‘It always does that! So annoying. Ow,’ said Tess, putting the wine bottle firmly on the kitchen surface. ‘That’s a lovely pub,’ she added, rubbing her hand. ‘Right next to where we grew up. Adam’s mum worked there for a bit.’
‘What was she like, Adam’s mum?’ Francesca asked curiously. ‘Adam never talks about her.’
‘She was lovely.’ Tess took out some olives, bought the previous day from the Jen’s Deli on the high street where Liz worked. Jen’s Deli catered for tourists wanting a picnic. The olives were three pounds ninety-nine for a small tub. She tipped them into one of the little painted bowls that sat on the kitchen mantelpiece. ‘Ooh, I love this, don’t you? I feel as if I’m in a picture book, living in my own little cottage.’
‘You are living in your own little cottage,’ Francesca pointed out. ‘So am I.’
‘Oh.’ Tess took the nice new glasses out of the cupboard. Francesca lolled against the kitchen counter. She plucked an olive out of the bowl.
‘Has Adam always lived there, then?’
‘What?’ Tess opened the bottle. ‘Lived where? Here?’
‘In that house,’ Francesca said patiently. ‘Did he never live anywhere else, after she died? Am I going out with a man who’s never lived anywhere else?’
‘So you are actually going out with him?’ Tess said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Oh, my God!’ She swallowed, hastily, realizing she sounded like a teenager. ‘So have you—I thought you two were…’ She trailed off.
Francesca tossed her hair casually behind her back; Tess had noticed that, far from doing it to intimidate, she did this when she was feeling self-conscious.
‘Ahm. I don’t know. I suppose so. I’m seeing him.’ She raked a hand across her scalp. ‘We talked about it on the weekend. I don’t know what going out means these days, do you? It’s a bit juvenile, anyway. Like, sometimes it means one thing, and sometimes it means something else…you know…’ She trailed off, and Tess was pleased to see she was blushing.
‘You like him!’ Tess hit her housemate on the arm. ‘Oh, my God, how cool. And he likes you, it’s obvious.’
‘Is it?’
‘Absolutely.’ Tess thought back to the previous Sunday, when she, Francesca, Suggs and Adam had taken a picnic up to the ruins of Langford Priory, once the greatest monastery in Somerset before Henry VIII had given it a good going over. They had sat in the grass, perching on stones scattered around, looking down over the valley towards the town, and that’s when it had happened. Tess had asked Francesca for a knife, and Francesca had leaned into the bag to get one, her hair falling in her face and, without thinking about it, Adam had reached forward and gently tucked her hair behind her ear, his big hand touching her shoulder afterwards. He said nothing, Francesca said nothing, but Tess had watched them, with affection and a pang of loneliness, realizing she was aware of something they weren’t: that her oldest friend had fallen hook, line and sinker for Francesca Jackson.
She asked, a little shyly, ‘Can I ask—when did this all…happen?’
‘Oh—properly? Well, he came round to bring that spanner he’d promised? And he ended up fixing the door and then he stayed—and he stayed…’ She blushed.
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