Mandy went to the table. At her place was the usual home-made gravelly finger of oaty molasses-flavoured goodness, a piece of fruit and a glass of apple-juice concentrate diluted one to twenty.
‘I got chocolate cake yesterday,’ said Mandy.
‘I had chocolate cake myself, this morning.’
‘Great! Where is it?’
‘I’ve eaten it. I bought it to share with the play group. We were celebrating.’
Sue waited, to give the lines, Oh, really, mum? Gosh, how interesting. What were you celebrating? Do tell me all about it, plenty of time to waste their sweetness on the desert air. Then she took her feet down and turned to face her daughter.
‘I heard from Methuen this morning.’
‘Who?’
‘They publish children’s books. I sent them my story about Hector. The editor wants me to have lunch with her. In London.’
‘Big deal,’ said Amanda.
‘I think so,’ replied her mother.
Sue got up, opened the fridge and got out a wine bottle. There wasn’t much left, but what little there was she poured into a tumbler that had been resting on the floor beside her chair. Then she threw the bottle into the pedal bin, returned to her seat and disappeared behind the arts page of the newspaper.
Her eyes prickled and the print was definitely on the swimmy side. In fact one feature heading (‘A Hundred and One Dalmatians; the Influence of Pointillisme on Dodie Smith’) actually seemed about to dissolve. But Sue scrunched up her eyelids and swilled the tears back into her head by sheer force of will. It was nothing but foolishness to be cast down. After all, Amanda’s response was no more than she, Sue, had expected.
Sue laid her fingers briefly on her breast, where the precious letter lay, folded small inside her bra. She had rung Methuen’s about an hour ago. At first she had talked too much from nervousness and wine, but then, fearing they might think her wildly unstable and change their minds about the book, she had clammed up entirely. She had hardly been able to choke out an acceptance of the first date suggested. When she tried to make a note of this, the pen had twice slipped from her fingers and she’d had to put the phone down while she crawled around looking for it. The editor, who sounded very kind, and neither impatient nor amused at Sue’s ineptitude, then gave her the name of the nearest tube and directions on how to find the building, It was only after Sue’s palsied hand had clattered the receiver back onto its rest that she realised the thirteenth was only four days away.
‘I got buttered crumpets as well last night.’ Amanda affected to gag on the cookie. ‘My nan says I need—’
‘I don’t give a stuff what your nan says. She wants to try managing on my housekeeping. You’d be lucky to get a glass of water and a cream cracker never mind a buttered bloody crumpet.’
There was a long silence. Neither of them could quite believe their ears. Mandy gawped, mouth hanging open, sticky brown tongue clearly visible. Sue retired once more behind her screen, proud that, though her heart was riven with tremors, the sheets of newspaper remained completely still. She thought, I must be drunk. Was it possible that in vino veritas was not just some bibulous old soak’s tarradiddle but a matter of simple fact? And that, beneath the self-preserving layers of submissive docility, slept a person capable of extreme nastiness? Oh God, prayed Sue, I do hope so.
She lowered the Guardian. Amanda had gone. Scooby Doo had come. As now had Brian, kicking his boots against the front step in an attention-seeking, exaggerated way for all the world as if he had just bid hail and farewell to Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
He came into the sitting room, grumbled at Mandy for throwing her things on to the floor, laughed over-heartily at Scoob then strode straight through the kitchen into the toilet. Here he withdrew his penis, which looked and felt as if it had spent the previous twenty-four hours marinading in a jar of chili paste, with extreme care. He urinated, tucked himself tenderly away and zipped up very, very slowly. Emerging from the bathroom he stared, much as Amanda had done, at the sight of his spouse sitting (lolling might be more accurate) with her feet up.
Brian gave the room a sharp once-over but everything looked clean and tidy and tea was, as usual, on the table. Propped against his mug was a letter. Brian picked it up. As soon as he saw the writing he knew it was from Edie. His stomach heaved. Feeling both excited and alarmed he wriggled into the piney niche and forced himself to sit calmly and make some show of eating.
The food nearly choked him. The food and apprehension. Coming to the house! He’d have to put a stop to that. That sort of thing could lead to trouble. She was obviously desperate to see him again. Understandable. He was pretty keen to see her too. In fact, during a day spent teaching on automatic pilot (not that his class had noticed the difference) Brian had done nothing but dream of the future. He had already decided that, once he had obtained his freedom, they would be married. His parents would kick up of course, because of the social gap, but they’d come round. And eventually he would want children, though obviously he and Edie would be all in all to each other for a long time first.