Every Good Girl (2 page)

Nina giggled. ‘Oh
Henry
. You're completely useless. Joe knows quite well I'm perfectly happy, I don't have to prove anything. The semi-quavers, I think.'

She pinned them to her ears and rifled through her make-up bag for the right lipstick. Was the blue silk suit a bit
much
, she then wondered. It was new: Joe would comment, if only to find out how much it had cost. It was the kind of thing he thought he ought to know, now he was handing over alimony. He probably had a gaggle of friends who told him what to look out for in terms of overspending ex-wives, warning him she'd blow all the children's school lunch money in Harvey Nichols and leave them to forage on curled-up bread crusts and age-softened apples. She didn't want him to go thinking she'd made a special effort for him
either. His vanity, especially since the delectable (and so
young
) Catherine had moved in with him, was thriving quite well enough without her accidentally feeding it. It was no good asking Henry's opinion, sweet and well-meaning as he was, he'd probably suggest an off-the-shoulder taffeta ballgown.

As she applied the lipstick she took a quick look at him. He sat observing her make-up process, just like the best of girlfriends waiting for gossip, picking up perfume bottles and taking interested sniffs at them and pulling faces. He was a cosy friend, she thought, so comfortably shabby, always wearing oversized shirts of soft, huggable fabrics, just like nightdresses back in childhood. He smelt of hand-rolled tobacco and oil paint and his newly greying hair looked as if he'd so long ago given up combing it that it no longer knew in which direction it was supposed to go. There weren't many people she'd feel so content to have draped over the bath edge while she got on with such personal going-out preparations.

Among the inhabitants of the Crescent where conversation of more than ‘good morning' and some communal tut-tutting about what dogs had left on the pavement was seen as an assault on precious privacy, Henry's casual gregariousness was to be treasured. Unattached and uncommitted, he was always available for a drink, a grumble, a movie or a meal – no strings, no pay-offs required. The Perfect Man, Nina's friend Sally called him. Too close to home, Nina retorted, and anyway she wasn't looking.

Nina finished with the lipstick, put it into her handbag and leaned across to kiss his forehead. Henry recoiled, fending her off, laughing. ‘You'll leave a big red mark!' he complained. ‘I'll go all innocent into Mr Patel's for a paper and the whole neighbourhood will
know that I'm the sort of sad old sod who can only get women to kiss me on the
head
!'

‘OK then, no kiss, I promise,' Nina told him, picking up her bag and giving her back view a quick look in the mirror. ‘By the way what was it you came round to borrow?' she asked him as they went down the stairs. ‘Was it the stepladder, because if it was, I think you've already got it.'

‘Can't remember,' Henry shrugged as they reached the hallway. ‘No, I think, yes I'm sure it was the hedge trimmer thingy. I've had one of those notes from the Council; they're threatening to confiscate my privet if I don't stop it growing out over the pavement. Some small-minded sod in this miserable street must have reported me. They probably think it could put someone's eye out. My old mother was always saying that. Was yours?'

‘Yes of course she was. They all were. There was that one and “If you pull that face and the wind changes.” Probably still says them, on a good day. I'll have to ask Graham,' Nina said as she opened the door. ‘The trimmer's in the shed, just help yourself. Key's in the padlock.'

‘Thanks. Have a good lunch.' Henry strolled towards the side gate of the house and then looked back at her. ‘Tell Joe from me that I still think he's mad. Oh, and run back upstairs and put the other earrings on. With his monstrous ego those little gold notes will have him thinking you're still hankering after the days when his so-called music filled the house. The
street
, even,' he added.

Nina hesitated on the doorstep as Henry disappeared round the corner towards the shed and the hedge trimmer. They're only earrings, for heaven's sake (only lunch, only Joe), she thought, hovering with her keys,
waiting to feel ready to leave. Joe was hardly likely to sit there over his
galette de tomates
or whatever wondering about the secret psychology of her jewellery. That was the sort of thing that happened at the beginning of relationships, not the end of them. She slammed the door shut and marched down the path. Fronds of stray wistaria reached out from the arch over the gate and brushed against her face. Perhaps Henry would notice, Nina thought, and give them a bit of a neighbourly clipping in return for use of the hedge trimmer.

