Russell Blythe and Joss were having an after-lunch drink in the local pub with half a dozen of the course members. Gray was one of them. The Admiral was only a short walk away and because the day was pleasantly warm, Russell had suggested that the workshop adjourn there. ‘Otherwise,’ he said, ‘I don’t know about all of you, but I’ll fall asleep after that lunch.’
Joss had made a point of walking next to two women, and the talk was about children and husbands and, because Joss had mentioned Zannah, weddings. When they reached the Admiral, she took a seat as far away from Gray as possible because she wanted to indulge in something she’d learned was completely pleasurable: watching him without talking to him. Watching him talk to other people. She wouldn’t have been able to explain it, but being separate from Gray and thinking of how they’d been last night, how they’d be again tonight, made her aware of every nerve ending in her body: almost painfully aroused. She watched in silence as, further down the table, his mouth moved in laughter and speech. Remembering how that mouth had felt on her skin, breathing words into her ear, opening under the pressure of her lips brought a flush to her cheeks that had nothing to do with the relative warmth of the sunshine.
Gray didn’t usually say much in company. Bob was a jovial person and liked to be the centre of attention. He often did what Em called ‘holding forth’, but Gray usually sat quietly as the talk buzzed round him. Joss had noticed this during meals at Fairford. He knew how to listen. That must be one reason why he was so good at his job. She could imagine how soothed his patients must feel, how comforted to have him beside them, knowing he was attending to them completely.
Now Gray was discussing rhyming verse, which always got poets steamed up. He said, ‘It’s true, rhyme isn’t necessary but I bet you’ve sometimes thought this or that poem was only a piece of prose cut up. Haven’t you? Can you swear you’ve never thought that?’
Russell laughed. ‘You’re right, of course. Some poems are about as poetic as … well, as some very unpoetic thing. But it’s not rhyme that makes a poem, because then what’s in a Hallmark card would be poetry and we know it’s not.’
‘Okay, that’s true. But you have to have that extra … I don’t know. Not just description. And not just nonsense going under the banner of surrealism.’
‘My skin tells me,’ said one of the other course members, a shy young woman called Maggie. ‘If I get goosebumps, it’s real poetry. And if I don’t, it’s not.’
‘That can’t be right,’ said Blake, a dark-haired man who was just a fraction too old to be wearing the punkish clothes he favoured. ‘Funny poems don’t raise goosebumps, nor does political satire, but you’re not saying that Dryden’s not a poet, are you?’
‘I agree with Maggie,’ said Gray, smiling at her. Making her feel better. Protecting her from Blake’s ill-disguised scorn. ‘You have to be moved. And not necessarily in a sentimental way. You can be … I don’t know. Stirred. Thrilled.’
Blake sniffed. Came back with some remark about humour. Joss smiled to herself. She wasn’t going to get involved in the general chat, then wondered if that would seem unfriendly or strange. She decided to speak and said, ‘I read a novel once where the characters spent a few pages discussing what a poem was. The punchline was: you know it’s a poem if it has the name “Ted Hughes” at the end. Or any other poet would do, I suppose. T.S. Eliot. Yeats.’
Everyone laughed. Maggie said, ‘I get goosebumps when I read all of those. Who said poetry was the right words in the right order?’
‘Coleridge, I think,’ Russell said. ‘My round.’
The talk went on. Laughter rose into the air. Russell went inside to get more drinks. Joss was starting to count the hours until she could be alone with Gray, but she was sharply conscious of how happy she was now, this minute. I wish this afternoon would go on for ever, she thought. I want it never to stop: this delicious waiting for the day to end.
*
It must be nearly morning, Gray thought, and groped for his mobile on the bedside table. Just after five o’clock. I should go back to my room. Lydia – she’d asked him to call her Joss, but he couldn’t think of her as anything but Lydia – was still asleep beside him. Everyone at Fairford always went to bed late, after wine and talk and laughter till the early hours, and then he’d had to wait until it was safe to slip along the dark corridors to her room. He smiled into the darkness as he recalled the hours that had elapsed since she’d opened the door to him. When they’d been together in public, he’d been careful not to give anything away. He’d been polite, smiling, signing up like all the other course members for his time alone with her, when they would pretend to be talking about his poems, chatting to Russell – a chubby gay guy with a wicked sense of humour – about music and cricket and how wonderful it had been to see England getting the Ashes back after so long and who was sleeping with whom in the world of poetry, joining in with the writing exercises and volunteering himself for the first group in the kitchen and all the time dreaming about what would happen when they were alone. Today at the pub he’d felt her trying to not-watch him, which made him smile because he was also trying to not-watch her.
