What You Will. Katherine Bucknell

put Will’s breakfast things in the dishwasher, walked around to the clammy back room, and started dragging towels and sheets out of the dryer, heaping them on the ironing board in crackling electric mounds so she could transfer the wet things in from the washing machine. She stopped to find Roland’s number in the kitchen drawer, dialled it, and kept the phone clutched against her ear as she went back again to the laundry room.

      ‘There’s someone I want you to meet.’ She felt unexpectedly shy – bent double, arse up, at the mouths of her machines, struggling one-handed to weed out little cotton items to dry on the rack, her knickers, a bra, falling on the dirty floor as they came untangled from the wet lump in the bouncing, perforated drum.

      But Roland welcomed it. ‘I’ll drive down with Lawrence,’ he said. ‘Any day this week apart from tomorrow. It’s only the freshers arriving now.’

      ‘Lawrence thought he might be staying up for a couple of nights.’

      ‘I’ll give him a ring, shall I? And we’ll fix it.’

      That was it. She chucked more laundry into the washing machine and turned it on with the dryer, leaving the folding for later, everything churning.

      Mentioning the arrangement to Hilary, Gwen was casual. ‘There’s a friend coming to supper. It’s just the four of us.’

      Hilary was horrified. She had woken up late and swayed down into the kitchen in her pale blue-and-grey-striped men’s pyjamas with a black V-neck sweater over them. Her dark tendrils of hair were pulled into a bright red scrunchie at the back of her head so that her whole face was revealed in the morning light, flushed, puffy around the eyes, but smooth with deep, long sleep.

      She came on with a spoiling chill. ‘I don’t want to meet anyone, Gwen. I’m a wreck. I need to recover. I need time to – figure out what’s going to happen.’ In her alarm, she pulled her hair loose from the scrunchie, scowled as she plucked at its ends.

      Gwen just looked at her for a few seconds, trying to tell from Hilary’s half-veiled face why she seemed to be receiving the effort as an insult. But she couldn’t see Hilary’s eyes. An insult to grief? Gwen considered. Or to the seriousness of what’s happened to her? How much time would Hilary need to mourn the end of her engagement? Gwen lifted her eyebrows and, at the same time, she blinked, indicating doubt, an attempt to be patient. She didn’t speak.

      ‘Don’t get mad, Gwen.’ Hilary dropped into the same chair where she had sat last night, reached for the box of Weetabix sitting on the table, studied the package.

      ‘I’m not mad.’ Gwen was trying to suppress her sense of investment in sorting Hilary out. She was thinking, It’s a problem to be solved, let’s get the ball rolling. Why dawdle and agonise? But she said, as casually as she could muster, ‘Do you want me to postpone it?’

      ‘I guess. I don’t know.’ Hilary looked a little dazed. ‘Do you think I’ll like this cereal? I never tried it all the time I was staying here. It looks so weird.’ Hilary thought she was off the hook.

      ‘It needs milk. Lawrence eats it,’ Gwen said with sympathetic diffidence. Then adopting a perky, administrative tone, ‘I can call him back and say next week instead of this? Is a week enough?’

      Hilary put the cereal box down on the table and looked at Gwen. ‘Is it really important? I mean, do we have to set a particular date now?’

      ‘No. I mean – yes, it’s important. It’s harder for him to find the time once term starts.’

      ‘So he can’t come after I’m gone? I won’t be here long.’

      ‘He’s wonderful. You should meet him.’

      ‘Well, I don’t want to waste that, do I? A wonderful man? But I’m really not in the mood to meet a man right now, Gwen. It’s about the last thing I need. Don’t you think?’

      Where does mood come into it? Gwen wondered. Either he’s the right man or he’s not. And knowing she was grooming things ever so slightly, pushing her luck, she said, ‘It’s not a date or anything. He’s an old friend of Lawrence’s – of both of ours.’

      ‘So you told him you want us to meet?’ Despite her fanfared emotional helplessness and her sleepy look, Hilary was nobody’s fool.

      ‘He comes here to supper – all the time. You happen to be staying with us.’ Gwen lifted her hands, absolving herself of setting anything up. ‘I haven’t told him a lot about you.’

      ‘What – that I’m roadkill? That someone needs to drag me to the shoulder before I get run over again and my guts squish out? Gwen, you said he’s wonderful, and you said that it’s important. So shouldn’t I be – well, at least shouldn’t I be looking my best? Maybe a few more days of real sleep, some exercise. I have to be ready to make an effort. Right now, I can’t really think or talk about anything apart from – from everything that’s happened to me since Eddie died.’

      ‘Maybe you should try. You need to get your mind off what’s happened. Just do something else. Distract yourself for a while, and let some time pass.’

      ‘Can’t I do that with you and Will and Lawrence? You guys are enough. And frankly, you’re all I can cope with right now. Christ, you’re bossy. And you must be at least two cups of coffee ahead of me.’ Hilary gave Gwen a camp smile. She stood up and looked around the counters until she spotted the coffee machine that during the weeks she had stayed in the flat she had never used because she had hurried out each morning as if to meet her destiny. The clear glass jug was dark with coffee at the bottom and the little red light was on.

      Without a word, Gwen opened a cupboard, handed Hilary a mug, went to the fridge for the milk, hangdog, slack-footed. She was suddenly remorseful. ‘Hil. I’m sorry. Roland’s not a lot more than just us. That’s how well we know him. It’s just one evening.’

      ‘Do whatever you’d do if I weren’t here,’ Hilary said as she slurped. ‘But I reserve the right to hide in my room – or leave before he shows up.’

      Gwen saw she might get her way; she decided to drop it for a while. ‘I got you some money,’ she said. ‘Don’t know if you need it or not.’ She pulled it from her pocket, held it out.

      Hilary was surprised and embarrassed. Of course I need it, she thought. But despite herself she said, ‘I can’t take that, Gwen. God.’ What she was thinking was, Why does it feel like she’s forcing it on me? Is it just because she didn’t give me time to ask before she offered? And how the hell will I ask for it now?

      ‘Just in case you maybe don’t have pounds?’ Gwen put the money on the counter, and there it lay, burning a hole in the slate. ‘Do you want to go for a run with me now you’re up?’ Gwen asked. ‘We could do a little circuit down across Hammersmith Bridge and along the south side of the river to Putney?’

      Hilary’s eyes focused hard at her; the glassy, washed-away blue brightened, sparked with enthusiasm. ‘So forget cereal. Give me five minutes.’

      Outside, the first morning of October glowed at them; summer grown brittle, a little shabby, along the car-lined street. Gwen set off in front because the pavement was narrow and uneven, blistered by tree roots, and because she knew the way.

      ‘These poor trees,’ Hilary said, looking up and around. ‘They made me sad in the summer with their branches lopped off, trying to squeeze a leaf out of those knobs they have left. It looks even worse now that the green is turning.’

      ‘It’s what cities do, yeah? Cramping us all, making us into grotesques. The council prunes the trees like that because the roots are getting at everyone’s foundations. Lifting them and breaking the walls.’

      ‘All about insurance probably.’ Hilary puffed out the words in even bursts. ‘Just like the States.’

      ‘Getting like that here. How people think they can be insured against nature, against what grows, I don’t know. There are just so many of us on the planet now. Everything, everyone,