11

Back in London early that evening, Liz dropped Peggy off and drove straight home. She took an unenthusiastic look at the sparse contents of her fridge and decided she wasn’t feeling hungry. The light on her answering machine was blinking, and reluctantly she went across to play back the messages, hoping that it wasn’t someone from the office. She was tired: what she wanted more than anything else was a deep bath, a large vodka tonic, and bed.

The voice on the phone was faint and slightly hesitant. It took Liz, still contemplating her various meetings in the day, several seconds to realise it was her mother. She was talking about the nursery—how it was suddenly busy after the long flat winter.

Then her voice changed gear, sounding almost artificially light, as if keen to deal quickly with a less pleasant subject. “Barlow rang,” her mother said, and Liz’s ears pricked up. He was her mother’s GP. “Those tests have come back and he wants me to come in. Such a bore.” There was a pause. “Anyway, give me a ring, darling, when you can. Though I’m just off now, but I’ll be in tomorrow night.”

This was not good news. Her mother was a reluctant patient, who saw her GP only when all else—stiff upper lip, hot toddies, simple stoicism—had failed. Barlow must be insisting she come in to see him, which was worrying.

Liz poured herself a stiffish vodka. She was turning on the bath taps when the phone rang.

It was Dave Armstrong. “Hi, Liz, where have you been?” he asked. “I’ve been looking for you all day.”

“I’ve been doing something for Charles,” she said. Feeling unwilling to explain further, she changed the subject. “Any luck with the photos?”

“Not yet, but there are more coming.”

“How’s our friend?”

“Okay so far.” The odds of their conversation being intercepted by the wrong people were virtually nil, but like everyone in their profession they had an inbuilt wariness of the telephone.

“I was trying to find you,” said Dave, “to say I had to see a contact in Islington. I was going to offer to buy you the world’s best Indian meal. The offer’s still open.”

“Oh that’s nice of you,” she said, “but I can barely keep my eyes open. I’d be terrible company. Let’s make it another time.”

“No problem,” Dave said, habitually cheerful. “See you back at the farm.”

Liz went to check her bath. It was true she was tired, yet most times she would have joined Dave anyway, since she always liked his company. Tonight, however, with the worry about her mother, she wouldn’t have enjoyed herself.

Getting into the bath, she thought, I have to do something about this room. Unwisely, when she’d bought the flat she had decided to wall-paper the walls in the bathroom in a lively lemon yellow that was now looking distinctly bleached out. Worse than that, the combination of a daily dose of hot steam from the bath and the small enclosed space of the room meant the wallpaper was starting to peel. She noted that one patched square right above the tap was just hanging on.

Her thoughts turned back to Dave. He was a close friend in many ways, though there had never been anything more than friendship between them—and never would be. Funny that: on the surface Dave would look like an ideal candidate for a relationship. He was bright if not exactly intellectual, amusing—and yes, he was good-looking. He wasn’t moody, and he didn’t complain, and he seemed to have a life subscription to the Power of Positive Thinking. If Liz occasionally thought he was a little too convinced the world was his oyster, at least he always seemed happy to make room for Liz in his shell.

She sat up and turned on the hot-water tap until a small cloud of steam rose from the water’s surface, then she turned off the tap and lay back again, relaxing. If not Dave, who could she confide in? No one, she realised, for there was no special man in her life at the moment, something she noted dispassionately, without dismay or regret.

Of course, it would be nice to have someone intimate enough to share things with—especially the bad things, the difficult things like her mother’s test results. But you didn’t want to do that with just any friend, she thought. In her experience, imparting confidences always caused a strain, creating a kind of artificial intimacy that went beyond friendship. Some women seemed to get away with it—in fact they did it all the time—but it didn’t suit her personality. Whereas a “partner” (horrible word, thought Liz, but she could think of no better) was there precisely to share.

Plop. Water splashed by her toes. She saw that the wallpaper patch had given up the struggle and decided to keep her company in the bath.