‘Gray?’
‘You’re supposed to be asleep. It’s only just after five-thirty.’
‘I woke up,’ Lydia said, and turned to him. He opened his arms to her and held her naked body close, close to his. She was warm and fragrant and he didn’t want to leave her.
‘I don’t want to leave you,’ he whispered.
‘You must. There’s always someone who’s up before the others. It’s not safe.’
‘We’ve got to talk, Lydia.’
‘Do we? Why do we?’
‘Because … I want to ask Maureen for a divorce. I’m serious. I want us to be together.’
‘How can you say that? You’ve been married so long. You must love her, Gray.’
‘In a way I do. You can’t live with someone for so long and not have … Well, you know what I mean. Think of yourself and … and Bob.’ Gray shifted in the bed. He didn’t like saying Lydia’s husband’s name, not even to himself, much less aloud.
‘I can’t leave him,’ she murmured, and as she did, she pulled him to her and began to kiss his neck, just under his ear.
‘Why not? Why can’t you?’
‘He wouldn’t cope without me. He’d go to pieces.’
‘He manages okay when you’re not there. He’s in Egypt now, not giving you a second thought, I bet. Maureen’s having the time of her life in Guildford too, I expect. They’re used to us, Lydia, and that’s it. It’s not like this. Are we happy when we’re together?’
He could feel her nodding, but she said, ‘We made vows, Gray. We promised. That should mean something, surely.’
‘It does mean something, of course it does, but there should be a way of cancelling them when we’re not happy any longer. We deserve to be happy, don’t we?’
‘No one’s completely happy all the time,’ Lydia said. ‘What if other people are hurt? I don’t want to do that, Gray. I’m sorry. Imagine what would happen if no one kept any promises. If nothing were binding. It would be – life would be – impossible.’
‘No one stays hurt for ever. What about Bob and Maureen living with us? We’re unfaithful to them. Have you thought of that? And it’s not just a casual affair, so it’s an even worse betrayal. We’ve betrayed them. But we love one another, so how does that tot up, Lydia? Now, at this very moment. Are we being fair to them when we’re like this?’
Lydia sat up in bed and rested her head on her clasped knees. ‘I explained, Gray. As soon as I saw you, I explained. This … These days are like time outside real life. Time out. We’re not going to see one another alone again. I mean that. This is it. I can’t spoil Zannah’s wedding. Adrian’s wedding, too. It would … Well, nothing would be the same again. You must see that.’
He began to stroke her back and felt her shiver under his hand. ‘I don’t think I can do not seeing you any more, Lydia. What if we’re careful? We can be so … discreet. No one need know.’
She shook her head. ‘I’d be terrified. It’s no good. I feel … It’s impossible. I can’t … I can’t think about it.’
‘Then don’t. Don’t think about it now. Let’s discuss it. Seriously. When we have our session together tomorrow … I mean today … Not in bed, but face to face over a table. We can talk about the future. I want us to be together.’
She lay back and sighed. ‘I want that as well. But it’s difficult. Everything’s so complicated. Let’s just … let’s just have these days and … ’
‘And what? Leave Fairford and forget everything? I can’t. You can’t either. Admit it. No emails. No phone calls. Nothing. Just think about it. What sort of a life is that? Not one I’m willing to live, Lydia.’
‘Later. We’ll talk properly, I promise. But it’s getting late now, Gray. You should go.’
‘In a minute. Come here … ’
‘Oh, Gray, there’s no … ’
He stopped her words with his mouth and she wrapped her arms round him. There was time. He felt her opening, softening under his hands, and closed his eyes.
*
Emily wished she’d taken advantage of her education while it was actually going on. She was out with Cal and Isis on a visit to the zoo, and whenever they were together, because Cal was so well informed, she became aware of how little she knew about almost everything. She’d gone down to London straight after uni to help Zannah after her breakdown and she’d never regretted that. She was eager to start working and had taken up her job in PR quite happily, but now she sometimes found herself thinking in ways most of her friends would consider most peculiar. For instance, she thought, I wish I could have gone with Dad to Egypt and had a good look at some mummies. She knew he was actually sitting in a university classroom, giving oral exams to poor foreign PhD students, but the image of herself accompanying him into the desert, with beige sand dunes all around and romantic-looking tents with lanterns hanging up in them seemed very attractive. I’m going to ask him one day, she thought, if I can go with him. And maybe I could do a doctorate or something. Later on. She shook her head to clear it of an image of herself in fetching khaki shirt and shorts. Cal and Isis had just come back from visiting the snakes. Emily drew the line at snakes (were there snakes in the desert?) and had waited for them on a convenient bench in the rather chilly sunlight.
