Isaac’s rucksack was stuffed to bursting point, so distended that the zip was puckered on each side, and the whole thing resembled a pair of giant, wrinkled lips. Sighing, Sofia squeezed it between her knees to reduce the pressure and teased the teeth over stray bits of fake fur and feather to release three small teddy bears, a felt penguin and a floppy goat.
‘You did put some clean socks and pants in here as well, didn’t you, and your pyjamas, like I said?’
Isaac glanced at the pile of clothes half hidden under his bed.
‘Oh, Isaac. You’re going to be at Ben’s for two whole nights, you know. You can’t wear the same pair of pants for all that time.’
He couldn’t quite take it in. ‘I thought Ben’s sleepover was for his birthday night?’
‘You’re staying tonight, just to play with him and help him get things ready. Then tomorrow it’s the party, in the afternoon, and you get to stay all night again after that, and then on Sunday, I’m going to pick you up some time after lunch.’
‘So I can play with him all day today and two days after that?’ Isaac couldn’t quite believe his luck.
‘That’s right. It’s going to be like a little holiday.’
‘Where’s Daddy going to be?’
‘He’s still going to be away, like Florence and Tim. But on Sunday night, we’ll all be back for a big family tea.’
‘Are you going to be at home all by yourself, just you?’
Sofia’s heart sank. She couldn’t have it all crash down, now she had found her nerve. ‘Well, yes I will, my darling, but I’ll be absolutely fine.’
‘You’ll be in the house all by yourself in the dark.’ Isaac had a horror of being left alone at night.
‘It’s fine, Isaac. When you’re a grown-up, you don’t mind it quite the same.’
His face was a picture of crestfallen concern. She could see the vicarious suffering the situation would create in his five-year-old imagination, as she was eaten alive by wolves and snakes while he tossed and turned in a strange bed.
‘Actually, Isaac…’ she wondered just how much to tell, ‘you don’t need to worry about me one bit, because I’m only going to be by myself for one tiny part of this evening, and then I’m going to meet up with some old friends to do some camping and climbing, like we used to do before. So, all the time you’re with Ben, I’ll be all together with my friends inside a tent. Just like Flo and Tim are, but in a different place.’
‘Climbing?’ He looked surprised for a moment, then shook his curly fringe just once, as if to dismiss his doubt. ‘OK. Can we go now?’
‘We’ve still got to squeeze your clothes into that bag and wrap up Ben’s present.’
‘Can I give it to him today?’
‘I guess so, but he might not be allowed to open it early.’
‘Can I April Fool him? Can I April Fool him today?’
‘Well, it’s not really April Fool’s day ’til tomorrow.’
‘I want to wrap up some air and surprise him cos there’s nothing inside.’
‘Oh, Isaac.’ She laughed. ‘That sounds a bit mean.’
‘It’s OK. I’ll tell him he’s having his real present tomorrow.’
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s hurry up and get it wrapped or it’ll be tomorrow by the time we actually get there.’
It was in fact only half-past two when they pulled up at the Laymans’ house. Freya had never known Sofia to be on time before and was still clearing a space on Ben’s bedroom floor to put down the mattress for the birthday guest. She waved from the window as they pulled into the drive.
Ben shot past as she opened the front door, hauling Isaac and his rucksack in as if rescuing a drowning swimmer, or catching a bag of letters thrown from a postal train. They jumped about in mutual ecstasy for three or four seconds before galumphing up the stairs, running their fingers joyfully along the well-worn paint.
‘Good luck,’ said Sofia, pulling a face. ‘Sure you don’t mind?’
‘It’s easier when he’s got a friend over, actually. Saves me having to entertain him every second of the day.’
‘Call me, if there’s anything at all,’ Sofia said, hoping she wouldn’t. ‘He should be absolutely fine, it’s just… er… can he have the landing light on when he goes to sleep? He’s absolutely freaked out by the dark.’
