Nancy sat alone in front of the television as Big Ben struck twelve and the crowd on the Thames went wild, fireworks exploding in the London sky, the presenter shrieking hysterically at the camera. Hope had begged to stay up, see the New Year in with her grandmother, and Nancy had had a moment of temptation, thinking how good the company would be, but she knew the girls would never last. Local fireworks, earlier on, had kept them from sleeping, but by ten she’d heard no more giggling and shuffling about, so she’d assumed they had finally dropped off.
She wondered what Jim was doing. He’d said he was staying in with a bottle of bourbon and his guitar, and she pictured him now, the wood stove burning, his boots off, the clear starry sky outside the balcony window, maybe some crisps or chocolate on the table, strumming quietly as he sipped his whiskey. She smiled to herself, her heart aching to be with him. They had agreed they would talk at her midnight, not his, which was an hour earlier, and she reached for her phone.
He didn’t pick up, her call going to voicemail.
“Come on, Jim,” she muttered, dialing again, suddenly worried he was already asleep. This time it was picked up after two rings.
“Jim’s phone?” a sleepy—or drunk—female voice muttered, before Nancy had a chance to speak.
She froze. On the verge of hanging up, she heard the voice say, “Happy Noo Year!” in a bad American accent, then, “Izzy here, who’s this?”
“It’s Nancy.”
“Hey, Nancy. Happy New Year,” Izzy repeated.
“Can I talk to Jim, please?”
“Umm . . .” There was a rustle of what sounded suspiciously like sheets to Nancy. “Bit tricky. He’s asleep, I’m afraid. We . . . he . . . There was a lot of alcohol involved and, well, he kinda passed out a while back.” Nancy heard her giggle drunkenly. “We made a bit of a night of it, to be honest.”
Nancy held her breath.
“Are you at Stevie’s house?”
“No, mine.” Izzy yawned.
Nancy didn’t speak.
“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea, Nancy. Jim wasn’t in a fit state to get back up the hill, that’s all. So I just put him to bed. Nothing odd going on, I assure you. Think he was just upset you didn’t make it.”
Nancy wanted nothing more in that moment than to stab the beautiful Izzy through the heart. Instead, she forced herself to laugh, the sound harsh to her ears. “Well, if you’d ask him to call me when he surfaces.”
“Course, will do. Hope you had a good one. We missed you.”
“It was great. Night, then.”
“Night, Nancy.”
She sat clutching the phone for a long time. She shivered, the house was getting cold. While her mother had been ill, she’d left the heating on all night—Frances was always freezing—but Nancy had barely been able to breathe in the stifling fug and now the system switched off at ten-thirty.
Nothing to worry about, she told herself firmly. Jim doesn’t find Izzy attractive—he’s told me that enough times. Like the woman said, he was just upset I wasn’t there and he got drunk. Serves me right.
But telling herself wasn’t working. She felt a piercing thrust of jealousy in her gut, so powerful that she almost retched as she imagined them lying together in bed, his hands all over Izzy’s beautiful body, his—No! she shrieked silently, getting up off the sofa and pacing around the room, clutching her arms around her icy body, not knowing what to do with the intensity of her feelings, but instinctively aware that she must move about or be choked by them.
If the girls had not been asleep upstairs, she would have run from the house, jumped in the car, driven as fast as she could away from the fear that was consuming her. Instead she put on the kettle. Shaking, wrapping herself in the sea-green woolen throw that had been folded over the back of the sofa, she pulled a mug out of the cupboard, then found a chamomile teabag.
The liquid scalded her tongue and the roof of her mouth as she sipped it, standing rigid against the worktop, her socked feet numb on the chilly kitchen tiles, but she craved the heat. Without it, she was sure she would die.
She must have stood there for a long time, because the next thing she was aware of was the sound of Ross’s car creeping slowly over the gravel. She wished she’d turned the lights out: the last thing she needed right now was a conversation with her daughter. But if they saw the lights, they didn’t come over—it was after two in the morning. A minute later she heard the front door closing quietly.
*
Nancy didn’t pick up when Jim called early the next day. He rang again half an hour later, and at regular intervals throughout the morning. Nancy still didn’t pick up. She couldn’t decide how to react. But it was too hard, not speaking to him, and by lunchtime she gave in.
“Nancy! Oh, thank God. I thought—Izzy said she’d spoken to you—” He broke off.
“Izzy said you were in her bed.”
“She said that? I wasn’t. I slept in the spare room—passed out, more like. Listen, I know it doesn’t sound good—”
“Why did she answer your phone, if she wasn’t in the same room as you?” Nancy interrupted him, unable to keep the sharpness out of her voice.
“I have no idea.” He sounded bewildered. “I told you, I was totally out of it.” He paused. “For heaven’s sake, Nancy, do you honestly think I’d do anything with Izzy? Do you honestly think that?”
“I don’t know what to think. You said you were staying in, alone, having a glass of whiskey or two, and then I phone at what must have been one in the morning and that woman answers and I can hear . . . I can bloody hear, Jim, the sound of her moving about in the bed.”
