Friday Nights Read online

  ‘I’ve been offered my first gig.’

  Lindsay pushed a sandwich towards her.

  ‘But I thought you already—’

  ‘That was just warm-ups. This is the real deal. My night.’

  Lindsay looked straight at her.

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Can you do it?’

  Jules peeled back the plastic film from the sandwich.

  ‘Hope so.’

  ‘How many hours?’

  ‘Four or five—’

  ‘Four or five hours of music?’

  Jules took a bite.

  ‘I’ll have to work on it.’

  ‘Well done,’ Lindsay said again. She looked Jules up and down and grinned. ‘He booked you, even looking like that.’

  ‘He booked me because I’m good,’ Jules said. She didn’t glance at Lindsay. ‘I can talk signal-to-noise ratio with the best of them.’

  ‘Why can’t you get a flat, then?’

  ‘Don’t want a flat.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t want the hassle.’

  ‘What about the hassle of never knowing where you’re going to sleep?’

  ‘I do know where I’m going to sleep.’

  ‘Do you?’

  Jules carefully extracted the tomato slices from her sandwich and dropped them into the discarded wrapping.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Tonight, for example?’

  Jules didn’t look up.

  ‘Yours.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’m out tonight. It’s Friday.’

  Jules licked the mayonnaise off her fingers.

  ‘I know. I’m coming.’

  ‘I thought you were—’

  ‘Not tonight,’ Jules said with emphasis. ‘I may have been offered a gig, but I haven’t been offered a Friday.’

  ‘Don’t you want to sleep?’

  ‘I’ll sleep tomorrow.’ She put down the half-chewed sandwich and looked at Lindsay. ‘Don’t you want me to come?’

  ‘It’s at Blaise’s.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I thought Blaise—’

  ‘Blaise is OK. I’m cool with Blaise. Who got Eleanor to ask her in the first place, anyway?’

  Lindsay opened her own sandwich packet and neatly extracted half the contents.

  ‘I never thought you’d come, you know. When I asked Eleanor, when Noah was a baby, when I asked her if I could bring you, I never thought you’d come.’

  Jules didn’t care for these kind of conversations. She knew of old where they would lead, with Lindsay expecting her to say something soft, and explain what it was about having a sister, or knowing Eleanor or liking Paula’s Toby that kept her coming back, however irregularly. She also didn’t want to talk about the time when Noah was a baby, when she’d been living nominally with her mother, but actually nowhere much, and she’d been so excited and terrified and out of it most of the time that she couldn’t go near Noah, she daren’t, in case, like the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, she cast some terrible blight on him without meaning to, which only she would know about and would never be able to share. And she would always know that, when Lindsay had been widowed at that same period in her life, she’d been no support, no help, no consolation. In fact, she couldn’t yet look at those memories. She couldn’t look at them because they made her flinch and cringe, not just because of what had happened, but because of the way she’d behaved. There had been no excuse for behaviour like that, and never would be. And Lindsay, although for years looking as if a dimension had been sucked out of her, had never reproached her, had never required her to imagine what it was like to lose your young husband, let alone in such a terrible way. All Lindsay had done was to redouble her efforts to stop Jules, if she possibly could, from leaving her as well.

  Jules picked at some chicken stuck in her teeth with a fingernail.

  ‘I’m coming tonight, Lin.’

  Lindsay looked down at her sandwich.

  ‘Then you’ll meet Paula’s new man.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘She looks amazing,’ Lindsay said. ‘She’s so happy.’

  ‘That OK by you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be—’

  Jules regarded her.

  ‘You know.’

  Lindsay put her sandwich down.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lindsay said. ‘I’m fine on my own. I’m fine.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t turn a man down.’

  ‘Not the right one.’

  Jules gave a little snort.

  ‘If they’re hot, they’re hopeless. And if they’re not hot, who cares?’

