She stopped, and looked at Tess guiltily, though why, Tess wondered fleetingly—there was nothing to be guilty about, it was nothing but good news. Why shouldn’t they have sex in the middle of the day, in her own home, while Tess was off wearing a sensible cardigan and shirt, teaching people about things that happened two thousand years ago?
‘That’s—it’s OK with you, isn’t it? It doesn’t make you feel weird?’
‘Of course it’s OK with me!’ Tess said. As she said it, she knew it wasn’t, it was a bit weird. It was her flatmate and her oldest friend, after all. She’d just have to get used to it, and then it’d be fine. And if she practised looking as if it was OK, it would be.
‘Oh, good,’ said Francesca. ‘I don’t want things to be awkward.’
‘Why would they be? He’s not my boyfriend.’
‘Exactly,’ Francesca said.
The words, No, he’s my boyfriend, hung in the air, unsaid.
‘So are you hanging out in the day then?’
‘Well, it was only Monday it happened. Sunday if you count the walk. So yeah, he came round on Tuesday too, and today—well, I’m seeing him in the evening so I—I wanted a distraction.’ She picked at the side of her nail. ‘And I went shopping.’
‘So that’s it,’ Tess said, smiling. ‘It’s a substitute for shagging.’
‘No!’ Francesca smiled too. ‘How rude. He’s—oh, man.’ She sighed, mistily. ‘He is so gorgeous. You have no idea. I just feel like…’ Her shoulders rose and sank again, and she gazed unseeingly past Tess, into the sitting room. Tess followed her gaze, almost desperately, hoping to see what Francesca saw:
A kiss in a sun-dappled glade.
A gorgeous man arriving at the cottage and sweeping you off your feet.
Mind-explodingly good sex…in the afternoon.
Instead, she saw:
The batteries from the TV remote control, which were always falling out (it had no back, mysteriously).
A stack of essays on Virgil and Rome spilling out of her cloth bag.
Her main school shoes, clumpy, sensible, covered in mud, lying next to Francesca’s strappy gold flip-flops.
Francesca was like Dido or Thetis, lying on a day bed eating chocolates, a cloud of hair tumbling down her back, whilst handsome suitors arrived to pay court and ravish her. She, Tess, on the other hand, was a dwarfish teacher with a pile of marking to do, a hair growing out of her chin and footwear that even Mary Whitehouse would say could do with sexing up a tad.
‘Drink?’ Tess said, practically ripping the cap off the bottle of wine and upending it into her glass. ‘When are you going out? You meeting him at the pub?’
‘No, I’m going to his house to pick him up,’ said Francesca. ‘Haven’t been there before. That’s why I was wondering what—’ she took a sip from her glass, and flicked her hair again.
‘What what?’
‘What his mum was like. If there’s anything I should know.’
‘If there’s anything you should know.’ Tess stared into the distance. ‘Ahh.’ She exhaled, through her teeth. ‘Philippa. She was wonderful. That’s all you need to know.’
‘That’s not very helpful.’
‘I know. Sorry.’ Tess thought back. ‘I can remember her, really clearly, after thirteen years. She was just a wonderful person. It’s a tragedy.’
‘What exactly happened?’
‘It was an aneurysm. She just—dropped dead in the street one day.’ Tess swallowed. ‘She was on her way back from the shops. Mum found her.’
‘That’s awful.’
Tess nodded. ‘It was. Her, of all people. Philippa was—she was really special.’
‘Like how?’
‘Like—when we were little, she treated us like we were people in our own right, you know? She’d give you little presents for special occasions, nothing much, just personal things that were just for you.’ There was the time when Tess was eleven, and had to have braces on her teeth for eighteen months, and Philippa had bought her a special two-year diary, to count down the days till they were off, and she’d scribbled little things in it. ‘Only a year to go now!‘ ‘Who’s that beautiful girl? It’s young Miss Tennant, the one with the perfect teeth!’
‘Aah,’ said Francesca. ‘Nice.’
‘She was nice. She—’ Tess started, and then she stopped. ‘She was lovely.’
‘What happened to Adam’s dad, then?’ Francesca asked tentatively. ‘You don’t have to tell me, but he hasn’t mentioned, and I sort of thought, was it something awful?’
‘Could be,’ Tess said, sipping her wine again. ‘No one knows.’
‘Knows what? How he died?’
‘No,’ said Tess. ‘There isn’t really a mystery there, I think he’s just some guy who she had a thing with. No one knew really where Philippa came from, that’s the weird thing. That house was empty for years, and then one day she just turned up.’
‘Like Mary Poppins?’ Francesca was smiling.
‘Sort of,’ said Tess, earnestly. ‘Honestly, she never really told anyone anything about herself. Mum asked her once, why she came to Langford, and Philippa said, “I don’t know myself, to be honest.” And then she never said anything again.’
‘No,’ said Francesca, fascinated.
‘Yep. And I’ve never understood it. Why did she come to Langford? Why? I mean—we were lucky she did, but—’
‘It’s interesting,’ said Francesca. ‘Wow.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Tess, though she felt a little guilty, giving up Adam’s family secrets like that. She looked out of the window, wondering. Really, she supposed, she didn’t know what the secret actually was, so how could she give it up? Adam himself didn’t know where he came from. That was how it had always been.
One Friday afternoon, just before the first May bank holiday, Tess sat on the sofa, putting on her shoes and humming loudly so she couldn’t hear anything that might be going on in the bedroom upstairs. She had been teaching all morning and was on her way out to get some food for their picnic. She, Adam and Francesca were going to the beach the next day and the fridge at Easter Cottage had never been quite so denuded. Two sex-mad grown-ups ate a lot, Tess had discovered. It was like living with termites and a team of Sumo wrestlers.
The noises that she had been pretending not to hear from upstairs grew unavoidably louder, a crescendo, and Tess banged her feet on the floor and started singing as she searched for her keys. Suddenly, almost abruptly, there was silence, and after a minute she heard footsteps on the narrow stairs, a slight stumble and then a muffled curse—as the owner of the feet narrowly avoided the stair with a missing chunk, especially hazardous without shoes.
‘Hey there, you!’ Adam called to her, still cheerful. ‘Coffee?’ Tess looked up at him, in disbelief, as he went into the kitchen. ‘Is that Francesca’s dressing gown?’ she said, watching Adam pull the Chinese silk carefully around him as he put the kettle on.
‘Why yes, and I think it’s just lovely,’ said Adam. He scratched his thick hair thoughtfully. ‘She’s given it to me.’
‘So