‘Hello, darling, how lovely. Did bridge finish early?’ This, from Angus, in a strained voice as he hastened to greet her at the door.

‘No, it did not finish early. Our rubber finished dead on eight as usual. It’s you that’s late, Angus. I thought you were going to put the baked potatoes in for me!’

Other admonishments were lost in the stiff autumn breeze. As the front door closed behind them, Sylvia’s angry voice could still be heard as she frogmarched Angus down the road, past the pond and across the street towards home. We caught her drift, but not the finer nuances.

Peggy came back and immediately crossed to draw the curtains with a flourish. ‘Foolish of me not to have done that before,’ she remarked. Then she turned to face us, hands on hips. ‘Now. Who’s for a sticky?’

‘A what?’ Jennie frowned.

‘A sticky. You know, Calvados, Drambuie, that sort of thing. What about you, Pete?’

‘Er, well, I’m not convinced I’ve ever had anything like that before,’ Pete said, palpitating nervously. ‘This Muscadet’s nice, though,’ he said, pronouncing the t.

‘Ah, but then you’ve never joined a book club before, have you?’ Peggy murmured, slipping down onto the sofa. She patted the space beside her. ‘Come. Sit.’ He obeyed, as if in a trance. ‘So many firsts in one evening. Oh, sorry, Angie, were you sitting here?’ She moved to accommodate her irate friend, who’d clearly been usurped, having nipped to the loo to refresh her lipstick. Peggy perched on the sofa arm instead. Lit a cigarette.

‘Pete here was telling me earlier that he’s got a furnace in the back of his Land Rover.’

‘Well, of course he has; he’s a mobile farrier,’ Angie said testily.

‘Frightfully mobile, I should think.’ Peggy looked him up and down appreciatively.

‘Was Sylvia livid, Peggy?’ Angie asked nervously. Angie sat on the parish council with Sylvia; she was also very much on the same dinner-party circuit.

‘A bit, but she’ll live.’ Peggy flicked ash in the fireplace. ‘Must get terribly hot in there,’ she murmured to Pete. ‘In your Land Rover. Very cosy.’

‘Well, I’m not actually in it much, except for driving. And the furnace isn’t on then, of course.’ Pete was looking pretty hot and flustered himself.

‘No, no, of course not. And what else d’you make, Pete? Apart from shoes? With your furnace? I say, aren’t your thighs enormous? It’s a wonder you can squeeze them into that armchair. You were saying?’

‘Um, w-was I?’ Pete blotted his perspiring forehead with his cuff.

‘Yes, about what else it is you make. Aside from horses’ shoes.’

‘Oh … well, I do the odd bit of iron railings and the like. But it’s not on a regular basis. More one-off commissions, that type of thing.’

‘Iron railings, do you really?’ Peggy’s eyes widened. ‘D’you know, I was just thinking the other day I was bored with the white picket fence outside my house and could do with some darling little railings there instead.’ Her smoky-grey eyes gazed innocently into his. ‘You couldn’t pop round next week and give me a quote, could you? Gone down the wrong way, Angie?’ She turned to pat her friend on the back. Angie, who appeared to be having a coughing fit, shot her a blistering look and stormed off to get a glass of water. Once she’d gone, Peggy laid a hand on my arm.

‘I say,’ she murmured, nodding towards the other side of the room, ‘Jennie’s having a nice time, isn’t she?’

I turned to see Jennie, at the far end of the room by the French windows, talking to Simon. He was standing with one hand resting on a beam above her head, leaning in towards her as they chatted. Jennie’s cheeks were flushed, and as she threw her head back and laughed at something he said, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen her look like that for a long time. Hadn’t seen her look so pretty. It also occurred to me that I’d been incredibly dim.




11

‘She’s infuriating!’ Angie stormed the next morning when she and I popped round to Jennie’s for a cup of coffee and a post-match analysis. ‘She’s like some ghastly Carry On character: how hot is your furnace, Pete? Do you ever take your shirt off, Pete?’ she mimicked. ‘I mean, honestly.’ She sank down in a heap at Jennie’s kitchen table. ‘I thought: any minute now she’ll be feeling his biceps!’

Jennie and I exchanged a guilty glance. After Angie had left early – in a bit of a huff, it has to be said – there had been a bit of bicep comparing. Quite a few people had rolled up their sleeves in a bid to compete with Pete’s monumental brawn. But, in our defence, we had all been terribly drunk, what with Peggy’s Calvados slipping down a treat and not having had any supper apart from a few meagre bits of smoked salmon. It had all got faintly giggly. Possibly out of hand. Angie had missed quite a party.

