When Angela saw Christopher push the agency door open she got up quickly from her computer, which was displaying a list of charter flights to Tenerife, and went into the back. She needed a few moments to compose herself. She both resented and welcomed his presence at her workplace. She combed through her hair with her fingers and smoothed her jacket over her hips: it was an habitual gesture.
He would always be able to find her here, she thought. From nine until five-thirty, six days a week. And if she changed her job, or moved to another country he would track her down eventually, she knew that. Sjie felt an emotion she couldn’t identify immediately, a mixture of excitement and fear—a fairground emotion. She saw herself, the timid child, being urged on to the big wheel by her mother, who did not want to ride in the lucent night air with a stranger beside her in the swaying carriage.
She came back into the shop. When she saw his smiling face she was lost. Who else would ever be so happy to see her? Snowflakes were melting into his hair. She looked away from him to the windows and saw that the street outside had been transformed from grey to mellow white. The flakes were so fat that it was possible to follow their individual progress before they settled with the uncountable millions on the pavement. They watched the snow fall in silence for a while, then Christopher said, “I can’t stop thinking about you,” as though he were explaining to her the nature of an illness he was suffering from. Angela glanced towards her colleagues, but they were busy with customers and hadn’t heard his oblique declaration of love. His coat was open, he had unfastened the top button of his shirt and loosened his tie. She wanted to slip her hand inside his shirt and stroke the back of his neck as she had often done before, when they were young. It had been a prelude to making love. One of the many signals between them. She became aware of her nipples inside the utilitarian cotton bra she had to wear now. She was close enough to him to feel his breath on her face. She said softly, “I’ll get my coat,” and went back behind the counter. She told Lisa, Claire and Andrea that she had been called away to attend to urgent family business. After she had left the shop her colleagues speculated on the nature of the ‘family business’. They decided that it would have to be an imminent or sudden death. Angela was always so punctilious about the hours she worked; she never took advantage of her seniority.
Christopher stood at the rack where the brochures were displayed, and read about holidays where it was possible to combine both the wedding and the honeymoon. There were photographs of attractive couples in wedding clothes posing against a tropical background of setting sun and palm trees. After two minutes, as arranged, he replaced the brochure on the rack and left the shop. They met a quarter of a mile away on the stinking stairs of the multistorey carpark, but it was not until they got into the car that they took each other into their arms and smelt the breath and the skin of each other, and tasted the saliva and felt the scrape of eyelashes against their faces, and heard the wordless sounds of desire and longing that passed between them.
In his ticket booth, Lionel watched on a closed-circuit TV camera as the Fat Woman and the Tall Man embraced in the front seats of the Volvo. He knew they weren’t man and wife. He’d seen the Fat Woman’s husband, he was a small bloke with a moustache who never said please or thank you when Lionel gave him his change.
When Angela eventually drove up to the booth and handed Lionel her ticket, he spoke to her.
“Leaving work early today, madam?” he said.
“No,” she said. “It’s my day off.”
A stupid lie, thought Lionel, who could clearly see her work uniform underneath her overcoat.
The dog met them in the hall of Christopher’s house. It was happy to have human company, but neither of them could be bothered with it. They could think of nothing but themselves and each other. They went upstairs to the bedroom and closed the door. The dog followed them and lay outside with its nose pressed into the gap under the door, waiting for its master to reappear. They lay together on the bed dressed in their winter clothes, the compacted snow from the soles of their shoes melting on to the duvet cover. They lay still for a long while, bulky in their overcoats and scarves and gloves, their faces pressed together. The light gradually faded.
Then Angela turned her head and said, “Chris, I’ve put rather a lot of weight on.”
Christopher said, “I know, I love you.”
He turned her head back towards him and found her mouth and covered it with his own. She took her glove off and slid her hand inside the bulk of clothing around his neck and pulled him towards her, crushing his mouth against hers. She felt his tongue and his teeth with her own tongue and teeth. They removed as much clothing as they could without losing touch, breaking away only for seconds to remove shoes and boots and underwear.
When they were naked they knelt on the bed and each looked at the unfamiliar middle-aged body of the other. Christopher lovingly stroked the rolls of fat that Angela hated, and she touched the grey hair on his chest that reminded Christopher of his own grandfather whenever he caught sight of his naked self in the mirror. They kissed the fat and the skin tags and the moles and callouses and broken veins, and the wrinkles and bags that middle age had visited upon them, and each thought the other beautiful. Christopher could still feel the skeleton of her, and Angela recognised the young Christopher and began to love him now in middle age. “We’re together again,” he said, before he gathered her heavy breasts together and brought them towards his mouth.