Truly Madly Guilty(46)

‘Ah, no it’s not,’ said Tiffany, echoing Erika’s thoughts. ‘It’s not inevitable.’

‘Agreed.’ Sam clinked his beer bottle against Tiffany’s. ‘Jeez. These feckless partners of ours.’

‘You and me, we are the feckless ones,’ said Vid to Clementine, and he made ‘feckless’ sound like a delicious way to be.

‘We’re relaxed,’ said Clementine. ‘Anyway, it happened once and now I watch them like a hawk.’

‘What about you two, eh?’ said Vid to Erika and Oliver, perhaps noticing that his neighbours were being left out of the conversation.

‘I watch Erika like a hawk,’ said Oliver unexpectedly. ‘I haven’t lost her once.’

Everyone laughed and Oliver looked triumphant. He couldn’t normally pull off a clever comeback. Don’t ruin it, my love, thought Erika as she saw Oliver’s mouth move in preparation to speak again. Stop there. Don’t try to say the same thing again in a different way to get a bigger laugh.

‘But what about kids, eh?’ said Vid. ‘Are you two planning to have children?’

There was a brief pause. A tightening, a constriction of the atmosphere as if people had stopped breathing.

‘Vid,’ said Tiffany. ‘You can’t ask people that. It’s personal.’

‘What? Why not? What’s personal about children?’ Vid looked nonplussed.

‘We’re hoping to have children,’ said Oliver. His face collapsed inward, like a popped balloon. Poor Oliver. So soon after his tiny social triumph.

‘One day,’ said Erika. Everyone seemed to be deliberately not looking at her, the way people did when you had food in your teeth and they didn’t want to tell you so they kept trying not to see. She used her fingernail to check her teeth for sesame seeds from the crackers. She’d meant to sound up-beat and positive. ‘One day soon.’

‘Yes, but you can’t wait too long,’ said Vid.

‘For God’s sake, Vid!’ said Tiffany.

There was a piercing yell from upstairs.





chapter twenty-three



‘It’s Clementine.’

The rain was so loud right now Erika could only just distinguish Clementine’s voice on the phone.

‘Speak up,’ she said.

‘Sorry. It’s Clementine. Good morning! How are you?’

‘Yeah, hi, how are you?’ Erika moved her mobile phone to the other ear and tucked it against her shoulder so she could continue taking things from the house through to the garage to pack in the car.

‘I wondered if you wanted to meet up for a drink after work,’ said Clementine. ‘Today. Or another day.’

‘I’m not going to work,’ said Erika. ‘I’m taking the day off. I have to go to my mother’s house.’

When she’d called the office she had told her secretary to tell anyone who asked that she’d taken the day off because her mother was ill, which was technically true.

There was a pause. ‘Oh,’ said Clementine, and her tone changed as it always did when they talked about Erika’s mother. She became tentative and gentle, as if she were talking to someone with a terminal disease. ‘Mum did mention that she called you last night.’

‘Yes,’ said Erika. She felt a tiny eruption of fury at the thought of Clementine and her mother talking cosily about her, poor, poor Erika, as they must have done since she was a child.

She said to Clementine, ‘How was dinner?’

‘Great,’ said Clementine, which meant that it wasn’t, because otherwise she would have rhapsodised about the amazing flavours of the such-and-such.

Don’t tell me about it then, Clementine. I don’t care if your marriage is falling apart, if your perfect life is not so perfect these days. See how the rest of us live.

‘So you’re going to your mother’s place,’ said Clementine. ‘To, uh, help her clean.’

‘As much as I can.’ Erika picked up the three-litre container of disinfectant and put it down again. It was too hard to carry while she tried to talk on the phone. She picked up the two mops instead and walked through the connecting door to the garage, switching on the light as she did. Their garage was spotless. Like a showroom for their spotless blue Statesman.

‘Has Oliver taken the day off work too?’ Clementine knew that Oliver always went with her. Erika remembered when she’d told Clementine about the first time Oliver had helped with her mother’s house and how wonderful he’d been, just getting the job done, never a word of complaint, and how Clementine had got such a soft, teary look on her face when she heard this, and for some reason that soft, teary look made Erika feel angry, because she already knew how lucky she was to have Oliver’s help, she already felt grateful and cherished, but Clementine’s reaction made her feel ashamed, as if Erika didn’t deserve it, as if he were doing more than anyone could expect of a husband.

‘Oliver is home from work but he’s sick,’ said Erika. She opened the boot of her car and slid in the mops.

‘Oh. Well, do you want me to come with you today?’ said Clementine. ‘I could come. I’m playing at a wedding this morning, but then I’m free until school pick-up time.’

Erika closed her eyes. She could hear notes of both hope and fear in Clementine’s voice. She remembered Clementine as a child, the day she’d discovered the way Erika lived: sweet little Clementine, with her porcelain skin, her clear blue eyes and her clean, lovely life, standing at Erika’s front door, her round eyes even rounder still.