I smile. ‘’Fraid not.’

‘Where’d you go, then, for your two months of self-actualisation? Bali? Bali seems to be a popular one.’

I try not to laugh. ‘Actually, I went to the Yorkshire Dales. Where my family lives. That’s where I’m going, when I finish up here – I’m going to move in with my grandma, hopefully, and B—’ I stop myself just before I mention Bee’s plans to buy a house in Daredale for her and Jaime. Bee has yet to hand her notice in. In fact, I suspect she is hovering outside the door, ready to come in as soon as I come out.

‘Huh.’ Rebecca narrows her eyes. ‘Smart.’

I blush, and she gives me a knowing look.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Really. Thank you for everything.’

She waves me off. ‘Give me your absolute everything for the next two months, if you really want to thank me,’ she says. ‘Oh – and tell that ex-boyfriend of yours to stop hanging around when he should be client-side.’

‘Ethan?’

‘He’s been mooning around your desk since seven this morning.’

I wince, and she grins.

‘I told him you were on a project in Milton Keynes. ’Spect he’s trying to find the right address for sending a box of chocolates as we speak.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, rather wearily. ‘He’s trying to make amends, I think. Only … it’s something chocolates can’t fix.’

There’s a quiet knock on the door, and Ceci pokes her head around it. I freeze. We look at each other, and I watch the colour creep up from her neck to her cheeks.

‘Great to have you back, Leena,’ she says nervously. ‘So sorry to disturb you. I’ll … I’ll come back.’

I watch her scuttle away. My heart pounds, half loathing, half adrenaline. Some deeply instinctual part of myself wanted to claw at her face, but now she’s retreating I’m glad I didn’t let her see how thoroughly I loathe her. Let her scurry away from me for the next two months on those absurdly long legs of hers. She doesn’t deserve a moment’s thought.

‘Whatever you did to earn her respect at last, it definitely worked,’ Rebecca comments, flicking through a pile of papers on her desk.

‘I think she met my grandmother,’ I say. ‘That’s probably what did it.’

36

Eileen

For the first time in over a decade, I go to Betsy’s house.

At first we handle Betsy leaving Cliff the way we’ve always handled these sorts of things.

‘Tea?’ she asks, and then she says she got scones in for us as a treat, and we talk about the progress we’re making with doing up Marian’s house.

But then I think of Martha crying on the sofa, telling me how unprepared she felt to be a mother. Bee confessing how hard it’s been for her to find a man. Fitz letting me write him to-do lists and teach him to cook. How honest and open my young London friends were.

‘How are you, Betsy?’ I say. ‘Now that Cliff’s gone? I can’t imagine how you must feel.’

She looks a little startled, glancing at me as she stirs the milk into the teas. Then, rather cautiously, she says, ‘I’m … bearing up.’

I wait, taking the tea tray from her and making my way into her front room. I can’t have been here since, oh, the late nineties? She’s still got the same patterned carpet, but the armchairs are new, two matching soft pink ones that I can’t imagine Cliff would have liked much.

‘The hardest part is the guilt,’ she says eventually, settling into an armchair. ‘I can’t shake the feeling I ought to be looking after him.’ She gives a little smile, reaching for the jam for her scone. ‘And I keep thinking of how horrified my mother and father would be, if they’d seen me screaming at my husband out there with everybody watching.’

‘I for one wish I’d been there. I would have cheered you on,’ I say fervently.

She smiles. ‘Well. Our Leena did a good job stepping in for you.’

We eat our scones and sip our tea.

‘We ought to have done more,’ I say. ‘For one another, I mean. I should have done an awful lot more to help you leave Cliff, and I’m very, very sorry I didn’t.’

Betsy blinks for a moment, then sets her scone down. ‘I should have told you to give Wade the boot thirty years ago.’

I consider the point. It probably would have made a difference, that. I’d always rather thought Betsy would say I ought to stay with my husband through thick and thin, the way you’re supposed to.

‘We’ve got a few years left in us,’ Betsy says after a moment. ‘Let’s promise to meddle in each other’s business as much as we see fit from now on, shall we, dear?’

‘Let’s,’ I say, as she picks up her scone again. ‘More tea?’

*

The following week I bump into Arnold on my way home from painting at Marian’s; Leena was here at the weekend, and we got almost all the downstairs rooms painted, so I was only finishing up edges today. I’m dressed in my shabbiest painting clothes, threadbare old trousers and a T-shirt that shows rather more of my upper arms than I’d like anybody to see.

Arnold gives me a stiff nod. ‘Ey up,’ he says. ‘How are you, Eileen?’

‘Oh, fine, thank you,’ I say. Things have been peculiar ever since I got home. In fact, aside from the day Marian left, I’ve hardly seen him. After years of Arnold popping up in my kitchen window and calling out to me over the hedge, I can’t help wondering whether this sudden absence is significant.

‘Good, good. Well, I’ll be on my way.’

‘Arnold,’ I say, catching his arm. ‘I wanted to say thank you. Leena said what a help you were, while I was away in London.’

‘Tell you about the car, did she?’ Arnold says, looking down at my hand on his arm. He’s in a short-sleeved shirt and his skin is warm beneath my palm.

‘The car?’

‘Oh.’ His eyes flick to the dent in the hedge I’ve been wondering about for weeks. ‘Nothing. It was no trouble. She’s a good’un, that Leena of yours.’

‘She is,’ I say, smiling. ‘Still. Thank you.’

He moves away, back towards his front gate. ‘See you when I see you,’ he says, and I frown, because that seems to be hardly at all, these days.

‘Will you come in?’ I call, as he walks away. ‘For a cup of tea?’

‘Not today.’ He doesn’t even turn; he’s through his gate and gone before I can clock that he’s turned me down.

This is irritating. As much as Arnold and I have always been at each other’s throats, I’ve always thought … I’ve always had the impression … Well, I never invited him for tea, but I knew that if I did, he’d come. Let’s put it that way.

Only now it seems something’s changed.

I narrow my eyes at his house. It’s clear that whatever is wrong, Arnold’s not going to talk to me about it any time soon.

Sometimes, with obstinate people like Arnold, you have no choice but to force their hand.

*

‘What have you done?’ Arnold roars through the kitchen window.