink and the bath – additional prerequisites of her childhood dreams. And yet she could not remember her mother ever yearning for such things.

Showered and dressed with her hair in a towel turban, Oriana made her way downstairs. Stairs that don’t creak or groan, she mused, make one feel light and dainty. When she was young, her father had called her Fairy Elephant – such was the inadvertent noise she’d make even crossing the hallway of her childhood home. It was only when she was at the base of the stairs that she realized she wasn’t alone in the house. From behind the glazed door leading into the kitchen, she could hear the radio tuned low to something middle of the road. It must be Bernard. Had it been her mother, the volume would have been high on a talk show and Rachel would be joining in, or, as Bernard would have described it, having her tuppence worth.

‘Morning.’

Bernard looked up from the crossword and a mug of tea. He smiled his uncomplicated smile. ‘Good morning, love,’ he said. ‘Breakfast?’

Last night, Oriana had been too tired not to feel sick after a couple of mouthfuls and prior to that, she’d only snacked on the plane.

‘Yes, please.’

‘What would you like?’

She looked blankly around the kitchen. She had no idea, really.

‘Toast and tea?’ Bernard suggested. ‘Poached egg?’ He could hear hunger in her inability to decide. He chuckled. ‘Sit yourself down – have a look at six across.’

She couldn’t concentrate on crossword clues and watched Bernard at the stove. ‘I had a special poaching pan,’ she said, ‘in America.’

Bernard had a spoon, a saucepan of boiling water and a perfected technique.

‘Fancy that,’ he said, his tone genial.

Poached to perfection, Oriana thought, as she tucked in.

‘More toast?’

Oriana nodded because Bernard’s toast was cut into triangles, buttered thickly and placed in a toast rack. The taste was as comforting as it was delicious. English salty butter and builder’s tea. She had to concede that some things just didn’t travel well across the Atlantic.

‘What do you have for breakfast,’ Bernard asked, ‘over there?’

Oriana wondered why he was using the present tense. Being tactful, probably. She’d told them both last night that she was back in the UK for good or for whatever. She shrugged. ‘I used to just grab something,’ she said, ‘from a stall or a bakery, on my way to work.’

Bernard filled her mug with a strong brew the same colour as the brown teapot. He used a tea strainer. The tea strainer had a little holder of its own and the teapot was returned to a trivet on the table. He did like things just so, Bernard. Oriana knew that in itself was what had attracted her mother to this ordinary, gentle man. Her father placed used tea bags on windowsills and tore into loaves of bread with his hands and teeth. Her father once told her that plates were for the bourgeoisie.

‘You take your time,’ Bernard said and she knew he meant way beyond her eating breakfast at his table. ‘Your mother’ll not be long.’ And he returned to his crossword, instinctively knowing when to pour more tea, when to glance and smile. Privately, they both reflected that they liked this time, just the two of them. They’d rarely had it. They barely knew each other. Rachel, who could have been the conduit, had kept them separate.

After breakfast – and Bernard had insisted she went nowhere near the washing-up (plenty of time for that, love) – he sent Oriana out for a walk, explaining painstakingly the route around the block. His pedantry with directions had infuriated her when she’d been a teen. Boring old fart. Mum – he’s such an old woman! Now, though, she liked it. It was one less thing to think about – which way to go – because in recent months which direction to take had consumed her entirely. Today was a day just for putting one foot in front of the other, for allowing the sidewalk to turn back into a pavement, for acknowledging that driving on the left was actually right, for accepting that cars were tiny and the traffic lights and postboxes were different, more polite somehow, and that this was Derbyshire, not San Francisco, and that was the end of that.

‘Where is she?’

‘She’s out for a walk – just round the block. The Bigger Block. I told her the way.’

‘But round the block doesn’t take an hour, Bernard, not even the Bigger One, not even when your knee’s playing up.’

‘She’ll be fine.’

‘Something’s happened to her.’

‘Here? In Hathersage?’

‘Not here in Hathersage, Bernard. Out there – over there.’ Rachel gesticulated wildly as if America, her own homeland, was an annoying fly just to the left of her. ‘Something happened,’ she said. ‘That’s why she came back. That’s why she looks the way she does.’

