Kitabı oxu: «The Art of Friendship»

Chapter Two

Patsy led her into what used to be the playroom. Now that Pete was nearly eighteen, it served as a second, more informal, lounge. Someone had pulled both of the black leather sofas into the centre of the room facing each other, thereby switching the focus from the big flat-screen TV in the corner to the coffee table between the sofas. There were a dozen or so people in the room.

Patsy let go of Janice’s hand and, sauntering her way across the cream shag-pile carpet, called out, ‘Don’t start without us!’

Janice spotted Martin sitting on the edge of the sofa fiddling with his mobile phone, his huge feet like plates on the floor. His legs were so long his bony knees jutted up awkwardly, like he had been badly folded. Skinny as the lamp in the corner, he had a tousled mop of brown curly hair and a long, thin face. Physically he was not Janice’s cup of tea, but he was a great guy. And, in spite of the physical differences between him and his curvy wife, they were a perfect match for each other. Patsy hopped onto the arm of the sofa, put her arm round Martin’s shoulder and kissed the top of his head. He looked up and winked, beaming.

‘Come over here, Janice,’ said Patsy, waving her across the room with an urgent flapping of her right arm. Janice went and stood behind Martin so that the coffee table was in clear view.

‘This’ll never work,’ said Martin.

‘Give it a chance,’ said Liam, Clare’s husband, who sat opposite him.

Liam’s slight build and boyish face made him seem younger than a man in his late thirties. This impression was reinforced by his bright periwinkle eyes and, when he became very animated, the peculiar and entirely unconscious habit of raising the pitch of his voice. Clare and Kirsty, who were almost the same age and great friends, had gravitated towards each other and now stood talking behind the sofa. They each held a fresh glass of white wine in their hands and paid no attention to what was going on around them. Even though Janice was only a few years older than them, she had more in common with Patsy – perhaps because, unlike Clare and Kirsty, they both had grown-up children.

Liam spotted Janice and said, ‘Great party, Janice. Come here and see this.’ He pointed to the table where three mobile phones were laid out in an arc.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Janice, perplexed.

‘A party trick! Just watch,’ declared Liam with gusto. ‘Ah, there you are. Thanks, Pete.’

At the mention of her son’s name, Janice looked up, surprised. Under his choppy highlighted hairstyle his face was lightly freckled and his delicate frame was bony under a t-shirt and low-slung jeans. He dropped a handful of caramel-coloured kernels into Liam’s hand, a half-smile on his face. Or smirk, depending how you looked at it.

‘Right. We’re ready to rock,’ said Liam. ‘Just need one more mobile phone.’

Another phone hastily appeared. Liam placed it on the table with the others so that they formed an even-armed cross shape, with a space in the middle. The top of each phone was six inches from the one opposite. Liam said, ‘Now call each mobile on my signal.’

Janice was sure Pete caught her glance but, if he did, he chose to ignore her. She fixed her gaze on the mobile phones. Pete wasn’t supposed to be here – he had said he was going out. He must’ve changed his plans, she thought, and tried not to allow his presence disturb her. Pete folded his arms and watched Liam with a bemused expression on his face.

‘Okay, key in the phone numbers now,’ said Liam and he scattered a few of the kernels on the table, in the space at the centre of the cross.

‘Popcorn!’ exclaimed Patsy.

‘Hit dial now!’ ordered Liam and, after a few seconds’ delay, Martin’s phone began to ring followed quickly by the others.

The room fell silent, everyone fixated on the vibrating phones. Even Clare and Kirsty suspended their conversation to watch.

‘What’s supposed to happen?’ said Janice, but no-one replied. The phones continued to trill. After several rings, they stopped, presumably as they tripped to voice mail. Janice looked around at a roomful of puzzled faces. Pete had his hand up to his mouth. He seemed to be trying not to laugh. Janice looked away.

‘I don’t understand. I saw it on YouTube just the other day,’ said Liam, and he glanced at Martin who raised his eyebrows and shook his head. ‘The energy in the mobile phones cooks the popcorn.’

Suddenly Pete emitted a loud burst of laughter and everyone looked at him. ‘Oh man!’ he cried and slapped his thighs theatrically, his wiry frame bent double with hysteria. Then he straightened up and composed himself enough to say, ‘I can’t believe you actually did that. Everyone knows that YouTube video was a hoax. It’s, like, months old.’ The left side of his lip curled up in an Elvis-style sneer. ‘How could you think a few phones would emit enough energy to pop corn? You’re a total dork, Liam.’