Cal sat down next to her. Isis had gone off to get an ice-cream at the kiosk they could see from the bench.
‘Makes her feel independent,’ said Cal. ‘She doesn’t realize I don’t take my eyes off her for a second.’
This was true. He was gazing fixedly at Isis’s back and had half turned away from her. Emily fought an urge to put out a hand and stroke his hair. He was talking about the wedding dress, ‘Icey’s been telling me about the wonderful Miss Hayward. She wants a blush-pink dress, apparently. What’s blush pink?’
‘Well, it’s pale and very pretty. You know Zannah. It has to be the exact shade that goes with Zannah’s lace, which is sort of like dead pale milky coffee … It’ll look marvellous, don’t worry.’
‘Worry? Doesn’t matter a scrap to me. I’m sure they’ll both look great, whatever. Hello, Mouse,’ he said to Isis, who had come back from the kiosk to sit next to them. Emily closed her eyes and listened to them chatting. Every time she was with Cal, it became more and more obvious to her that he didn’t think of her as anything other than Zannah’s younger sister. She should give up daydreaming.
Since her early teens, she’d never been short of boyfriends. Now there were three young men who probably regarded themselves as … What could you call them? In her life, was all she was prepared to concede. They weren’t boyfriends, and they had no intention of marrying her, so they weren’t suitors, and Zannah called them ‘your reserve squad’. The reserve squad dated from Emily’s sixth-form days, when she’d had a boyfriend and always a notional list of others she was sort of interested in, even if only in her head. Nowadays, the reserve squad had moved off the bench, as it were, and into play. She went out to meals, movies and parties with all three, though not at the same time, naturally. Grant was an advertising copywriter. He called himself ‘a creative’ which Emily thought was pretentious. She’d met him when he worked on one of her firm’s accounts. He was the one who fancied himself a foodie and took her to fashionable restaurants and bar openings. Rory was the cultural one: theatres, concerts and movies. He was fun and flirtatious and Emily thought, because he’d never once made a real pass at her, that he was probably gay and not quite ready to come out. Matt was the one she went to bed with. He worked in her office, was handsome, uncomplicated, fun and had his own rather lovely flat in Notting Hill Gate. She couldn’t say there was anything wrong with the sex, but that was all it seemed to be, and if Matt was a good lover, he wasn’t in the least romantic and Emily reckoned that he regarded their lovemaking as a pleasant alternative to a workout at the gym. She sighed. Cal combined everything she liked about the three men. Or maybe not quite. She couldn’t imagine him having the patience for some of Grant’s restaurants and he’d faint if he saw some of the bills they ran up. He’d do the movies, if not the concerts, and he’d talk and talk, which was perhaps more important than anything else. He wouldn’t change the subject when emotions or feelings came up in conversation. He wasn’t afraid of relationships, because he’d married Zannah, hadn’t he? As for sex, she tried not to think about the two of them together, because it made her feel too terrible. She already suffered awful pangs of guilt about her fantasies and had vowed to exclude any thoughts of Cal from her nights with Matt but it was harder than she’d expected.
‘You okay, young Emmy?’ Cal said now. ‘You were miles away. I think we ought to be getting home. Come on.’
He stood up and gave her his hand to pull her to her feet. Perhaps when Zannah was married the penny would drop. Cal would see her in a completely different light and fall madly in love with her. And that aardvark in the enclosure over there would be asked to dance the lead role in Giselle. Grow up, Em, she told herself. Move on.
*
The room she was in reminded Joss of a monk’s cell: plain, whitewashed walls, a pine table, two chairs, a high window. Those who came in here and sat at the table, close enough to touch the person opposite them, adopted a manner of something like reverence, and modulated their voices to fit with the way the room made them feel: serious, scholarly and as though they were about to discover deeply buried truths about themselves. On the Fairford courses, each pupil was given an hour with each tutor, one to one. It was only in those circumstances, poring over single lines, discussing what they truly meant to say, that proper tutoring took place. The communal exercises were fun, but they often led to some course members showing off, and others being almost entirely silenced.
