‘Thandie?’ said Billy.
She had long, curling black hair, huge eyes, and the kind of voluptuous body Billy would happily move into.
‘About bloody time too,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Billy.
‘So you should be. Glad you made it at long last.’
There didn’t seem much he could say to that. He offered: ‘Yes.’
Thandie turned and headed back into the house, Sally close behind her and, after a moment, Billy followed her in too. The entrance hall was surreal: nothing like the places they usually stayed, it had pale-blue William Morris wallpaper and a few framed botanical prints, and no signs of mould. It was – he searched for the right word – pleasant. He was uncomfortably aware of tracking sand on the polished floorboards.
Thandie rooted around in a handbag on the hall table and pulled out a £20 note which she handed to Sally with a heart-melting smile.
‘I need to talk to Bill alone, love,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you head down to the pub?’
‘Thanks, Thandie,’ said Sally, appearing pleased but not surprised. ‘See you later!’ And with that she went back out, shutting the door behind her. What kind of a place was this, where the landlady handed out cash?
Meanwhile, Thandie was walking ahead of him, the rear view as good as the front. She headed through a wood-panelled door into a room at the back of the cottage. ‘And don’t you start about me giving money to Sal,’ she was saying. ‘I know you won’t approve, but she doesn’t have much, and she’s out of work, and she’s feeling so down about it … What can I tell you, I’m a soft touch.’
Sally had a knack of making friends quickly, reflected Billy. He, less so.
He followed Thandie into a living room running the width of the house, with French doors open onto a sunny patio, bursting with plants. At one end of the room was a round table, set for two.
‘I cooked, like an idiot,’ she said. ‘I actually thought it might be nice, for us to share a meal together, while we talk things through.’
Billy tried to remember if he’d ever been offered so much as a Mint Imperial while previous landladies had detailed how to unblock the shower drain and that towels would only be changed every other week.
‘It will be nice,’ he said.
‘Well then, why weren’t you here any earlier?’
This woman’s moodiness was incomprehensible.
‘I came as soon as I knew you were waiting.’
‘The chicken’ll be dry now,’ said Thandie, ducking through a door into what presumably was the kitchen. ‘You could at least try to keep to our arrangements.’
‘Yes,’ said Billy. ‘I will in future. This is a lovely house, by the way.’
There was a long silence, and then Thandie said, in a peculiar tone, ‘I know.’ Then she added, ‘I’m just going to make the gravy.’
Billy wandered around the living room, asking himself what kind of a deal Sally could possibly have struck to allow them to stay in such a swanky place. As well as the dining table, there was a comfortable-looking sofa with a matching armchair, both with all their springs and stuffing still inside them. Against one wall stood a polished upright piano, with a few framed photographs displayed on top. The other walls were lined with bookshelves, and instead of the torn-jacketed Jeffrey Archer novels and Shades of Grey sequels he was used to – when the places where they stayed had books at all – there were classic novels, modern prize-winners, volumes of plays and poetry. He spotted several of his favourites, a few of which he had stolen from libraries in towns they’d passed through and were now stuffed in the wheelie bag. He couldn’t have asked for a better living room if he had designed it himself.
‘Do you want wine?’ said Thandie from the kitchen. ‘I know I could do with some.’
Since when did these places serve wine? Maybe this Thandie was an alcoholic – that would certainly explain a lot. Still, Billy had never been one for examining the mouths of gift horses. ‘That would be great,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
Near the French doors, there was a stylish wooden rocking chair with a low table beside it, this one tottering with books – exactly the kind of chair that Billy would love to sit in and read. He glanced towards the kitchen door, but there was no sign of Thandie returning.
‘Mind if I sit?’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ said Thandie in that peculiar tone again.
Billy lowered himself into the rocking chair and leaned back. It was the perfect height for him, with just the right amount of give. He reached over and took the top book off the pile on the table. It was a play, called If You Say So, by one William Evans. He turned it over to read the back cover, shrieked and dropped the book.
Thandie rushed in from the kitchen, brandishing a wooden spatula. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes, I …’ Billy picked up the book and clapped his hand down over the photo on the back. ‘I thought I saw a mouse.’
‘Oh, God, yes, you probably did. I do keep saying we should get a cat. Close the patio doors if you like. Christ, you nearly gave me a heart attack. I’ll just be a minute.’