‘Don’t worry. Ben’s the same. We’ll have it lit up like an operating theatre. He’ll have a great time. Cup of tea before you go?’
‘I won’t actually. Bits and bobs to sort out,’ she explained feebly. ‘May as well get on with it while everyone’s away.’
‘Not throwing any wild parties then, while you have the chance?’
No, no wild parties, she thought. Nothing like that.
Freya had her number. She’d be easily contactable if anything went wrong.
‘Oh, and this is for Ben,’ Sofia remembered. ‘It’s just a kit thing. I’m hoping he hasn’t got anything like it already.’
‘He’ll love it, I’m sure. Anything that involves totally ignoring the instructions and sticking lots of random things together is right up his street. It’ll keep them busy while I’m sorting out the party food.’
Sofia was torn.
‘Don’t worry, Mum’s coming round – I’ll have plenty of help.’
She succumbed to the stronger unmaternal pull to get away. ‘Isaac!’ she called up the stairs. ‘I’m going now.’
There were giggles and scuffles and something made a thump.
‘Isaac! Come on. Come down and say goodbye.’
He tumbled down dutifully and put his arms round her, already turning his head round to get back to the game.
‘Have a brilliant time, darling. I’ll ring you when it’s bedtime. And don’t fret about anyone else. We’ll all be absolutely fine. Be good!’
‘Bye, Mummy.’
‘See you on Sunday.’
She needn’t have worried. He’d already forgotten everything.
*
She barely made it onto the 3pm train, despite the careful planning and sudden absence of any need to consider anyone but herself. At the last moment, she had decided to take a taxi not the car, leaving the Citroen as a public marker on the drive. It was 2.59pm when she swung herself gratefully onto the carpeted seat, not minding the synthetic smell of polyester and ashes, or the shiny grey patches of undefined residue under her thighs, her heart beating with her exertions and what she was about to do.
She used the first fifteen minutes to calm herself. It wasn’t a crime, a weekend away. For Annie, Bea and Kay, it was a regular entitlement. They toured the country calling on immobile child-bound friends, stopping for suppers and Sunday dinners, clothing events and festivals. She was snatching just two nights away alone, for the first time, so far as she remembered, in as many decades. The daring of it was the travelling back in time, trying to slot back into that youthful configuration, span the chasm of the years with airy confidence, find her former carefree self before it was too late. But she must do it. Maalik had said she must. Maalik who had never graduated with his high school friends or been to university. Maalik who had learned to drive a clutch-less car, negotiate his way across the globe and navigate by moon and stars, all without sitting down inside and reading books.
She did resume her formal study during the middle leg. This time the carriage was packed, warmed with the overintimate odours of human respiration and digestion, and she took refuge in her headphones and her mobile phone. Music was an obvious place to start in such an environment. The other aspects of art and recreation – dance, drama, design and sport, the only remaining categories she had in fact to do, could wait until next week.
Classical wasn’t a problem. Trained in all the middle-class pursuits, she knew her Beethoven piano sonatas from her Bach preludes and fugues, and had performed perfectly at Prize Day when she was Florence’s age. In fact, she’d already jotted the major musical eras onto her cards. Popular music was, however, her pub quiz round nadir. She knew what she liked – danced to it unselfconsciously in her partying days, shouting out the choruses by heart and waving her willowy arms in synchrony with her girlfriends – but ask her the name of a lead singer, song or group, and she was clueless, hopeless, bereft of suggestion. For some reason, that kind of information hadn’t stuck.
She decided to start by assessing her existing level of knowledge, trying to identify the female singer on the radio. The voice was tortured, restricted, sultry, hoarse, the lyrics repetitive, straightforwardly suggestive, generically anonymous. She had no idea, not even a small clutch of possible names from which to pick. Perhaps she needed to revisit the despised A–Z of Knowledge book and work her way through the 1000 Number One Singles up to the present day.