  ‘We wouldn’t want the same ones,’ Lindsay said primly.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And I like seeing Paula happy. I like seeing her all lit up like this, new shoes, haircut—’

  Jules reached across the table and helped herself to Lindsay’s second sandwich.

  ‘You don’t like tuna,’ Lindsay said.

  Jules bit into the sandwich and said through it, ‘What about Toby?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘What about Toby and this new man?’

  Lindsay gave Jules a quick smile.

  ‘He’s a season-ticket holder at Stamford Bridge.’

  Jules shrugged.

  ‘Toby coming tonight?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Lindsay said, and then added in a rush, ‘unless they, unless Paula—’

  ‘Wants to play happy families.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘You’re soft,’ Jules said to Lindsay. ‘You’re just soft.’

  Lindsay began to gather up the sandwich wrappings.

  ‘I’ve got to go back to work.’

  ‘I’ll get Noah from school.’

  ‘Jules—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I,’ Lindsay said, her brow creasing, ‘can I trust you to do that?’

  ‘OK,’ Jules said, staring elaborately past her, ‘don’t.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  Jules stood up.

  ‘Why don’t you come and check on me?’

  Lindsay said nothing. She gave a resigned small shrug and picked up her bag.

  ‘Trouble is,’ Jules said, looking down on her, ‘you don’t trust anyone, do you?’

  Lindsay stayed silent, holding her bag on her knee.

  ‘Not me, not any man who’s ever been anywhere near you, not Noah to stay safe, not even the girlfriends. No one. Do you?’

  Lindsay stood up. She gave Jules a quick fierce glance.

  ‘No,’ she said, and then she turned and began to walk away.

  Outside Noah’s school, Jules established herself in a prime position by the gates so he couldn’t possibly miss her. There were a handful of mothers, some with babies in buggies, and a man who might have been a father or just might have been a creep. In the bag slung over her shoulder, Jules had a packet of chocolate beans for Noah and a CD of some of her music. She planned to put this on for him when they got back to Lindsay’s flat, and dance with him. Noah liked dancing. He was a silent little boy, an observer, not a participator, his teacher said, but he liked dancing. When Jules played her music he would quietly stop doing whatever he was doing and come and dance. He danced like a lot of people in the club danced, with that look of inward concentration that makes a partner irrelevant, and he would dance as long as the music was playing.

  He came out of school on the edge of his group as usual, not exactly on his own, but not talking to anyone either. Jules crouched down so that her face would be level with his.

  ‘Hi, Noah.’

  He looked at her. He gave a small smile.

  ‘We did music,’ Noah said.

  ‘I’ve got more,’ Jules said. ‘I’ve got more music for you.’

  She straightened up and took his hand.

  ‘We’re going to play music. And dance.’

  ‘OK,’ No
ah said. He was wearing a small backpack, shaped like a panda, and it had pulled his anorak away from his neck so that it looked particularly vulnerable. Jules gave his clothes a rough twitch. He didn’t object. Jules couldn’t remember him ever objecting to anything much. Not like Toby. Toby had always had a mind of his own.

  She began to walk along the pavement, Noah’s hand in hers. He was so used to having his hand held that he never tried to pull away. He didn’t look up at her, but occasionally he said something so that she had to stoop to hear him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘She’s coming,’ Jules said. ‘She’s at work. She’s coming.’

  And then a bit further on, ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got a recorder.’

  ‘Can you play it?’

  Pause.

  ‘Noah?’

  Silence.

  ‘Noah?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can you play your recorder?’

  Pause.

  ‘No.’

  She looked down at him. Funny little boy. He had Lindsay’s narrow features and his father’s thick dark hair. There was a picture of his father in Noah’s bedroom, in the uniform of a naval rating. He’d thought he wanted to be a sailor but it had only lasted two years. Then he joined the construction industry. He’d been married a year when it happened. He didn’t even know he was going to be a father. Fathers! Jules tightened her grip on Noah’s hand.