She heard him let out a frustrated sigh.
“Don’t treat me like I’m making a fuss about nothing. You obviously went down to her house when you said you didn’t want to go anywhere, then got nice and cozy with her, partying away, and ended up in bed. What the hell am I supposed to think?”
“Please, listen, Nancy. I wasn’t in her bed . . . or if she was in mine, then we weren’t doing anything. I was fully clothed when I woke up this morning and Izzy was shut in her own bedroom. I swear, going over to hers was just a drunken impulse because you weren’t here and I was missing you.”
“Don’t blame me for your behavior, Jim. We aren’t children. I have responsibilities. Surely we can spend a few nights apart without you getting into another woman’s bed.”
“I’ve told you, I wasn’t in Izzy’s bed.” He groaned. “I mean she wasn’t in bed with me, is what I’m trying to say.” Another sigh. “God, my head hurts. I don’t feel I’m making any sense, but please, please, believe me, Nancy. I got stupidly drunk, and that is absolutely the only bad thing I did last night.”
Nancy wanted to believe him. She did believe him. What made her sick with jealousy was the thought of him with Izzy at all, smiling and laughing with each other over the New Year candlelight in her cool little cottage, with her smooth, long-limbed, lightly tanned, youthful body, and—just as important—her brown-eyed, adoring gaze. Bloody cow.
“Nancy?”
“I’m still here.”
“Please, I’m so sorry about last night. But you know I don’t fancy the woman. Okay, I should never have gone there, but I’d had a couple and I just thought . . .”
Leave a man alone for ten seconds, her mother used to say, and they’ll be up to no good. With a jolt, Nancy remembered her mother was no longer around to deliver her bitter homilies. And although her conscious mind knew she had gone, the habit of concern for her—a constant backdrop to her day—was only just beginning to fade.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, not quite meaning it but feeling they were going round in circles with the argument.
Jim was silent.
“Let’s talk later,” she added.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” he replied, his voice tired and dull.
*
Lindy had been to Antigua for Christmas and was looking unreasonably gorgeous—more Goldie even than Goldie—when Nancy met up with her in the village pub two days later. Her blonde hair blonder, her skin glowing, she seemed to light up the dark, low-ceilinged pub like the Christmas tree they’d just dismantled. Nancy wanted desperately to talk to her friend about Jim, but she listened politely to Lindy’s tales from the Caribbean, which inevitably involved a muscled diving instructor and a Chelsea-boy heir to a jewelry empire with a large yacht.
“Right.” Lindy eventually turned her attention to Nancy, a slight frown on her face. “Spill the beans about our Jim. I know you’ve got something to tell me.”
Nancy didn’t ask how she knew, she just launched into a breathless description of the events of New Year’s Eve.
When she’d finished, her friend, raising her eyebrows, mouth pursed, took time to consider the situation. “Sounds innocent enough.”
“You think?”
Lindy nodded. “Yeah.” She laughed. “He’s a man, Nance. He’s sitting there, all alone, having a glass or two, feeling a bit sorry for himself because you haven’t pitched up . . . and there’s this neighbor down the hill, whom he doesn’t fancy . . .”
“So he says.”
“You don’t believe him?”
Nancy sighed. “Yes, I do. But she’s very beautiful, Lindy.”
Lindy shrugged. “Beautiful doesn’t necessarily mean desirable, darling, and vice versa. You must know that by now . . . But that’s not really the issue here, is it?”
“Isn’t it?”
“No. Seems to me the issue is whether you love him enough to go to France. Or he loves you enough to give France up and come back to England.”
Nancy knew that. “I can’t leave Louise at the moment.”
Lindy looked skeptical. “Well, there’s your answer.”
“You think I’m wrong?”
“Not for me to judge. But if France means so much to Jim, you have to face the prospect of losing him.”
Nancy’s heart seemed to contract down to a small, hard nub. “Can’t he live here?”
Lindy frowned. “Sounds like he wants to make a break, try something new with you by his side. So romantic. But if you’re dead set against it . . .”
“I’m not! I can easily imagine living there with him. I just can’t imagine leaving the family. Especially as Lou’s having a nightmare with Ross at the moment.”
“Fair enough. But, as I’ve said before, there’s always some sort of drama with family. And if you’re basically telling Jim you’re putting them first . . . Well, that’s a very strong message to a guy.”
Nancy nodded wearily.
“How much do you really love him, now the first flush of sex has worn off?” Lindy was peering at her intently.
“A lot,” she said softly, “but I love my family too.”
Lindy laughed. “Doesn’t have to be either/or, you know, just a form of compromise that suits everyone. Thing is, hitching your star to your family and not having your own life can work for some people, especially if there isn’t an alternative. But you’ve been offered a sodding brilliant alternative in Jim.” She shook her head, her glance almost pitying. “You’ve done your bit, Nance. Couldn’t you just throw caution to the wind for a change? Take a chance?”