‘I’m warning you. She’s on the prowl.’

  She giggled. ‘What are you going to do, then?’

  ‘Be afraid. I’m warning you.’

  ‘Well I don’t care, Douglas. Do anything to stop her coming here.’

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Anything to stop her coming over here and seeing my face for another week. I’ll hear about it for the rest of my damned life.’

  I stepped inside that pub on Ealing Broadway where we had gone on Aoife and Lou’s wedding day. Abby had her hair cut short; it was darkened and spiked up. I was shocked and didn’t like it. ‘Thanks for posting on that last giro. What have you done to your hair?’

  ‘Had it cut.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Thanks. You oaf. You just think women should have hippy locks, flowing down their shoulders, you Scotch lumberjack.’ Then she pummelled me over the first pint on every single detail about Lou going to teach and if Aoife was okay about it – if there had been any arguments.

  I said, ‘I thought Aoife told you everything.’

  ‘Well, almost everything.’ She looked around the pub and lowered her voice. ‘Think Aoife suspects anything about me and Lou? She hasn’t called me for ages.’

  ‘No. She’s got other things on her mind with Lou away. I think you should just forget about it.’

  ‘Do you think Lou’s forgotten about it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She swirled her drink so aggressively her ice flew round and one melting glob shot out and fired across the scratched varnish of the table, silently plonking onto the carpet. We both looked down at it.

  Then she probed about how much work Aoife’s agents had got her and what had gone wrong at the photo shoot with that guy Ross. I don’t know why, but I began to get suspicious Abby might have been to bed with Ross at some point.

  I denied everything that needed to be denied; I bored her with detailed descriptions of Lily trying to walk.

  Eventually, I sat looking at her and said, ‘I’m starting to like your hair the more I drink.’

  She observed, ‘It’s getting busy in here.’

  ‘It’s a Saturday.’

  She leaned towards me again. ‘I’ve some dope and a pipe; will we get a bottle of wine, take it over to Aoife?’

  I said, I had to say, ‘Why don’t we just go back to your place?’

  When she opened her front door I ran up the stairs in a familiar way – as if it really was my residence. My fake bedroom had now been restored to that fantastic long front room with wall hangings and bean bags, so we sat in them, listening to her fashionable music that wasn’t good to listen to on dope, but Ocean Rain by Echo and the Bunnymen was full of echoes, of depths, of dripping caves; it was fatalistic and romantic.

  She made me take my shoes off and sit in my socks because of the carpet. She had a bong so we kneeled around the Indonesian table, burning up small chunks in the brass burner and sucking in the cooled smoke through the bulb, but it still burned the back of my throat.

  Everything I said from then on seemed to be thought of after I had already said it. When she disappeared I knew she would be waiting in her bedroom, so I obediently went in there and lay down next to her. Her bed was surrounded on the three sides by clothes on sagging hanger rails, like those withered, flattened corpses of monks that are hung on the walls of monasteries.

  ‘Must think I’m a right old tart,’ she said – almost to herself – pulling her shirt over her head. I felt I knew those breasts fairly well by then.

  ‘On the contrary.’ I crawled on the soft bed, sank in and rolled over in its marshmallow. ‘Lou himself told me, you were very sparing in the distribution of your favours.’

  ‘Is that a good thing?’

  ‘I think you’re very virtuous.’

  ‘I don’t do anything without a condom any more. Okey doke?’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘Anything. Okay?’

  ‘Yes. Okay.’

  She looked at me. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’

  On my way over to her bed, beneath my cautious-stepping foot, I had felt the glossy slip of plasticity. Her buried telephone, sliding underneath a scarf or a flowered skirt – or even knickers, which were everywhere on the floor. I remembered how she had taken the phone from the bedroom and set it up in the hallway at the top of the stairs, for the DHSS visit. I could hear the hand-held shower head spraying about and slashing the shower curtain next door.

  I dangled my arms down and dug out the phone. The entire floor along the side of the bed was filled with a layer of clothing.

  Aoife answered and I whispered, ‘I warned you.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In her bed. She’s in the bathroom.’

