Neither of them said anything for a few moments.

"So, am I invited?" Tony blew a little plume of smoke toward the ceiling.

Jamie paused a fraction of a second too long before answering, and Tony did that suspicious thing with his eyebrows. So Jamie had to change tactics on the hoof. "I'm sincerely hoping it's not going to happen."

"But if it does?"

There was no point fighting over this. Not now. When Jehovah's Witnesses knocked on the door Tony invited them in for tea. Jamie took a deep breath. "Mum did mention bringing someone."

"Someone?" said Tony. "Charming."

"You don't actually want to come, do you?"

"Why not?" asked Tony.

"Ray's engineering colleagues, my mother fussing over you-"

"You're not listening to what I'm saying, are you." Tony took hold of Jamie's chin and squished it, the way aunts did when you were a kid. "I would like. To come. To your sister's wedding. With you."

A police car tore past the end of the cul-de-sac with its siren going. Tony was still holding Jamie's chin. Jamie said, "Let's talk about it later, OK?"

Tony tightened his grip, pulled Jamie toward him and sniffed. "What have you been eating?"

"Choc-ice."

"G.o.d. This thing really has depressed you, hasn't it."

"I threw the rest away," said Jamie.

Tony stubbed out his cigarette. "Go and get me one. I haven't had a choc-ice since...G.o.d, Brighton in about 1987."

Jamie went into the kitchen, retrieved one of the choc-ices from the bin, rinsed the ketchup from the wrapper and took it back through to the living room.

If his luck was in, Katie would throw a toaster at Ray before September and there wouldn't be a wedding.

13.

George spread a generous helping of steroid cream onto the eczema, changed into his building clothes, then went downstairs where he b.u.mped into Jean returning laden from Sainsbury's. helping of steroid cream onto the eczema, changed into his building clothes, then went downstairs where he b.u.mped into Jean returning laden from Sainsbury's.

"How was the doctor?"

"Fine."

"So...?" asked Jean.

George decided that it was simpler to lie. "Heat stroke, probably. Dehydration. Working out there in the sun without a hat. Not drinking enough water."

"Well, that's a relief."

"Indeed," said George.

"I rang Jamie."

"And?"

"Wasn't in," said Jean. "I left a message. Said we'd be sending him an invite. I told him he could bring someone if he wanted."

"Excellent."

Jean paused. "Are you all right, George?"

"I am, actually." He kissed her and headed off to the garden.

He sc.r.a.ped the contents of the bucket into the miniskip, hosed it out, made some fresh mortar and began laying bricks. Another couple of courses and he could think about cementing the door frame into place.

He didn't have a problem with h.o.m.os.e.xuality per se. Men having s.e.x with men. One could imagine, if one was in the business of imagining such things, that there were situations where it might happen, situations in which chaps were denied the normal outlets. Military camps. Long sea voyages. One didn't want to dwell on the plumbing but one could almost see it as a sporting activity. Letting off steam. High spirits. Handshake and a hot shower afterward.

It was the thought of men purchasing furniture together which disturbed him. Men snuggling. More disconcerting, somehow, than shenanigans in public toilets. It gave him the unpleasant feeling that there was a weakness in the very fabric of the world. Like seeing a man hit a woman in the street. Or suddenly not being able to remember the bedroom you had as a child.

Still, things changed. Mobile phones. Thai restaurants. You had to remain elastic or you turned into an angry fossil railing at litter. Besides, Jamie was a sensible young man and if he brought someone along he was bound to be another very sensible young man.

What Ray would make of it Lord only knew.

Interesting. That was what it would be.

He laid another brick.

"Unless I'm very much mistaken," Dr. Barghoutian had said.

Just covering himself, no doubt.

14.

Jean undressed while David was showering and slipped into the dressing gown he'd left out for her. She wandered over to the bay window and sat on the arm of the chair. was showering and slipped into the dressing gown he'd left out for her. She wandered over to the bay window and sat on the arm of the chair.

It made her feel attractive. Just being in this room. The cream walls. The wooden floor. The big fish print in the metal frame. It was like one of those rooms you saw in magazines which made you think about living a different life.

She gazed onto the oval lawn. Three shrubs in big stone pots on one side. Three on the other. A folding wooden lounger.

She enjoyed making love, but she enjoyed this too. The way she could think here, without the rest of her life rushing in and crowding her.