She had to change trains again at Leeds, and by then knew she must speak to Isaac, to tie things up cleanly before venturing into the unknown. Contact with Flo and Tim was safely severed – they were on survival training, so far as they were all concerned, and would have no need to phone except in dire emergency. But there mustn’t be an awkward crossover, a conflict of identity, once she had alighted at her final stop. The young man in the corner heard everything she said.
‘Hi, Freya. Everything OK?
‘Brilliant. Can I just have a little word with Isaac please, to say night night?
‘OK.’ Pause while he was extracted from a game or the TV.
‘Hello, my darling. Are you having a good time?
‘I thought I’d catch you early, before you went to bed.
‘Did she? Well, I’ve caught you a long, long time before bedtime then.
‘No, I haven’t meeted them yet. I’m still on the train.’ She smiled as she copied his incorrect grammar. Linguistic overgeneralisation, typical of kids his age, but it made him sound charmingly tiny on the end of the line.
‘Well, there’s one called Bobby, and one called Clara, and lots of other people who’ll all be camping too.
‘Yes, I’ve got it. I’ve got my little tent. And lots of torches, to make it really bright.
‘OK then. Love you. Night night. See you Sunday afternoon.’
She wanted to tell him she didn’t know when she might phone again, and that Freya would tuck him in, but he had already put the phone down and gone back off to play.
*
She walked up from the station, allowing the cool evening air to decontaminate her skin. The path was a plain, thin strip of tarmac following the road in parallel as far as she could see, encroached upon by tangles of broken straw, where damp juice cartons and empty cigarette packets nested in the grass. She walked for twenty minutes, taking in the road signs and the faces of the sheep, who raised their heads and shuffled sideways in the fields as she passed. After a while, she noticed nothing but her rucksack, bouncing against her sweating back, the cluck of pheasants going up to roost, and the pale grey of the kerb, swept by passing sidelights in the reducing light.
What would they notice about her, she wondered? Would they even recognise each other? As she drew closer to the Square and Compass, past the stone houses crouched low behind their hedges, Sofia drew herself up, tossed back her hair and adopted a more confident stride.
She sprang up the steps and pushed open the double doors.
*
She saw them immediately, up against the bar. Bobby, still outlandishly tall and sinewy. Clara, once voluptuously tanned, now all spread out and gone to pastiness and lard.
‘Sofia!’ they gasped with well-prepared expressions of spontaneous excitement. ‘Great to see you! God it’s been so long!’ They’d been wondering who’d be first. Now they hugged and air-kissed her with ecstatic enthusiasm, just as they would have greeted whoever it had been.
‘Still looking amazing, even in your jeans.’ Bobby was in leggings: she was qualified to judge. Sports science and business management degree. Now ran her own chain of gyms. She looked with envy at Sofia’s only lightly altered features: her own carefully bronze-powdered to blend away the blue capillaries and tiny deltas of criss-crossed lines. Clara gathered up her pale bosoms under her forearms and leaned proudly over the bar, oblivious to two thick creases running right up to her neck. She’d made different choices and was content with that.
‘Can’t believe you made it, after all these years,’ she said. Bobby had been at the ten-year reunion. This was Clara’s first one. ‘Where did all that time go?’ the platitudes flowed easily. ‘Feels like yesterday.’
Sofia had the odd sensation of being top of this tree. She leapt up on the bar stool.
‘Another drink, either of you? What are you both having?’
They’d drained two white wine glasses each while she had been walking to the pub, welcome props as they’d manoeuvred through their conversation, delicately re-establishing marital and occupational status, levels of fecundity and other markers of success.