  ‘You are joking. God. That didn’t take both of you long. She’s a right old tart.’

  ‘Should I leave now and come home to you? Or do you want to listen?’

  There was a long silence. Then she said, ‘But when I hang up, she’ll hear the tone of the phone.’

  ‘Don’t hang up, then.’

  As I put on and pulled off condoms and was sent to the bathroom to shower myself, I paused frequently to throw out leading questions to Abby and she often answered them. Yes I do like it. No, I don’t. Do you want to? Stuff along those lines. For an hour, everything physical was verbalised into some form.

  ‘You really like to talk dirty, don’t you?’ she pointed out.

  I was awaiting disaster; for her to shout out that I wasn’t as good as, or better than Llewellyn. It added risk, but she never did refer to him. He was forgotten and it was only immediate sex she devoted her utterances to. And her fantastic cries and shrieks. The phone handset lying hidden beside the bed was the most erotic object I’d known – it was like a huge eye, greedily gathering everything up.

  ‘Go to the bathroom and change your condom, again. And don’t make a mess,’ she told me each time.

  I listened yet again when I returned, expecting the electronic tone of a hung-up phone, me claiming I’d kicked it off the hook on my way out, but each time I returned, the silence hung out there in the near dark, like God himself, monitoring all things.

  I got back to Conrad Flats before midnight. The mortice lock had been on and behind me Aoife turned it again. She kissed me in the shadowy corridor. I had only been five hours but I realised it was the longest I had been away from her in a very long time. I squinted at her face.

  ‘She makes so much noise. I can’t believe it. Do you want me to make that kind of noise? Do you like it?’

  ‘I like it with you.’

  She repeated, ‘I can’t believe how noisy she is. She’s absolutely comical. And sort of sexy.’

  ‘I can’t be bothered having a bath.’ I climbed into their bed with Aoife.

  ‘No, don’t have a bath, I like the thought and the smell of her on you.’

  Lily was silent in the cot, so all we said was in whispers as we embraced.

  I told Aoife, ‘Guilt is amazing. It’s like it’s ordained. Even though you gave me permission, I feel the guilt now.’

  She looked at me and nodded. ‘But it doesn’t matter. It’s nothing. It’s funny. It’s just sex, not love.’

  ‘Even though you let me and you were right there with me all the time. I feel I’ve betrayed you.’

  ‘Do you mean because you and I don’t always use condoms?’

  ‘I mean emotionally. Yet I don’t feel guilty about Lou.’

  She quickly whispered, ‘I touched myself while I listened.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I love you,’ Aoife said into my ear, quickly and so quiet I could just distinguish it.

  ‘I love you too.’

  ‘All the girls want Douglas,’ she whispered sleepily. There was a long silence and she murmured, ‘I want you too.’

  You couldn’t see any blemishes on her face now. They were not visible at all to anyone but her and me. Her bruising was like a ghost that only she and I saw, locked in that summer apartment, sweating onto each other. I wasn’t convinced Abby would have noticed a thing wrong about Aoife’s face had they met that night.

  I reached into her to find the lust and to keep doing it again and again, until we had to put the pillow down the back of the headboard – she and Lou did that, she told me.

  24

  On the Thursday afternoon I picked up the ringing phone quick to try not to let it awaken sleeping Lily, in her buggy. I was expecting Lou’s voice.

  ‘Who’s this, then? Eeefie there? I need Eeefie.’

  ‘Ee-fah.’

  ‘Oh. Scotch fella. We need Llewellyn Smith down here right away. It’s his gran and he’s gone away someplace.’

  ‘Is that Flo?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘Too right. Old Myrtle Smith from next door, isn’t it? Me that found her. Wasn’t it?’

  ‘Oh God. No?’

  ‘You can bring Lil to me and I’ll take care of her.’

  ‘Is it that’s she’s— Mrs Smith hasn’t passed away, has she?’

  ‘I should say so, my dear. I’m very sorry. Looks like she conked out during her afternoon nap. Sad. But she loved the naps. I was fond of the old thing.’

  ‘Oh my God. Oh my God.’