Jean rarely spoke about her parents. People simply didn't understand. They were teenagers before it dawned on them that Auntie Mary from next door was their father's girlfriend. Everyone pictured some kind of steamy soap opera. But there was no intrigue, no blazing rows. Her father worked in the same bank for forty years and made wooden birdhouses in the cellar. And whatever her mother felt about their bizarre domestic arrangement she never spoke about it, even after Jean's father died.

Her guess was that she never spoke about it when he was alive either. It happened. Appearances were kept up. End of story.

Jean felt ashamed. As any sane person would. If you kept quiet about it you felt like a liar. If you told the story you felt like something from a circus.

No wonder the children all headed off so fast in such different directions. Eileen to her religion. Douglas to his articulated lorries. And Jean to George.

They met at Betty's wedding.

There was something formal about him, almost military. Handsome in a way that young men no longer were these days.

Everyone was being rather silly (Betty's brother, the one who died in that horrible factory accident, had made a hat out of a napkin and was singing "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts" to much general hilarity). Jean could see that George was finding it all rather tiresome. She wanted to tell him that she was finding it all rather tiresome, too, but he didn't look like someone you could talk to, like that, out of the blue.

Ten minutes later he was at her side, offering to get her another drink, and she made a fool of herself by asking for a lemonade, to show that she was sober and sensible, then asking for wine because she didn't want to seem childish, then changing her mind a second time because he really was very attractive and she was getting a bit fl.u.s.tered.

He invited her out for dinner the following week and she didn't want to go. She knew what would happen. He was honest and utterly dependable and she was going to fall in love with him, and when he found out about her family he was going to disappear in a cloud of smoke. Like Roger Hamilton. Like Pat Lloyd.

Then he told her about his father drinking himself into a stupor and sleeping facedown on the lawn. And his mother crying in the bathroom. And his uncle going mad and ending up in some dreadful hospital. At which point she just took hold of his face and kissed him, which was something she'd never done to a man before.

And it wasn't that he'd changed over the years. He was still honest. He was still dependable. But the world had changed. And so had she.

If anything it was those French ca.s.settes (were they a present from Katie? she really couldn't remember). They were going to the Dordogne, and she had time on her hands.

A few months later she was standing in a shop in Bergerac buying bread and cheese and these little spinach tarts and the woman was apologizing for the weather and Jean found herself striking up an actual conversation while George sat on a bench across the street counting his mosquito bites. And nothing happened there and then, but when she got home it seemed a bit cold, a bit small, a bit English.

Through the wall she heard the faint sound of the shower door popping open.

That it should be David, of all people, amazed her still. She'd cooked him spaghetti Bolognese on one occasion. She'd made small talk about the new conservatory and come away feeling dull but thankfully invisible. He wore linen jackets and roll-neck sweaters in peach and sky blue and smoked little cigars. He'd lived in Stockholm for three years and when he and Mina separated amicably it only increased the sense that he was a little too modern for Peterborough.

He retired early, George lost touch with him and he didn't cross her mind until she looked up from her till in Ottakar's one day and saw him holding a copy of The Naked Chef The Naked Chef and a tin of Maisie Mouse pencils. and a tin of Maisie Mouse pencils.

They had a coffee across the street and when she talked about going to Paris with Ursula he didn't mock her, like Bob Green used to do. Or wonder how two middle-aged ladies could survive a long weekend in a foreign city without being mugged or strangled or sold into the white slave trade, like George had done.

And it wasn't that she was physically attracted to him (he was shorter than her and there was quite a lot of black hair protruding from his cuffs). But she never met men over fifty who were still interested in the world around them, in new people, new books, new countries.

It was like talking to a female friend. Except that he was a man. And they'd only known each other for about fifteen minutes. Which was very disconcerting.

The following week they were standing on a footbridge over the dual carriageway and that feeling welled up inside her. The one she got by the sea sometimes. Ships disembarking, gulls squabbling over the wake, those mournful horns. The realization that you could sail off into the blue and start again in a new place.

He took her hand and held it, and she was disappointed. She'd found a soul mate and he was about to wreck it all with a clumsy pa.s.s. But he squeezed it and let go and said, "Come on. You'll be late home," and she wanted to take his hand back.

Later she was scared. Of saying yes. Of saying no. Of saying yes then realizing she should have said no. Of saying no then realizing she should have said yes. Of being naked in front of another man when her body sometimes made her feel like weeping.