Sofia bought three more large glasses and realised, disbelievingly, as she put them down that the girls were still slightly in awe of her, anxious to impress. At first, she assumed her one-time relationship with ROX’s founder Jim, three meltingly attractive years older than them all, was what gave her some form of superior standing. But as the compliments poured out with the wine, it was clear that what transfixed them still were memories of her sheer vivacity, her throwaway assuredness as she swung herself from hold to hold, her annoying knack of triumphing in end-of-term exams, whilst appearing to spend every second of every revision time outdoors. Sofia’s mistake the last time she had visited a pub had been to say too much. Tonight, she saw that as her former identity remained intact, her best strategy was to say as little as possible and simply smile and sip away as she surveyed the scene.
‘So, when was the last time you guys actually saw each other?’ she asked, laying open the conversation for others to complete.
‘It was literally twenty years ago,’ babbled Clara. ‘I mean we’ve messaged each other and everything, but we haven’t all sat down together properly since 1996. There’s thirteen of us coming: nine of us tonight, including my hubby, who can’t get off work ’til late, and four tomorrow. Can’t wait to see if everyone’s the same or if they’ve changed.’
Not a lot had happened in Clara’s life the past decade.
‘So, what are you all up to now?’ Sofia was suddenly confident enough to ask.
‘Well, you saw my business page I guess,’ said Bobby. Sofia hadn’t. ‘Just about to open our seventh gym.’
‘And I’m still with Ordnance Survey,’ Clara butted in, ‘GIS Chief Technical Architect.’ The initials slid into each other giddily, now the wine was taking hold. ‘What about you?’
Sofia felt momentarily inadequate again, but then she remembered and, in a moment of bravado, found herself saying matter-of-factly, ‘Oh, I’m working on my latest book. Just finishing off the research.’ Well, she was almost there. She only had a handful of sub-topics left to do. And, technically speaking, it was her latest book. She didn’t need to mention there’d been no previous one.
‘So do you have family, both of you, kids or anything?’ She changed the subject.
‘Not for me,’ said Bobby. It was hard to imagine that wiry body bearing fruit, and Sofia had seen from her online profile that she was between men.
‘Eleven, fourteen and seventeen,’ Clara said with pride. ‘Eldest’ll be driving soon. Can’t believe it. Where did that time go?’ She paused. ‘Did you stay with Hugo in the end?’
‘Hugo?’ said Bobby.
‘Oh, you remember Hugo. Lovely, funny guy with the sticky-up fringe. Always playing chess or snooker with Mark Foswell, in the common room.’
Bobby looked blank. In a moment of tipsy tactlessness, Clara broadened her description. ‘Girlfriend called Annabel, in our first year. Used to travel up at weekends, just to visit him. Really pretty. Sat at his graduation ceremony, in the back row. They were both at that wedding reception you and I went to in Norfolk. Philippa and Christopher’s. 2001.’
Sofia couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. If Annabel had been present in the background when they’d collected their degrees, it was the first she’d heard of it. And a wedding? There had been a wedding reception, one of many, she remembered it now, fifteen years ago, when she’d been sick with the unborn Florence, and he had gone there on his own. He’d seemed unusually content, it struck her now, to represent them socially, but it all made sense perhaps, if she had been there too.
Sofia needed to process this new information. She reached down to pick her rucksack off the floor, turning the dinosaur away from them in case it spoiled the look, and slid carefully, shakily, off the bar stool.
‘Excuse me a minute. Just popping to the loo.’
When she emerged ten minutes later, they had decamped to a long table in the far corner overlooking the patio, to make room for four new arrivals, who were just starting to sit down, their rucksacks dumped on the table or slung on the backs of chairs, arms freed from their first wave of back-slapping and hugs.
The pub seemed to have come to life since she had left the room. The crowd of regulars had thickened. More alcove lights were on. The chink of glasses came more rhythmically, as the bar attendant swiftly rearmed the rack above his head. She took a deep breath. She would have to make a new impression all over again. She could see Bobby pointing her out as she closed the toilet door behind.
‘Yay! Sofia Berrisford!’ They turned around and made as if to get up in her honour. Dave, Angus, Kristian and his girlfriend Melissa – wife she now supposed. They’d all weathered well. Probably still cycled to work and spent their weekends doing half-marathons with the kids.
