A Taste for Malice (11 page)

‘Your friends,’ he corralled his thoughts. ‘... have not been so good at keeping in touch.’

‘Oh.’ From the note of her tone he read Angela translating this into a failure on her part.

‘It wasn’t your fault, or anything. No. It was a combination of things. We moved across here from Edinburgh after Ben was born. You gave up your job to become a fulltime mum. Your friends all had babies. Everybody was just too busy in their own lives.’ And they all had Facebook to keep them company, so why bother with the effort of talking to real people.

‘What about that girl …Kirsty?’ Her tone this time was adamant. Adamant that she must have at least one real friend. Kirsty had appeared in more than one of the photographs she had looked through, so Angela had obviously realised her significance. But why hadn’t she asked about her until now? Did she sense Jim’s unwillingness to talk about her?

Jim hid his reluctance and decided that now was the time to pull Kirsty out from under the carpet and brush her down. He had to give her some part in the story of Angela’s life. She was no doubt about to make her own entrance for real soon and it would look better if he prepared the way. A little.

‘Kirsty and you were friends at college,’ he began. ‘You were doing the same nursing course.’ But how much to tell?

‘Uh huh?’ Angela brightened, tucking her feet under her bum and a strand of hair behind an ear. She was getting into a listening position — and Jim thought he’d better have something worthwhile to tell her.

‘You and she hit it off almost immediately.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I think the lack of a father thing was what you shared. You could bitch about men before boyfriends started to let you down.’ Jim tried to make a joke of it. Neither of them laughed.

The mirror of memory may have been in 3-D, but Jim had to work at remembering the emotions that surrounded them. They were diluted in the mist that was a time from another age, the energy of youth, the feeling of immortality all bound up in the haze from the pleasure of
now
.

Initially they went around in a threesome. Angela was reluctant to leave Kirsty on her own for some reason. Jim remembered a few arguments over that. How were he and Angela ever going to get intimate with the gooseberry around? Eventually he got used to her presence, as she rarely said much and when she did it tended towards the pithy, so she could be fun. It didn’t hurt that under the baggy, student, charity shop clothes and waves of dragged-through-a-hedge hair, Kirsty was actually a very pretty girl doing her best to hide it.

‘Again …you kinda lost touch with her after Ben was born. She had a new job in management somewhere in the Health Board and you were busy with the baby.’

Later on that evening, as his two loved ones slept in the rooms above him Jim reflected on the tale of Kirsty. It seemed that Angela had taken some sort of comfort from the telling, as if she was relieved that other than he and Ben she did indeed have someone else in her life. Jim’s job now was to effect some sort of introduction that would not endanger his new found family situation. For as difficult and trying as it was he couldn’t afford to lose his wife again.

In the meantime, he’d had to help Angela adjust and find some way for her to cope with the hours he spent in the office.

The next day, Jim was confronted with a stranger in his living room when he came home from work.

‘Jim, you know…’ Angela began.

‘Moira.’ The small woman sitting in his living room on the settee with his wife helpfully supplied her own name.

‘Yeah…’ His heart went into freefall behind his ribs. Bugger. Shit. Questions raced through his mind. Who the hell was she? How much did she know? How much had she said? How did this happen? Ignoring the crowd of worries in his head, he donned his best welcome to my humble abode face and said, ‘We met …’

‘I’m not sure we did meet, Jim. Angela and I just used to meet at the children’s playgroup.’ She smiled at Ben, who was hiding behind my leg.

‘Hello, Ben. My, you’re getting big.’

Who the fuck was she? Did she really meet Angela at the playgroup? Have to get her out, have to get her out. He tried to focus. Right. Was he in any danger? Did she know that he and Angela had split up? If not, why didn’t Angela tell her? They couldn’t have been such good friends if that was the case.

What was more worrying to Jim was the thought that if Moira did know they had split up, why hasn’t she said something? Okay, Jim, calm down. The woman’s being sensitive. She probably thinks that they patched things up.

He read Angela’s expression. Nothing but naked delight at the fact that someone had come to see her. That and a faint blush of embarrassment that she had forgotten the woman’s name.

‘M …she heard that I was out of hospital. The girls at the nursery told her. Isn’t that wonderful?’ Angela beamed, with only a momentary concern when she chose to go with an initial rather than display her forgetfulness when forgetting Moira’s name again.

