Dora shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.
Stealthily, the waiter slipped their plates onto the table.
Calvin picked up his fork. ‘Stop sulking. Let’s try and talk about something else shall we?’
Jon Melrose had looked better than Dora remembered him, threads of laughter lines gathering around his dark eyes, broad shoulders – she shivered and glanced up at the restaurant clock. Eight o’clock, seven or so more hours to go.
Calvin’s mouth was opening and closing rhythmically. Between words he pushed slivers of salmon into it.
‘… What a bastard I thought, what a smug, self-satisfied bastard.’
‘Who?’
‘What?’ Calvin stopped mid-chew, his face flushed. ‘Guy Phelps, the guy they’ve chosen to stand for Jack’s seat in the by-election. I met him at the Con Club last night.’ He picked a stray piece of lettuce out of his teeth. ‘You’re spending too much time on your own with that bloody cat. It was all over the breakfast news this morning.’
‘Guy Phelps?’
Calvin snorted. ‘Oh, come on. You must know him. Lay preacher, all family values, white starch and grey suit.’
Dora pulled a face. ‘I don’t think so. Mind you, whoever they choose will have a hard job.’
Calvin lifted an eyebrow. ‘Not this bloke, he’s pure twenty-four carat arsehole.’
Dora picked at the fish on her plate; the fennel garnish filled the air with the pungent aroma of aniseed. ‘You don’t like him, then?’
Calvin held up his hand in mock surrender. ‘Like? What’s to like? He’s another local boy, but he’s no Jack Rees. Phelps is perfect for politics. Jack was good because he wasn’t – square peg battling for the rights of round holes everywhere. No, this guy’s got no bloody soul, one hundred per cent party man. Surely you must know him?’
Dora pressed the fennel into pulp. ‘No, the name doesn’t ring a bell.’ She paused and looked out into the rain. ‘By the way, where is Lillian today?’
‘Got the decorators in. Getting her new flat organised. But she’s booked solid all next week.’
Dora smiled without humour. ‘She could prove to be a very expensive hobby, Calvin.’
He bristled and turned his attention back to his fish.
Dora left Calvin, still ruminating over coffee and liqueurs, at just after two, and was almost grateful to be back out in the rain. The water ran like a river in the gutters; not a taxi in sight. She glanced down at the clutch of letters in her hand; the raindrops were gently transforming Catiana’s makeshift address into a soft unreadable blur. If only it could stay that way. The envelopes felt like fragments of shrapnel. She stuffed them in her bag, opened her umbrella and set off stoically towards Gunners Terrace.
Dora hurried along the pavement, skirting the puddles; the wind buffeted the canvas. Filbert’s Restaurant was in a sedate Georgian crescent that, with the help of its neighbour and a master stroke of town planning, held the Fairbeach museum, the new library and the market square in parentheses. Perhaps it was the same fluke that created the vortex of air currents. At the corner of Green Street, a gust ran up behind her, ripping between the spokes, shredding the cover like a razor. She swore softly, backing into the wind to try and wrestle the umbrella into submission.
As she fought with the handle a car cut the corner and splashed her from head to foot. Cold water made her scream out in protest.
‘You miserable bastard,’ she snapped, hurling the brolly down onto the pavement. ‘You total and utter miserable shit!’
Eventually, soaked, cold and miserable, Dora let herself into the little ground-floor lobby of her flat. She had barely time to close the door before the girl from the shoe shop was tapping on the glass.
‘Hello. Mrs Hall?’
Dora forced a smile. ‘Hello, how are you today?’
The girl snorted. ‘Fed up with this weather, all this rain is driving me nuts, and the shop is really slow, no-one in their right mind wants to come out in this.’ She looked Dora up and down. ‘I just came to tell you we’ve got a builder coming round to look at the building. He called a couple of days ago, I’d forgot all about it –’
Dora grinned. ‘Not before time.’
The girl nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what I said to him. He wanted to get into the flat. He came round after you’d gone out the other day. I told him we hadn’t got a key. He said he’d be back, all right?’
From upstairs Dora could hear her phone ringing. She looked at the girl and shrugged.
‘Sorry, duty calls. Thanks for the message. I’ll keep an eye out for him.’
Abandoning the girl, her dripping mac and ruined umbrella, Dora hurried up the stairs. Oscar bleated as she stepped over him on her way to the office and meowed in disgust as she ignored him and snatched up the receiver.
‘Hello?’ she gasped breathlessly.
‘Afternoon.’ Jon Melrose’s soft voice. ‘Didn’t mean to make you run.’
Dora slumped down into her chair, and smiled. ‘No problem, I’ve only just got in. How are you?’
‘I rang you this morning. Are you all right?’
Dora glanced around. ‘I think so, how about you?’
‘Fine. I wondered if you like fried chicken?’
Dora grinned. ‘Yes.’
‘Good, is around eight-ish still all right tonight?’
Dora nodded. ‘Fine.’
‘Great. I’ve got to go, I’ll see you later then.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
As she hung up, Oscar leapt into her lap and stared soulfully into her eyes, demanding she played fast and loose with the tin opener.
Dora spent all afternoon hoovering and cleaning right the way through the flat.
Fried chicken wasn’t exactly an explicit indication of what Jon had in mind. The more she thought about it the more complex it got. Was fried chicken an invitation to go out or had he planned that they stay in with a bucket of something greasy?
She glanced at the clock and then back at the bedroom mirror. What exactly did a woman wear for fried chicken in or out? The days of dates seemed long gone, and conjured up self-conscious memories of hours spent in front of the mirror, agonising over what to wear, panicking over what to talk about. Dora opened her make-up bag and peered inside – not an awful lot had changed there.
Since leaving Ray, she realised, she hadn’t actually been out with anyone. What had happened to all those years? It had never been part of her master plan not to have another relationship. It was simply that her freedom had cost too much to go looking for a compromise candidate to fill the gap Ray left in her life. After a while the gap had simply healed over.
Ironic really, she thought, tipping the lipsticks, eye shadows, little jars and tubes out onto the dressing table. Her everyday life was spent exploring the fictional boundaries of wild passion, while she spent every night alone with a neutered ginger tomcat.
It felt very odd putting on serious eye make-up. Turning the little pot of eye shadow over between her fingers, Dora looked at the faded label on the bottom. God alone knows where or when she had bought it. The surface was dry and crusty from lack of use.
It had taken most of the afternoon to decide what to wear. There had been a flurry of washing and tumble drying and ironing between Jon’s phone