‘Hi, guys. Good to see you all! Don’t get up, I’m good.’ Sofia couldn’t believe she’d used that term again. She bent over to press her cheeks to theirs. The men were conscious of her hair as it bounced briefly off their necks.
‘Am I OK to sit here?’ The far-left corner of the padded bench was still empty.
‘Sure, that’s your glass.’ Clara had transported it, filled up again. Sofia sat down, and they all shuffled along.
‘Well, cheers ROX reunioners. Here’s to a fabulous weekend.’ Dave raised his lager, and they echoed his sentiment with a ragged chorus of cheers, wolf whistles and the odd “woohoo!”.
They settled into small talk pairings after that, asking how the journey had gone, how far they’d had to come, then after jobs, wives, husbands, children and climbs that they had done. The voices rose around them. Their voices rose to match. They leaned in closer, and their body language seemed to reaffirm how intensely interested in each other they all were, the alcohol warmly welding them retrospectively together, although the only words they’d exchanged for years had been on Christmas cards.
She wasn’t used to drinking this much and, after half an hour, had to extract herself again. When she came out of the ladies this time, there was an incredulous roar at the far end of the room. But it wasn’t for her. The whole table was up again, welcoming someone they’d never thought to see, reaching to grasp a handshake, feel his stubble scrape against their chin, touch him disbelievingly on the shoulder or be the very first person to order him a drink.
She stopped dead three paces back into the room. A tray of glasses smashed against bare concrete, nudged backwards off the bar. Every face looked up to source the noise, which cut a slice of silence straight through every interchange.
‘Jim?’
She was dumbfounded. He was equally electrified to see her standing there.
They spoke simultaneously.
‘I thought you said you weren’t coming.’
‘You said you couldn’t get childcare.’
There was a pause of half a second. For another whole second, it was, even for him, briefly awkward. Then, as usual, he suavely moved things on. Reaching across the table, he held her shoulders firmly and kissed her with public and professional charm once upon each cheek. ‘Sofia, great to see you. So glad you could come.’
The ROX reunion members thought nothing of it. They hadn’t known she mightn’t have come if she’d known he would be here, or that Bobby and Clara hadn’t passed her private message on. What would it have mattered, in any case? A reunion was a reunion, after all. They’d all been married once now, if not twice, and half of them had started out with someone different to the person next to them.
As the conversations around her started to knit back together, Sofia was mortified, burning up. They didn’t know, she realised, just how far things had gone. Or that, barring the bizarre one-minute chance exchange of twelve weeks ago, they hadn’t spoken, hadn’t texted, hadn’t known anything of each other’s lives since then.
‘So, how come you made it after all?’ asked Angus, who hadn’t heard what Jim had said as he came in.
‘Managed to swap my hospital on-call at the last minute. Colleague of mine needs me to do next weekend instead – house move’s been delayed.’
‘That’s brilliant. I was just saying we need an expert to remind us how it’s done. Promised Greta and the kids I’ll be back home on Sunday unscathed and in one piece.’
‘Well, I’m pretty up to date,’ Jim said. ‘You should be in safe hands.’
Clara and Bobby couldn’t help glancing at his capable forearms.
*
‘Look at that sunset!’ said Melissa ten minutes later, nodding at the pinky-purple furrows in the sky.
‘We should do it,’ said Clara impulsively, ‘go and give it a recce, now. It’ll be stunning with the sun just going down.’
Jim shook his head, smiling. ‘No time to set up the kit as well as striking camp. Besides which, I’m the only one who hasn’t had a drink.’
‘Could go and have a look though,’ said Dave hopefully. ‘I’ve only had a half and I can fit six of you in.’