  ‘Don’t you panic now,’ Flo told me.

  ‘I’ll get Aoife to phone Lou now. Anything we can do?’

  ‘Nah. Rhys, that’s the elder brother, he’s down here with the undertakers now. Don’t you worry now, we’ll get something in the Acton Observer. Any old how, you get Eeefie to bring poor Llewellyn down south again. Funeral’ll be next week.’

  Aoife was in the kitchen staring at me. I told her, ‘That was Flo. It’s bad. The worst. It’s Lou’s gran.’

  She opened her mouth.

  I nodded.

  She put her hand to her mouth. ‘It’s our punishment come at last. Yours and mine. Poor Granny Smith. It’s our punishment that we deserve.’ Aoife repeated this in variations for minute after minute, shaking her head.

  ‘You have to phone Lou.’

  She waved her hand at me. ‘You get him on the phone. I can’t speak to people.’ She sat down. Then she looked across at me and this astonished look came over her face. ‘Douglas!’

  I realised, stunned, that I was weeping. It took me completely by surprise. I shook my head and sniffed, said, ‘I realise. I really liked that old woman,’ and I sort of choked off on the last word as all the sorrow swelled up in me.

  She launched herself up and embraced me. ‘Douglas. She was well into her eighties, darling.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. Nobody wants to go.’

  ‘That’s true, that’s true, my darling, but she was ready, she prayed every day and when Lou was really very ill, she asked that God take her and not him.’

  ‘Oh my goodness.’ I sniffed again and wiped at my eyes. ‘You are all so dramatic in this family.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I think we’ve been under more pressure than we realise,’ I said, and I wiped at my nose with the back of my hand. ‘I didn’t like the way you said it was our punishment. I don’t believe in that, Aoife. I don’t believe in a punishing God.’

  ‘Oh Douglas. I’m sorry I said it.’ We began kissing, and before they dried some of my tears were transferred onto the skin of her face.

  Initially I got somebody of an administrative nature at Stead’s Language School – and she sounded sceptical about the situation amounting to an emergency, so she sought guidance further up the hierarchy. It was like an avant-garde radio play based on the ascent of the English class system. Nobody seemed ready to accept the death of Lou’s gran as official. As seniority rose, the voices got plummier and fatter. The question was passed higher and all the higher ranks seemed to exist at the far end of lengthy lawns, or up right-angled, creaking stairways, or down linoleum corridors where their names were called, in the Worcestershire afternoon: ‘Mr Clitherow?’ ‘Mr Bone?’ and this always after the receiver had been rested with such a series of low bumps upon the desk that it was impossible to imagine anything but a heavy, antique phone. Footsteps were heard moving away from it and onward, deeper into the old dwelling, seeking greater seniority yet again. Then footsteps drew near, returning. Eventually, I heard the low chorus voice comment, like a piece of exposition on a stage, ‘Here’s Mr Stead,’ and the voice of the same came on the phone.

  ‘What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘Llewellyn Smith’s wife needs to talk to him.’

  ‘He’s teaching a class. Is it something I can assist with?’

  ‘Mr Smith’s wife needs to speak to him absolutely immediately. There’s been a sudden death in the family.’

  ‘I see. How terrible. A close family member?’

  I felt an incongruous puff of pride for Lou. Had he proved to be a lousy teacher, I couldn’t imagine this twit trying to hang on to him so scandalously. ‘Yes. His grandmother who brought him up. And we’d appreciate if you’d allow his wife to break that news to him.’

  ‘Of course. I’m most terribly sorry. I shall fetch him up.’

  I’d given the phone to Aoife but I heard Lou’s deep voice which I recognised as having just exhaled tobacco smoke, with its slight quiver of breathlessness.

  Aoife said, as soft as breath, ‘It’s your gran, Lou. Your gran.’ I clung on to her, with my arm over her bony shoulder and spine. As I might have done at this moment even if we were not illicit lovers. Lou didn’t seem to have responded, so she added, ‘Flo found her this afternoon. Her heart must have finally gave in. Rhys is there now but you’ve to come back. I’m so sorry, baby.’