  ‘I’ve got chocolate for you,’ Jules said. ‘And we’re going to do dancing.’

  Chapter Six

  Lucas had made a small pile in the hall of things he was taking round to his new studio. Lucas’s old studio, up near the top of the house under the girls’ bedroom, made disorder seem a description of tidiness, but this pile was very neat: a portfolio of boards and paper, scrupulously tied, a trim canvas roll of brushes, an unfamiliar (newly purchased?) plastic toolbox full of paint tubes graded by colour. Looking at the pile gave Karen the distinct impression that both its presence and its nature were deeply deliberate on Lucas’s part.

  He came down the stairs, apparently absorbed in texting something on his mobile phone. He was wearing familiar old black jeans and an unfamiliar russet linen shirt and he had tied his hair back, something he had stopped doing in the last few years. Having it tied back became him, showed off his excellent bone structure, and even that, to Karen, standing below him in her work tracksuit with a bulging work bag over her right shoulder, was a signal. He didn’t exactly look as if he was going out on a date, but he certainly looked as if he was removing himself from familial responsibility.

  Karen indicated the pile on the floor.

  ‘Very organized.’

  Lucas finished his text. Then he raised his eyes very slowly and looked at Karen.

  ‘I wish you’d come and see it.’

  ‘Luke—’

  ‘What?’

  She let her bag slide off her shoulder and hit the floor with a thud.

  ‘To be absolutely frank with you, I’d just stand there and think, This is costing six hundred and fifty quid a month, which means earning almost twice that to pay for it. So it’s better I stay away just now.’

  ‘Just now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Until I have justified it by selling something I’ve painted in it?’

  Karen looked down.

  ‘Well – yes.’

  Lucas walked past her.

  ‘At least that’s clear.’

  She put a hand out and caught clumsily at his sleeve.

  ‘Luke, I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be a mean-spirited killjoy. But I can’t work any harder, I can’t—’

  He moved very slightly so that his sleeve slipped from her hand.

  ‘Kay, babe, we’ve had this conversation.’ He bent and picked up the portfolio. He said, ‘You used to believe in me.’

  She looked directly at the wall ahead of her.

  ‘That,’ she said in as neutral a voice as she could manage, ‘is a deeply unfair thing to say. I still believe in you.’

  Lucas said nothing. He wedged the roll of brushes under the arm that held the portfolio, and picked up the toolbox.

  ‘I haven’t changed,’ Karen said. ‘I still believe in your talent. You are a very good painter and a truly wonderful father. But something in you has changed. You’ve sort of – sort of stopped trying.’

  Lucas indicated the front door with his head.

  ‘Could you? I’m a bit burdened—’

  She reached past him and unlatched the door. He put a foot through to lever it open, and then he turned to look at her.

  ‘Not trying,’ he said. ‘Not trying. So what do you think this new studio is all about?’ He continued to regard her for a few seconds and then he said, ‘The girls are fed and Rosie’s done her homework. All yours. Have fun,’ and then he went out into the street and the door swung shut behind him.

  Karen turned. Poppy was standing on the stairs wearing a party dress of two winters ago, so short now it barely covered her knickers, and embellished with a feather boa and glitter knee socks.

  ‘OK,’ Karen said.

  Poppy leaned forward. On closer inspection, she was also wearing eye shadow and large pearl earrings.

  ‘I think,’ Poppy said, ‘you’d better change.’

  ‘Come early,’ Blaise had said to Karen. ‘Eleanor’s always on time and I need you to be, too. I need the room full. Well, not full, but not empty either. Not just me.’

  It was strange, she thought, looking round her sitting room, how unpractised she felt at having people in it. She was so used to public entertaining, to the rituals of restaurants and bars and boardrooms, but doing it at home, where she bore sole responsibility and had to fulfil every role that she normally paid other people to do, was faintly alarming. She had grown used to having just the girls there – though she had been careful to visit all their houses before she surrendered her own – but tonight was different, tonight she felt more on display and it was disconcerting.