‘Let’s do it, guv,’ said Angus. ‘Come on, girls. Pick your routes out for tomorrow, while it’s still light.’ They looked at each other, daring themselves to be sensible, then, as one, downed their drinks, scraped their chairs and made out of the door. In the end, they all pushed into Dave’s seven-seater, Sofia in the front, while Jim squatted down with perfect balance on the floor at the back, as if about to light a campfire or investigate some tracks.
The younger six started running for the outcrop as they were tipped out of the door, yelling out like the unleashed kids they had left behind. Sofia shed her embarrassment, dissolved by her slight inebriation, and swapped it for rebelliousness. She would be the first one up. That was her rightful position. Just her tonight. No one else to hold her back. Joining in with the dervish shrieks, she raced past Bobby, bogged down in tussocks of grass, and overtook the men, bounding forwards to get her fingers on the millstone grit. The last of the sunshine bathed the gently rising fields in rose-gold light.
She was the first to touch it, to feel the scratchy stone. Infinitesimally, but first all the same. Angus, Dave, Kristian and Melissa were right behind her, bent double laughing, eyes shining in their shadowed faces, catching the final light still spilling from the horizon’s molten seam. She needed to do something to maintain her lead. Heart beating fiercely on the inside of her chest, she began to climb, full of herself, giggling ridiculously as she looked for the next hold.
It wasn’t long before she slipped a whole metre down, grazing her cheek and scraping white thread lines down her soft inner forearm. She stepped backwards, unbalanced at the bottom, almost on the feet of Jim, who stopped her falling with his outstretched palms.
‘What are you doing?’ he said, irritated on the surface, disturbed by the contact.
‘Bouldering!’ she joked triumphantly, the wine in her bloodstream making her silly and flirtatious. It was a sport she had observed but never actually tried. ‘You don’t need kit for that.’ She could see she was nothing to him anymore. Therefore, she would play the game that they had only just met.
He was serious. ‘You do need kit. Mats if nothing else. If you must have a go at it, start with something manageable at least.’
He took her down the slope, keeping her in public view as if managing an errant child. The others were taking photos all around the crag.
‘Here. Warm up on this one. It’s a V1 at the most.’
Sofia felt his disapproval, at her recalcitrance, her lack of control, her wayward attitude to risk. She turned to face her shadow on the flat side of the boulder, the grey stone still pinkened by the half-sunk sun.
Then he walked around to her, and for a moment they were visible to everyone and no one, two figures lit up on the hill, above three open miles of gleaming fields and hedgerows, casually scored across the glowing land: out of sight of their compatriots, scrambling elsewhere on the mound.
‘Sofia…’
She turned towards him, trying to read his face without him reading hers.
He seemed to lean towards her, a degree or two. Or perhaps it was she who swayed a little, heady from the climb.
Then the light turned cold, the colour gone, as the sun slipped down to burn elsewhere.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s getting late. We ought to be getting back.’
*
They camped at a nearby farm, owned by a friend of Kristian’s. As they hopped about in the damp grass just over the yard boundary, shielding their eyes from the security light, too dazzled in the darkness to see what they were pegging out, they became hysterical and had to sit with streaming eyes and lean against each other sighing, clutching at their sides. They joked about what the tents might look like in the morning and, stumbling in the darkness, who might end up with whom.
Jim lit the campfire a safe distance away, first cutting a turf to cover up tomorrow’s charcoal scar. They weren’t using it for cooking – Dave was off to buy eight lots of fish and chips from the local van. But to play the part, they boiled a pot of water twice to make everyone tea and seared their fingers on enamel cups as the flames consumed the broken pallets left for them in the yard.
By 9pm it burned so hot they had to shuffle back from it and look away when reaching in to toss their chip papers on. They leaned against an invisible wall of colder air, and the cool weight of the universe rested on their hair. They were several stories down a chain of reminiscence now – the time Kristian dropped Melissa two metres off too short a rope. The weekend they were shot at when they trespassed by mistake. Dave’s face when he realised he’d dropped his brand-new nut tool into the bottom of Huntsman’s Leap.
