anywhere painful. She yawns. “Ugh, I need a night off,” she says. “I’m wrecked.” She pours herself a vodka tonic and offers me one too, and I wish I’d thought to buy a bottle at the supermarket, I can’t keep drinking hers. I don’t really want one, but I say yes and then offer her one of my ready meals and she says yes too, so I put a lasagne and a cannelloni in the oven and I get out a bag of green salad. I go to the sink and look in the cupboard underneath and it smells of damp, but I find some bleach and I empty the sink of dirty crockery and cutlery and pour neat bleach in the sink and wipe all around. I rinse the sink, then do it all again and then I fill it with hot soapy water and I wash the rest of the plates that were already washed and stacked haphazardly on the draining board. Angel watches me, but seems to think I’m just a clean freak and so I tell her about Bev and the dog shit and we both laugh until we can’t breathe in the hot sickly air. My hands feel tight and dry from the bleach and I lick my finger-tips to moisten them, which is a revolting habit that I thought I’d stopped. I have another vodka and eventually confess my worries about my clothes for tomorrow, and Angel says to come with her and she takes me upstairs and although I can’t borrow her clothes, I’m so much bigger than her, she lends me a silver belt and bag and a black and silver skeleton print scarf that transform my black shift dress. Angel goes to get ready for work and I can think of nothing else to do now but lie down on my bed. These are the worst times, alone in my room, worrying about how Ben and Charlie are, whether I’ve done the right thing after all, but it’s too late now, I’ve left them, I can’t go back. I try instead to prepare mentally for tomorrow; I lie still in the half-light and force my thoughts away from the past towards the future – along tangling telephone wires, through beeping fax machines, across expanding internal directories. I crowd out old memories with wanton switchboardery, until at last sleep comes.
14
Emily found out later that the house had been built in 1877 for a gentleman’s mistress, the great love of his life. The story went that she'd adored the view from there, and so he'd made her throw a stone down towards the sea, and where it landed he built the house, even though it was an engineering nightmare. It was situated in the depth of the trees, completely hidden except from offshore, and if you looked from out there in the waves it appeared to cling to the cliff, almost desperately, as though it might fall off. It didn’t feel like it was even in England, the vista was serene and expansive, just yellow-green trees and flat blue sea, Mediterranean perhaps. Ben and Emily had found it that first New Year, when to escape the sniping at Frances and Andrew’s house (after all, Caroline was still living there), they’d packed up his car and headed south to the Devon coast, trusting that where they ended up was where they were meant to be. As they drove along the coast through little dead towns, past winter-sad hotels, Emily was losing her nerve – maybe they’d been mad to not find somewhere decent in advance, especially as it was their first New Year’s Eve together, she didn’t want it to be a disaster. She was about to suggest that maybe they’d be better off heading inland and finding themselves a little country pub – they were usually packed on New Year’s Eve, she'd said, that might be a fun place to see in the new year – when Ben wound the car up a steep tree-covered lane, zigzagging away from the sea, and as they rounded the last turn they saw an old-fashioned sign: Shutters Lodge, Accommodation, Evening Meals.
“Shall we try in there?” said Ben. Emily nodded, doubtful, and he turned the car into the gate and followed a driveway, up into the trees, for what seemed like forever, but eventually it opened into a clearing and there stood a vast old
14
Emily found out later that the house had been built in 1877 for a gentleman’s mistress, the great love of his life. The story went that she'd adored the view from there, and so he'd made her throw a stone down towards the sea, and where it landed he built the house, even though it was an engineering nightmare. It was situated in the depth of the trees, completely hidden except from offshore, and if you looked from out there in the waves it appeared to cling to the cliff, almost desperately, as though it might fall off. It didn’t feel like it was even in England, the vista was serene and expansive, just yellow-green trees and flat blue sea, Mediterranean perhaps. Ben and Emily had found it that first New Year, when to escape the sniping at Frances and Andrew’s house (after all, Caroline was still living there), they’d packed up his car and headed south to the Devon coast, trusting that where they ended up was where they were meant to be. As they drove along the coast through little dead towns, past winter-sad hotels, Emily was losing her nerve – maybe they’d been mad to not find somewhere decent in advance, especially as it was their first New Year’s Eve together, she didn’t want it to be a disaster. She was about to suggest that maybe they’d be better off heading inland and finding themselves a little country pub – they were usually packed on New Year’s Eve, she'd said, that might be a fun place to see in the new year – when Ben wound the car up a steep tree-covered lane, zigzagging away from the sea, and as they rounded the last turn they saw an old-fashioned sign: Shutters Lodge, Accommodation, Evening Meals.
“Shall we try in there?” said Ben. Emily nodded, doubtful, and he turned the car into the gate and followed a driveway, up into the trees, for what seemed like forever, but eventually it opened into a clearing and there stood a vast old
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