Was it humanly possible to feel more ill at ease than he did at this moment? His hands were shaking and there were ripples in the tea like in Jura.s.sic Park Jura.s.sic Park when the T. rex was approaching. when the T. rex was approaching.

"Katie says he's a decent bloke."

"Why are we talking about me and Tony?"

"You have arguments, right?" said Ray.

"Ray, it's none of your business whether we have arguments or not."

Dear G.o.d. He was telling Ray to back off. Jamie never told people to back off. He felt like he did when Robbie North threw that can of petrol onto the bonfire, knowing that a bad thing was about to happen very soon.

"Sorry." Ray held up his hands. "This gay stuff's all a bit foreign to me."

"It's got absolutely nothing to do with...Jeez." Jamie put his tea down in case he spilled it. He felt a little dizzy. He took a deep breath and spoke slowly. "Yes. Tony and I have arguments. Yes, I love Tony. And..."

I love Tony.

He'd said he loved Tony. He'd said it to Ray. He hadn't even said it to himself.

Did he love Tony?

Christ alive.

Ray said, "Look-"

"No. Wait." Jamie put his head in his hands.

It was the life/school/other-people thing all over again. You turned up at your sister's house with the best of intentions, you found yourself talking to someone who had failed to grasp the most basic rules of human conversation and suddenly there was a motorway pileup in your head.

He steeled himself. "Perhaps we should just talk about football."

"Football?" asked Ray.

"Man stuff." The bizarre idea came to him that they could be friends. Maybe not friends. But people who could rub along together. Christmas in the trenches and all that.

"Are you taking the p.i.s.s?" asked Ray.

Jamie breathed deeply. "Katie's lovely. But she's hard work. You couldn't give her a biscuit against her will. If she's marrying you it's because she wants to marry you."

The drill slid off the counter and hit the stone floor tiles and it sounded like a mortar sh.e.l.l going off.

25.

Something had happened to George. to George.

It started that evening when she came back into the living room to find him scrabbling about under the armchair looking for the TV remote. He got to his feet and asked what she'd been up to.

"Writing a letter."

"Who to?"

"Anna. In Melbourne."

"So what have you been telling her?" asked George.

"About the wedding. About your studio. About the extension the Khans have added to her old house."

George didn't talk about her family, or the books she was reading, or whether they should get a new sofa. But for the rest of the evening he wanted to know what she thought about all these things. When he finally fell asleep it was probably due to exhaustion. He hadn't sustained a conversation this long in twenty years.

The following day continued in much the same fashion. When he wasn't working at the bottom of the garden or listening to Tony Bennett at double the usual volume he was following her from room to room.

When she asked if he was OK he insisted that it was good to talk and that they didn't do it enough. He was right, of course. And perhaps she should have been a little more appreciative of the attention. But it was scary.

Dear G.o.d, there were times when she'd prayed for him to open up a little. But not overnight. Not like he'd suffered a blow to the head.

There was a practical problem, too. Seeing David when George had no interest in what she was doing was one thing. Seeing David when George was following her every move was another.

Except that he wasn't very good at it. The listening, the taking an interest. He reminded her of Jamie at four. Froggy wants to talk to you on the phone...Get on the sofa train, it's about to start! Froggy wants to talk to you on the phone...Get on the sofa train, it's about to start! Anything to hold her attention. Anything to hold her attention.

Just before they climbed into bed he'd wandered out of the bathroom holding a soiled Q-tip to ask whether she thought it was normal to have that much wax in one's ear.

David could do it. The listening, the taking an interest.

The following afternoon they were sitting in his living room with the French windows open. He was talking about stamps.

"Jersey World War Two occupation issues. The 1888 dull green Zululand one shilling. Perforates. Imperforates. Inverted watermarks...Lord knows what I thought I was going to achieve. Easier than growing up, I guess. I've still got them somewhere."

Most men wanted to tell you what they knew. The route to Wisbech. How to get a log fire going. David made her feel she was the one who knew things.

He lit a cigar and they sat quietly watching the sparrows on the bird table and the mackerel sky moving slowly from right to left behind the poplars. And it felt good. Because he could do silence, too. And in her experience there were very few men who could do silence.