Joss smiled. Gray would be here soon. He’d put himself last on the list, which revealed a sensitivity to her feelings, to what she might want, that few others in her life had ever shown. He knew their talk would disturb her, stir up emotions which she might find hard to cover up if she then had to go on and discuss their work with someone else. He also knew that if any session could overrun a little, it was the last one of the day. There was half an hour before supper. Neither of them was on kitchen duty.
While she was waiting for him, Joss closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair, trying to clear her mind. Other people’s words were floating around in there, other people’s personalities had left a sort of imprint on her, yet the thing she was most aware of was her own body. She couldn’t stop herself. Her head had become a kind of kaleidoscope, and with every turn pictures of their lovemaking appeared and she was unable to prevent them filling her with the drunken dizziness of desire. She was just remembering how he’d left her this morning, how he’d clung to her as she opened the door, how he’d kicked it closed again just for a moment, just for one more kiss, just one … please.
‘Okay to come in, Lydia?’ He was standing in the doorway, clutching his file, like everyone else who came into this room.
‘Hello,’ Joss said, blinking a little, trying to dispel what she’d been thinking a moment ago. ‘Yes … come and sit down.’
Gray took the chair opposite her and put his file on the table in front of him. He smiled, but she could see that he was in a serious mood. ‘I’ve not brought any poems,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you about the future. I want you to leave Bob, Lydia. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’ve been thinking about nothing else for months.’
‘Do we have to talk about this now? It’s so … it makes it so … Oh, God, I’m scared, Gray.’
‘What of?’
‘Everything. If I left Bob, so many people would be hurt. There’d be problems. It’d be like an earthquake. How can we do that to people we love? And we do love them, don’t we, Gray? You can’t say we don’t.’
‘I don’t. I don’t say that. But let me ask you something. What would Bob really do if you left him? If you were to die, let’s say, how would he manage?’
Joss said nothing. For the last five years at least, Bob had been less interested in her than he was in many other things. She tried to reconstruct time they spent together and realized that this was just meals, often eaten quickly, with Bob’s mind on something he was working on upstairs. He worked, they slept in the same bed and met in the kitchen. How many times had he made love to her in the last year? A dozen? She doubted it was as many as that. And if she wasn’t there? If she was in London with Zannah and Isis and Emily, he appeared to manage perfectly well. And yet there was the weight of the years they’d been together. At the beginning, when they were first married, he could make her feel … She could remember being swept away, perhaps not quite as she was being swept away now, but still, she could recall their lovemaking, that it used to be passionate and heartfelt and she’d been happy. She couldn’t deny that shared history now, and it would be wrong to make light of it. Time had happened to them: time and habit. Surely that could happen to her and Gray as well? To any relationship? Was it right to break up two families just for a short period of intense gratification? She might feel exactly the same about Gray in a few years as she felt about Bob now. No, that wasn’t possible. This was different, like no other love she’d ever known. Or had she thought that about Bob long ago? She no longer remembered properly. And there was something else, too. Now that she’d met Maureen, she could imagine only too well the kind of sex she must once have had with Gray … maybe was still having. This thought made her feel faintly nauseous, but it was there, whenever she considered the whole situation rather than just her little corner of it. She answered Gray’s question: ‘He’d cope, I suppose, but I expect he’d miss me.’
‘What would Zannah and Emily think?’
‘They’d be shocked. I think they feel Bob and I are one person. I don’t imagine they spend a lot of time worrying about us. If we’re okay, then they’re busy with their lives. That’s as it should be. But if we parted … well, Zannah would probably be … Well, it might upset her a great deal. She’d be more able to cope with it if she were happily married herself. She went through hell after she left Cal. What he’d confessed to was quite honestly no more than a fling in Moscow, but she was nearly broken by it. She divorced him, in spite of all my persuasion, and Bob’s. If I told her about us now … well, I don’t know how she’d react but I can’t take the risk of her going to pieces again. We can’t, mustn’t wreck the wedding. Zannah’s thought of nothing else for months. And what about Maureen? She’s also very involved with everything to do with the day. More than me, and I feel guilty about that, but she loves all the arrangements so much and is so good at them, and I’m not … ’ Joss’s voice trailed away into silence and she pushed her hair off her forehead with both hands.
