‘Mary, this is Kay,’ said Miles. ‘Kay, this is Mary Fairbrother.’
‘Oh,’ said Kay, thrown; she had thought that it would only be the four of them. ‘Yes, hello.’
Gavin, who could tell that Mary had not meant to drop in on a dinner party and was on the point of walking straight back out again, patted the sofa beside him; Mary sat down with a weak smile. He was overjoyed to see her. Here was his buffer; even Samantha must realize that her particular brand of prurience would be inappropriate in front of a bereaved woman; plus, the constrictive symmetry of a foursome had been broken up.
‘How are you?’ he said quietly. ‘I was going to give you a ring, actually… there’ve been developments with the insurance…’
‘Haven’t we got any nibbles, Sam?’ asked Miles.
Samantha walked from the room, seething at Miles. The smell of scorched meat met her as she opened the kitchen door.
‘Oh shit, shit, shit…’
She had completely forgotten the casserole, which had dried out. Desiccated chunks of meat and vegetables sat, forlorn survivors of the catastrophe, on the singed bottom of the pot. Samantha sloshed in wine and stock, chiselling the adhering bits off the pan with her spoon, stirring vigorously, sweating in the heat. Miles’ high-pitched laugh rang out from the sitting room. Samantha put on long-stemmed broccoli to steam, drained her glass of wine, ripped open a bag of tortilla chips and a tub of hummus, and upended them into bowls.
Mary and Gavin were still conversing quietly on the sofa when she returned to the sitting room, while Miles was showing Kay a framed aerial photograph of Pagford, and giving her a lesson in the town’s history. Samantha set down the bowls on the coffee table, poured herself another drink and settled into the armchair, making no effort to join either conversation. It was awfully uncomfortable to have Mary there; with her grief hanging so heavily around her she might as well have walked in trailing a shroud. Surely, though, she would leave before dinner.
Gavin was determined that Mary should stay. As they discussed the latest developments in their ongoing battle with the insurance company, he felt much more relaxed and in control than he usually did in Miles and Samantha’s presence. Nobody was chipping away at him, or patronizing him, and Miles was absolving him temporarily of all responsibility for Kay.
‘…and just here, just out of sight,’ Miles was saying, pointing to a spot two inches past the frame of the picture, ‘you’ve got Sweetlove House, the Fawley place. Big Queen Anne manor house, dormers, stone quoins… stunning, you should visit, it’s open to the public on Sundays in the summer. Important family locally, the Fawleys.’
‘Stone quoins?’ ‘Important family, locally?’ God, you are an arse, Miles.
Samantha hoisted herself out of her armchair and returned to the kitchen. Though the casserole was watery, the burnt flavour dominated. The broccoli was flaccid and tasteless; the mashed potato cool and dry. Past caring, she decanted it all into dishes and slammed it down on the circular dining-room table.
‘Dinner’s ready!’ she called at the sitting-room door.
‘Oh, I must go,’ said Mary, jumping up. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘No, no, no!’ said Gavin, in a tone that Kay had never heard before: kindly and cajoling. ‘It’ll do you good to eat — kids’ll be all right for an hour.’
Miles added his support and Mary looked uncertainly towards Samantha, who was forced to add her voice to theirs, then dashed back through into the dining room to lay another setting.
She invited Mary to sit between Gavin and Miles, because placing her next to a woman seemed to emphasize her husband’s absence. Kay and Miles had moved on to discussing social work.
‘I don’t envy you,’ he said, serving Kay a large ladle full of casserole; Samantha could see black, scorched flecks in the sauce spreading across the white plate. ‘Bloody difficult job.’
‘Well, we’re perennially under-resourced,’ said Kay, ‘but it can be satisfying, especially when you can feel you’re making a difference.’
And she thought of the Weedons. Terri’s urine sample had tested negative at the clinic yesterday and Robbie had had a full week in nursery. The recollection cheered her, counterbalancing her slight irritation that Gavin’s attention was still focused entirely on Mary; that he was doing nothing to help ease her conversation with his friends.
‘You’ve got a daughter, haven’t you, Kay?’
‘That’s right: Gaia. She’s sixteen.’
‘Same age as Lexie; we should get them together,’ said Miles.