Constance. Rosie Thomas

about it, at least, won’t you? Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you ever think, is this what I really want?’

      Angela was warming to her subject. She was happy, and in her benign daze she wished the same for everyone. They had both had quite a lot to drink, Connie allowed. She tilted her glass, then gazed around at the glimmering garden. The frogs were loud, but the noise of the party was eclipsing them. Soon, probably, the other guests in the hotel would start complaining. That would be something else that Angela would have to deal with.

      ‘Connie, are you listening?’

      ‘Yep.’

      She was wondering which end to pull out of the tangle of Angela’s speech. She didn’t say that she only asked herself what she really, really wanted when her solitude was compromised.

      ‘I do come back to London. Quite often.’

      ‘You slip in and out of town like a…like a…’

      ‘Mouse into its hole?’

      ‘I was trying to think of something polite.’

      ‘I like my life.’ It was true, she did.

      ‘But – don’t you want – love, marriage? A family?’

      ‘I’m forty-three.’

      ‘That’s not an answer.’

      ‘No, then.’

      That silenced Angela for a moment. Eight years younger and uncomfortably in love, she couldn’t imagine any woman not wanting those things.

      Love, marriage, family?

      Love Connie did have, and she had come to the conclusion that she always would. Love could exist in a vacuum, without being returned, with nothing to nourish it, without even a sight of the person involved. It was always there, embedded beneath her skin like an electronic tag, probably sending out its warning signals to everyone who came within range.

      Yes but no. Available but not.

      The truth was that Connie had loved Bill Bunting since she was fifteen, and Seb hadn’t been the first or even the last attempt she had made to convince herself otherwise. She wasn’t going to marry Bill, or even see him, because he was another woman’s husband. He wouldn’t abandon his wife, and if he had been willing to do so Connie would have had to stop loving him. That was the impossibility of it.

      And family…

      It was significant that even Angela, who had been a friend for more than ten years, had to think twice about whether Connie had a family or not, and what it consisted of.

      That was the way Connie preferred it to be.

      She turned to look at Angela and started laughing.

      ‘What’s funny?’

      ‘Your expression. Angie, I know what you’re saying to me, and thank you for being concerned. Your advice is probably good. But I’m happy here, you know. I’m not hiding. And it’s very beautiful.’

      ‘Do you feel that you belong here?’

      ‘Do we have to feel that we belong?’

      There was a sharp scream and a splash followed by some confused shouting.

      ‘What now?’ Angela groaned.

      ‘It sounded like Tara.’

      ‘Will you think about what I’m saying, though?’

      ‘Yes, I will.’

      ‘It’s mostly selfish. I want you to come home so we can see more of each other.’

      Connie smiled. ‘I’d like that too. But I am home.’

      The evening was finally over. Connie walked the empty side-roads back to her house, the way ahead a pale thread between black walls of dense greenery. It was a still night, and she brushed the trailing filaments of spiders’ webs from her face.

      When she reached home, she saw that there was a small, motionless figure sitting on a stone at the point where her path diverged from her neighbours’. The figure took on the shape of Wayan Tupereme.

      ‘Wayan? Good evening.’

      He got to his feet and shuffled to her in his plastic flip-flops.

      ‘I have a grandson,’ he said. ‘Dewi had a son tonight.’

      Connie put her hands on his shoulders. The top of his head was level with her nose.

      ‘That’s wonderful news. Congratulations.’

      Dewi was his youngest daughter, who had married and gone to live with her husband’s family. Wayan and his wife missed her badly.

      He nodded. ‘I wanted you to know.’

      ‘I’m so pleased. Dewi and Pema must be very happy.’

      ‘We all are,’ the old man said. ‘We all are. A new baby. And a boy.’

       THREE

      ‘Nearly there,’ Bill said unnecessarily, but in any case Jeanette’s head was turned away from him. She seemed to be admiring the bitter green of the hawthorn hedge and the froth of cow parsley standing up from the verge. It had rained earlier in the day but now the sky was washed clear, and bars of sunshine striped the tarmac where field gates broke the line of the hedge. ‘Nearly there,’ he repeated. Conscious of the bumps in the road, he tried to drive as smoothly as he could so she wouldn’t be jarred with pain.

      Their house was at the end of a lane, behind a coppice of tall trees. Jeanette had found it, two years after Noah was born, and insisted that they buy it. Bill would have preferred to be closer to town but in the end he had given way to her, and he had to concede that she had been right. They had lived there for more than twenty years. Noah had grown up in the house, had finally left for university and then gone to live in London; Jeanette and he were still there. It would be their last home together. Lately they had talked about moving, maybe into town, to a minimalist apartment with a view of the river, but it had been just talk.

      He swung the car past the gateposts and stopped as close as he could to the front door. Jeanette did turn her head now, staring past him and up at the house. It had a steep tiled roof with mansard windows that had always made him think of eyes under heavy lids. A purple-flowered clematis and a cream climbing rose grew beside the front door, the colours harmonising with the dusty red brick of the house. Bill didn’t know the names of the varieties, but Jeanette would. She was a passionate gardener.

      He turned off the ignition and the silence enveloped them. He took his wife’s hand and held it. He wanted to crush it, to rub his mouth against the thin skin, somehow revitalising her with his own heat, but he didn’t. He just let her fingers rest in his.

      Jeanette’s eyes were on him now.

      ‘Are you ready to go inside?’ he asked.

      She nodded.

      He helped her out of the car and she leaned on his arm as they made their way. Once they were in the hallway she indicated that she wanted to stop. The parquet floor was warmed by the late sun, the long-case barometer indicated Fair, there was a pile of unopened post on the oak table next to the big pot of African violets.

      ‘Good to be home?’ Bill asked.

      – Yes, Jeanette said. – Thank you.

      But he could feel the rigidity of her arm, and her neck and her spine. Her fingers dug into his wrist. Gently he urged her forwards, thinking that he would establish her in her chair beside the French windows so that she could look out into the garden while he made her a cup of tea. She let him lead her but instead of sinking into her chair she stood and gazed at the room. It looked as it always did.

      Her