Joanne Sefton Book 2

Octavia sailed over at that moment, bringing Karen and a couple of girls Misty didn’t recognise with her.

‘Alex, darling, amazing party. Do you know there are two members of the Royal Shakespeare Company here? And apparently a cabinet minister. Can’t remember which one, granted, but then they’re not very memorable, are they?’

One of the band boys put his arm around Octavia’s shoulders, pulling her towards him. Another began to whisper to Karen. Misty caught something about going into the garden, but Andrew shook his head.

‘We’re on again in five minutes. You’re not going anywhere, Eastley.’

As the boys collected themselves, Alex sloshed brandy and cola into glasses for the three of them and Octavia.

‘No point in taking it easy when you’re all staying the night anyway. Let’s get wasted and shag some tottie,’ Alex said, raising her glass.

Misty snorted her cola out through her nose, partly at the idea, but mostly at the word ‘tottie’.

‘In your parents’ house?’ said Karen, incredulously, having managed to hold it together enough to express the thought that was once again on the same lines as Misty’s.

‘You don’t know my parents,’ replied Alex, darkly, before decisively knocking back her own drink.

*

A few hours later – she was vague on exactly how many hours as she was on much else – Misty was sitting on the stairs, leaning against the wood panelling and looking through the railings at the comings and goings in the hall below. She felt like the little girl from The Sound of Music, except very drunk and slightly nauseous.

The quartet had long since finished their official set, and Andrew was conspicuously absent, as was Alex. The pianist hadn’t got so lucky, or else preferred his music to the other pleasures on offer. He continued to jam with himself, his fingers chasing his scatting voice as he filled the hall with sound. Misty listened, watching groups and couples leave in the stream of taxis that pulled up outside. The crowds were thinning; it was much quieter. A fat, bearded man slept in a wingback armchair, his hairy stomach protruding from his shirt. The door opened once more and Misty shivered in the chill blast of outside air.

‘I hope you’ve had a good evening?’

The question came from behind her, in a deep, calm voice that sounded much less drunk than most people now seemed to be.

‘What? Oh, hi, I didn’t notice you coming down the stairs.’

‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

The man dropped down with graceful ease and sat next to her on the step. She guessed he was about the same age as the snoring man in the chair below – mid-forties, perhaps – but they couldn’t have been more different. This man was slim and elegant, his hair was styled in the slick, dark waves of a Fifties leading man and there was a musky scent to him that made her want to fill her lungs. The deep inhalation turned into a yawn.

‘You’re tired.’ There was a note of concern in his voice. ‘Do you want me to call you a taxi? Where are you getting back to?’

‘Oh, I’m not. I’m staying here. I came with Alex Penrith. You know? She lives here …’

He nodded. ‘I know.’

The pianist was enjoying himself, letting rip on a clutch of high notes and that made conversation momentarily impossible. The man turned away, rifling through his jacket pocket. Misty took the opportunity to stare, noting the plush velvet collar against the pale skin of his neck.

‘Here,’ he said, turning back suddenly. ‘Want one?’

They were cocktail cigars, dinky and covetable. She’d never been tempted to smoke before, but she took one of these, wondering if her lack of experience would be obvious.

‘Are you the cabinet minister, then?’ she asked, emboldened by the alcohol. ‘Apparently there’s one here, but they all look the same to me on the news.’

‘The vegetables, eh?’ He laughed. ‘No, he left quite early. Sorry to disappoint. I’m just a second-rate academic. But then I always preferred parties to work anyway.’ He raised his cigar in a mock toast.

‘You work at the university then?’

‘Only when I really can’t avoid it. But, yes, they’ve not managed to get rid of me yet.’

‘I’m sure you’re not anything like what you’re making out. Is that how you know the Penriths, through work?’

‘Oh, darling, you’re exquisite.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Eric Penrith. Delighted to meet you.’

She blushed beetroot up to her hairline and stammered some response, but he just shushed her embarrassment away.

‘Now, clearly my daughter isn’t being much of a hostess, and you look ready to drop. Let’s work out where she’s put your stuff and I’ll find you somewhere to sleep.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If you can’t sleep in daylight, you’d better take your chance now.’

Feeling even more tired, she got to her feet and followed him into the labyrinth of upstairs rooms, the sound of the piano fading behind them.

A few minutes later, after a couple of false starts, he had located both her belongings and an unoccupied room – a cramped attic with a single bed neatly made up.

‘Servants’ quarters, I’m afraid, we’ll do better next time. Look, I don’t expect anyone to bother you up here, but there’s a latch on the door so use it, okay? Some people down there are rather blitzed. Better safe than sorry.’

She nodded. ‘I understand.’

