They got back to find Dafydd strimming the rectangle of lawn near the front door.
‘Nice lunch?’ he asked.
‘Yes, thanks,’ Elizabeth said. ‘We bumped into Lenny. He was with a friend.’ She suspected that talking about Lenny Butler might not be such a good idea and she asked quickly ‘Where are the kids? What are they doing?’
‘Redeeming themselves. Cleaning windows.’
A volley of laughter sounded from the back garden.
‘Allegedly.’
She had been on edge as they drove up from the beach, wondering what she would feel when she saw him, and fearing that, by her earlier unsubtle advance, she had forfeited his good opinion. But, as they sat on the grass, watching swallows wheeling and swooping, he showed no sign of disapproval.
‘We’ll eat around seven. Is that okay with you two?’ he said.
Diane rubbed her hands together. ‘Sounds wonderful.’
‘She’d eat on the hour, every hour, if she could,’ Elizabeth said, ‘and look at her. She’s a rake.’
‘It’s genetic, Lizzie, not from choice. Besides, men prefer curvy women, don’t they?’ Diane turned to Dafydd for confirmation.
‘Maybe I’m out of tune with my gender, but I’ve got a thing about ears myself.’
Diane fingered her ears which were peppered with rings and studs. ‘Sounds kinky. Pierced or unpierced?’
‘On the whole, I prefer my women unmutilated,’ Dafydd said.
Elizabeth moved her head discreetly from side to side, trying to recall which earrings she was wearing, hoping that she’d chosen something inconspicuous.
The discussion moved on to tattoos. Diane approved of them – Elizabeth didn’t.
‘D’you have a tattoo, Dafydd,’ Diane asked. ‘Something meteorological, perhaps?’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint. Apart from anything else, I’m useless with needles. Whenever one of our crowd was getting “done” we’d all tag along for a laugh. I’m talking a while ago, mind you. There was this dodgy dive in Tudor Street. God knows why it wasn’t closed down. They must have been giving the Environmental Health inspectors top-of-the-range freebies. The Last Supper – something along those lines. Anyway, the guy only had to start up the needle thingy and I’d pass out.’
Diane extended her arm, the palm of her hand upwards, revealing a smudge the size of a ten-pence piece on the pale skin halfway between wrist and elbow. ‘It’s supposed to be a star. Lizzie’s handiwork. Quink and a compass point. We were thirteen. It bloody hurt, and then it went septic. My mother nearly killed me.’
Dafydd inspected her skin, running his thumb across the blue-black mark. ‘Impressive.’ He turned to Elizabeth. ‘Repeatedly jabbing a compass into your best friend must have taken guts.’
‘I’ll say. Especially as she was screaming the place down.’
Dafydd returned to his task while Elizabeth and Diane went to see how the window cleaners were progressing.
A ladder reached from the yard to the dormer window and Jordan was at the top of it, sponge in hand, bucket balanced in the guttering. There was no sign of Angel or Mimi.
‘Oh, God,’ Elizabeth whispered.
Jordan glanced down, grinned, then slopped more suds on the glass.
‘Someone should be holding the ladder.’ Elizabeth placed her foot on the bottom rung and gripped the sides, feeling the metal flex with his movement. ‘In fact you shouldn’t be up there at all. Where are the girls?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘That’s not the point.’
He frowned. ‘You say that all the time.’
‘What? What do I say?’
‘“That’s not the point.”’
Elizabeth stood silently, steadying the ladder whilst he finished cleaning the window, suspecting that were she to indulge in a tit-for-tat exchange she might lose.
‘What is his problem?’ Elizabeth complained later when she and Diane were in the kitchen preparing salads for the barbecue supper. ‘He communicates in monosyllables. And on the odd occasions when he cobbles together a few sentences he does that Australian thing? Turns every sentence into a question?’ Her rising voice reinforced the criticism. ‘Then he has the nerve to criticise my phraseology.’
‘Teenagers are supposed to be stroppy and uncommunicative. It’s their job. We’ve already discussed this. Cheer up. A few more days and you can hand him back.’
Elizabeth was at the sink, swishing lettuce leaves around in cold water, watching particles of soil swirling and drifting, forming sediment in the bottom of the washing-up bowl. She couldn’t identify the moment during the week when she’d stopped wishing the days away and started regretting how quickly they were passing. Three more nights and then she would be sleeping in her own bed with Laurence. And she would sleep with Laurence – and only Laurence – until one of them died.