Across the road, at number 26 (four bedrooms, late Victorian, period features) a man was attaching a
SOLD
sticker to the
FOR SALE
sign that had stood at the gatepost for only a couple of weeks. He looked up as Nina unlocked her car and whistled. She rewarded him with the full Pearl Girl power smile but he'd turned back to his hammering. Oh well, she thought.

In the car on the way to the restaurant, Nina felt the familiar rising nervousness that came over her every time she and Joe had this monthly so-civilized lunch date. It was an on-the-way-to-the-dentist feeling, dread and excitement and the certainty that real life was on hold till it was all over. It didn't have the same thrill as
dating
, but then it wouldn't with an ex-husband, but it came unnervingly close. This one would be the tenth lunch, all in different restaurants, just, as Joe had decided, for the pleasurable hell of it. They'd now covered all the seasons and were back to spring again, which made her wonder if she should be feeling new-startish, skin sloughed like a gleaming snake. ‘The first Thursday of every month,' he'd suggested when their so-amicable separation had been agreed. ‘Just you and me so we can talk about the girls and do all that family decision stuff without cutting into their time or having
silly misunderstandings over the phone.' He'd made it sound like a business meeting. She'd briefly imagined wearing a chalk-striped power suit and bringing along a file full of diary dates – doctors', orthodontists' and opticians' appointments, formalized lists of Emily's A-level grade predictions, what size Lucy's shoes were this week.

‘Or so we can just have rows without feeling guilty about them overhearing us?' she'd countered wryly.

‘We won't need to row, will we? Nothing to row about now that we've decided we don't live together any more,' he'd replied jovially. ‘All that's in the past. We'll probably get on really well now.' How cheerful he'd sounded about it, as if this state of friendly separation, all the twenty years they'd been together, had been exactly what he'd been most looking forward to.

But although she and Joe were in the past, the girls weren't. You can't, Nina thought as the traffic crawled over Putney Bridge, you can't just have ‘a nice clean break', as Joe had put it, when there were people involved who simply could not be broken from. She'd always thought that was a strange phrase anyway. Even with bones, a clean break meant just as many months of pain and difficulty as an untidy one.

Nina could see Joe arriving from the end of the street while she waited for a parking space to be vacated by a harassed woman loading a toddler into a Renault Espace. Joe was loping along as if he was walking for the fun of it, absorbed in his own thoughts and going nowhere in particular. He had a very loose way of walking, she'd always thought, like a lazily wandering lion. His legs were simply too long for staccato hurrying, so even when he was in a genuine rush he would give an irritating impression of leisurely pace. He was dressed in a smarter version of Henry-comfort,
monochrome relaxed chic – white T-shirt (probably new, he bought at least four a month, unable to pass The Gap), loosely crumpled black jacket. His reddish-brown hair was, unlike Henry's, so expensively cut that it wouldn't dare think of being indecisive about which way it lay. He'd once said the secret of eternal youth was in a good haircut. And of course he'd got Catherine to bestow her mere twenty-nine years on him. Outside the restaurant Nina saw him stop abruptly as if the sight of its blue and white awning had suddenly reminded him why he was there, in that street at that time. What was he thinking so deeply about? she wondered as she backed her Polo, at last, into the parking space.

Graham sat in the weak sunshine on the steps of the Accident and Emergency department, neatly peeled the foil from the strip of gum and folded it carefully into his mouth. Three folds. Then he folded the silver foil (four folds) and tucked it into the top pocket of his shirt. He looked down and could just see it showing through, a little grubby greyish square outline against the white poly-cotton. He frowned. He didn't like the look of it but there was nowhere else for it to go. He couldn't put it in his trouser pocket in case of fluff. Though there wasn't likely to be fluff, he knew that. Mother always turned the pockets completely inside out before anything went to the cleaners. Clothes went into the washing machine with their pockets pulled right out too so nothing was ever lost, but nothing was ever hidden. Her hankies and stockings were washed inside one pillowcase and his underwear and socks in another one. She never lost socks like some people did. Nina, last time she'd come round to visit, had watched Mother pairing his up for putting away and had joked
that her tumble dryer always seemed to eat them. She'd said there must be a secret place in every house where all the biros disappear to, and odd socks. ‘Not in my house there isn't,' Mother had said, but she'd been smiling and he knew that was because she enjoyed Nina admitting there were things she couldn't do quite as well as Mother.