Janice closed her eyes briefly, her face already aflame with embarrassment. Liam bit his bottom lip, grabbed his mobile off the table, and stuffed it in his pocket. Clare shot Pete an angry look and Janice opened her mouth to speak, then closed it.

Pete was nearly a grown man. He should know better. More to the point, she and Keith should’ve taught him better and she, and everybody in that room, knew it. She put a hand over her eyes in shame.

‘Any more drinks?’ called a cheerful voice and Janice looked up, grateful to see a young man, one of the waiters, holding out a tray of glasses – red and white wine and champagne. The tension in the room was dispelled immediately as several people made a dive for the drinks and a chorus of goodhumoured ribbing went up from the men in the room.

‘Well, Liam, boy,’ said someone. ‘It looks like you’ll have to get a microwave to make your popcorn, like everyone else.’

‘It’d be a lot cheaper than four mobile phones,’ said someone else while Pete slipped from the room.

‘And you can do more than four kernels at a time,’ added another and Patsy, in a fit of giggles, nearly fell off the end of the sofa.

‘Okay, okay. Point taken,’ said Liam, permitting himself a glimmer of a smile and raising his hands, palms outwards, above his head, surrender fashion. He added, through gritted teeth, ‘Bet I wasn’t the only one duped, though.’

‘I thought it would work too,’ said Clare, in defence of her husband. ‘And you don’t know till you try, do you?’ She placed her right hand on Liam’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. Fleetingly, he touched her hand with his own.

‘Phew!’ said Patsy. ‘It’s only clever people with degrees in science and physics and…and whatever would know it wouldn’t work.’

‘Hey, are you saying we’re not clever?’ said Martin good-naturedly, as Janice walked quickly over to the door just in time to watch Pete sauntering up the hallway. All merriment had evaporated – she was suddenly and completely sober. She felt a hard, cold knot in her stomach like a stone. She snatched a glass of champagne from the tray, knocked it back in one, replaced the glass and followed him, keeping her eyes fixed determinedly on the place between his jutting shoulder blades.

‘Janice!’ called Keith’s voice. ‘Over here.’

‘I’ll be there in a minute,’ called Janice, her voice like iron. She did not move her eyes from Pete.

He stopped to talk to two of his friends in the doorway to the kitchen – what were they doing here? Free drink of course, she realised, noting the beer can in Al’s hand and the crystal tumbler full of amber-coloured liquid in Ben’s. From the glazed expression on Ben’s face it looked like he was already well-acquainted with the contents of the spirit cabinet. But that was the least of her concerns right now.

For just then a young waitress, not more than sixteen, with her blonde hair scraped back in a severe ponytail and not a scrap of make-up on her fresh face, turned sideways to navigate her way past the boys, who were blocking her way into the kitchen. Not one of them made any attempt to move. She raised the tray above her head, facing Pete and smiled at him in an embarrassed sort of way. In one swift movement, so quick Janice almost missed it, he put his hands up, grabbed the girl’s breasts and squeezed them hard. The girl let out a yelp like an injured puppy, pulled the tray down like a shield across her chest and stumbled past him into the kitchen.

Seconds later Janice reached him. Ignoring Al and Ben, she grabbed Pete by the arm and dug her nails in hard enough for him to flinch. Pete didn’t appear surprised to see her. In fact when he turned to face her with that knowing smile on his face, it was almost as though he was expecting her. She put her palm on the handle of the cloakroom door and hissed, ‘In here. Now.’ His friends had the grace to stop laughing and look at the floor.

Pete flicked his long black eyelashes at her, looked away, looked back, sighed audibly. When he returned his gaze to her, it was full of insolence.

‘Now,’ she repeated through gritted teeth.

‘Whatever,’ he said, looking away again. She released her grip and he followed her into the cloakroom, slowly, making her wait. Janice flicked on the light and closed the door behind them. The room smelt of rugby boots and wet wool.

Janice folded her arms. ‘I saw what you just did.’

He stared at her insolently.

‘Are you drunk?’

‘Nope,’ he said and she knew from his clear-headed gaze that he was telling the truth. She wished he wasn’t – she wished that he was pissed out of his head. At least that would partly explain what she had just seen – and his unspeakable rudeness to Liam.