‘Well,’ said Bernard, ‘she had a good breakfast. You can’t go far wrong on a full stomach.’

The cacophony of tooting and the screeching of tyres tore into Oriana’s peaceful stroll.

‘Get in, honey!’ Her mother was trying to open the passenger door while leaning across the gearstick, buckled as she was by her safety belt and hampered by her capacious bag on the passenger seat. Rachel now had the door open and was lying on her handbag.

‘Oriana – get in.’

For a split second, Oriana actually thought about sitting on top of her – if the urgency in her mother’s voice was anything to go by. But Rachel had managed to straighten herself and hoick the bag into the back by the time Oriana sat herself down.

Her mother was agitated. ‘You can’t take an hour to walk around the block!’

‘Can’t I?’

‘No!’

‘No?’

‘No! Not without telling someone you’re going for a long walk.’

She’s serious, Oriana thought. She’s utterly serious. All those years when she didn’t know where I was and didn’t care what time I was back.

It was so preposterous. Surely her mother could see that? However, the irony appeared not to have confronted Rachel. But there again, Rachel had re invented herself and parcelled away the past when she’d left Robin for Bernard. The car radio was on and Rachel bantered back vitriolically at the callers and the presenters, having her tuppence worth, all the way home.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I thought I’d come this weekend.’

‘Good morning, brother dear. Alone?’

‘Yes,’ Jed told Malachy. ‘Alone.’

‘You’re on your own, then? Again?’ Malachy looked at the phone as if Jed could see his expression which was playfully arch.

‘Yes,’ Jed laughed at himself. ‘Again.’

‘Which one was it?’

‘Fiona – the lawyer.’

‘Did I meet Fiona the lawyer?’

‘No,’ Jed said. ‘We were only together about eight months.’

‘Jesus – have I not seen you for eight months?’

‘Piss off – of course you have. I just didn’t bring Fiona to the house, that’s all.’

Malachy considered this. But there was no pattern to which girlfriends Jed brought home. Sometimes it was girls he wanted to impress, other times it was girls he wanted to unnerve, as if their reaction to the house was the ultimate litmus test.

‘Fine,’ said Malachy. ‘It’ll be good to see you.’

Mildly frustrated with Jed for making him late setting off for work, Malachy cursed his brother under his breath. Not that he was expecting any clients. But still. He had standards and opening times and a novel to write and a business to run. And, now, his younger brother descending on him for the weekend. Which would mean long nights and bottles of wine and philosophizing and reminiscing and arguing and irritation and laughter. Malachy jumped into his car, noting that the de la Mares had long since left on the school run.

Oriana looked at her phone, deflated. The number she’d rung was unobtainable – the fact that it still had a name ascribed to it made this seem all the more blunt. How could she not have known that Cat had changed her number? Oriana tried the number again and then chucked the phone on the sofa in frustration before slumping down and reaching for it again as if giving the gadget a third and final chance.

Rachel pretended not to notice. ‘Do you want to use the proper phone?’ she asked, referring to the landline. She and Bernard shared one mobile ‘for emergencies’ and it rarely left the drawer of the desk in the hallway. If it was mobile, how could it be grounded and trustworthy?

‘I was just trying Cat,’ Oriana said, ‘but I think she’s changed her number.’

‘And she didn’t give you her new one?’ Rachel employed extravagant indignance on her daughter’s behalf but it backfired.

‘If she’d given me her new number, I wouldn’t be phoning her old one.’

Bernard looked up, aggrieved, and immediately Oriana regretted her snappiness.

‘Sorry.’

She vaguely recalled a mass-text from Cat with a new number a few months ago. She’d been on a stolen weekend with Casey, just outside Monterey, in their favourite fish restaurant, the sides open to the sea, a breeze from the surf bringing an ephemeral saltiness to the food. She remembered being so in the moment, so desperate for no interruption, for time to slow down, for the day to stretch and belong only to them, that when the text came she glanced at it and discarded it.

‘Sorry,’ she said to her mother and, privately, to Cat.