‘Maureen,’ Gray said, ‘will be shocked and scream at me, but she’ll survive. What you have to know about Maureen is that she’s supremely selfish and she’ll always see to it that she’s okay. I’d let her keep the house. I’d provide for her – and I can – and I bet she’s married again within two years. Men like her. She likes them. As long as the material circumstances of her life don’t change, she’ll come round.’
‘D’you love her? Does she love you?’ She wanted to ask: What do you do in bed? How is it with her?
Gray closed his eyes. ‘I suppose I do. Just as you love Bob. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her, but … we don’t talk about anything, Lydia. The only thing we discuss is arrangements. When, where, who, how much. It’s not like you and me. You … the way we talk about everything, the way we laugh about the same things … It’s like being young again.’
‘That’s because we don’t live together, Gray. If we did, we’d also fall into a routine. Everyone does. Everyone has to. You can’t … I mean, things have to settle down, don’t they? Perhaps it’s because we’ve seen so little of one another, because we’ve not had time to get sick of one another that we’re feeling … well, as we are. What if we got fed up, irritated with one another? Have you thought of that?’
‘We might, I suppose. Though I don’t think so. But Lydia, we’re in our fifties. We could live for another thirty years. There was that couple in the newspaper … d’you remember? … who’d been married for eighty years. It’s entirely possible we could be together as long as we’ve been with Maureen and Bob.’
Joss smiled.
Gray continued, ‘Tell me honestly. Can you face another thirty years with him? And remember that means without me, because you have this hang-up about not being unfaithful to him … if you knew he wouldn’t fall to pieces, if you knew your children wouldn’t stop talking to you, if you were sure that you’d be no worse off financially … in other words, if all practical matters were taken care of, how would you feel about spending the rest of your life with me? Marry me. Lydia, I’m asking you to marry me.’
Joss listened to what Gray was saying and suddenly she was in tears. She felt as though her whole life had been upended, tipped upside down.
‘I’m sorry … I can’t … Oh, yes, Gray, yes. Of course I want that too, but how … When? I just don’t know … ’
He took her hands and held them in his own. ‘Listen, Lydia. Don’t think about it now. Not in a practical way. There’ll be plenty of time after the wedding. Once Adrian and Zannah have settled down, once Maureen’s had her glorious party, then we can tell them. Honestly. Quietly. There won’t be any need for scenes.’
‘I’m not sure about that.’ Joss imagined the conversation she and Bob might have. What would he do? Cry? Break down? She had no idea. What about the girls? Emily was more understanding than Zannah, but she was so much her father’s daughter. What would she think of the mother who abandoned him? And Charlotte? Joss longed to confide in her and listen to her advice. Maybe she should. Maybe that would be a good way to help her decide … show her what she really wanted. What nonsense. She knew that already. She took a deep breath.
‘If I say yes, Gray, and if we wait till after the wedding, what does it mean? We can’t meet. It would feel … wrong. Deceitful. Underhand. I hate the very idea of hiding away, fearful of getting caught … but how … ’ How will I survive without you for nine months? How will I get through the days? It struck her suddenly that some people were better at adultery than others, and she was very bad at it. She’d watched many of her friends conduct casual affairs without any apparent guilt on the principle of ‘what they don’t know can’t hurt them’. Was she a coward, fearful of discovery, or did she really inhabit a moral high ground? She suspected that the truth was much simpler. She had the kind of imagination that was always working overtime and she knew, from the way she felt when she had found out Gray was married, that her head was constantly full of pictures she couldn’t erase and which tortured her. If she suddenly learned that Bob had been unfaithful to her over a long period of time, what would hurt would be that the whole of the life they’d lived up to this point would become a lie. Every memory she had of their marriage would be somehow falsified.
Gray broke into her thoughts. ‘We’re being deceitful now, my darling. Underhand. D’you regret the last two nights?’
She shook her head. Already, at half past five in the afternoon, she was wishing away the hours till tonight, and at the same time wanting it never to come. Tomorrow would be their last night together. After that, the future was like an empty desert of nothing but wanting him. Wanting to be with him. She said suddenly: ‘I don’t regret anything. And I will marry you.’ As she spoke the words, she felt faint. This wasn’t like adultery. This was commitment. ‘But we must wait until the wedding’s over. Then we’ll be together. I promise. And until that time we can write. And we can phone sometimes, when we’re sure it’s safe. I won’t lose you. I can’t. It’ll be okay. I have to believe it will be okay.’
