Antonia sweeps the crumbs into the sink as she contemplates last Friday night. She had been sound asleep and was awoken suddenly, the accusatory sound of the doorbell in the dead of night throwing her back to a time she tries hard to erase. She padded from her bedroom and down the limestone stairs, the sound of her heart loud in her ears, and there was Mike Turner peering through the peep hole while doing his best to hold David upright.
‘Sorry, Antonia,’ Mike said, and for a moment she gazed at him, her new name taking her by surprise, even after all these years. But then she rallied, shaking herself back to the dark cold night and the state of her husband.
Mike’s eyes seemed watchful; she found she couldn’t meet them. ‘I know it’s late but he’s had a bit too much,’ he said after a moment. ‘And he couldn’t find his keys. So I thought I’d better— Do you want me to help him upstairs?’
‘I can get myself up my own fucking stairs.’ David pulled himself upright and pushed Mike away. ‘I could’ve found my way home too. Fuck off home and polish your halo, you fucking sanctimonious Irish prick.’
‘Sorry, Mike,’ she said, not knowing what else to say. Her heartbeat started to slow, but she felt panicky, that familiar metallic taste in her mouth.
Mike stood for a moment, looking unsteady on his feet and raking his hand through his dark messy hair. He opened his mouth, as though looking for the right words, but then turned away and lifted his hand. ‘No problem, he won’t remember in the morning. Taxi waiting. Night, Antonia. Take care.’
Antonia fleetingly wondered about David’s surprising behaviour before climbing into bed beside his unconscious bulk. He could drink enormous quantities of booze, but was rarely drunk. She closed her eyes, hoping sleep would overcome the unsought memories jabbing at her mind. But just as she was finally drifting off, David woke up with a jerk. He stared at her face for what seemed like an age before starting to cry, loud, wretched sobs.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please forgive me,’ he wept, pushing his face against her breast like a small helpless child. But then he fell back to sleep as swiftly as he’d woken. Antonia lay there, her silk nightdress stuck to her chest from the tears and saliva, feeling nothing but a queer blankness, tinged with memories of disgust.
‘You’re doing it again, Toni. Stop!’
Sophie’s words bring Antonia back to the muggy September Monday and to the scrutinising eyes of her friend. She feels the tightness in her stomach, the burn of her cheeks and that mild taste of panic. ‘Ready for a top-up?’ she asks, turning away.
‘Less coffee and more cream this time. And different biscuits,’ Sophie replies, picking up the television remote control, pointing it at the huge flatscreen on the wall and flicking through the shopping channels. Then, after a few moments, ‘You know you’ll tell me eventually.’
‘Lunch calls. Are you ready to go?’ David asks, putting his head around Charlie Proctor’s office door and inhaling the familiar smell of old books and leather.
‘Is it that time already? Thought the old juices were giving me gyp. Turns out it’s just my stomach rumbling for lunch!’
Charlie peers at the ancient oak grandfather clock which dominates the room. He places his hands on each arm of the leather chair, hauls himself up and then steadies himself against the desk. He clears his throat and adjusts his tie before reaching for his overcoat and umbrella.
‘Charlie, it isn’t cold or raining and you’re forty-six, not sixty!’ David might say. But that wouldn’t be sporting or, indeed, nice. Besides, Charlie is Charlie, a cliché of his own creation. He was wearing a paisley smoking jacket and an avuncular smile the day they first met at boarding school. The eleven-year-old David had been allocated Charlie’s study. ‘How do. Ten years ago you would have been my new fag. Shame they scrapped them,’ Charlie said by way of greeting that morning and yet it still took David days to work out that Charlie was a pupil, albeit an eighteen-year-old sixth former, and not a benign schoolmaster.
But today David’s thoughts are with Antonia and their weekend. He woke late on Saturday to an empty house, a certainty in his gut that Antonia had left him. He misbehaved on Friday night. He made a scene at the pub, though he couldn’t recall the details. But worse than that he cried in her arms; that he could remember.
Charlie closes his office door with a thud. The ‘Senior Partner’ brass plate shakes. It’s left over from the days when the position of senior partner was handed down from father to son and when it meant something. Now it’s incongruous, like Charlie himself. None of the other partners went to a public school; they went to grammar school or, in the case of the young guns, to a state comprehensive. The flavour of the partnership these days is political correctness, accountability and liberalism. Gone are the days of getting on because of the ‘old school tie’. Nepotism died with Charlie’s old man. David has learned to adapt, to tone down the open vowels and to voice slightly left-wing opinions he doesn’t believe in, but Charlie seems oblivious to it all. Or perhaps that’s part of his act, his survival.
They stroll pass the imposing eighteenth-century St Ann’s church, past the al fresco diners huddling under chic canopies at its side, then continue through the cobbled alleyway to Sam’s Chop House.
It’s dark and quiet as usual on a Monday in Sam’s. David brought Antonia here once, not long after they met. He wanted to show her off, his new stunning girlfriend, never dreaming that one day soon she’d say yes and become his wife. But she was withdrawn, she’d looked uncomfortable in the company of the older lunchtime lawyers and eventually asked if they could leave.
‘Have you decided?’
David starts, his heart seeming to lurch out of place. Charlie is frowning at him, as though he can read his thoughts.
‘Decided what?’
‘What you’re eating of course. The steak is always delicious here. But don’t ask for rare. They don’t bother cooking it at all. Are you all right, David? You’re miles away.’
David glances at Charlie’s face before dropping his gaze to the menu. His mind is in spasm. He’s finding it difficult to focus. There are hugely worrying things to discuss, to confess, but it’s all he can do not to put his head on the table and sleep. ‘Yes, steak’s a grand idea,’ he says. He wonders if he’ll manage to eat it. He worries whether he’ll keep the food down. ‘Shall we order? There’s something I wanted to talk about. It’s pretty—’
‘Let’s try a bottle of that rather nice Chianti. I’ve been stuck in the All England Reports this morning. No one reads case law any more, but they should, David. Back to basics, I say. Now at Cambridge …’
David’s mind strays back to Antonia. Thank God, she came home. He didn’t ask where she’d been. Her absence from White Gables for so long was strange, but it didn’t matter. She was smiling; she was home.
‘Do you know what I fancy doing?’ she said, her cheek cold against his. ‘But we don’t have to if you don’t want to.’
He watches as the glossy red wine is poured and then lifts the glass to his lips. Charlie is still talking, but he can’t concentrate on anything but the wisps of chin hair he has omitted to shave, which are moving in time with his mouth.
‘And I told George Briggs what I thought. Bloody Queen’s Counsel. How they lord it over us mere solicitors. Waste of a Monday morning.’
David wasted his morning too. He sat in his sunlit office with the insurance file on his desk, staring at its cover for hours, but seeing nothing. He needed to work things out in his head, but thoughts of his wife, her fresh face and her laughter, filtered in with the rays through the blinds.
‘Been to the doctor …’