Thandie headed back into the kitchen. Billy peeled his hand off the back of the book and looked down at what was quite clearly a photograph of himself, sitting in this very chair in this very room, a room that he had never been in before today. Trembling, Billy got up and went over and examined the bookshelves. He found a whole shelf of plays and poetry by William Evans and, when he pulled out a couple, they had the same photograph on the back, the photo of him. Time seemed simultaneously to slow down and speed up. He lurched over to the piano and scanned the photos until he found what he was looking for. He picked it up: a silver-framed portrait of Thandie in a wedding dress, a veil pushed back over her long, dark hair. She was laughing, and her eyes were filled with love as she gazed over at the man on her arm, who was, of course, himself. Or rather, William Evans. Another himself. Another Shakespeare.
Thandie came in carrying two glasses of wine, saying, ‘I thought I’d open that bottle your father gave us.’ Father? His mother had always said that she hadn’t needed a man; all she’d needed was a womb, a laboratory and one of Shakespeare’s wisdom teeth. And now he had a father? Who was he? An ex-husband? Another scientist? A clone of William Shakespeare’s actual dad? Argh, he hated the word ‘clone’!
‘Why are you looking at that?’ said Thandie.
Billy looked down at the wedding photograph in his hand, at the happy Thandie there.
‘You look so beautiful,’ he said.
The real Thandie’s face hardened. She slammed the glasses down on the dining table. Some wine sloshed over the side of one of them. ‘I’ll get the chicken,’ she said.
‘Chicken, right,’ said Billy. I need to get out of here immediately, he thought.
He tossed the photograph onto the piano and made a move for the door. Thandie came back in with a roast chicken studded with rosemary, on a bed of onions and whole roasted garlic cloves.
Well, thought Billy, maybe not quite immediately.
Thandie returned to the kitchen and emerged with a dish of crispy roast potatoes and carrots, and a steaming bowl of gravy. The smell of the food made Billy’s mouth water. He could barely remember the last meal he’d eaten that hadn’t come in a bun. He thought of Sally with her £20 in the pub and hoped that she was getting something just as delicious, though it was hard to imagine that she could.
Thandie looked at him and he looked at Thandie and Thandie looked at the chicken and he looked at the chicken and then he realised that Thandie was expecting him to carve. He’d never carved a chicken in his life. He wondered how much of it he could eat while still staying polite. Half the chicken had to be fine, surely. He picked up the carving knife and the long matching fork and started hacking pieces off the bird as best he could. Thandie watched for a while.
‘Have you been drinking?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Billy. Thandie seemed to require a further explanation. ‘I’m just nervous,’ he said.
Which was true enough. Thandie shrugged and began serving the vegetables. Billy experienced a small amount of relief in a situation that was far from relieving. Maybe he’d be able to busk his way through this. He’d gone to drama school in London, because it had seemed like the kind of thing a modern-day Shakespeare would do, and then he’d dropped out after a year to try to write, which he also told himself was appropriately Shakespearean. The truth was that he wasn’t an especially good actor, but he had learned to improvise under pressure, which he hoped would keep him in good stead here. He put some mangled pieces of chicken on both plates and then poured the gravy, which looked so thick and rich that it was all he could do not to drink it straight out of the bowl.
‘Cheers,’ said Thandie, holding up her wine glass. Yes. Drinking wine was better than drinking gravy.
‘Cheers,’ said Billy.
They clinked glasses and drank, Billy a large mouthful, hoping for anaesthesia. He got something even better than that. He gasped.
‘This wine is amazing!’ he said.
‘Well, you know your dad,’ said Thandie inaccurately.
Billy began to eat, trying not to gobble. Thandie was right, the chicken was a bit dry – Billy suspected that she could have taken it out of the oven on time, but had left it in to punish him, or rather William Evans, for having been so late. Thanks a lot, William, he thought. It was still the best thing that he’d eaten in – well – years. Imagine if this was his life! His house, his wife, his shelf of published work. William Evans was the luckiest man alive. Maybe I should kill him and take his place, he thought suddenly, but no, unfortunately, he wasn’t that kind of man. He just needed to eat and go. And maybe take Thandie upstairs for a good seeing to after the meal. William Evans could hardly complain, he should be grateful that he wasn’t going to get murdered.
He realised that Thandie was just sitting there, watching him stuffing himself, and made an effort to slow down. He smiled at her as he chewed, attempting to show his appreciation. My God, she was gorgeous.
Thandie ate a tiny morsel of her chicken, then put her knife and fork down. Great, thought Billy, if she’s not going to eat, maybe I can have the whole thing!
‘Bill,’ she said. ‘We need to talk.’
Oh, no. No, no. These conversations were bad enough when they were about him. He certainly didn’t need to take one for the William Evans team. He glanced towards the French doors, the door to the hallway. Maybe he could make a run for it.
On the other hand, the chicken.
On the other, other hand, Thandie’s face.
‘We need to have a serious conversation about this marriage,’ said Thandie.