‘How many lovers have you had, Di?’
‘Jeez, you are in weird mood.’ Diane stopped slicing tomatoes. ‘Funny you should ask. I did a head count – not exactly the appropriate part of the anatomy I know – a couple of weeks ago. The day after Carl proposed in fact. It seemed only fair to give him the gory details of my past.’
‘And you didn’t tell him about Vexler? Doesn’t marriage to a dissident Romanian count as a gory detail?’
‘Watch you don’t fall off your high horse. You were the one who started this, don’t forget.’
‘Sorry. You’re right.’ She left it a moment before prompting ‘So how many?’
‘Forty. Good grief. I’m amazed that can you remember them all.’
‘Easy. I keep a list.’
‘You—’
‘Kidding. And don’t look so horrified. That only averages one a year. Well, near enough.’
‘You make it sound like a … a flu jab.’
‘And you make it sound like a hanging offence.’
‘How did Carl react to that?’
‘He kissed me and said that all my practising had paid off. And, if we’re confessing gory details, how about you? Let me guess.’ She cocked her head to one side and raised her eyebrows. ‘Two?’
‘Three if you count Laurence.’ Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s pathetic isn’t it?’
‘It is a bit.’ Diane patted her arm. ‘But our needs are obviously very different.’
Was that what it boiled down to? Needs? Diane needed an unlimited supply of partners whilst she needed – what? Monogamy? Monotony?
‘So it seems,’ Elizabeth said primly. ‘And have you decided what you’re going to do about Marin? And the money?’
‘The money’s easy. Whoever sent it intended me to spend it, so I’m inclined to do just that. Marin?’ She chewed her lip. ‘It would be kind of fascinating to see him again. Find out if he still presses all the right buttons.’
‘You’re incorrigible.’
‘No, I’m honest.’
It must be easy always to tell the truth, Elizabeth thought, regardless of how it affected others. But didn’t truth become an indulgence when it hurt the people that you loved and who loved you? ‘Where does Carl fit in with all this honesty?’
‘Poor Carl. He’s a lovely man but …’ Diane shrugged as though nothing more needed to be said.
Elizabeth wasn’t prepared to let it go. ‘Have you noticed that “Carl” always comes with a “but” or a “poor”?’
‘Yes. Well.’ Diane held up the bowl of sliced tomatoes. ‘That’s enough, don’t you think?’
Despite the talk of lovers and needs, Diane hadn’t bothered to ask what the situation was with Dafydd. That was because Diane didn’t really believe that he fancied her. Diane pitied her. All the nudging and winking had been something to cheer her up on her holiday. She could hear it now – Poor Elizabeth, she’s a lovely woman but…
Elizabeth was removing the pearl studs from her barely mutilated earlobes when Angel knocked on the bedroom door.
‘You don’t want to mess up your nice clothes.’ She went to the tallboy and pulled open the bottom drawer. ‘Are these any good?’ She held up a couple of T-shirts and a pair of striped cotton trousers. ‘They’re Mum’s. She leaves a few odds and ends here, for emergencies.’
‘Thanks. How sweet of you.’
Elizabeth wouldn’t normally consider wearing a stranger’s ‘odds and ends’, but it would have been ill-mannered to decline Angel’s thoughtful offer. And she was right – a white shirt and pale linen trousers weren’t suitable barbecue-wear.
She hadn’t worn red since she was a small child. She wasn’t sure why. Her mother’s determined but misguided pursuit of good taste, perhaps. When she tried them, the trousers were too short and the T-shirt on the snug side, but, on looking in the mirror, she was pleased with what she saw. For the first time since leaving home, she looked like a woman on holiday.
‘I always liked that T-shirt,’ Dafydd said when she joined the others in the garden.
‘What’s there to like, Dad?’ Mimi asked. ‘It’s plain and it’s red.’
‘Plain, I like. And red, I like.’ Dafydd looked Elizabeth up and down. ‘I like stripes, too.’
‘Shut up, Dad. You’ll embarrass her,’ Angel said.
Two barbecues stood on the waist-high wall separating the yard from the lawn, the air above them shimmering with heat. Tongs, spatula, basting brush and skewers lay alongside on a tin tray, like instruments laid out in readiness for a surgical procedure. The table was laden with bread rolls, assorted salads, crisps, sauces, pickles and mayonnaise – the whole lot no more than five paces from a functioning kitchen.
