It slipped out of him before he could stop it; he was sick of her constant probing and jeering. For once, it was just the two of them; Miles was still busy with the Fawleys.
She over-acted being taken aback. Her eyes were bloodshot and her speech was deliberate; for the first time, Gavin felt more dislike than intimidation.
‘I’m sorry. I was only—’
‘Asking. Yeah,’ he said, as Howard and Maureen swayed, arm in arm.
‘I’d like to see you settled down. You and Kay seemed good together.’
‘Yeah, well, I like my freedom,’ said Gavin. ‘I don’t know many happily married couples.’
Samantha had drunk too much to feel the full force of the dig, but she had the impression that one had been made.
‘Marriages are always a mystery to outsiders,’ she said carefully. ‘Nobody can ever really know except the two people involved. So you shouldn’t judge, Gavin.’
‘Thanks for the insight,’ he said, and irritated past endurance he set down his empty beer can and headed towards the cloakroom.
Samantha watched him leave, sure that she had had the best of the encounter, and turned her attention to her mother-in-law, whom she could see through a gap in the crowd, watching Howard and Maureen sing. Samantha relished Shirley’s anger, which was expressed in the tightest, coldest smile she had worn all evening. Howard and Maureen had performed together many a time over the years; Howard loved to sing, and Maureen had once performed backing vocals for a local skiffle band. When the song finished, Shirley clapped her hands together once; she might have been summoning a flunkey, and Samantha laughed out loud and moved along to the bar end of the table, which she was disappointed to find unmanned by the boy in the bow tie.
Andrew, Gaia and Sukhvinder were still convulsed in the kitchen. They laughed because of Howard and Maureen’s duet, and because they had finished two-thirds of the vodka, but mostly they laughed because they laughed, feeding off each other until they could barely stand.
The little window over the sink, propped ajar so that the kitchen did not become too steamy, rattled and clattered, and Fats’ head appeared through it.
‘Evening,’ he said. Evidently he had climbed onto something outside, because, with a noise of scraping and a heavy object falling over, more and more of him emerged through the window until he landed heavily on the draining board, knocking several glasses to the ground, where they shattered.
Sukhvinder walked straight out of the kitchen. Andrew knew immediately that he did not want Fats there. Only Gaia seemed unperturbed. Still giggling, she said, ‘There’s a door, you know.’
‘No shit?’ said Fats. ‘Where’s the drink?’
‘This is ours,’ said Gaia, cradling the vodka in her arms. ‘Andy nicked it. You’ll have to get your own.’
‘Not a problem,’ said Fats coolly, and he walked through the doors into the hall.
‘Need the loo…’ mumbled Gaia, and she stowed the vodka bottle back under the sink, and left the kitchen too.
Andrew followed. Sukhvinder had returned to the bar area, Gaia was disappearing into the bathroom, and Fats was leaning against the trestle table with a beer in one hand and a sandwich in the other.
‘Didn’t think you’d want to come to this,’ said Andrew.
‘I was invited, mate,’ said Fats. ‘It was on the invitation. Whole Wall family.’
‘Does Cubby know you’re here?’
‘Dunno,’ said Fats. ‘He’s in hiding. Didn’t get ol’ Barry’s seat after all. The whole social fabric’ll collapse now Cubby’s not holding it together. Fucking hell, that’s horrible,’ he added, spitting out a mouthful of sandwich. ‘Wanna fag?’
The hall was so noisy, and the guests so raucously drunk, that nobody seemed to care where Andrew went any more. When they got outside, they found Patricia Mollison, alone beside her sports car, looking up at the clear starry sky, smoking.
‘You can have one of these,’ she said, offering her packet, ‘if you want.’
After she had lit their cigarettes, she stood at her ease with one hand balled deep in her pocket. There was something about her that Andrew found intimidating; he could not even bring himself to glance at Fats, to gauge his reaction.
‘I’m Pat,’ she told them, after a little while. ‘Howard and Shirley’s daughter.’
‘Hi,’ said Andrew. ‘’M Andrew.’
‘Stuart,’ said Fats.
She did not seem to need to prolong conversation. Andrew felt it as a kind of compliment and tried to emulate her indifference. The silence was broken by footsteps and the sound of muffled girls’ voices.
Gaia was dragging Sukhvinder outside by the hand. She was laughing, and Andrew could tell that the full effect of the vodka was still intensifying inside her.
‘You,’ said Gaia, to Fats, ‘are really horrible to Sukhvinder.’
‘Stop it,’ said Sukhvinder, tugging against Gaia’s hand. ‘I’m serious — let me—’
‘He is!’ said Gaia breathlessly. ‘You are! Do you put stuff on her Facebook?’
‘