‘I thought she was living in the US too?’

‘She was – Colorado – but she came back about a year ago.’

‘You could phone Django,’ her mother suggested, but they both knew how the phone could ring at Cat’s uncle’s place and he might answer it, if he felt like it, or not, if he didn’t. Usually, he’d rage across the house simply to bury the phone in the sofa cushions to shut the damn thing up.

‘Seven, four, nine,’ Oriana chanted, ‘six, eight, two.’ Django McCabe’s phone number was one of the few still inscribed into her memory. She’d known it from a time long before SIM cards made memorizing numbers outdated and pointless.

‘He’s poorly, you know,’ Rachel said, ‘from what I’ve heard.’

Oriana thought, I could always drive over there – I loved Django. But she didn’t want to. When one had lived away from one’s roots for so long, returning always revealed such an unexpected acceleration in the ageing of those left behind. Her mother. Bernard. They always looked so much older than she anticipated. And Django – whom Oriana remembered so vividly and fondly as robust and larger than life – she simply didn’t want to see him shriven and ill and aged.

Facebook. In recent weeks, she’d stayed sensibly away from Facebook much as she’d avoided Alice Trenton in the school playground – the cool girl, the mean girl; get too close and you’re trapped. Facebook was similar, thrilling and oppressive in equal measure. The choice was between Django and Facebook. The former brought with it intimacy, the latter intrusion, and Oriana wanted to steer clear of both. There again, Facebook afforded her invisibility. She reached for her iPad which, at her behest, Bernard had gingerly had a play on the night before, his index finger out rigid while his remaining fingers and thumb were scrunched into a fist, as if merely pointing at the screen might deliver an electric shock.

Facebook. She signed in. Sixteen trillion notifications and a newsfeed jammed with peculiar app suggestions and people she hardly knew gloating about virtual farms and aquariums and poker games; photos of babies and smiling and beaches and the wild and wacky times that apparently defined everyone else’s lives. She typed in ‘Ca’. And sure enough, up came ‘Cat McCabe’ but, just above her, ‘Casey’ too. He was minute, his photo hardly recognizable at this size. Do not click on ‘Casey’. There is no need and there is no point.

With the iPad on her lap, Oriana pushed her hands under her thighs and stared and stared at the screen until the wave of nausea passed and she felt her breathing regulate. She should have unfriended him. She was aware that, if she did so now, he probably wouldn’t even notice. She clicked on Cat and sent a message.

I’m back in Derbyshire – call me! I can’t find your new number xxxx

A little white lie on Facebook was so pale it practically didn’t exist.

Bernard announced he was off out for a stroll. It was only when Rachel cleared her throat for the second time that Oriana realized there was something brewing.

‘Cup of tea, Mum?’ Clever.

‘No. Not now.’ It wasn’t tea brewing. Rachel appeared awkward and spoke fast. ‘I was saying to Bernard last night how lovely it is to have you home. And we both want you to know you can stay as long as you like and take all the time you need – you know, to find a job and your feet and somewhere to live and what it is that you want to do.’

‘Thank you.’ It suddenly seemed prudent to sound genuine, guileless. But from Rachel’s penetrating stare, Oriana knew she saw right through it.

Oriana felt irked. Four days in the last five years, a similar average over the past eighteen years, and already she’s had enough of me. ‘What you mean is, it’s been nice seeing me but you think I should get a job, ship out and get on with it.’

Rachel tutted. ‘Honestly – why must you be so defensive?’

Oriana thought, I’ve got to get out of here. Then she thought, but I have nowhere else to go. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said and it wasn’t to apologize, it was to qualify. ‘It’s just it sounded like you don’t want me here.’

‘It’s not that,’ her mother said, ‘but I really don’t know what you’re even doing here.’

For years, Oriana had felt better about her relationship with her mother by believing, quite categorically, that her mother had been in the wrong. Now it was obvious that in this current situation, Rachel was actually quite right. ‘Why have you come back?’ she asked. ‘Why give up a charmed life? What happened to Casey – I’m assuming you guys are through?’

