Sun at Midnight

She told herself that it meant nothing, it was what parties were for. She would go downstairs herself and kiss Mark, or preferably Vijay.

But everything about the tiny encounter told her that it wasn’t nothing; it was much more than just a kiss at a party.

Becky and Jo both stared at her as she came back.

‘Hey,’ Becky said softly.

‘Are they all right?’ Jo was already heaving herself to her feet.

‘They’re fine. I just saw Pete kissing some girl on the stairs.’

Now it was Becky and Jo who looked at each other.

‘Which girl?’

Alice glanced around the crowded room. Faces nodded and mouthed through the smoke and music. A tide of dirty plates and ashtrays lapped against the walls.

‘That one.’ She was standing by the mantelpiece. Midway between the prominent crest of her hip bone and her neat bellybutton there was a butterfly tattoo.

‘Never seen her before,’ Becky said.

‘She’s one of Pete’s students.’

‘And where is he?’ Jo asked in a let-me-at-him way.

Alice forced a smile. ‘He’d better keep out of my sight for an hour.’

She drank some more wine and tried to reconnect to her earlier enjoyment. She kept talking and laughing, then she danced with Mark and with Harry. She saw Pete moving through the skeins of people, even caught his eye as she had done at the start of the evening, but it was only a brief connection. She wanted to dance with him, but they were never in the right place together.

At 1 a.m. Jo and Harry went home, carrying a baby seat apiece down the stairs. Becky and Vijay left at two.

‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Becky said, concern showing in her eyes.

‘Don’t worry, I’m fine.’

The hard-core guests stayed until it was light. She would have liked to be drunk herself, but all she felt was cold. Pete had spent the last hour playing his guitar and singing with the remaining handful of people. Now he was sitting on the sofa, picking out chords and humming with his head down. There was a glass of whisky at his feet.

Alice stood in front of him and he raised his head to look at her. His eyes weren’t quite focusing. The room seemed to press in around the two of them, full of the weight of their combined belongings and the evening’s events.

Pete strummed a chord and sang, ‘Just the two of us, just you and…me.’

‘Pete, come to bed.’

The bedroom was disorientatingly light. Alice took off the black dress and hung it up in her cupboard, Pete stripped off his clothes and left them in a heap. They lay down and Pete gave a long sigh, then turned and lay against her, one arm heavy over her hips.

‘Who was she?’ Alice asked.

‘Who was who?’

‘The girl with the tattoo.’

‘Tattoo? I dunno. All girls have tattoos. ’Cept you.’ He laughed into her hair and she shivered with the first wave of longing for intimacy that was already gone.

‘She was with you yesterday. In the punt.’

‘Punt? Oh, yeah, her. Georgia.’

Alice lay on her back, watching the ceiling. If he says anything else, she thought, it will be all right. If I have to ask him what he was doing with her it won’t be. The seconds passed. Out of the furthest corner of her eye she was aware of the digital clock on the bedside table. The green numerals changed, 23, 24. Then she realised from Pete’s slow breathing that he had fallen asleep.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_14aea596-2ffb-5de3-b679-1dd94c0a862d)

‘Your mother’s not very well,’ Trevor said.

Alice was sitting at her desk in the Department of Geology. She had been trying to concentrate on her work but her eyes kept sliding to the square of sky visible from her window. Now as she pressed the phone to her ear the maps she had been studying lost their definition and ran together in a grey blur. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘She’s picked up a chest infection. The hotel doctor’s a bit worried about her.’

‘Can I talk to her?’

‘She’s asleep at the moment.’

‘How long has she been ill?’

‘A couple of days.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Trevor sighed. ‘You know what she’s like.’

Small, fierce, unfaltering, impatient with weakness. As stubborn as a rock formation. Yes, Alice knew what her mother was like.

‘Are you going to bring her home? Shall I come out there?’

‘There’s no need for that. Rest and antibiotics is what she needs.’

‘Are you sure? I’ll call you later and see how she is. Give her a kiss from me when she wakes up.’

After Trevor had rung off Alice tried to turn back to her work, but anxiety nudged at her and in the end she gave up. It was almost lunchtime. Jo’s house was nearby and Jo would have constructive advice to offer. But it was Pete she wanted to talk to. She would call in at his studio and tell him about Margaret. They could have a sandwich and a cup of coffee together. Alice left her desk at once and rode her bicycle through the traffic.

The studio was in an old warehouse at the end of a cul-de-sac. Mark’s side was closed up, but the heavy door to Pete’s hung narrowly ajar, sagging slightly on its hinges. Alice padlocked her bike to a street sign advising that there was no parking. A smart new Mini was parked right alongside.

She edged round the door and slipped into the studio. It was dim inside after the bright daylight. Pete wasn’t working, then. The blinds at the big windows were all drawn. The concrete-floored space smelled of dust and resin, and something familiar scraped at her subconscious in the split second before she identified it and the association. It was music, the same song that had been playing in the punt on the afternoon when Pete jumped into the water.

His latest work in progress loomed above Alice’s head. It was a bird’s nest of twisted metal and within the lattice cage some of his found objects were suspended on thin wires – a buckled bicycle wheel, a polystyrene wig block like a blanched head that revolved very slowly as the studio air stirred. The hair at the nape of Alice’s neck prickled as she looked around for the source of the music. Peter’s welding torch lay on the ground, with the black welding mask that made him look like Darth Vader discarded beside it. She took three quick steps to the inner door, past more accumulated debris.

The door led into a boxed-off cubicle with a metalworker’s bench at which Pete did his smaller-scale work. There was a grey filing cabinet, a kettle and a clutch of mugs stained with rings of tannin. The CD player was balanced on the broken typist’s chair from the skip outside the Parks. A girl’s handbag, an expensive-looking fringed suede affair, spilled its contents on the floor. The girl herself was perched on the edge of the cluttered bench, steadying herself with her hands. Her denim legs stretched out on either side of Pete’s head.

Pete hadn’t heard Alice come in. Just above and to the side of his right ear Alice could see the butterfly tattoo.