She exploded with rage. ‘How dare you touch that girl! How dare you! She’s an employee in this house and she should be treated with respect. She doesn’t look a day over sixteen, poor thing.’

When this failed to make any impression on Pete she added, ‘You could be charged with sexual assault, you do know that, don’t you?’

‘I never touched her. She just bumped against me on her way past. Big deal.’

‘Liar.’

He shrugged, looked away.

‘And how dare you talk to Liam McCormack like that?’ she said, her voice more controlled now, the rage simmering underneath. Her heart pounded against her ribcage, the adrenaline, released by fury, coursing through her veins. It felt like she was looking at him through a tunnel.

Again, Pete shrugged his shoulders, sharp at the edges like a hanger. ‘He deserved it. Anyway, I was only having a laugh. Don’t be so uptight, Janice.’ He’d stopped calling her Mum when he was nine, much to her irritation and hurt.

‘I didn’t see anyone laughing,’ said Janice. Apart from you. You were unforgivably rude and what’s worse, you encouraged him, knowing the trick would never work.’ In spite of her best efforts, her speech became more rapid and high-pitched as she went on. ‘You set him up. You deliberately set him up.’

Pete rolled backwards on the heels of his Hush Puppies, the middle-aged man’s shoes now inexplicably hip among his age group. His face was expressionless.

‘Why didn’t you tell him it was a hoax as soon as you realised what he was doing?’

‘You gotta admit it was funny,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t funny. It was horrible.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion. Al and Ben thought it was fly when I told them.’

‘What are they doing here anyway?’ said Janice. ‘I thought you were going out?’

‘We are. Later.’

‘If you leave it much later it’ll be tomorrow. And Ben’s had enough to drink. It’s time he and Al left.’

Pete turned and Janice said, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I’m leaving,’ he said, opening the door. The sound of the party, a wall of noise, came crashing through the door. ‘Isn’t that what you want, Mummy dearest?’

Janice resisted the urge to smack him like she had sometimes done, to her shame, when he was younger. Pete had always pushed the boundaries in a way she was quite sure other kids did not do. She lunged at the door and pushed it closed with the flat of her hand, muffling the noise.

‘You’ll go and apologise to that girl first. And then Liam.’

He snorted derisively. He furrowed his brow in an exaggerated fashion, pretending to give grave consideration to her demand. ‘Nah,’ he said at last, bringing his lazy gaze back to Janice. ‘That ain’t gonna happen.’

‘You bloody well will,’ said Janice, putting on a brave face but knowing already, from previous form, that it was a battle lost. How could she make Pete apologise? She had long ago lost the ability to influence him, let alone control him.

Pete folded his arms and said, ‘And who’s going to make me?’

‘We’ll see what your father has to say about this,’ said Janice. Deferring to Keith was her last resort and an ineffectual one at that. She was defeated, and both she and Pete knew it. Angered by her powerlessness, she flung the door open and marched into the hall.

‘There you are, Janice!’ cried Keith, over a sea of heads, his face flushed with beer and excitement. He side-stepped a circle of people engrossed in conversation, and, when he reached her, thrust a glass of champagne into her hand. ‘Here, quick, you need a drink! This way.’

Never more pleased to see him, she followed him into the hot and noisy drawing room. A temporary bar had been set up against one wall, behind a table covered in a nowdrinkstained white cloth. The table was littered with beer-bottle tops and dirty glasses and underneath the table there were great plastic bins of ice containing bottles of white wine and champagne and cans of beer. A thin, pale-skinned young woman brushed past proffering a tray of full champagne flutes. She held the tray in both hands, biting her bottom lip in concentration.

‘Did everyone get a glass of champagne, now?’ Keith asked her.

‘I think so, Mr Kirkpatrick. Emma’s been round the rest of the house already,’ she said, referring to the other waitress. The one, Janice assumed, Pete had just molested.

‘Good, good. You’re doing a grand job,’ he said and the girl smiled, showing uneven teeth. She visibly stood up a little straighter. Keith had the special knack of making everyone that came into contact with him feel that little bit better about themselves.