Oh, bloody marvellous, Jim answered under his breath. Now get her the hell out of here. He sat down while Ben sidled up to his mother. She gathered him in her arms and gave him a kiss.

‘Lovely,’ Jim said forcing himself to breath nice and slowly. ‘I didn’t realise you two had been friends.’ He aimed a smile at Moira, ‘Or I would have got in touch.’

‘Oh, that’s fine. I understand. You had more to contend with than getting in touch with me,’ she hooted and finished off with a snort.

‘Moira’s been telling me how difficult her life’s been recently and not to worry too much. Her husband left her last year.’ Angela was keen to be part of the conversation and fought not to make the problems with her memory too obvious.

‘…For another woman.’ Moira pursed her lips in judgement against all men. Then she turned back to Angela and they smiled at each other as if they’d been comparing miseries and scored around even. What the hell was going on here? This was surreal.

As Moira chattered, explaining how she and Angela used to chat over a coffee after dropping the kids off at nursery, she finished off each sentence with a delighted, solitary note of laughter. Every now and then she added a snort for good measure. Jim searched his memory for any mention of a Moira. None, nothing, zip. The friendship must have begun while Jim and Angela were separated.

If that was the case, why hadn’t she alluded to that in her conversation with Angela. Perhaps she had, Jim thought and examined Angela’s face for any clues. There was nothing there but delight in having a friend.

Jim examined Moira. She wasn’t someone he would have tagged as a friend of Angela’s. In his experience people tend to socialise with others who are similar in outlook, habits, beliefs and a myriad of other things. Other than having children in the same nursery he couldn’t see any way in which these two women would bond. The pre-accident Angela would have been polite to this woman — but nothing more.

Age-wise he would have put her in her late twenties, early thirties. How would he describe her appearance? Average. Everything about her was average. Brown hair, medium height, not too thin, small breasts. Even her clothes were non-descript jeans and a brown blouse. She was the kind of woman who would easily blend into a crowd and become indistinguishable from the people around her.

‘Oh, the coffees we had,’ hoot, ‘the chats,’ snort. ‘We were a fine pair, so we were.’

Aye, right, Jim thought, and my dick’s got a bell sown on to the end of it, why don’t you pull that? He just couldn’t place this woman.

‘Where did we go?’ Angela was keen to know.

‘Oh, here and there,’ Moira answered. ‘Your favourite was The Honey Pot. You used to love their toffee apple pie, so you did.’ Angela did like The Honey Pot, it was a friendly wee cafe with a really good variety of speciality teas. And she had raved about their toffee apple pie. Several times.

‘Yes,’ continued Moira. ‘And you loved their cappuccino, so you did.’

‘Can I make you both another coffee just now?’ Jim asked, so that he could leave the room without appearing too rude. Who was this woman? And in any case, a worrying smell was coming from the kitchen. Angela must have been trying to make the dinner and Jim thought he should take care of it rather than leave Angela to place another tick in her
fail
column.

‘No thanks, Jim. I’ve had enough for now.’ Angela smiled. Then she was on her feet, expression tight with alarm. ‘Shit. The dinner.’ She ran into the kitchen. We heard the oven door opening. ‘Shit.’ A strong smell of burning meat. And then the oven door was slammed shut.

‘Something else was burning when I came in an hour ago,’ Moira said under her breath. She smiled weakly and then shrugged as if apologising for distracting my wife. ‘I think that’s version number two.’ She smiled again.

How dare you smile at my wife’s accidents, Jim wanted to say. Instead he stood up and said. ‘Well, thank you for visiting Angela,’ and waited for her to do likewise. Walking towards the door, he added, ‘perhaps you could come again.’

‘Oh, right,’ Moira looked at her feet for her handbag. And stood up. ‘Perhaps I should leave you two alone. A hard day at work and all that.’

With a ‘See you later, Angela,’ winging into the kitchen, Moira followed Jim to the door.

Angela appeared at my shoulder, ‘You don’t have to go so soon.’

Moira glanced at Jim, read the expression on his face and faced Angela. ‘I really should go and get Erskine from his granny’s. She’ll be tearing her hair out trying to deal with the little darling.’

Yeah. Go on. Piss off, Jim thought.

‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘I mean, that you have to go.’

‘It was lovely to see you, Angela,’ Moira leaned past me and kissed Angela on the cheek. ‘I’ll call in again, soon.’