  Lou spoke in low monosyllables that I couldn’t quite make out, but Aoife did say, ‘Yes. He’s with me now, thank God,’ and she looked into my face, nodding. ‘Will you arrive tonight or—? Night bus.’ She nodded at what else was said and she added, ‘I love you too, Lou.’ She put the phone down and raised her face with determination. I nodded. She said, ‘Poor, poor old lady. She thought I was slutty for getting pregnant so soon and modelling, but if I’d bothered and went to Mass. Just once with her.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  We were in an embrace again, as if we’d been dancing together for hours – alone in the ballroom of a cruise ship over the Java Trench – and had just paused in a waltz. ‘I’d better phone the house. And Rhys.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, but neither of us moved.

  ‘She chucked it in our faces – Rhys too – that she was leaving all her savings to Rhys, and I think she had quite a lot. Since she didn’t trust Lou with cash – wisely, I must say. Always said she’d be leaving Rhys the savings and Lou the house.’

  ‘Don’t think about these things now.’ I took the edge of my hand and pushed her golden fringe back off her forehead, over her crown, so it fell away to each side. But I was helplessly thinking about those things.

  ‘Might as well face it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  At first she wouldn’t. The gas of death had stilled her, but then she forgot it all in our arms and legs, whipping together and locking, turning the flannelette sheets into ropes around us. When it was still dark, before dawn, we both stripped those cotton sheets from the bed and put them in the washing machine. We remade the bed with fresh sheets and then Lily cried for an hour, whilst, naked as Adam and Eve, we passed the child back and forth between us.

  At six thirty in the morning, the telephone rang.

  ‘Cunningham. An abysmal hour.’

  ‘Lou. It’s terrible. I’m very sorry. Where are you?’

  He lowered his voice. ‘I need you to get the cot brought over.’

  ‘Shit, are you here?’

  Aoife stepped into the corridor and I saw her eyes go to the mortice to confirm it was locked.

  ‘Yeah, over at poor Gran’s. Got the night bus from Birmingham. One of the teachers drove me there last night, which was good of him. That bus was full of the most awful specimens. Things are going to be swirling round till the funeral. Best if me and Aoife and Lil are over here.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Abby’s hired a car and she’s coming round later with Flo to get the cot and everything. You know, I was thinking. While we’re at it, will you get Eeef to pile up as many of Abby’s bloody clothes as you can and get them out of there at last in the car. And as well, send that bloody tortoise over here where there’s a garden.’

  25

  The night before the funeral, Aoife and Lou suddenly turned up at Conrad Flats without Lily.

  By that time I’d been alone for three days and I hadn’t seen Lou since he’d returned to London. Aoife had taken herself out the equation, overtaken by her fears and her warped sense of duty. The loss of her was physical to me. Sometimes I gently punched the walls on either side as I walked up and down the corridor, grimacing at the slight pain, waiting for the golf clubs to begin knocking at my feet. And all that kept her from me was my own cowardice, which excused itself as the lie that I was really doing the correct thing by giving her up. Yet when I tried to imagine having Aoife in any context other than the current one, I frowned in the darkness, where I rarely bothered to switch on the lights any more. The wantonness and the love seemed uniquely cultivated by our absurd circumstances; remove them and it would crumble.

  Lou was standing there in the doorway with light streaming in behind him, through the windy concrete lobby – he was thinner in the face and wearing a new, long overcoat, bottle green and very handsome. In each hand he held one of his silver hip flasks, both with the tops off. Somehow, in the coat, he suddenly reminded me of Toby Hanson.

  ‘Silence, Exile and Cunningham.’ He nodded as if remembering.

  I knew he was seeing me anew, considering something sincerely with genuine puzzlement. ‘But what are we going to dress you in tomorrow, boyo?’ Then his mind quickly worked and he said, ‘My old suit. What else? You’ll be able to find it now Abby’s got all her shit out. What you wore to that fashion bash of Abby’s last winter. Remember? First time you saw Abby’s tits and from what I hear from her, not the last.’ He laughed and walked deeper in, through to the living room. Aoife shut the front door and followed us through.