‘Can we talk, Keith?’ said Janice. Her anger had started to subside, replaced by the onset of distress. She felt a pricking sensation at the back of her eyes – if she wasn’t careful she would break down in tears. And she was determined not to cry. If she did, Pete would’ve won – again. ‘About Pete. You’ve no idea…’

‘Not now, Janice. Later,’ said Keith. ‘It’s nearly twelve! Lads!’ he called to a group of men from work. ‘It’s nearly time for the bells.’

The countdown chant arose from the playroom, where someone must’ve switched on the TV, and it rolled out like a wave through the rest of the house.

‘But…’ began Janice.

‘…five, four,’ shouted Keith, as the chorus grew around them. He threw his arm around Janice’s slim waist and squeezed her until it hurt. He raised his glass into the air like a trophy.

‘Three, two, one,’ she joined in. She forced a smile, determined not to spoil this moment for Keith, furious that Pete had spoilt it for her. But he wouldn’t get away with it, she’d make sure of that.

‘Happy New Year!’ cried Keith and he clinked his glass against Janice’s so hard she thought the crystal might crack. Then he pulled her to him until they were chest to chest.

‘Careful!’ she cried, teetering precariously on her stilettos, the glass in her hand tilting dangerously. ‘You’ll spill the champagne.’

Keith loosened his grip and placed a soppy kiss on her lips.

‘Happy New Year, darling,’ she said, returning the kiss, and he beamed happily. How she envied his contented nature, his ability to always look on the bright side, to see the good in everyone and everything. She loved him for it. Indeed, it was one of the reasons she had married him.

She had hoped, mistakenly, that some of Keith’s magic would rub off on her, that she would become a happier person just by being around him. But it hadn’t worked that way – in fact she worried that, if she wasn’t careful, the opposite might be true. She thought that if he knew the full extent of her pessimism, she would destroy him. Worse, he would stop loving her. For these reasons she did not share with him her darkest thoughts. Like how she really felt about Pete. Tonight, however, she thought determinedly, the issue of Pete’s behaviour could not be ignored.

‘Keith?’

‘Yes, darling?’

‘I know now’s maybe not the time,’ said Janice. ‘But we need to talk about…’

‘There you are,’ shrieked Patsy, appearing from nowhere. She threw her arms around Janice and cried ‘Happy New Year!’ into her left ear.

‘Happy New Year, darling,’ said Janice, embracing Patsy. Her soft, maternal body was comforting – Patsy’s perfume enveloped her like a blanket. She didn’t want to let go.

Soon Janice was surrounded by well-wishers, and, when she looked over at him, so was Keith, his head thrown back in laughter, radiating bonhomie. Janice glanced through the door to the place in the hall where Pete and his friends had been only moments before. They had disappeared. It looked like the topic of Pete would have to wait.

Clare and Liam appeared suddenly, Liam with his navy sports jacket on and Clare carrying a black wool coat over her arm.

‘You’re not leaving already, are you?’ she said, disappointed.

“Fraid so,’ said Clare. ‘We need to get back for the babysitter.’

‘Our taxi’ll be here any minute,’ confirmed Liam. The people around them peeled away like onion skins until only the three of them were left.

‘Well, thanks for a great party, Janice,’ said Liam.

‘Yeah, thanks a million. It was fab,’ said Clare.

If Pete wouldn’t apologise to them, thought Janice grimly, then she would have to…

‘We’d better get going, Liam,’ said Clare, ever the worrier. ‘We don’t want the taxi driving off without us. They’re like hen’s teeth on New Year’s Eve,’ she added, trying to be lighthearted.

‘Liam. Clare,’ began Janice.

They stared at her, waiting.

‘I must apologise to you about Pete’s behaviour earlier.’

‘No, no, no. There’s no need,’ mumbled Liam, stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets and finding sudden fascination with his shoes.

‘None at all,’ said Clare, shaking her head and avoiding eye contact with Janice.

‘Just high spirits,’ said Liam, looking at his wife. ‘A few drinks too many, that’s all.’

‘We’ve all been there,’ said Clare, nodding her head at Liam. ‘Haven’t we?’

‘Oh yes,’ he agreed. ‘I insult people on a regular basis, don’t I, pet?’ he said and laughed. Then he added hastily, his face colouring, ‘Not that I was insulted, you understand. No, not in the least. I just meant…I…’

His voice tailed off and there was an awkward pause. Their efforts to mitigate Pete’s crime only served to embarrass Janice further. They were too nice to be honest. Janice took a deep breath.

