house and children; he needed more than that. ‘Have you been talking to her about it?’
‘No, I most certainly have not. That doesn’t mean I don’t know how she must feel. Finish it, George, before it finishes you. It isn’t worth the grief.’ She stood up. ‘Now, I must go. I’ll leave you to think it over.’
He sat on after she had gone, staring into space, his work forgotten. His mother had made him feel more of a heel than ever Barbara could. He found himself looking at a future in which all the bright goals he had set himself receded from his grasp. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been aware of the risks, but whenever he thought of them he told himself he thrived on risks. Half the success of his business had been down to calculating the risks and then defying them. It had been a mixture of good judgement and luck. Was the balance of luck tipping away from him now? He picked up the phone and rang Virginia.
‘There’s going to be a reception at the town hall on Friday,’ George told Barbara that evening. ‘It’s to celebrate the success of the trip to Paris.’
‘So? You don’t expect me to go, do you?’ She didn’t want to go, to be the subject of whispers, derision. They all knew, they must do; the wife was always the last to find out. Why couldn’t he see that all she wanted to do was find a dark corner somewhere and hide?
‘Of course. What will everyone think if I turn up without my wife?’
‘Nothing, seeing as you nearly always do.’
Her eyes were bleak as winter, full of misery. He felt a stab of remorse. He had loved her once, had found her beautiful and funny and charming. Where had all that gone? ‘Don’t be silly. I’ve asked Mother to come at lunchtime and look after the children so that you can have your hair done and pamper yourself a bit. Buy a new dress.’ He bent to kiss her cheek. ‘Now, I’m off. I’ll be home about six.’
She watched him pick up his briefcase and leave the house, heard his car go, and had absolutely no intention of going to that reception.
It was Elizabeth who persuaded her to go. It was the last day of term and the children were being let out of school at midday. Alison had been loaded with pictures she had drawn which had been unpinned from the wall where they had been displayed for weeks; a red balloon on a string; a shoe bag stuffed with plimsolls and a cardigan which turned out not to be hers. Elizabeth arrived as she was piling everything on the kitchen table. While Barbara put the kettle on the gas stove, Elizabeth pulled Nick onto her lap and hugged him. He scrambled off again and ran into the garden.
‘I swear he grows every time I see him,’ she said, looking covertly at Barbara, busy setting out cups and saucers, taking milk from the refrigerator, fetching the tea caddy from the cupboard. There were great hollows under her eyes, and her lips, devoid of make-up, looked dry and pale. She moved with a kind of listlessness. Elizabeth’s thoughts went tumbling back through the years, back to that other misery, to the last time she had seen Fred, the misery and anger and the struggle that followed as she tried to bring George up alone. ‘You look as though you haven’t been sleeping,’ she said carefully.
‘No, I haven’t. It’s the heat, I expect.’ Her smile was a wry twist of the lips, no more. She put a cup of tea in front of her mother-in-law. ‘I don’t think I’ll go tonight.’
‘Why not?’
She couldn’t tell her the real reason, couldn’t be that disloyal, and besides, Elizabeth adored her son; she would see no wrong in him, would blame her daughter-in-law. Perhaps it was her fault, some inherent failure to give her husband what he wanted. She wasn’t beautiful enough, talented enough, socially outgoing enough, was probably a dreadful failure in bed; she had no way of knowing. ‘They are so false, these receptions,’ she said. ‘No one seems genuine, all trying to cultivate whoever will do them most good, finding fault with their opponents, talking about people behind their backs…’
‘If you’re there, they can’t talk about you behind your back, can they? They can’t begin to wonder why George Kennett is there without his wife.’
Barbara looked at her sharply. ‘Are they talking about