It Had to Be You

‘I think that could be one of the problems, James.’

‘Sorry?’

‘All that bourgeois politeness thing. I think that’s one of the things Charlie could have been running away from.’

Gordon Tollington walked slowly across the lawn. The air was shimmering with heat. The afternoon was still, but not silent. A woodpecker was drumming nearby, there was the calm, soft drone of a light aircraft, and the reassuring sound of a lawnmower manicuring this safe suburb. The hot weather had brought out the butterflies. Gordon Tollington was a relieved man. And a shamed one.

Steph was half asleep over a John Grisham. She looked up as he approached. His was not a light tread. Unbeknown to them, well beneath the surface of the lawn, moles were panicking.

‘Good book?’

‘Riveting.’

‘That was James.’

‘Oh.’

‘Funeral’s a week today.’

He watched her working it out. He hadn’t married her for her brains.

‘Thursday,’ she said.

‘Yes. We don’t need to cancel the Fat Duck.’

‘You look so pleased,’ she said. ‘I’m ashamed of you, Gordon.’

‘I’m ashamed of myself, Steph,’ he said, ‘but I can’t help it.’

He tried Callum, the son of an old school friend who lived in Argentina. He liked Callum, in fact he had sponsored him to help him through art college, and not just so that he could slip a reference to it into a conversation with Charles. He had just graduated, and had been tipped, in one national newspaper, as the one to watch this year. They had been to supper with him and his much tattooed girlfriend Erica. Erica had been so beautiful that he had almost overcome his revulsion to tattoos. The vegetarian moussaka had been a revelation. Callum took his art seriously. Their crazy single-roomed beanbag-bursting sex-smelling apartment had been overflowing with avant-garde pictures and sculptures and posters, but in the surprisingly modern loo there had been just two pictures, exquisite, nicely framed still lifes, each picture consisting of just one fig, so realistic and ripe that you wanted to pluck it out and eat it. Under the pictures were the words Fig 1 and Fig 2. James had loved that.

‘Callum. Hello. It’s James.’

The story again. The shock again. Oh, God.

‘I’m devastated. I cannot believe it,’ said Callum. ‘She was so lovely, James. I shouldn’t say this, but Erica knows it. She was the only woman over thirty I’ve ever fancied. I’ve dreamt about her several times.’