When Christopher arrived at Veronica’s, Angela had placed a saucer on top of the cup to keep his tea hot.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” he said. Angela was reluctant to leave the warm café where she felt safe, but he was insistent. As soon as they were outside on the pavement he embraced her. He took her arm when they crossed the roads. She knew she should have shaken him off. She’d been born in the city and so had he. Between them they knew hundreds of people. They were certain to be noticed by somebody. She said this to him and he frightened her a little by saying that he didn’t care any more.
They walked towards the city centre and passed dangerously near to the market place and the Lowood’s Linens shop. Christopher tried to put his arm around her waist, but she was too wide, and he contented himself with hanging his thumb on the decorative belt on the back of her overcoat.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“We’re going to spend the day together,” he said.
“I have to go back to work,” she said.
“This is more important than work.”
“I have to work, I need the money,” she said.
“I can get enough for two of us,” he said. He bent down and kissed the top of her head. She was reminded of her father taking two half crowns from his trouser pocket on a Saturday morning.
She said, “I bought some new lingerie this morning. I’m wearing it now.”
“What’s it like?” he said.
“It’s red, and it’s satin, not real satin.”
He pulled her off the pavement and into the doorway of a boarded-up shop. The dog stood sentinel on the slightly raised marble doorstep as Christopher pushed her against the door and opened the buttons of her overcoat. She pushed him away.
“Not here, Chris.” She struggled against him.
But his hand had already found a way through the layers of clothes to the satiny smoothness next to her skin.
“It feels lovely,” he said, and he pulled away slightly so that he could see as well as feel the red camisole she was wearing.
♦
Gregory stopped outside a Car Phone Warehouse and looked across the High Street to where his wife and the tall man were kissing in a shop doorway, in daylight, in the middle of town. He took a small disposable camera out of his pocket and took three photographs of them. He needed concrete evidence: he didn’t altogether trust his own eyes. This morning when he had woken up with Angela beside him he’d sought desperately to find an explanation for the scene he’d witnessed in the garden last night. Was the tall man a long-lost brother, reunited with the sister he’d never met? It was just possible, but did long-lost brothers crush their lips into the mouths of their newly found sisters? Gregory knew they did not. Still he’d given her something to think about this morning. He’d punished her by telling her about those other women.
Angela’s face was pressed against Christopher’s scratchy tweed overcoat. She noticed that he had already replaced the buttons he had torn off the night before. Angela turned her head and read ‘30,000 sq metres of Retail Space To Let’ which was written on an estate agent’s window. The town is dying, she thought.
♦
Over the road Gregory took one more photograph before moving away, and because there were twenty-four more possible photographs left on the film, he continued to snap away at the city centre: the clock tower, the McDonald’s restaurant; the market stalls and the grinning stallholders; and the concrete Market Cross and its wino regulars with their squashed noses and red eyes. He was anxious to get the film developed that same day. He needed proof other than his own eyes that his wife was seeing another man. The last photograph he took was of his own shop. He posed his black assistant, Lynda, in front of a tower of white bath towels, for the contrast.
♦
Christopher took Angela to Pasta’s, an Italian restaurant in an area called St Kevin’s Square, a new development of shops and up-market eating places. Genuine old buildings had been knocked down so that fake old buildings could be erected in their place. There was a bandstand in the middle of a small square where the Salvation Army played at Christmas and buskers licensed by the Council played throughout the rest of the year.
Christopher tied the dog to the bandstand under the apprehensive eye of a young man in a clown’s costume who was about to juggle three clubs whilst riding on a unicycle. When they had been seated at a table by the window by an authentic-sounding Italian waiter, Christopher said, “I hope you still love Italian food.”
Angela laughed nervously and said, “;This is mad, Chris. I’ve only got ten minutes before I have to be back at work.” He handed her the huge menu and said, “You’re not going back to work this afternoon. You’re coming with me to find out where our Catherine is.”
“I’m here.” Catherine sat down next to Angela and cricked her neck around to read the menu.
“Have the garlic bread, Mum; then I can have some.”
Angela smiled at Catherine and couldn’t resist adjusting the collar of her white shirt, smoothing it down over her navy blue uniform cardigan. Catherine playfully tapped her mother’s hand away.
“Mum, I’m not a baby.”
Angela said, “I’ll have some garlic bread, but I can’t manage anything else, Chris.”
Catherine was laughing at the young clown’s ham-fisted attempts to manage the unicycle and the clubs.
“What a saddo!” she said, then her own laughing face became sad as the clown fell off the unicycle yet again.
“He’s not very good, is he?” said Angela.
“He’s probably been on one of those poxy government training schemes for clowns,” said Christopher. Angela and Catherine laughed, and Christopher said, “You think I’m joking, Angie. I’m not. We’ll soon have more trained clowns in this country than trained engineers.”
Angela laughed again and held Catherine’s hand under the table. Her daughter’s hand felt exquisitely soft. Is this what it’s like to have a family? she wondered to herself. She looked at Catherine’s flawless complexion and thought to herself how lucky she was to be the mother of such a beautiful child. It wasn’t only her looks she admired: she had won every sporting and academic prize open to her. Angela was so proud of her daughter.
She felt Catherine pull her hand away and when she turned the girl had gone, without saying goodbye.