He stood up then and leaned over the small table so that their faces were very close together. Without a word, he kissed her, and Joss allowed herself to dream, for just a second, of a time when they might go out of a room like this together. As it was, he went by himself, leaving her trembling. She had a sudden vision of tears, anguish, recriminations, fights, silences, reproaches and even though it cost her some effort of will, she pushed all of that, all those hideous things, out of her mind. I’m not going to think like that, she told herself. I don’t have to deal with any of it for a long time. She packed her papers into her bag, and a feeling of lightness and elation washed over her. In a way, this was a return to being young and full of possibilities. There would be letters and emails and phone calls. Already, she could imagine the things they would write to one another and beyond that, she could see it clearly: a mirage at the far-distant edge of the very same desert she’d been picturing a moment ago. A house. Not her house, not Gray’s house, but theirs. Their home.
*
‘Zannah, have you read Ma’s book?’
Emily was lying on the sofa. Zannah was sitting on the floor, drawing in the wedding notebook. Isis’s designs for bridesmaids’ dresses lay all over the coffee table and Zannah had promised to boil down her daughter’s ideas into one sketch of a supremely pretty dress that would flatter both Isis and her friend Gemma, who was about the same height but a little stockier. Something simple was best, she was quite sure. The dress she’d ended up with had sleeves that reached to just above the elbow and were frilled like the petals of a sweet pea. There was a wide ribbon-sash at the waist with the ends floating down at the back. But pink was impossible. The girls would have to be talked into a pale green … pistachio ice-cream green was how she thought of it … that would go well with her old-ivory lace. Watermarked silk taffeta. Once they saw what she had in mind, she was sure Isis and Gemma would love it. They could hold little round bouquets of bright pink or perhaps dark red, almost black roses and very dark green foliage. Maybe before she got carried away she’d better ring up the flower lady Louise had recommended, who might have other ideas for her to consider. The one thing she was firm about was no white lilies. No lilies at all because they were for funerals. She tuned in to what Emily was saying and found she hadn’t heard it.
‘Sorry, what was that?’
‘I asked if you’d read Ma’s book of poems.’
‘I’ve had a look. Read a couple, I suppose. Not sure that I know what I think about modern poetry, to tell the truth. Any good?’
‘Yes,’ said Emily, ‘but they’re very … Well, they’re surprisingly sexy.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Quite a few are about love.’
‘Lots of poems are about love, aren’t they? Most, even,’ said Zannah. ‘Nothing strange about that.’
‘No, but these are passionate. You’d think the poet was madly in love with someone.’
‘I expect Ma does love Pa passionately,’ Zannah said. Once she’d said the words out load, she wondered if they were true. Perhaps her mother would be capable of having an affair without telling any of them. She was always wary of talking about her feelings.
‘Oh, God, Zannah, you cannot be serious!’
‘I am. Why shouldn’t I be? They’ve been married for ever.’
Emily sat up and said, ‘That’s exactly my point. You clearly haven’t been paying attention. They’ve been together so long that they hardly ever have a proper conversation. As for what happens in bed … ’
‘I don’t fancy thinking about that, thanks very much.’ Zannah wrinkled her nose. ‘But they must love one another, even though we don’t like to think about it.’
‘Have a look, though. This book is full of stuff. Burning and melting and comparing herself to water and his hands touching her and all sorts of things. These poems are not written to Pa, I’m convinced of it.’
‘She can’t be having an affair, can she? I can’t believe that. Ma? She wouldn’t.’
Emily thought for a moment. ‘Then is all this in her imagination? She’s pretending?’
‘She must be. We can ask her.’
‘I’m going to,’ said Emily lying down again and picking up The Shipwreck Café. ‘Next time we see her.’
For a few minutes, there was silence in the room. Then Zannah said, ‘Anyway, who on earth is there for Ma to have an affair with, even if she wanted to? She never meets anyone new, does she? All day at work and back home at night. I can’t somehow see any of the regulars at the library melting her heart and turning her into this erotic creature you’re describing. I’m sure she’s, well, indulging in fantasies. I mean, it’s out there in a book, where anyone can read it including Pa, so she’s clearly not trying to hide it.’
‘Can you imagine Pa reading poems? Even Ma’s?’ Emily laughed. ‘Of course you can’t because he wouldn’t. He’d look as though he was but his mind wouldn’t be on them. Not for a second. I love him to bits but he’s not exactly a whiz when it comes to poetry, is he? Anyway, I’m going to try to forget what I’ve read. I liked it better when I didn’t know what was going on in Ma’s head.’