And here we go.
Billy had just taken a huge bite of chicken, so Thandie had to wait for quite some time while he made his way through it.
‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Just not right now.’
‘If we’re not going to talk about it now, when are we going to talk about it?’
‘Literally any other time would be better for me.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it would be. If it were up to you we’d never talk about it at all. I mean, just look at today! You turn up late, you disrespect my cooking—’
‘I definitely do not disrespect your cooking.’
‘—hacking into it like you’re cutting down a tree, you refuse to engage with me when I’m trying to talk to you about something really important—’
‘Could you pass the carrots?’
‘I’m doing all the work here, and you’re giving me nothing.’
‘And …’ he said. ‘The gravy?’
‘This marriage is dead, Bill.’
The statement landed on the table with a thud. Billy tried to make the face of a person whose marriage was dead and not of someone who had just met this woman fifteen minutes previously and who was starting to ask himself what would happen when her real husband turned up.
‘Don’t you have anything to say about that?’
‘Well, obviously, I’m very sad that the marriage is dead,’ said Billy. From Thandie’s expression, this wasn’t good enough. ‘I’m heartbroken. Devastated.’ What he would give for a thesaurus. ‘Inconsolable?’
‘Stop being facetious.’
‘I’m not. I really mean it. Let’s give things another try. There’s really no need for us to discuss this any further.’
‘I don’t know why I expected more from you,’ said Thandie. ‘You’ve never put the slightest bit of effort into our relationship. I mean, I knew from the start that your work was always going to come first – you were very clear about that, and I accepted it – but it’s just got worse and worse. Lately it seems like even when you’re here, you’re not here.’
Thandie sounded so sorrowful that Billy found himself starting to feel guilty, even though it had nothing to do with him.
‘We live in the same house, sleep in the same bed, but I don’t feel like we’re sharing our lives,’ Thandie went on. ‘You don’t take any interest in me, you don’t show me any affection. Our sex life is basically zero.’
Billy looked up sharply from his plate. If William Evans wasn’t giving her any (more fool him), he knew someone who would.
‘It’s wearing me down,’ Thandie continued. ‘I’m not myself any more. I feel so old – I’m not old, Bill! We used to talk about having a baby, I can’t even imagine that happening any more. And … I feel like – lately I sense that – don’t deny it …’
Billy felt a rising sense of panic as he guessed where this was heading.
‘I think you’ve been seeing someone else,’ Thandie said finally. ‘I don’t have any proof, I haven’t been snooping or anything, it’s just – I can’t think of any other explanation for how you’ve been behaving.’
Just as he’d expected. What an arsehole William Evans was! Billy had no idea what to say. He was hardly going to defend the guy. Plus he was acutely aware that his chicken was getting cold.
‘I know it’s partly my fault,’ Thandie said. ‘I know there hasn’t been much to attract you lately – but I get so exhausted by trying and failing to get your attention – and then I’ve got nothing left to offer – and so you go elsewhere – it’s a vicious circle …’
Billy was outraged on Thandie’s behalf. She had more than enough to offer, from where he was sitting. How could she take it all on herself when this shit William Evans was clearly entirely to blame? Ungrateful sod! He slammed his fist down on the table. Thandie jumped.
‘This is appalling!’ he cried. ‘I have treated you dreadfully! It’s all my fault – don’t you dare say otherwise. Nobody should have to put up with the way I’ve behaved, especially you. You’ve been such a wonderful wife to me – patient, loving, understanding, super-hot and great in the sack – the very idea that I would cheat on you – it’s reprehensible! I’m a dog! I don’t deserve you, Thandie, and I would give all my plays and books of poems and other published works to have you love me again.’
Billy meant every word of this – albeit on behalf of that animal, William Evans – but he wondered whether maybe he had laid it on a bit thick, because Thandie had a look of shock on her face, perhaps even disbelief. He quickly ate a little bit more of his chicken.
‘Also,’ he added, ‘you’re an amazing cook. Really.’
Thandie began to smile, but at that moment her phone, lying on the table beside her, rang. Thank you, God! thought Billy. Maybe this awful conversation could now come to an end.
‘Go ahead,’ he said, ‘take it, it might be important.’
Thandie looked at the display. Her face went white.
‘It’s you,’ she said.
I take it back, God! Billy’s hand scrambled around in his pocket, hurrying to switch his phone to silent.
‘Don’t pick up,’ he said. ‘My phone was stolen earlier, that’s why I was late.’
But it was too late. Thandie had already lifted the phone to her ear.
‘Listen to me carefully,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you want, but if you ever call this number again, I’m phoning the police.’
Oh dear, thought Billy.