  Her sitting room was normally her leisure place. The deep sofas, the large television, the top-of-the-range music system were all there to provide the alternative to work that she endeavoured to design as conscientiously as she devised everything else in her life. There were even, upstairs in her wardrobe, clothes purchased specifically to be leisured in, to convey somehow that this space and time were as valuable and nourishing to her as the work times were. She had asked Eleanor once if, while she was working, she had filled her house at weekends with friends and colleagues and Eleanor had paused and then said, with a shade too much emphasis, ‘Heavens, no,’ and then she had said, ‘But of course, I am not very interested in houses. And you, I think, are.’

  Blaise considered that she was interested in her house, at least.

  ‘Not really,’ Karen said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you like it as a place to have, but not, fully, to live in.’

  ‘Is this another jibe at the single life?’

  ‘I expect so,’ Karen said, ‘but houses aren’t just settings, you know.’

  Perhaps, Blaise thought, looking round now at her calm, pale room, they were more manifestations than settings. Perhaps people like her, who consciously chose linen blinds and restful pictures, wanted to complement themselves, rather than strive for something that they weren’t, but would like to be. Maybe the room was her, just as Karen’s more ethnic sitting room was her and Lindsay’s neat, pastel one was her and Eleanor’s bookish muddle was – oh, stop this, Blaise thought, stop analysing this. What’s different about tonight except that a man is coming?

  The letterbox banged a few times unevenly.

  Poppy shouted through it, ‘We’re here! We’re here!’

  Blaise went out to the hall and opened the door. Eleanor, Karen, Rosie and Poppy were outside, Karen holding a bottle and Poppy a large, slightly creased sheet of paper.

  She thrust it at Blaise. ‘
I did you a picture!’ Rosie stepped forward.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ she said confidingly, ‘it isn’t very good. Poppy can do much better than that.’

  ‘Are you coming like that?’ Lindsay asked.

  Jules didn’t even glance down at what she was wearing. She had taken off the pinstriped jacket while she was dancing with Noah, revealing a green-lace long-sleeved T-shirt under her minidress.

  She said defiantly, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Haven’t you got—’

  ‘No,’ Jules said, interrupting, ‘I haven’t got anything except a toothbrush. Try and like it that I’ve even got a toothbrush.’

  ‘OK,’ Lindsay said.

  She had put on her beige hooded coat over black trousers and a neat red sweater with a V-neck. Noah had on a tracksuit and his school anorak over his dinosaur pyjamas. When he was dancing with Jules, his cheeks had briefly pinkened, but they were pale again now. He stood by the door, obediently ready to go, clutching his panda backpack with his slippers in it.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lindsay said, ‘I’m a bit nervous.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘S’pose – s’pose I don’t like him –?’

  ‘Why does that matter? He’s Paula’s bloke, not yours.’

  ‘It drives a wedge. In friendships. If you don’t like someone’s partner. You know it does.’

  ‘Why don’t you think you’ll like him?’

  ‘I don’t. I just think, s’pose I—’

  ‘It’ll be worse,’ Jules said, ‘if you fancy him.’

  Lindsay looked shocked.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that!’

  Jules grinned. She picked up her jacket.

  ‘I’m only into fancying people,’ Jules said. ‘I don’t care about like.’

  Lindsay steered Noah out into the hall.

  ‘Stupid talk.’

  Noah said something.

  Lindsay stooped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I take my recorder?’ Noah said.

  Well, Eleanor thought, deep in one of Blaise’s armchairs, with a glass of wine in her hand and Mozart tastefully on the sound system, the stage is admirably set. Here we all are, even Jules, the candles are lit, the children are supplying an important element of unselfconsciousness – I think Noah may even be asleep – and we have had enough wine to embolden us and not so much as to make us careless. We are, I think, ready for all exhibits. The question is: is the poor exhibit, after this extraordinary build-up, ready for us?