‘He was unforgivably rude to you and for that I must apologise,’ said Janice. ‘And I wish I could put it down to drink but I can’t. He was completely sober. I asked him to apologise but he simply refused,’ she said blankly, laying out the bare facts. The temptation to invent excuses for him was great. But she would not spare herself the censure that was rightly hers.

‘Taxi for McCormack,’ hollered a rough male voice from the hallway and the relief on the couple’s faces was obvious.

‘Come on, Clare,’ said Liam. ‘We need to go.’

‘God, yeah!’ said Clare, suddenly flustered. Her bag slipped and she juggled it and the coat until she had secured them both safely in her arms again. ‘Well, Janice. It was a fabulous party. Thank you so much,’ she said with a broad smile, placed a kiss on Janice’s cheek and then they were gone.

Janice, grim-faced, headed for the kitchen, looking for Emma, only to find out that she had gone home early, ostensibly with a headache.

Later Janice sat alone in the drawing room as Keith saw the last guests to the door. She nursed a glass of water, her shoes at her feet. The room had been cleared of glasses and bottles and the bar dismantled. The furniture needed to be put back in place, ornaments reinstated where they had been removed for safe keeping, and the room given a good clean. But there was little real damage, bar a few spillages on one of the rugs. Nothing that couldn’t easily be rectified.

She wished the same could be said of Pete. That the blots on his character could be shampooed out like the stains on a carpet. But she feared his nature was too ingrained now. This realisation shocked Janice for, up until now, she had always held out hope that Pete would somehow be redeemed. She had been doing so all his life.

From the very early days when, as a toddler, he bit other children so hard he left bruises, right up until tonight, she had told herself it was a ‘stage’ he would grow out of. And Keith was happy to buy into that fallacy too. They mistook Pete’s maliciousness for mischievousness, cunning for cleverness and deviousness for precocious development. They shut their eyes to the fact that his behaviour didn’t improve with the years. It just became more covert as he gradually began to understand what he could get away with, and what would get him into deep trouble.

And, when the hoped-for brothers and sisters for Pete failed to arrive, they, Keith especially, indulged him. If they had been able to have children together Janice wondered if it would’ve made any difference to the way Pete turned out. He wouldn’t have been so spoilt, but somehow she doubted if his character would’ve been fundamentally different. So much of character was down to genes, wasn’t it? Janice bit her lip and blinked back the tears. At one time she had convinced herself that good parenting would be enough to overcome the curse of Pete’s legacy. And she had been proved wrong.

Keith came into the room, let out a long, weary sigh and collapsed onto the elegant green sofa opposite Janice. He rested his elbow on the arm of the couch and rubbed his brow with forefinger and thumb, as if smoothing out wrinkles.

‘I’m knackered,’ he yawned. He kicked his shoes off and put his feet on the coffee table.

‘Me too,’ said Janice, exhausted by the emotional rollercoaster of the last few hours. She rubbed the tender red welts across the arches of her feet – the painful price of fashion.

‘Do you think everyone enjoyed themselves?’ asked Keith, resting his head on the back of the sofa.

‘Everyone except Clare and Liam. And Emma, the waitress, ’ said Janice, her anger reignited.

‘What are you talking about, Janice?’

Janice, feeling suddenly chilled, pulled a beaded beige cashmere throw off the back of the sofa and draped it across her shoulders. ‘Pete.’

Keith sighed loudly. ‘What’s he done now?’ The uninterested tone of his delivery irritated Janice. Her husband was always quick to jump to Pete’s defence.

Janice rolled her shoulders to ease the tension across her upper back and took a deep breath. She told Keith what had happened and tried not to colour the story with her opinions and prejudices.

‘Oh, Janice. Is that what had you storming out of the cloakroom with a face like thunder?’ he said when she had finished. Janice felt herself bristle with indignation. ‘It sounds like nothing more than a case of high jinks to me. And that’s hardly a crime on New Year’s Eve, is it?’

Janice took a deep breath and counted to five. Getting Keith to understand that there was something wrong with Pete was an uphill battle. ‘He assaulted that girl right in front of my eyes. And it isn’t so much what he did to Liam. Yes, I can see how it might sound like a harmless prank. And handled the right way, perhaps it might’ve been funny. But it was the way he did it. He wasn’t joining in the fun, he was poking ridicule at one of our dearest friends.’