She left late and found herself in a traffic jam by the roadworks outside B & Q. She was worrying about what to say to George to explain her lateness when it occurred to her that he knew about David. That his attentiveness was a way of making amends, or competing, or making her feel guilty.

But when she manhandled the bags into the kitchen he was sitting at the table with two mugs of hot coffee, waving a folded newspaper.

"You were talking about the Underwood boys. Well, apparently, these scientists in California have been studying identical twins..."

The shop was unusually quiet the following week. As a result her paranoia began to grow. And because Ursula was in Dublin there was no one she could discuss her fears with.

Mornings at St. John's were her only respite, sitting in the Jungle Corner with Megan and Callum and Sunil reading Winnie the Witch Winnie the Witch and and Mr. Gumpy's Outing Mr. Gumpy's Outing. Especially Callum, who couldn't sit still and look in the same direction for five seconds (sadly, she wasn't allowed to bribe him with biscuits like she did with Jacob). But as soon as she walked out of the main doors into the car park it began nagging at her all over again.

On Thursday George announced that he'd booked the marquee firm and arranged a meeting with two caterers. This from a man who forgot his children's birthdays. She was so surprised she didn't even complain about the lack of consultation.

Later that evening a sinister voice in her head began to ask whether he was making her dispensable. Ready for when she moved out. Or when he told her to go.

Yet when the day of the dinner with David rolled around he was unexpectedly cheerful. He spent the day shopping and making risotto in the time-honored male way, removing all the utensils from the drawers and laying them out like surgical instruments, then decanting all the ingredients into small bowls to maximize the washing up.

She still couldn't shake the idea that he was planning some kind of showdown, and as the tension rose during the afternoon she found herself toying with the idea of faking some kind of illness. When the doorbell finally rang just after half past seven she ran down the landing, trying to get to the door first and tripped on the loose carpet, twisting her ankle.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, George was standing in the hallway wiping his hands on his stripy ap.r.o.n, and David was handing him a bottle of wine and a bunch of flowers.

David noticed her hobbling a little. "Are you OK?" Instinctively he moved to comfort her, then caught himself and stepped back.

Jean put her hand on George's arm and bent down to rub her ankle. It didn't hurt a great deal, but she wanted to avoid David's eye, and the fear that he might have given something away in that fraction of a second made her feel light-headed.

"Is it bad?" asked George. Thankfully he seemed to have noticed nothing.

"Not too bad," said Jean.

"You should sit down and put your foot up," said David. "To prevent it swelling." He took the flowers and wine back so that George could help her.

"I'm still in the middle of cooking," said George. "Why don't I sit you two down with a gla.s.s of wine in the living room?"

"No," said Jean, a little too firmly. She paused to calm herself. "We'll come into the kitchen with you."

George installed them at the table, pulled out a third chair for Jean's ankle, which she didn't really need, filled two winegla.s.ses and returned to grating Parmesan.

It was always going to be a strange occasion, whoever their guest was. George didn't like other people in his kennel. So she a.s.sumed the conversation would be stilted. Whenever she dragged him along to parties she would invariably find him standing disconsolately in a circle of men, as they talked about rugby and tax returns, wearing a pained expression on his face, as if he was suffering from a headache. She hoped, at least, that David would be able to fill any silences.

But to her surprise, it was George who did most of the talking. He seemed genuinely excited to have company. The two men congratulated themselves about the decline in Shepherds' fortunes since their departure. They talked about trekking holidays in France. David talked about his gliding. George talked about his fear of flying. David suggested that learning to glide might cure the problem. George said that David clearly underestimated his fear of flying. David confessed to a snake phobia. George asked him to imagine an anaconda in his lap for a couple of hours. David laughed and said George had a point.

Jean's fear ebbed away and was replaced by something odder but equally uncomfortable. It was ridiculous but she didn't want them to be getting on this well. George was warmer and funnier than he was when they were alone together. And David seemed more ordinary.

Was this how they'd been at work? And if so, why had George not mentioned David once since leaving the company? She began to feel rather guilty for having painted David such a bleak picture of her home life.

By the time they decamped to the dining room George and David seemed to have more in common with one another than she had with either of them. It was like being back at school again. Watching your best friend striking up a relationship with another child and being left out in the cold.