‘Peggy just gets a bit overexcited,’ I assured her, trying not to recall the arm-wrestling match between Peggy and Saintly Sue, with Pete as referee, the rest of us cheering them on. Sue had turned out to have quite a wild side. Blonde hair askew, pale blue eyes on fire, a button of her already overstretched shirt popping undone, she’d slammed Peggy’s arm down on the table then punched the air, roaring, ‘Yes!’ Her halo definitely hitting the deck. Luke, hooting with laughter, had swept her into his arms where she’d clung like a slug, planting a smacker on his lips. As I say, we were all very tight.

‘Yes, but if anyone’s allowed to flirt with Pete, it’s me; he’s my farrier,’ Angie said petulantly. ‘She’s supposed to fancy Angus.’

‘Peggy flirts with everyone,’ I soothed, recalling how strangely watchful Peggy had been as Angie had flounced out. ‘Good,’ she’d observed to me quietly, taking a thoughtful drag of her cigarette. ‘Important to save Angie from herself sometimes, don’t you think? Nice to see her having a bit of fun, but we don’t want her making a complete fool of herself.’ I’d blinked in surprise. A bit of me had even wondered if Peggy had a master plan going here; if this seemingly frivolous book club she’d organized for her friends had a deeper design. One which made us turn around and take a close look at ourselves, at our motives. Before I had time to reply, though, Peggy had disappeared down to the other end of the room, where she was busy organizing a team game which involved popping a coin down a shirt and jigging about until it appeared from trouser leg or skirt, then passing it on. Simon’s coin would keep getting stuck on the way so Peggy was instructing him in the fine art of helping it along. The porcelain expert’s face had been one of pure delight, and as Peggy threw her head back and roared, I’d thought: no, no master plan. Unless it just involved getting her friends laughing again.

‘Simon was nice, wasn’t he?’ mused Jennie, cradling her mug and gazing out of the window, a distant smile on her face. ‘Remember him hopping around on the sofa, trying to dislodge the coin?’

‘What coin?’ said Angie grumpily.

‘He really loosened up,’ Jennie went on distractedly. ‘His family home is in the next village, that’s why he’s standing for candidacy round here. He stayed there last night. He loves this part of the world. “My little corner of England” he calls it.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘In fact he said he might not wait to buy a cottage, might rent and commute into town.’

‘Why isn’t he married?’ demanded Angie. ‘He must be over thirty. He’s not gay, is he?’

‘There’s someone he never got over, apparently. He’d known her for ages, first girlfriend and all that, and they were going to get married a few years back; they were engaged and everything, but she kept postponing the wedding. It turned out she’d fallen for someone else. He told me all about it. I really liked that about him,’ Jennie observed. ‘His lack of guile. The way he didn’t try to build himself up. Some people wouldn’t have mentioned they’d been ditched but he’s not like that. He’s a really nice man, actually.’

We digested this quietly. ‘Bit smooth for me,’ Angie sniffed eventually, disingenuously too, I thought. She’d done quite a lot of hair-flicking when she’d talked to Simon. She made a pious face and helped herself to the percolator.

‘I like smooth,’ Jennie said with feeling. ‘Haven’t had smooth for years. Decades. Ever. Could very easily get used to smooth.’

I tried not to notice her hands were clenched; just as, last night, as I’d wandered back through the village at midnight, I’d tried not to notice that Simon, as I reached my gate, had just left Jennie’s. I’d been in time to see Jennie disappear inside as Simon turned to walk the two miles up the hill to his parents’ home in Wessington, presumably leaving his car at Peggy’s. A moonlit walk. A contemplative walk, perhaps. Whilst Jennie had gone inside and up the stairs in her dark, sleep-filled house, feeling just a little bit warmer, a little bit happier. And what was wrong with that?

‘You won’t be getting used to anything,’ Angie reminded her brutally. ‘You’re married.’

‘Yes, I know. To Toad.’ Jennie threw back her head and scratched it energetically with both hands. ‘Oh, I’m not about to leap into bed with the man, Angie, but surely this old heart of mine is allowed to quicken occasionally? Even skip a beat? Allow me a little extra-marital flirting, please. It’s surely not a crime to have a tiny light shining in some dark corner of my life?’