‘It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘I’m sorry, Keith,’ said Janice stiffly, ‘but you weren’t there. There was this awful silence and people didn’t know where to look. Everybody was embarrassed. And Liam was furious.’

‘You’re imagining things.’

‘I’m not,’ she said patiently.

‘Well. Look,’ said Keith. He removed his feet from the table, leant forwards and held his hands out wide, palms upwards as though weighing the truth in them. ‘Did Clare and Liam say anything to you about it? I saw you talking to them just before they left.’

‘No,’ said Janice and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Of course not. They’re far too polite to criticise their host’s son. I apologised to them though.’

‘And what did they say?’ said Keith.

‘They made out like it was nothing,’ she was forced to admit.

‘There you go then,’ said Keith, dropping his hands and relaxing back into the seat again, barely managing to keep the smile off his face.

Janice was reminded yet again of the pitfalls of arguing with a barrister. Keith had a way of rounding an argument into a corner, like a sheepdog. And once he had you cornered, you felt just as stupid as a sheep. She gripped the edges of the wrap and pulled it tighter, like a swaddling blanket.

‘I always said you let him wind you up too easily, Janice. The trick with Pete is not to let him know he’s got to you.’

Ignoring this comment she said, ‘And what about him molesting that waitress? You’re not going to shrug that off too, are you?’

He said, ‘Again, I think you’re over-reacting. Maybe they were just messing about – both of them. I don’t know. But a quick grope in the hallway hardly constitutes sexual assault.’

‘She didn’t ask for it, if that’s what you mean, Keith. It wasn’t like that. It was totally inappropriate. She was horrified and when I went looking for her later on, I was told she’d gone home.’

‘Her going home may have had nothing to do with Pete.’

‘You’re not taking me seriously, are you?’ she said, balling her fists in frustration. ‘You never believe me when it comes to Pete.’

‘I never believe you,’ he repeated, nodding his head slowly. ‘Hmm.’ This was one of his favourite devices in a debate. By drawing attention to her inaccurate generalisation, he was attempting to divert the argument into a siding. She knew what was coming next. ‘Do you think it’s fair to say that “I never believe you when it comes to Pete”?’

‘That may be an exaggeration,’ said Janice quickly, determined not to let him deflect her. ‘But you persistently fail to accept that Pete isn’t…isn’t…’ She floundered, searching for the right word. ‘He isn’t right.’

Keith rubbed his hand through his hair until it stood up on end. ‘He’s a normal seventeen year old, Janice. And, yes, I acknowledge that his social skills aren’t as refined as we might like. But that’ll come with experience. You know sometimes you talk about him as though you don’t even like him.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. He’s my son,’ protested Janice.

Keith sighed. ‘Look, if it makes you any happier, I’ll get him to phone Liam tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ she said ungraciously, pleased to have made some ground but frustrated that she had had to fight so hard for it.

‘Though I’m sure he’ll wonder what on earth Pete’s calling him for…’

‘No he won’t,’ said Janice.

‘I’ve said I’ll get him to apologise, Janice. What more do you want?’

‘And what about the waitress?’

‘I’ll talk to him about that. It wouldn’t be…wise,’ he said, placing careful emphasis on the last word, ‘for him to contact the girl about that. Just in case she decided to take it further. But I’ll make sure,’ he added firmly, ‘that he understands his actions were unacceptable.’

Janice sighed. That was something. ‘Okay,’ she said quietly, mollified but not entirely content.

‘Right. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’ he said.

She nodded.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ he said and came over to her and held out his hand. She took it, stood up and he kissed her on the forehead – without heels, she was three inches shorter than him. ‘I know you worry about Pete, Janice. But he just needs to find his own way a bit. And he’s going to be alright. I know it. Let’s forget about him for now.’

Janice rested her head on his shoulder and swallowed the lump in her throat. She had a terrible sense of foreboding. Something bad was about to happen; no, more specifically, Pete was about to do something bad. And yet when she tried to articulate this thought, it sounded ridiculous. She closed her eyes and tried very hard to believe Keith’s optimistic words.

‘Oh Keith,’ she said, ‘I do love you.’

‘I know you do,’ he replied, with the unerring confidence of someone who believes that good things are their due.