Sofia looked across the fields and upwards through the glittering bluish blackness of the sky. Star. Meteor. Burning. Blaze. Fire. Passion. Fever. Flame. She idly traced a semantic network to try and thread it all together. Just for her own amusement: she had more systematic means of ordering information now. And it was working. When she drilled down through applied science, earth and space sciences, and down to the astrophysics section in her brain, labels for a dozen constellations popped up into view, along with a woodcut of the first ethereal map maker: Hipparchus – she could even remember the name.
Angus took himself away to call his wife at 9.30pm, leaving a gap in the fireside ring between Sofia and Jim.
One by one, the others folded too, recoupling to the manmade world, getting their illuminated mobiles from their pockets and wandering away from each other like particles in Brownian motion. Circling, advancing and retreating randomly, they looked always downwards, stopping only to lightly scuff the ground as they spoke to their spouses about the post that day and how the kids had been.
‘Don’t you have to report in?’ said Sofia lightly, mischievously, but never more desperate to know the answer. Jim was the last one left sitting at the fire.
‘I’ve no one to check in with now,’ he said, giving out the first significant piece of information in all their brief exchanges so far.
‘Didn’t you—’
‘Went our separate ways. No procreation. No kids or dogs. 1997.’
Sofia was stunned. For years she had been living her life in parallel to Inika, seeing her own complexion pale next to her flawless Asian skin; pondering on how different his kids must look, with her glossy ebony hair; comparing outfits as they dressed in the morning – jewelled tailored trouser suits versus her grubby lab coat or – post maternity – her bobbled jumper slopping over faded jeans.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and meant it. The last time she’d felt like this was in the library, in relation to personal tragedy on a more dreadful scale, but for Jim… he sought perfection, and Inika, working alongside him in their elective year, had been undeniably a grade beyond Sofia in sophistication, self-assuredness, intelligence and charm. Sofia had laughed off the demotion, taken it on the chin and fallen into the surprised and delighted arms of the hapless, brilliant Hugo, six months later on.
Her skin started to prickle with altered possibilities, exacerbated by the flames still radiating from the fire.
‘I’ve been lucky actually,’ he said. It wasn’t failure. There was never any failure with Jim. And if she knew rightly, it wouldn’t have been Inika who had left him. ‘Given me the chance to focus on developing a career.’
But she sensed an emptiness beneath the self-preserving summary.
He turned to her, and she could hear him breathing out again.
Logs ticking and sizzling. Penny-sized discs of sap, released every so often by the heat only to boil away…
‘I’ve been able to give it a hundred per cent,’ he said carefully, making sure she was listening. ‘There hasn’t been anyone else.’
*
‘Where’s everyone gone?’ It was Clara, clambering back over the fence with some difficulty, and another man, short and stocky, battling with a freezer box of beer.
‘Sofia, this is Ethan. Ethan: Sofia. He’s driven up from work to join us all for the weekend.’
Ethan bounced forward like a friendly dog, eager to make a good impression.
‘Sofia, I’ve heard so much about you,’ he nodded at Jim, ‘and your other half.’
‘Oh, no,’ Clara was quick to correct him, ‘this is…’
A strident artificial bell rang from Sofia’s pocket, and a shot of anxiety ran through her chest.
‘My husband,’ she explained. ‘Overseas. Excuse me for a moment. Better call him back.’ She pressed redial.
His voice was crackly and distant at the other end. Clara and Ethan heard her speak.
‘Hi, sorry. Didn’t hear it ring.
‘Oh, the landline’s playing up a bit. Or maybe Isaac took it off the hook.
‘Did everything go OK? I guess you had plenty of time before the flight and once you were settled in.’
She hadn’t meant to highlight that. The most important thing now was to keep the conversation smooth, to steer it so suspicion fell only on one side and give him no reason to question where she was.
