Constance

‘Don’t put his happiness before your own,’ was all Connie advised.

‘They’re the same thing,’ Angela breathed.

They sat in silence for a moment.

‘Anyway, I wanted to talk about you, not me,’ Angela began again.

‘Why’s that?’

Angela waved her glass. ‘About here. And why you stay, and what…Are you hiding from something, maybe? Out here. On your own, you know what I’m saying, ever since you split from Seb. Why don’t you come back to London? Be with your friends, everyone you know. Don’t your family miss you, apart from anything else? You’ve got a…sister, haven’t you? And that amazing flat. And it’s not as though you don’t get plenty of work. Honestly. You can’t stay out here for ever, you need to come back and…connect. Think about it, at least, won’t you? Aren’t you lonely? Don’t you ever think, is this what I really want?’

Angela was warming to her subject. She was happy, and in her benign daze she wished the same for everyone. They had both had quite a lot to drink, Connie allowed. She tilted her glass, then gazed around at the glimmering garden. The frogs were loud, but the noise of the party was eclipsing them. Soon, probably, the other guests in the hotel would start complaining. That would be something else that Angela would have to deal with.

‘Connie, are you listening?’

‘Yep.’

She was wondering which end to pull out of the tangle of Angela’s speech. She didn’t say that she only asked herself what she really, really wanted when her solitude was compromised.

‘I do come back to London. Quite often.’

‘You slip in and out of town like a…like a…’

‘Mouse into its hole?’

‘I was trying to think of something polite.’

‘I like my life.’ It was true, she did.

‘But – don’t you want – love, marriage? A family?’

‘I’m forty-three.’

‘That’s not an answer.’

‘No, then.’

That silenced Angela for a moment. Eight years younger and uncomfortably in love, she couldn’t imagine any woman not wanting those things.

Love, marriage, family?

Love Connie did have, and she had come to the conclusion that she always would. Love could exist in a vacuum, without being returned, with nothing to nourish it, without even a sight of the person involved. It was always there, embedded beneath her skin like an electronic tag, probably sending out its warning signals to everyone who came within range.

Yes but no. Available but not.

The truth was that Connie had loved Bill Bunting since she was fifteen, and Seb hadn’t been the first or even the last attempt she had made to convince herself otherwise. She wasn’t going to marry Bill, or even see him, because he was another woman’s husband. He wouldn’t abandon his wife, and if he had been willing to do so Connie would have had to stop loving him. That was the impossibility of it.

And family…

It was significant that even Angela, who had been a friend for more than ten years, had to think twice about whether Connie had a family or not, and what it consisted of.

That was the way Connie preferred it to be.

She turned to look at Angela and started laughing.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Your expression. Angie, I know what you’re saying to me, and thank you for being concerned. Your advice is probably good. But I’m happy here, you know. I’m not hiding. And it’s very beautiful.’

‘Do you feel that you belong here?’

‘Do we have to feel that we belong?’

There was a sharp scream and a splash followed by some confused shouting.

‘What now?’ Angela groaned.

‘It sounded like Tara.’

‘Will you think about what I’m saying, though?’

‘Yes, I will.’

‘It’s mostly selfish. I want you to come home so we can see more of each other.’

Connie smiled. ‘I’d like that too. But I am home.’

The evening was finally over. Connie walked the empty side-roads back to her house, the way ahead a pale thread between black walls of dense greenery. It was a still night, and she brushed the trailing filaments of spiders’ webs from her face.

When she reached home, she saw that there was a small, motionless figure sitting on a stone at the point where her path diverged from her neighbours’. The figure took on the shape of Wayan Tupereme.

‘Wayan? Good evening.’

He got to his feet and shuffled to her in his plastic flip-flops.

‘I have a grandson,’ he said. ‘Dewi had a son tonight.’

Connie put her hands on his shoulders. The top of his head was level with her nose.

‘That’s wonderful news. Congratulations.’

Dewi was his youngest daughter, who had married and gone to live with her husband’s family. Wayan and his wife missed her badly.

He nodded. ‘I wanted you to know.’

‘I’m so pleased. Dewi and Pema must be very happy.’

‘We all are,’ the old man said. ‘We all are. A new baby. And a boy.’