‘Let’s get a drink,’ Daisy said, and dragged me inside. It was quieter here, apart from a small group gathered in front of a table that was set out as a bar. There was an impressive display of Lancashire drinks: real ale with weird and wonderful names from a micro-brewery a few miles away; sloe gin and blueberry vodka from a farm in a nearby village; and a delicious selection of soft drinks from Fitzgerald’s, the famous temperance bar. I picked up a glass of wine.
‘That’s French.’ Daisy pointed disapprovingly at my glass. She had chosen a pint of beer, an incongruous sight in her dainty hands, but she carried it off; she was one of those naturally pretty women who could carry off anything. Beside her petite blonde figure, I looked like the Grim Reaper’s warm-up act. If we weren’t such friends I would never have stood within ten feet of her. ‘You’re not being loyal to the spirit of the evening.’
The glass hovered halfway to my lips, as my values battled with my need for wine. Luckily Lindsay, who had organised the event, was nearby and solved my dilemma.
‘We used a Lancashire wine merchant,’ she said. ‘It was the closest we could get.’ I drank half my glass, conscience clear. Lindsay smiled, and leaned across to kiss my cheek. ‘You deserve that wine after your hard work this afternoon. The display looks great.’
Lindsay gestured over to one corner of the barn. The central space was set out with chairs ready for the entertainment to begin, and each performer – not a word I had dared use to Leo’s face – had been allocated an area to display their work around the sides. Leo’s table was a shrine to Alice Hornby. The famous picture of her stood on an easel in the centre, surrounded by glass boxes containing replicas of some of her personal items: a tiny pair of outdoor shoes, complete with battens; an ivory fan; a purse embroidered with miniature birds, which we believed Alice had sewn herself. One box held a couple of pages of a draft of her most famous novel, The Gentleman’s Daughter; her handwriting was as familiar as my own, and thrilled me every time I saw it. A discreet pile of Leo’s book lay at the rear of the display, along with postcards and bookmarks bearing some of Alice’s most beautiful quotations. I had also added some leaflets about the Alice Hornby Society, which Leo and I had started ten years ago in a bid to connect fans of her work and promote awareness of her writing.
‘Is Leo outside?’ Lindsay asked, glancing at her watch. ‘We’re starting with the rock choir soon, and Leo’s on after that.’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘Have you lost him?’
How could I reply to that? I had lost him, but in a more permanent way than Lindsay meant. Amazingly, and despite my conviction that the whole world must be talking about us, it seemed that there was one house in Stoneybrook where the gossip had not yet spread.
‘We’re not …’ Above the chatter around us, the clink of my wedding ring against my glass was deafening. I couldn’t finish the sentence. I finished my wine instead. Daisy gripped my hand.
‘Mary and Leo are divorced,’ she said, leaning towards Lindsay and lowering her voice. ‘Leo lives in Manchester now. He may be delayed by traffic.’
She stopped there, giving only half the news; the rest would be obvious soon enough. And the sympathy in Lindsay’s eyes, when she pulled me into a brief hug, was quite enough to bear without witnessing her reaction to the rest of it. How long would it be before someone looked at me without pity or curiosity? I longed for a life of quiet anonymity again.
The rock choir were halfway through their set of songs by North West artists, and were belting out an arrangement of Elbow’s ‘Open Arms’ which moistened even my stubbornly dry old eyes, when Leo sauntered in with Clark. I slipped out of my seat and met them at the back of the barn, horribly conscious that many members of the audience were watching us.
‘Hello,’ I whispered, dragging up my public smile, and kissing them each in turn. Leo still didn’t smell like my Leo, and he had cut his hair much shorter, losing the fluffiness that had characterised him for the last twenty years. The new look suited him. ‘You’re in perfect time. The choir has one more song after this, and then it’s your turn. I’ve marked the passage that you’re reading.’ I delved into my handbag and pulled out a copy of the book, adorned with Post-it Notes. ‘And try to squeeze in a mention of the Alice Hornby Society. I’ve left some application forms on the display over there.’
Leo turned in the direction I was pointing.
‘It looks wonderful, Mary, well done. You never let me down.’
Those words, which would have once meant so much, could only ever be bittersweet now. Loud applause for the choir shattered the awkwardness of the moment, and I motioned to Leo to go to the front, while I resumed my seat next to Daisy. Clark remained standing, leaning against the wall, his attention wholly on Leo.
Lindsay welcomed Leo, and then Leo made a few opening remarks and began to read from the book. I had chosen a lively passage, describing a prank that Alice and her sister had played on their hated governess, and which had gone on to form the basis of a scene in her most famous book, and the audience laughed as I had hoped. But I was hardly paying attention to the words, too transfixed by Leo. He didn’t smell like my Leo; he no longer looked like my Leo; and he performed for the audience in a way that my Leo would never have done. He was relaxed, smiling, comfortable in himself as he had never been in the days of our marriage. There was no doubting why. Whenever his gaze swept the room, it always lingered over Clark.
The applause when he finished was as rapturous as it had been for the choir, and way beyond anything I had expected. I rose from my seat, propelled by pride, heedless of the fact that no one else was giving a standing ovation until Daisy yanked me back down.
‘He was great,’ Daisy said, with undisguised surprise. ‘He made me want to buy the book, and Lord knows there have been times when I thought I might go insane if I heard the name Alice Hornby again.’
‘You’re a philistine. She is the world’s greatest writer.’
‘Don’t waste your breath on me. I won’t read anything unless it has a glossy cover and celebrity interviews.’ She looked over at Leo, who had now joined Clark. They were talking, heads bent close together, tightly bound to each other even though they weren’t touching. ‘He’s changed. He looks …’ She screwed up her eyes, studying him. ‘Free.’
That was it, exactly. Perhaps because Daisy hadn’t seen Leo for a few months, the alteration was obvious to her. Leo did look free: free of care, free of pretence, free of being someone he was not. Free of me. Our stars had been aligned for so long; but his had now risen to a height that seemed well beyond my reach.
A performance poet came next, entertaining us in a traditional Lancashire dialect, followed by a popular local folk band, before supper was served – Lancashire hotpot, served with pickled red cabbage, which was simple but delicious. I was one of the last to be served, distracted by talking to the bookshop owner who had previously promised to attend, and by that time many of the guests had wandered outside to enjoy their food. Carrying my plate of steaming hotpot, I headed the same way, trying to find Daisy. She was never easy to spot in a crowd, but I located her at last, talking to a tall blond man who had his back to me. His head was tilted down towards her, exposing a stretch of tanned skin between the collar of his shirt and his exceptionally neat hairline – a perfect horizontal line that my finger itched to trace. I must have drunk more than I thought, because as I stared at his neck, my lips tingled with an inexplicable urge to taste that warm skin.
Heat