Oriana sighed and shrugged as if it was no big deal and just a tiresome topic. ‘It was time for a change,’ she shrugged. ‘It was hard for a while – but I’ve moved on. And I don’t really want to talk about it.’

‘And you’re OK?’

‘It was my call. I’m fine.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Look at me!’

‘You’re thin.’

‘Thin’s good! I’m fit.’

‘You’re too thin – for you.’

‘Nonsense. I eat like a horse – you’ve watched me! Two poached eggs and toast for breakfast. Seconds at supper. Bernard’s “nice biscuit” at regular intervals throughout the day.’

‘You look like you’ve been in the wars,’ Rachel said in Bernard’s voice. Her transatlantic accent might have been tempered by four decades of Derbyshire, but some phrases would simply never suit her.

‘Mother, I’m fine,’ Oriana said. ‘Casey is fine too. We’re still great friends – but I had to come back. You know – work, tax, stuff. And I’m thirty-four.’

‘Time waits for no man.’ Rachel channelled Bernard again. She felt irritated. Her daughter had just said emphatically, convincingly, that she was fine. The thinness, the paleness – perhaps that was just how Oriana in her thirties was meant to look. ‘Now you’re back – for good – will you go see Robin?’

The name hung like a dead man on the gallows, and silent, loaded looks swung back and forth between mother and daughter.

‘Now you’re back – you ought to.’

‘Why would he even know that I’m back?’

‘He doesn’t. He wouldn’t.’ Rachel paused. ‘But this isn’t a holiday, a flying visit. You have a duty.’

Oriana had to take a moment. A knot of accusations and retorts were loaded onto the tip of her tongue and aimed dangerously at Rachel. She bit it.

‘You don’t keep in touch? At all?’ Rachel said.

‘You know I don’t. You know that.’

‘I just thought—’

‘Well, don’t.’

‘You’re a lot older now, Oriana – and he’s not getting any younger.’

‘What’s that meant to mean?’

‘It means—’

‘Have you seen him?’ Oriana made the notion sound just as preposterous.

‘No – but that’s different.’

‘How so?’

‘He’s your father – for all his faults, he is still your father.’

How long? When was the last time? Oriana rifled through fading memories, their chronology confused, as if sifting through a disintegrating pile of documents.

‘Louis Bayford’s funeral,’ Oriana said.

Her mother paused. ‘That was the last time I saw him, myself. But you didn’t stay. You left straight after the service. You disappeared. He never knew you were there.’

Nor did Malachy or Jed. Oriana plucked at the seam on a scatter cushion. That funeral. Five years ago? Six? She had sat at the back of the church, away from everyone, hiding down into her coat, fighting the urge to stare at the backs of their heads, Jed and Malachy; praying neither would turn and see her. She couldn’t even remember seeing her father there.

She’d left as soon as she could – to avoid him not so much as them.

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And don’t miss the latest engrossing and poignant tale from Freya

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Over one short weekend, when musician Scott and children’s author Frankie meet by chance, a profound connection is made. Their homes are thousands of miles apart: Frankie and her children live by the coast of North Norfolk while Scott’s roots lie deep in the mountains of British Columbia. Against all advice, they decide to see where this might go.

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Poignant, engrossing and moving, The Turning Point is a novel about the importance of seizing happiness and trusting that love will always find a way.

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About the Author

Freya North is the author of 14 bestselling novels which have been translated into many languages.

She was born in London but lives in rural Hertfordshire with her family and other animals, where she writes from a stable in her back garden. A passionate reader since childhood, Freya was originally inspired by Mary Wesley, Rose Tremain and Barbara Trapido – fiction with strong female leads and original, sometimes eccentric, characters.

In 2012 she set up, and now runs, the Hertford Children’s Book Festival. She is also a judge for the CPRE Rural Living Awards, and also an ambassador for the charity Beating Bowel Cancer.

To connect with Freya and hear about events, unique competitions and sneak previews of what she’s writing, join her on Facebook, Twitter or her website.

Also by Freya North

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Chloë

Polly

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Pip

Love Rules

Home Truths

Pillow Talk

Secrets

Chances

Rumours

The Way Back Home

The Turning Point

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