In Elizabeth’s opinion, barbecueing was a sure-fire way to ruin meat. After a lot of messing around, what resulted was either carcinogenic or poisonous. It left participants grease-spattered, bloated and blistered. But, as Jordan strummed the guitar and the sun sank behind the trees, is was pleasant enough, sitting on the lawn eating peanuts and sipping white wine, watching Dafydd Jones manoeuvre chicken thighs and sausages on the metal grids.
‘Me and Jay are going to sleep in the tent. Aren’t we, Jay?’ Mimi smiled but there was purpose in her declaration. ‘We’re going to listen to music and play Monopoly all night.’ She looked at her father. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’
Dafydd cleared his throat and blew out his cheeks, letting the air out through slack lips.
‘You’re making a creepy face, Dad. What’s the matter?’
‘Well … I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’
‘Why? What d’you think we’re going to do?’
Angel snorted.
‘Shut up,’ Mimi snapped at her sister.
Dafydd tried to put his arm around his younger daughter’s shoulders. ‘I don’t want to spoil your fun, love. It’s just that…’
‘It’s just that you don’t trust me.’ Mimi pulled away, scowling.
Dafydd looked towards Angel as if she might be able to broker a truce but his older daughter was deeply involved with making a daisy chain.
‘Some day,’ he began.
‘Here we go again,’ Mimi said. ‘“Someday, when you have a kid of your own, you’ll understand,” blah, blah, blah. If I ever have kids – which I won’t – I won’t stop them sleeping in a tent with a mate.’
Running into the house, she delivered what she clearly considered to be the killer blow. ‘Mum and Sam would let me.’
Angel rolled her eyes and followed her sister.
Dafydd prodded the chicken, Diane poured herself another glass of wine and Jordan strummed on. Elizabeth guessed that they were all (well, perhaps not Jordan) rerunning the last few minutes, marvelling at the speed with which a few sentences could sour an evening.
Dafydd was the first to speak. ‘I loused that up, didn’t I?’
‘You were a tad … predictable,’ Diane said, ‘although I must admit the Monopoly story was a bit implausible.’
The sound of sobbing drifted down from the open dormer window.
‘What the hell’s a responsible father to do when his daughter announces that she’s going to spend the night in a tent with some bloke?’ (Dafydd appeared to have forgotten that ‘some bloke’ was only a few yards away.)
‘Maybe Angel can talk her down,’ Elizabeth said.
The wailing was replaced by an angry exchange in Welsh, the substance of which needed no translation. The tirade reached a crescendo and a door slammed.
Angel leaned out of the bedroom window. ‘I give up. She’s such a stubborn cow.’
‘Thanks for trying,’ Dafydd said. ‘Are you coming down?’
‘In a minute. I need to make a few calls.’
‘Would you like me to have a word?’ Diane asked. ‘See if I can pour a little oil?’
Dafydd glanced at Elizabeth. She hoped her deadpan expression conveyed her lack of enthusiasm for the suggestion. Sending Diane Shapcott as an advocate for restraint was like deploying Attila the Hun on a peace mission.
‘Let’s leave it a few minutes,’ he said. ‘Can you give me a hand here, Jay?’ It was a considerate if transparent attempt to demonstrate that he blamed Jordan for none of this.
Jordan laid the guitar on the grass. ‘Okay.’
‘You keep an eye on that lot,’ Dafydd pointed to the sausages and handed him the tongs, ‘and I’ll see to the chicken.’ He smiled at the boy. ‘It’s nothing personal, Jay. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ Jordan muttered. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t my idea.’
After the business of the party, Jordan’s reluctance to get involved in another father-daughter clash was understandable. Nevertheless his haste to dissociate himself from Mimi’s plan seemed disloyal. Elizabeth, feeling unaccountably embarrassed by her charge’s spinelessness, wondered if his impulse for self-preservation had something to do with his being an only child, not used to looking out for anyone but himself.
‘No worries,’ Dafydd said. ‘Mimi gives us all a hard time. She’s got strong views on practically everything – which is great – but she’s got to learn to be a bit more…’ ‘Submissive?’ Diane suggested.
‘I was going to say diplomatic.’
Dipping a tortilla chip into a tub of humous she said, ‘I need the loo. Back in a sec.’
‘You know what she’s up to, don’t you?’ Elizabeth said.
Dafydd nodded. ‘But I can’t imagine how she’s going to pull it off.’
