We eat in the kitchen, just nattering about old times and old friends, laughing now and again, as the monstrous shadow of the building is thrown longer and longer across the sheep-dotted parkland to the south-east. We clear up together and I am able to display my newly, London-acquired ability to stack a dishwasher. Mum would be so proud.
She puts the lights on later, and the kitchen glitters.
‘I better take you back,’ she says, after some very good espresso from a neat little machine. I have a much more impressive device back at the flat in Stepney — all gleamy red and chrome, with confusing dials, and more handles and levers than a person can operate at one time — which does no better.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Thanks for all this.’
‘That’s okay,’ she tells me. She shrugs. ‘Sorry there’s no invitation to stay.’
‘Don’t be sorry. And don’t be daft. Are you crazy? Just all this has been more than I deserve. You’ve been very…forgiving.’
‘Yeah, well. If only that was the worst of my faults.’
‘Oh, just stop it.’
She looks at me through narrowed eyes. ‘You would if I did, though, wouldn’t you?’
‘What, invite me to stay the night?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘Course I would,’ I tell her. I don’t think she’s actually going to, so I don’t bother telling her my nuts are quite possibly out of action — if I’ve any sense — for a day or two. ‘If that’s what you really wanted.’
‘I’m still not,’ she says, eyes flashing. ‘But, well …’
We’re both standing, maybe a metre apart, by the work surface. She looks down, picks with a thumbnail at something non-existent there, shakes her head. ‘I don’t know whether to feel flattered or just think, Men …’ She looks up at me. ‘I mean, I’m still not, but …’ She balls her hand into a fist on the work surface, and looks me in the eye. ‘That time Grier came to stay at your place, in London.’
‘Uh-huh?’
Ellie’s eyes narrow. ‘Anything happen?’
‘It was like the first night you and I slept together.’
She turns her head a fraction. ‘On the beach?’
‘Just sleep.’
‘She told me your hands were all over her.’
‘Is that what she told you?’
‘True, or not?’
‘Like you said, I’m not a blabber.’
‘Oh, yes, your famous policy: no kissing and telling.’
‘Yeah. Though I’m starting to think it’s just contrarianism on my part, not morality, because it’s what all the other guys do.’
‘And girls, as a rule.’
‘And girls. So, I just want to be different. And retain an air of mystery, obviously.’
She smiles slowly. ‘I’d still like to know. And you do sort of owe me, Stewart.’
‘Yeah,’ I breathe. ‘Guess I do.’ I spread my hands. ‘Anyway, I’ve already told Ferg. The loophole being, there wasn’t any kissing to tell about.’ El’s eyebrows go up at this point like she wants to protest at my double standards or something, but I talk on quickly. ‘It was the other way round: Grier was all over me. I mean not, nastily…Just, like, Oh, come on, and then, Okay, suit yourself…But …Well, there you go. We parted…a little awkwardly. I mean, still friends, or whatever we’d been to start with…but awkwardly. Didn’t see her again until this weekend.’
‘Huh,’ Ellie says. ‘Thought you’d want the complete set of Murston girls.’
I just suck in breath through pursed lips and frown at her.
Ellie picks up her jacket from the back of the bar stool. ‘Oh well. Thought so.’ She nods at my jacket, draped over another seat back. ‘Get your coat, love; you’ve pushed.’
I just smile, pick the jacket up, and we tramp creakingly back down through the wood-panelled excesses of the castle that never was.
She drives me back through a starry night, the Mini’s headlights piercing the fragrant late-summer darkness of the parkland around the old building, pulling us through to the stuttering streams of red and white lights marking the main road back into town.
Ferg rings my new phone just before we get to Dabroch Drive, wondering if I fancy a pint later, but I say no: long day, bit tired.
‘Bit fucking
‘Whatever.’
‘See you at the funeral.’
‘See you then.’
We pull up outside Mum and Dad’s. Ellie leans over quickly and kisses me on the cheek. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow.’
I watch the Mini’s lights disappear round the corner, and touch my cheek where she kissed me.
‘Still more than you deserve,’ I murmur to myself.
I take a look round, checking for lurking Murston brothers or their vehicles, and keek through the hedge to check there’s nobody lying in wait there, then safely negotiate the path to the door, a cup of tea, some pleasant, inconsequential talk with Al and Morven, and bed.
It’s another one of those diaphanous days, the Toun submerged in a glowing mist from dawn onwards. It’s supposed to lift later, according to the forecast, though the forecasting people are notoriously bad at getting the Toun’s weather right.