‘So, what time did you actually get to present then, if it was all swapped round? Goodness. How on earth did you entertain yourself for all that time?’
She wasn’t trying to be pointed, and she needed him not to know she had new evidence for her doubts. But the questions interrogated him all by themselves. What time had his flight been? Where had he been before? How likely was it that a scheduled international conference talk might be delayed? Was he even actually in the USA at all?
She hated herself for doubting, but she needed to know. Perhaps Maalik could help her set things straight. There would be some way of knowing, of checking the last time the car was used. Perhaps the taxi had been a decoy, maybe even the conference was a lie, and he’d double-backed to visit her…
She realised he was waiting for her to speak.
‘OK, darling. Thanks for phoning. No, I’m pretty sure he’s fast asleep. I’ll get him to have a chat with you tomorrow if I can.’
‘OK. Love you. See you Sunday. Have fun.’
Florence called almost as soon as she had hung up.
‘Sorry, darling. I was just saying to Dad. It’s not been working properly, and sometimes I don’t hear it if I’ve gone up to bed.
‘No, I’m not in bed yet actually.
‘Just pottering. How’s the expedition going?
‘Wow, that sounds amazing. Bivvying underneath the stars – you absolutely can’t beat that.
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m absolutely fine. You didn’t need to phone, Flo. It’s lovely of you but I’m perfectly OK. Yeah, he’s absolutely fine too. Went to sleep just after seven, I think. And Dad’s having a great time too. Said his talk was moved around, but he’s given it today.
‘OK, my darling, have a brilliant time. Hope everything goes well. See you and Tim on Sunday. Love you. Sleep well.’
Jim could not know the subtext, and heard only the exclusive dialogue of familial love, as he watched her leaning unselfconsciously against the fence, her slim limbs folding easily, one knee raised up, the barn lamp casting her crazy hair in an aureole of white-gold light.
Darkly, he started to smother the fire with turf and make ready for bed.
As she pressed the phone off, she saw what he was doing and gave a disappointed “oh”.
‘I thought you would leave it a bit longer. Those embers were perfect.’
‘There’s not much point. The crowd has kind of dissipated now.’
‘I haven’t dissipated.’
‘I didn’t think you were with us anymore.’
‘I’m with you. Let’s sit by it for a bit more. I’ve got some sachets of hot chocolate. We could make a drink.’
She lifted up the turf and poked the embers with a stick. A little crown of flames licked up, nuzzling the end of it and stretching out for air. The stars were amoral, passing no judgement on her decision to sit down next to him once again, and there was no one else to see and find them innocent or wanting. The evening of excitement had made the others sleepy-headed, and they had retired to their tents, murmuring as they zipped sleeping bags together and shuffled into their silken night cocoons.
Jim remained an impenetrable paragon of chivalry. As the embers swelled with oxygen back into a blazing heap, he flattened them off, settled a tiny aluminium pan into the centre and made hot chocolate for them both, dividing it between two enamel cups and pouring hers out first. Then, as the embers became exhausted, unable to extract more sustenance from the clear night air, and Sofia let out a single, involuntary shiver, he moved a little closer and offered her his coat.
*
Hugo reached his long arm behind the veneered desk to plug his laptop in and stirred the UHT milk into his hotel cup of tea. He was aware his emotional sensitivity was considered lax at home, but even he was faintly troubled by the conversation they’d just had. She’d seemed too vibrant, too cheerful, too caring somehow – like the time she’d been on that medication and morphed into a frighteningly intensified version of herself. It was true she hadn’t been right for years, not since Tim was born, but the last few months she’d seemed to vacillate, clinging to him one minute, cold and absent the next, taking turns to fade right in and fade right out again.
Still, the last night they’d spent together he’d felt they were at one, watching TV together, playing as a team. Perhaps he was being stupid, reading too much into things. No doubt he’d get back home and find everything was fine.
The laptop finished booting up. He logged into the forum, to answer any questions raised from his talk that day.