‘Yes?’ Shelley Pendleton twirled round. Tim was brushing the sleeves of his dinner jacket and barely glanced up.
‘Fine.’
‘Oh thanks.’
‘No, sorry – you look good.’ He hesitated.
‘What?’
‘Is it a bit low at the front?’
‘Too revealing?’
‘Some might think so.’
‘Do you?’
‘Not the point, I’m your husband.’
‘You mean stuffy Masons – great master and all that.’
‘Grand master.’
‘So I should wear something high up to the neck with long sleeves, preferably in beige.’
‘I didn’t say that. You look good, OK? Come on.’
‘It’s boring when you don’t have a drink.’
‘It’s boring when you have too many so watch out, Shell.’
‘I’m ignoring that. You could have a couple of glasses.’
‘If I’m driving it’s much easier to have none at all. I don’t mind.’
‘I know you don’t and I never understand it. You need it to get through the evening.’
‘You mean you do.’
‘I don’t drink too much.’
‘Not in general you don’t. It’s when you go out. Something comes over you.’
‘Boredom usually.’
She dreaded going, dreaded it all the way to the hotel where they held all their silly meetings and the functions in the big dining room. But once they hit the place and she was repowdering, combing and adding a bit more mascara, in the ladies’ cloakroom, she started to feel better. She always did. There was a buzz. There was the smell of Giorgio and Poison and Paloma and the sideways looks at every other woman’s dress. So many in Eastex and Betty Barclay, Shelley noted, women over fifty playing it safe by becoming their mothers. She had spent silly money on a Stella McCartney, but she could get away with it all right. Was the front too low? She hitched at it. But it wasn’t designed to be hitched, it was designed for a cleavage. She let it go again.
There was more buzz outside and on the stairs going up, the men, always good in DJs. This was when it started to get even better. A couple of glasses and it would be great. She gestured to Tim to give her his arm.
‘Good evening, Richard.’
Richard Serrailler was a step or two above them.
‘Tim. Shelley, beautiful as ever.’
Tim dug his elbow into her ribs. All right, so she did think Richard was handsome. Sexy even – not as sexy as his policeman son but he would do. She’d felt quite a pang when he had married again. Nobody had seen that one coming.
‘Where’s Judith?’
‘Caught some bug from the grandchildren. So I can have Shelley all to myself.’
‘I don’t think so.’ But Tim had seen someone across the room – networking, obviously. That’s what the Masons were all about, networking, mutual backscratching. Oh, and charity, of course. There would be the usual, amazing raffle, in which Shelley had once won a Balenciaga handbag. All for charity – Masonic charity, naturally.
‘Good, your husband has deserted you in a timely manner – let’s go and find a drink.’ Richard took her elbow and steered her through the crowd.
Nice, Shelley thought, the most distinguished-looking man in the room apart from the old Lord Lieutenant, though he had gone over rather suddenly into old age.
Richard waylaid a passing tray of champagne and handed her a glass.
‘I hope we’re sitting together.’
‘I haven’t looked. I always get next to some –’
‘Old bore? Or a thigh pincher?’
‘Usually both, I find.’
He had taken her arm now and led her to the seating plan. ‘Now this is a bitter blow. I’m on B, you’re D.’
‘Never mind, we can wave to one another. And there’s always the interval before they draw the raffle. I’m so sorry Judith is ill by the way – please give her our best.’
‘It’s nothing. She likes to cosset herself.’
Then Tim was back and someone was taking Richard Serrailler away for a quiet word.
They edged between bodies towards table D.
Judith woke from a short, deep sleep into the sensation of being in a storm at sea, the sofa pitching and tossing, the floor a green swell. She made it to the downstairs cloakroom and remained there for almost half an hour, sick and faint, the walls coming in on her and expanding again like balloons being pumped up.
Cat was writing up some dissertation notes, with Wookie the Yorkshire terrier squeezed on her lap against the edge of the desk, when the phone rang. He jumped off, eyeing her resentfully.
‘Darling, I’m so sorry to bother you but is there anything I can do for this damn bug? Can I take something? I thought I was getting better but I’m worse and Richard’s at a Masonic dinner.’
‘Have you got any sachets of rehydrating powder?’
‘I … I don’t think so, no.’
‘OK, get a glass of water, put in a teaspoon of salt and one of sugar and sip that. Do you have a temperature?’
‘I’m shivery, so probably yes.’
‘Could you hold down some paracetamol?’
‘I can try.’
‘I’d come over but I’m on my own with the children. Go to bed. I’ll call in after I’ve done the school run tomorrow. And ring me again if you feel worse. Better still, get Dad home.’
‘No, no, I’ll be fine, and besides, he would be furious.’
So what? Cat thought, shifting the cat Mephisto off her chair. Not long ago you wouldn’t have hesitated and he would have come back, grumbling perhaps, but come all the same.
She tried to settle down to work but after reading the same paragraph three times without taking in the meaning, she rang Silke, the au pair she used to share, and who still sat occasionally. Silke was up, watching ‘TV schlock’. She was at the farmhouse in ten minutes.
‘Did you lose consciousness?’
‘I was very giddy. I remember coming upstairs. No, I don’t think I passed out completely.’
‘Headache?’ Cat sat beside her, holding her wrist. The pulse was slow and Judith’s eyes looked slightly sunken. ‘You’re dehydrated and you shouldn’t be on your own. I’m going to call Dad –’
But Judith gripped her wrist tightly. ‘No. Please. Do as I ask – please.’