Behind Graham the swing door opened. ‘Wheelchair, cubicle three, straight up to X-ray,' a crisp voice ordered. There was a flash of white hat, and swish of dark blue skirt and the door banged shut again. ‘No please, no thank you, no manners,' Graham muttered to himself. If he spoke like that at home, well it just wouldn't be on, wasn't something you thought of doing. But here, here it was jump whenever anyone ordered it, sometimes even
bloody
jump, and you just did it as if you didn't deserve manners.

He rose slowly to his feet, took the gum from his mouth, rolled it between his clean plump fingers into a perfect ball and wrapped it in the silver foil. This time it could go into his pocket because it was on its way to the bin, but he'd be careful not to forget and leave it there for Mother to find. Chewing gum, she always said, was a disgusting habit and tied your guts in knots. If it did, Graham thought as he went back into the bustling A & E with its smells of terror, blood and disinfectant, why didn't they see more cases in here? There should be ambulances full of kids clutching their stomachs, faces grey with pain and eyes wild. They should be squashed together on the shabby wipe-clean benches, groaning and pleading to be untangled inside as if they'd swallowed knitting with the needles still attached. He shook his head slowly as if settling his thoughts and made his way to cubicle three. There sat a plump old lady, with a badly cut and bruised leg,
sausage curled sparse hair ashy grey just like Mother's. She wore a big pink knitted cardigan, patterned with holes and ribbons like a vast baby's jacket and clutched an old-fashioned string shopping bag bulging with onions. Graham smiled at her. He liked old people, most of
them
had manners. ‘Hello then love, been in the wars?' he asked, gently unbraking the chair and mentally promising her a smooth ride to X-ray.

‘I like the outfit, that colour's exactly your eyes,' Joe commented admiringly as he and Nina arranged themselves at their table.

‘Thanks,' Nina replied simply, smiling at him. She accepted a menu from the waiter and looked around. She felt strangely as if her real self was over by the window, watching the scene. She observed herself being self-controlled, not clumsily lobbing back the compliment with an ‘Oh this old thing?' type of remark, or getting defensive and lying that it was in a sale, less than half-price. Those were things she might have said during the married time. She knew better now. And of course
now
it was none of his business. Other things were none of his business too, like the answer to the question she always imagined hanging unspoken from him to her: ‘Have you met anyone?' If he asked she'd have to give him the quiet triumph of hearing her say no. She'd say she wasn't looking and he wouldn't believe her. He'd never believe someone wasn't looking for sex. That he should perhaps have not been, during their marriage, had been more than a small problem.

‘Drink? Spritzer as usual?' Joe asked.

‘Thanks, yes I'd love one, but
just
one. I brought the car.'

‘You always do. I can't think why. You've still got the
minicab account if you want it. I sometimes wonder if you bring it to make sure you keep utterly sober,' he teased. ‘That Polo is your minder.'

‘You know I hate drinking at lunchtime. If I do, it means the day's over, for me. I might as well just go straight to bed.'

He grinned, looking wolfish. ‘Hmm, now that I
do
remember.' Then he quickly rearranged his face to more suitable post-separation seriousness and ordered drinks. Nina felt awkward, and then cross. How could her ex-husband even begin to imagine she'd find suggestive remarks amusing? Perhaps he had some warped idea that she'd be
grateful
; that a discarded wife could do with the charity of the odd thrown-out sexy comment. Or perhaps he meant nothing at all, she reminded herself. Joe had never been a great one for deep thought before he spoke – it was part of the general flippancy that went with the advertising business. And from him, a composer of jingles that stayed annoyingly in the head, words weren't even required for work. He'd always been the first to claim it just didn't matter what rubbish he talked as long as the tune fitted.