‘Well, if I don’t see you tomorrow it was nice to meet you. Hopefully we’ll meet again. And merry Christmas!’

*

It was a merry Christmas, she supposed. At least it was the same as it always was, and it had never previously struck her as lacking in merriness. She enjoyed long mornings in bed, crispy winter walks with Mack, and her mother’s home cooking in which pastry featured strongly. In a day or two she felt fully recovered from her flu and she spent the week or so before Christmas knocking around with her little brother, Martin, or old school friends, and making inroads into the reading lists for next term.

There was a feeling of restlessness, though, that she carried with her as she sipped half-pints of snakebite and fended off teasing about Cambridge. It carried on through Christmas morning when they tucked into their fry-up and she dutifully opened and praised the presents she’d been bought without really noticing them. It carried on through lunch with Granny Mavis who was deaf and batty, as well as Auntie Cathy, Uncle Derek and the three young cousins all squeezed into the steam-filled kitchen. It was there as she watched her dad heckle the Queen’s speech and as they played gin rummy and as she drank a glass of advocaat with Granny Mavis and watched the creamy liquid coat the fine hairs of the old lady’s moustache.

She imagined Christmas at the Penrith house. Exotic food, jazz, unctuous expensive cheese and cocktail cigars. When she was here, it seemed like a fairy tale or a film set, something she’d dreamt up. But that wasn’t true; she might have got the details wrong in her daydreams, but the Penriths’ Christmas was just as real as her dad sitting in front of the telly, mechanically lifting KP nuts into his gob. She tried to shake herself out of it, but she fell into the same reverie over and over again.

The thing was, it wasn’t just the house and the party that had entranced her. Eric Penrith. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing his handsome, laughing face. She couldn’t lie in bed without thinking about what it would feel like to have him lie next to her. A stupid schoolgirl-type crush – she didn’t need anyone else to tell her that – but it didn’t make it any easier to cope with. On Christmas night she drifted off to the sound of her brother’s snoring and the Christmas number one leaking tinnily from the wireless. Pet Shop Boys. ‘You Were Always on My Mind’.

Eric Penrith. She was desperate to get back to college in the hope she would see him. But she was equally desperate never to see him again.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_a89cb05e-edcc-5d10-b15f-e2b96db7ddd7)

Karen

2019

The evening traffic was slow although rush hour should have ended several hours earlier. The cab crawled along, at a speed that gave her an intimate view of the endless front rooms and front doors of the south-west suburbs. Where curtains and shutters were still open, vignettes of life in all its variety were illuminated amidst the winter darkness. She watched her breath steam up the window and replayed the meeting with Andrew.

It was coincidence that they were still in contact, really. After university had ended so badly, Karen had fallen out of touch with almost everyone. She’d left with a poor degree and little motivation to start job hunting. She spent a couple of years doing bar work before eventually getting a junior role with a copywriting agency, coming up with campaign wording for drinks companies. Jonathan had been an up-and-coming solicitor at the law firm used by the agency. He was seconded to her office for a fortnight, going through some documents for a case. They got chatting in the canteen and three years later they were married. She’d been pleased enough to leave the work – which bored her and came with an unavoidable side order of lecherous lunches and drinks events – at his suggestion. She just regretted not having the foresight to think about what it could mean for her for the future.

Jonathan worked for a City law firm, and it turned out that one of the other junior associates was none other than Andrew Dyer. Andrew’s brush with the law had been brief, but he and Jonathan had been room-mates for a while, and the two of them had hit it off. They’d kept in touch over the years, with the passage of time eventually eroding Karen’s initial awkwardness. Andrew liked to reminisce about Alex, and he had few opportunities to spend time with people who actually knew her. Karen didn’t share his enjoyment, but in tolerating it she’d been surprised to find some sense of satisfaction, almost as though it counted as penance.

As the years went on, life moved on and they’d talked about Alex less. Andrew had been supportive when Jonathan died. She felt he was one of the few people who could come close to appreciating what she was going through. Since then, though, they’d seen less and less of each other. Managing the girls on her own gave her little time for a social life, and he’d been growing the business.

All the same, her friendship with Andrew was the one fragile thread still connecting the woman she was now to the girl she’d been then. She blushed to think about that girl, and wouldn’t normally linger, but seeing ‘Alex’ had jolted everything to the top of her mind again. Her friendship with Alex and Misty had always seemed unlikely, even though she and Alex were doing the same degree. The other two were both like magnets – they drew people to them. They had rooms on the same corridor in first year and struck up an alliance from day one. Karen’s first-year room was stuck away in an annexe and she had bumped into them on the first day. Some instinct told her to cling on for all she was worth, and she spent every day waiting to be kicked out of the clique she’d never felt she belonged to in the first place.