Jordan was concentrating on the sausages, turning them over, organising them into orderly ranks. The customary beat leaked from his earphones yet he could almost certainly hear everything that was being said. Dafydd resorted to discussing the problem of maintaining the house through the coming months whilst his in-laws were in Swansea.
‘We can get the post redirected and so on but Dad’s not going to have the energy to keep traipsing over here to see to the garden and clean the house. I’m going to have another bash at persuading him to find someone to keep an eye on the place.’
‘He won’t go for that?’
‘He’ll see it as throwing in the towel. The thing is, I’m not sure he’s faced up to what’s happening. He was saying, only this morning, that he hoped to get back to work in a week or two “when Mum’s feeling better”. As if she were going to get over this… this thing. As if it were a dose of flu or a broken leg.’
She recalled the workshop, tools and raw materials classified, everything neat and in its place. She wondered how they would manage for money if ‘Dad’ couldn’t work, how long they would be welcome at Auntie Peg’s, how long before the poor woman had to be hospitalised.
‘They’re lucky to have you,’ she said.
It wasn’t long before Diane and Mimi rejoined them. Mimi’s eyes looked excessively bright, the lids a little puffy but, that aside, she was composed.
‘Food’s about ready. I hope you’re all starving.’ Dafydd doled out sausages and chicken pieces. ‘Tuck in. There’s plenty more.’
Everyone was on their best behaviour, passing around bowls of salad and offering to top-up glasses, steering clear of anything that might spark off another outburst. Dafydd was the perfect host, treating everyone, including his daughters, like visitors, laughing too loudly and making corny jokes. Angel and Mimi smiled indulgently and knowingly, as though grown-ups were simpletons who must be tolerated. Diane, looking smug, was putting away twice as much food (and drink) as anyone else. The quarrel, short and sharp though it was, had spoiled Elizabeth’s appetite but, ignoring the charcoal and chicken grease that was accumulating on her plate, she battled on.
As soon as the opportunity arose, she sidled up to Diane. ‘What did you say to Mimi?’
‘All will be revealed. And, by the way, isn’t Jordan a vegetarian?’
‘Damn. I’d forgotten. Maybe there are some veggie-burgers in the deep freeze.’
‘I wouldn’t worry.’
She pointed towards Jordan who had retreated to the lawn and was hunched over his plate. Obviously sensing that he was being watched, he looked up, a sausage halfway to his mouth.
Elizabeth put down her plate and climbed the steps up to the lawn. Smiling, she sauntered towards him. ‘How’s it going? Enjoying your food?’
He shrugged, fixing his eyes on the ground and tugging at the grass.
‘Nice sausages?’
He kept his eyes averted. ‘I didn’t want to make a fuss.’
‘That’s very altruistic.’
There was no need to bait him. It made no difference to her whether the boy broke his own rules of not. But catching him out did feel undeniably satisfying.
‘So? It’s a free country.’
‘Yes, but that’s?’
‘“Not the point?”’ He smirked and thumbed the control on his iPod.
‘Jay? I’ve brought you some afters,’ Mimi said, holding out a bowl of strawberries and ice cream.
‘Thanks.’ He took it from her.
She dropped down on the grass. ‘What are you listening to?’
She pulled the earpiece out of his right ear and, leaning her cheek against his, jammed it in to her own, their faces bracketed together by the thin wires.
It was Elizabeth’s cue to make herself scarce but she felt obliged to make an excuse for leaving. ‘Those strawberries look delicious. I think I’ll get some before Di scoffs the lot.’
‘Can anyone tell me what’s going on?’ Dafydd said.
‘I may be spending the night playing Monopoly,’ Diane replied. ‘Mimi’s putting it to Jordan now.’
‘What?’
‘The poor girl had boxed herself into a corner. I had to offer her a get-out clause. It was all I could think of. She and Jordan get to spend the night in the tent, with me there as chaperone-cum-banker.’
‘I’m not sure he’ll go for that,’ Elizabeth said.
‘Mimi did, and once my daughter makes up her mind about something it’s a done deal. The lad doesn’t stand a chance.’
Elizabeth wondered whether Diane had been completely frank with them. If a chaperone were the solution, Angel would have been the obvious candidate. The whole thing didn’t ring true. She watched Jordan and Mimi, trying to gauge Jordan’s response to Diane’s bizarre offer, not knowing whether to be pleased or concerned when he grinned and they touched knuckles.