Spiderweb by Penelope Lively Page A

cool look. He found this declaration unnatural, or unwomanly, or just plain selfish. He probably knew something of her sexual history from Nadine. On which I have no intention of expanding, thought Stella. Nothing to do with him, really, any of this. But he’s a decent enough chap and one confidence deserves another, I suppose. If confidence is the right word.
    ‘Nadine envied you,’ said Richard abruptly.
    Stella was almost shocked. She stared at him, momentarily thrown.
    He qualified. ‘Not in the absolute sense. And not that she was in any way dissatisfied with her own lot. She just saw you as having something she didn’t – experience, opportunity …’ He let the sentence trail away.
    Yes, thought Stella. That fits. And somehow I never noticed at the time.
    There’s a man, says Nadine. This is not a question but a statement. She looks at Stella across a table in the cafeteria of the Royal Academy after the exhibition visit which has been the pretext for their meeting. They have not seen each other for over a year.
    ‘Well… yes,’ says Stella. She would rather not go into the matter, but sees that there is no escape.
    Nadine contemplates her. ‘I’ve known for the last hour. It’s written all over you. You’ve got that sort of feverish look.’ She sounds almost grumpy, and if Stella was not in this state of floating detachment, she would have detected then the whiff of envy. Nadine feels sidelined, high and dry on her island of marriage and maternity, while Stella is still out there in the world – free, in love. But Stella is for once blinkered, she is barely seeing or hearing Nadine. She is indeed in love. This means that she is self-absorbed, unobservant and not herself at all.
    ‘Is he an anthropologist?’
    ‘No … no, he’s a journalist.’
    Nadine is even more put out. An anthropologist would have staid, pedestrian connotations. To her ears journalist sounds racy, even glamorous. She is thinking that Stella always had more dashing men than she did. But Stella has not got the Georgian farmhouse in Sevenoaks and the two gorgeous children. And probably this man won’t last.
    ‘Where did you meet him?’
    ‘Oh … in Malta. I did a field study there this summer.’
    Malta. Sun, brown skin, hot nights. Beaches. Damn her, thinks Nadine, who is no longer enjoying her day out.
    Feeling disagreeably bloated, Stella watched Richard attend to the bill, which was delivered discreetly disguised as a leather notepad.
    ‘Thank you for a splendid meal,’ she said. ‘A treat.’
    ‘It’s for me to thank you. You did us proud.’
    I do not know how this has come about, thought Stella. How can it be that by some diabolical trick I am sixty-five and sitting in a sugar pink restaurant with the husband of my old friend Nadine, who is not anywhere at all. How has it come to this?
    ‘You will be the talk of the local history group for months. Our meetings are seldom so colourful.’
    And how did I come to be trying to explain the seminal matter of cultural difference to fifteen oddly assorted people in something called a village hall?
    ‘A pleasure,’ she said. ‘Rather cursory treatment of a hefty subject, I’m afraid. I did try to beef up the travel aspect, as you suggested.’
    They rose from the table. A waiter eased Stella into her coat as though he were robing a bishop. Outside the restaurant, she turned to Richard.
    ‘I don’t think Nadine envied me, exactly. We shot off in different directions. Having shared a starting-line, as it were. The thought could be unsettling.’
    He shrugged, smiled. ‘Maybe. Whatever … she came to see you as a symbol of lost promise, I think. Her lost promise.’
    ‘She would have hated to live as I have. What she had was what she always wanted.’
    ‘Oh, undoubtedly,’ said Richard. ‘But that doesn’t necessarily induce absolute satisfaction, does it?’
    Stella drove home through a black velvet night, under a sky crackling with stars. The night sky was