Penny was up early too, power walking around the lake, feeling the wind against her cheeks and rushing under her arms as she swung them. She was lengthening her stride, conscious of the big muscles of her thighs, the stretch of her hamstrings. She refused to wear exercise clothing, to bestow free advertising on a new lycra range, names emblazoned over everything. Since when did ‘fitness’ become a hobby, something you listed as an interest on an internet dating site? If she saw another new mother dressed by Lorna Jane, slimmer than a twelve-year-old, jogging around the lake while pushing a specially designed three-wheel pram containing an infant less than two months old, she would trip her up. Penny wore an old T-shirt of Pete’s, which still carried the shape of his body, and a stained pair of shorts she now used only for gardening. Running shoes were a different matter: she wore a pair of top-of-the-range Nikes, fluorescent orange, necessary to support the healed bone in her foot (embarrassingly broken falling off her new high-heeled shoes while dancing at the Orpheus. Oh, age, where is thy mercy?). She was scared of decay, of dissembling, of losing her shaky place in the world and ending up like her friendless, embattled mother. Marie—whom she never called ‘Mum’—lived unhappily in a retirement village, having failed to manipulate either of her two daughters into living with her. Marie made enemies of everyone, her only pleasure derived from flirting with hapless ancient gentlemen, smitten by her Frenchness which—like flirting—she practised reflexively, having long ago cultivated the art of being ‘French’. Her mother’s only surviving friend, a saintly old woman named Wendy O’Brien, visited Marie in order to be lectured about everything she was doing wrong. To Marie, other people existed simply to cause her grief and interfere with her plans; she was constitutionally unable to see another person’s point of view. Her mother—who had an uncanny ability to scramble other people’s brains—also had a genius for alienating everyone.
Penny was thinking about Marie and did not notice tall, gangly Jonathan Lott, trailed by Bites, moving towards her from the opposite direction. By the time she noticed him she barely had time to pull in her stomach, which must have been sticking out, the wind flattening the T-shirt against her belly which, mercifully, was always slightly smaller in the mornings. ‘Morning,’ she said and Jonathan smiled. Bites wagged her tail.
She knew him, of course. Penny had been to several parties with Jonathan and Sarah, an intelligent woman with an engaging smile whom she remembered mostly for a truthful conversation they had once had about recalcitrant daughters. She knew Sarah had run off with a woman, a fact she found intensely interesting, but despite this she intended to give Jonathan only a friendly nod and keep walking.
‘Penny!’ he said, and she stopped and turned. ‘I was going to drop in. I’m having a barbecue tonight, nothing fancy. Do you and PP want to join me? Gordie’s coming, and the Pattersons and Rosanna.’
She laughed. ‘You’re forgetting Pete and I aren’t married any more.’
He laughed too, a deep, sexy laugh. ‘Oh, I thought you had one of those civilised divorces where you all go away on holiday together like in an Alan Alda movie.’
‘Yeah, right,’ she said.
Something of her feelings must have shown on her face, because Jonathan averted his eyes. ‘Look, a kite,’ he said.
She followed the line of his finger and saw a hawk, freewheeling in the air. ‘Oh, you mean a bird kite, not a kite kite.’
He laughed again. ‘It’s too early for those kites,’ he said.
They both noticed, at the same time, the dog, eating a bright orange patch of vomit. ‘She loves vomit,’ said Penny.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’ he said. Penny smiled.
‘What time do you want me?’ she said.
‘Any time after seven,’ he said.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Oh, and what can I bring?’ The polite response to this was ‘nothing’, and she was surprised when Jonathan suggested she could bring something sweet if she liked. What a tight-arse, she thought as they parted, asking people to dinner and then asking them to bring the dinner. According to gossip he was mean with his money, even though he had piles of it. He never gave mates rates on his house either: Phil’s sixtieth birthday relatives had come from New Zealand and when Sylv asked Jonathan about the possibility of them staying at his house—assuming he would invite them to stay for free, or at the very least at a modest rental since it was empty—he let her know via Cheryl—via Cheryl, not even personally!—that, yes, it was available, but at the full price of comparable high-season rentals. Cheryl ran The Landing’s only letting agency, and everyone knew that she had once had a one-night stand with Jonathan, but no-one knew the details. Everyone wanted to know, naturally.