So she told George. About meeting David in the shop and the coffee across the road. But not about the hands and the footbridge. She wanted him to be cross. She wanted him to make her life simple again. But he didn't. She dropped David's name into the conversation a couple more times and got no reaction. George's lack of concern began to seem like encouragement.

David had had other affairs. She knew. Even before he said. The way he cupped his hand round the back of her neck that first time. She was relieved. She didn't want to do this with someone sailing into uncharted waters, especially after Gloria's horror story about finding that man from Derby parked outside her house one morning.

And Jean was right. He was very hairy indeed. Like a monkey, almost. Which made it better somehow. Because it showed that it wasn't really about the s.e.x. Though, during the last few months she had grown rather fond of that silky feel under her fingers when she stroked his back.

The bathroom door clicked open and she closed her eyes. David walked across the rug and slipped his arms around her. She could smell coal tar soap and clean skin. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck.

He said, "I seem to have found a beautiful woman in my bedroom."

She laughed at the childishness of it. She was very far from being a beautiful woman. But it was good, pretending. Almost better than the real thing. Like being a kid again. Getting this close to another human being. Climbing trees and drinking bathwater. Knowing how everything felt and tasted.

He turned her round and kissed her.

He wanted to make her feel good. She couldn't remember the last time someone had done that.

He closed the curtains and led her over to the bed and laid her down and kissed her again and pushed the dressing gown off her shoulders and she was melting into that dark behind her eyelids, the way b.u.t.ter melted in a hot pan, the way you melted back into sleep after waking up at night, just letting it take you.

She put her hands around his neck and felt the muscles under the skin and those tiny hairs where the barber had run the razor close. And his own hands were slowly moving down her body and she could see the two of them from the far side of the room, doing this thing you only ever saw beautiful people doing in films. And maybe she did believe it now, that she was beautiful, that they were both beautiful.

Her body felt as if it were swaying back and forth with the movement of his fingers, a fairground ride that was taking her higher and faster with every swing so that she was weightless at each end, so high she could see the pleasure gardens and the ferries in the bay and the green hills across the water.

He said, "G.o.d, I love you," and she loved him back, for doing this, for understanding a part of her that she never knew existed. But she couldn't say it. Not now. She couldn't say anything. She just squeezed his shoulder, meaning, Keep going. Keep going.

She put her hand around his p.e.n.i.s and moved it back and forth and it no longer seemed strange, not even a part of his body, more a part of hers, the sensations flowing in one unbroken circle. And she could hear herself panting now, like a dog, but she didn't care.

And she realized that it was going to happen and she heard herself saying, "Yes, yes, yes," and even hearing the sound of her own voice didn't break the spell. And it swept over her like surf sweeping over sand then falling back and sweeping up over the sand again and falling back.

Images went off in her head like little fireworks. The smell of coconut. Bra.s.s firedogs. The starched bolster in her parents' bed. A hot cone of gra.s.s clippings. She was breaking up into a thousand tiny pieces, like snow, or bonfire sparks, tumbling high in the air, then starting to fall, so slowly it hardly seemed like falling at all.

She held his wrist to stop his hand and lay there with her eyes closed, dizzy and out of breath.

She was crying.

It was like finding your body again after fifty years and realizing you were old friends and suddenly understanding why you'd felt so alone all this time.

She opened her eyes. David was looking down at her and she knew that she didn't need to explain anything.

He waited for a couple of minutes. "And now," he said, "I think it's my turn."

He got to his knees and moved between her legs. He opened her gently with his fingers and pushed himself inside. And this time she watched him as he rolled forward onto his arms until she was full of him.

Sometimes she enjoyed the fact that he was doing this to her. Sometimes she enjoyed the fact that she was doing this to him. Today the distinction didn't seem to exist.

He began to move faster and his eyes narrowed with pleasure and finally closed. So she closed her own eyes and held on to his arms and let herself be rocked back and forth, and finally he reached a climax and held himself inside her and did that little animal shiver. And when he opened his eyes he was breathing heavily and smiling.

She smiled back at him.

Katie was right. You spent your life giving everything to other people, so they could drift away, to school, to college, to the office, to Hornsey, to Ealing. So little of the love came back.

She had earned this. She deserved to feel like someone in a film.