‘That would be lovely.’ Angela looked lost. Her new friend was going away. Would she really come back, was that the question in her eyes?

‘Yeay. Do come back. Next time bring Erskine and he and Ben can play together.’ Jim found himself saying. Why the hell did he say that? Guilty conscience was intruding on his plans.

Standing there watching Angela’s expressions range from pleasure to little girl lost made him feel like the worst husband on the planet. But he couldn’t allow this woman too close. What did she know? And if she did know something, why didn’t she say?

Moira was now on the path leading to the gate. Facing them, instead of the way to her car, clutching her handbag to her belly. ‘You’re looking so well, Angela. I can’t believe it …after everything.’ She lifted her shoulders and gave a wee squeal. ‘What a brave woman you are.’

Oh good Christ, she’s going to cry now, thought Jim. But then she reined in her emotions and looked around her at the too long grass and bare brown earth of the borders that were needing a spot of colour.

‘Lovely garden, Jim.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I like the minimalist look.’ Right, go on, beat it. She must be one of those women who take an hour to say cheerio.

‘Toffee apple pie,’ said Angela. ‘We could meet up at that place and have coffee.’

‘I’d love that,’ said Moira.

In the doorway, Jim placed an arm over Angela’s shoulder. It stopped him from grabbing a handful of brown blouse and dragging Moira to her car.

‘Right. Bye,’ said Moira. And then they had another round of kisses.

In the kitchen as Angela and Jim viewed the brown and black lump that had been their dinner, she said. ‘What a nice friendly wee woman she was.’

‘Aye.’ It was all he could do not to wipe sweat from his brow with relief. Result. Disaster averted. ‘She obviously cared about you.’

Angela smiled in response. ‘It would be nice if she could come over sometime with her son. Let the boys get to know each other. Or, did they know each other before?’

‘If they were at the same nursery then I guess they should do. Anyway …’ Jim clapped his hands while thinking about his ruined dinner. ‘Who fancies some sweet and sour chicken?’

During the meal Angela opened her mouth only to pop in some puffs of battered chicken, her eyes focused somewhere on the surface of the table, between the aluminium tubs of food. She’d moved on from delight at finding a friend to …he wasn’t sure where. Must be exhausted after all the excitement.

‘She seemed nice,’ he tried to engage Angela in conversation. ‘Moira. Nice steady name that.’ There were several times during their short conversation when Angela clearly struggled to remember the woman’s name.

A wee reminder might help.

‘Oh very subtle, Jim. Why don’t you remind your wife how crap her memory is.’ Angela’s expression was melting into a puddle of shame.

‘Sorry,’ he offered, feeling awful. ‘Just trying to help.’

‘Can’t even remember an old friend’s name. How embarrassing is that?’ Angela flung her fork down on to the table.

‘It’s only a name.’ He couldn’t quite understand what was so important.

‘A name? Just a name?’ Angela screamed. A tiny piece of chicken hit his right cheek. ‘It’s polite …it’s manners. How on earth can I function socially when I can’t remember anybody’s names?’ Her voice rose in pitch throughout the sentence. She punctuated the last word with a slap at a tub of food. ‘Fuck.’ She screamed again.

Red sauce splattered over the floor and half way up a cupboard door. Ben, face white, slid off his chair and with a whimper ran out of the room.

‘Ben …’ Angela reached for his back. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her temper crashed in on itself and was replaced by tears.

Fighting to keep the irritation from his voice Jim said, ‘It’s just a name. Not worth scaring Ben for. I’ll go and check on the wee man.’

‘No. Let me,’ Angela walked past him, almost shouldering him back onto his chair. ‘I need to clear up my own mess.’ Fine, Jim thought. Pardon me for trying to help.

As he listened to her feet pad upstairs he looked at the mess on the floor and wondered if he should leave that for her as well. Deciding that he was tired of being Mr Nice Guy, he walked past it, careful not to slip and on in to the living room. What a night, he thought as he bent forward to switch on the TV.

Kicking his feet up on to a footstool he considered what he should do. This wasn’t the first time that Angela had thrown a fit. But it was the first time she’d done so while Ben was in the room and the first time she’d actually thrown something. Jim wanted to help, but Angela’s temper was getting worse and in the face of that it was difficult to keep calm and offer assistance.