She kept muscling into the conversation, trying to claw back some of that attention. But she kept getting it wrong. Sounding far too interested in Great Expectations Great Expectations when she'd only seen the TV series. Being too rude about George's previous culinary disasters when the risotto was actually very good. It was tiring. And in the end it seemed easier to take a backseat, leave them to do the talking and give her opinion when asked. when she'd only seen the TV series. Being too rude about George's previous culinary disasters when the risotto was actually very good. It was tiring. And in the end it seemed easier to take a backseat, leave them to do the talking and give her opinion when asked.

Only at one point did George seem lost for words. David was talking about Martin Donnelly's wife having to go into hospital for tests. She turned round and saw George sitting with his head between his knees. Her first thought was that he'd poisoned everyone with his cooking and was about to vomit. But he sat back, wincing and rubbing his leg, apologized for the interruption, then headed off to do a circuit of the kitchen to ease a muscle spasm.

By the end of the meal he'd drunk an entire bottle of red wine and turned into something of a comic.

"At the risk of boring Jean with an old story, a couple of weeks later we got our photos back. Except they weren't our photos. They were photos of some young man and his girlfriend. In the altogether. Jamie suggested we write 'Do you want an enlargement?' on the back before we returned them."

Over coffee David talked about Mina and the children, and as they stood on the steps watching him drive away on a little cloud of pink smoke, George said, "You wouldn't ever leave me, would you?"

"Of course not," said Jean.

She expected him to put an arm round her, at the very least. But he just clapped his hands together, said, "Right. Washing up," and headed back inside as if this were simply the next part of the fun.

26.

Katie had had a s.h.i.tty week. a s.h.i.tty week.

The festival programs arrived on Monday and Patsy, who still couldn't spell program, program, shocked everyone by knowing a fact, that the photo of Terry Jones on page seven was actually a photo of Terry Gilliam. Aidan bawled Katie out because admitting he'd c.o.c.ked up wasn't one of the skills he'd learnt on his MBA. She resigned. He refused to accept her resignation. And Patsy cried because people were shouting. shocked everyone by knowing a fact, that the photo of Terry Jones on page seven was actually a photo of Terry Gilliam. Aidan bawled Katie out because admitting he'd c.o.c.ked up wasn't one of the skills he'd learnt on his MBA. She resigned. He refused to accept her resignation. And Patsy cried because people were shouting.

Katie left early to pick up Jacob from nursery and Jackie said he'd bitten two other children. She took him to one side and gave him a lecture about being like the meanie crocodile in A Kiss Like This A Kiss Like This. But Jacob wasn't doing recriminations that day. So she cut her losses and drove him home where she withheld his yogurt until they'd had a conversation about biting, which generated the same kind of frustration Dr. Benson probably felt when they were doing Kant at university.

"It was my tractor," said Jacob.

"Actually it's everyone's tractor," said Katie.

"I was playing with it."

"And Ben shouldn't have grabbed it from you. But that doesn't give you the right to bite him."

"I was playing with it."

"If you're playing with something and someone tries to grab it you have to shout and tell Jackie or Bella or Susie."

"You said it's wrong to shout."

"It's OK to shout if you're really, really cross. But you're not allowed to bite. Or to hit someone. Because you don't want other people to bite you or hit you, do you?"

"Ben bites people," said Jacob.

"But you don't want to be like Ben."

"Can I have my yogurt now?"

"Not until you understand that biting people is a bad thing to do."

"I understand," said Jacob.

"Saying you understand is not the same thing as understanding."

"But he tried to grab my tractor."

Ray came in at this point and made the technically correct suggestion that it was unhelpful to hug Jacob while she was telling him off, and she was able to demonstrate immediately a situation where you were allowed to shout at someone if you were really, really cross.

Ray remained infuriatingly calm until Jacob told him not to make Mummy angry because "You're not my real Daddy," at which point he walked into the kitchen and snapped the breadboard into two pieces.

Jacob fixed her with a thirty-five-year-old stare and said, tartly, "I'm going to eat my yogurt now," then went off to consume it in front of Thomas the Tank Engine Thomas the Tank Engine.

The following morning she canceled her dentist's appointment and spent her day off taking Jacob into the office where he acted like a demented chimp while she and Patsy inserted five thousand erratum slips. By lunchtime he'd taken the chain off Aidan's bike, emptied a card index file and spilled hot chocolate into his shoes.