Slowly, James lifted a hand in farewell, exchanged one last stare with Ivan and Melvyn, and slid back into his car.
Diane let out her breath, giddy with relief.
Her hands, she noticed, were trembling. It took two goes to find the ignition with the key.
If she was a scarlet woman she was not much bloody use at it.How the hell did people carry on affairs? Her heart was bounding about as if already dodging accusations.
Half an hour later, ensconced on Ivan’s huge sofa, she smiled, accepted a cup of tea from Megan, Ivan’s wife, and began to relax and realise that her in-laws were behaving exactly as usual, soI had sex in the back of a car tonight!couldn’t be emblazoned across her face as she felt it must be. Somebody would’ve mentioned it.
The sofa was constructed like three reclining chairs stuck together. Ivan and Megan liked gimmicky stuff and the room was overdone with elaborate curtains and nets and lampshades like crystal cakes.
Stella, Megan’s sister, emerged from the kitchen with steaming mugs for Ivan and Melvyn. ‘How’s Gareth, Diane? Sounds like he had a close call.’ Shadows beneath her eyes spoilt her usual prettiness.
‘He’s too cussed to die. Are you OK, Stella? You’re very pale.’
‘I’m fine!’ Stella summoned a wide but not quite convincing smile. A small, brisk, blonde cutie, reminding Diane of a beaming cherub, Stella was often around for Jenner gatherings, adding a welcome flavour of rebellion with her declared views that marriage was a prison designed to prevent women from achieving their desires. In contrast, Megan, and Hilly, Melvyn’s docile spouse, were co-operative with their menfolk in a way that brought the word ‘doormat’ to Diane’s mind and Stella’s lips.
Stella had left her own husband during an affair with an improbably young teacher. Diane liked Stella and had been sorry the young teacher hadn’t stuck around. Gareth, however, had been sanctimonious. Stella had got what she deserved, he declared, reaped what she’d sewn, eaten just desserts on the bed she’d made and must now lie upon.
Stella, presumably aware of his self-righteous condemnation, had been quiet in his presence.
And now, as Stella and Megan melted back into the kitchen, Diane nursed her steaming mug, waiting stoically as Ivan and Melvyn lit cigarettes and updated themselves on the European football results via Sky Sports. Rude of them, having invited her to the house.
Meanwhile, George, Ivan’s eldest, clopped down the open-tread stairs into the sitting room.
Immediately, Diane forgot her brothers-in-law. ‘George! How have you been?’
‘Hey, Diane. Yeah. OK.’ George grinned. So impossibly beautiful with bisque skin and gold-brown eyes to set off his tawny hair, so funny, bright and kind, Diane wondered how he could be Ivan’s son. Or, for that matter, Megan’s. George had been lucky with both looks and charisma.
No wonder Bryony called him Gorgeous George.
Diane suddenly missed Bryony with a physical pain behind her breastbone and a boiling in her eyes. ‘How are things?’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Uni’s better than school. But reading and revising!Waaaaaaytoo much.’
‘Stop fannying about and get a job, then,’ Ivan demanded, without taking his eyes from the oversized TV screen.
Whether or not George went to university had been last year’s family row. George had, with difficulty and because he was eligible for the full loan, won. Ivan didn’t understand university and, as with most things he didn’t understand, rubbished it.
Diane ignored him. ‘Everyone hates revision, it’s in the rules. How’s the band?’
George flopped into the sofa and performed a yogic looking stretch to make his section recline. ‘Amazin’. Been working on some new stuff, Marty wrote some wicked riffs. Got a gig Saturday – with the new drummer, Rob.’ He’d hated having to replace Bryony and her pearl-white drum-kit. Bryony had told Diane that George sometimes sent her flyers announcing that Jenneration was to appear on Friday at The Bantam or Saturday at Dhobi Joe’s. No letter, just the flyers, a silent but eloquent message that things at home were moving on without her.
‘Hope it goes well.’
‘Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Revision. Nice to see ya.’ With a heart-stopping smile he loped from the room, chequered boxer shorts showing above the waistband of his jeans. If something that hung around his buttocks could be called a waistband.
‘’Bye,’ responded Diane, sorry he wasn’t staying longer.
She knew that George missed Bryony. When Bryony had lived at home he’d been huge in her life, so often a weekend guest that he was almost as familiar with Purtenon St. Paul as Bryony herself.
Diane thought of them making popcorn in her kitchen, a stereo playing Razorlight or The Arctic Monkeys; writing songs, arguing whether Bryony’s new boots made her look like an American high-school kid. George was a happy, larky, lippy but likeable lad who’d filled that clichéd spot in Diane’s heart of ‘the son she’d never had’.
He’d taken Bryony’s decision to work abroad personally, as if she was doing it to get away from him. Had tried frantically to talk her out of it.
Diane suspected that he felt more for Bryony than mere cousinly affection but Bryony pooh-poohed the notion, eyes big and curls bouncing. ‘What are you on, Mum? George is my bezzy, not my boyfriend.’
‘I know what he is. It’s what he wants to be – that’s the question.’
