of Shirley's commemorative plates as if they were in the Cabinet Room in Downing Street, as though one bit of tittle-tattle on a Parish Council website constituted an organized campaign, as though any of it mattered.
Consciously and defiantly, Samantha withdrew her attention from the lot of them. She fixed her eyes on the window and the clear evening sky beyond, and she thought about Jake, the muscular boy in Libby's favourite band. At lunchtime today, Samantha had gone out for sandwiches, and brought back a music magazine in which Jake and his bandmates were interviewed. There were lots of pictures.
'It's for Libby,' Samantha had told the girl who helped her in the shop.
'Wow, look at that. I wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating toast,' replied Carly, pointing at Jake, naked from the waist up, his head thrown back to reveal that thick strong neck. 'Oh, but he's only twenty-one, look. I'm not a cradle-snatcher.'
Carly was twenty-six. Samantha did not care to subtract Jake's age from her own. She had eaten her sandwich and read the interview, and studied all the pictures. Jake with his hands on a bar above his head, biceps swelling under a black T-shirt; Jake with his white shirt open, abdominal muscles chiselled above the loose waistband of his jeans.
Samantha drank Howard's wine and stared out at the sky above the black privet hedge, which was a delicate shade of rose pink; the precise shade her nipples had been before they had been darkened and distended by pregnancy and breast-feeding. She imagined herself nineteen to Jake's twenty-one, slender-waisted again, taut curves in the right places, and a strong flat stomach of her own, fitting comfortably into her white, size ten shorts. She vividly recalled how it felt to sit on a young man's lap in those shorts, with the heat and roughness of sun-warmed denim under her bare thighs, and big hands around her lithe waist. She imagined Jake's breath on her neck; she imagined turning to look into the blue eyes, close to the high cheekbones and that firm, carved mouth ...
'... at the church hall, and we're getting it catered by Bucknoles,' said Howard. 'We've invited everyone: Aubrey and Julia - everyone. With luck it will be a double celebration, you on the council, me, another year young ...'
Samantha felt tipsy and randy. When were they going to eat? She realized that Shirley had left the room, hopefully to put food on the table.
The telephone rang at Samantha's elbow, and she jumped. Before any of them could move, Shirley had bustled back in. She had one hand in a flowery oven glove, and picked up the receiver with the other.
'Double-two-five-nine?' sang Shirley on a rising inflection. 'Oh ... hello, Ruth, dear!'
Howard, Miles and Maureen became rigidly attentive. Shirley turned to look at her husband with intensity, as if she were transmitting Ruth's voice through her eyes into her husband's mind.
'Yes,' fluted Shirley. 'Yes ...'
Samantha, sitting closest to the receiver, could hear the other woman's voice but not make out the words.
'Oh, really ...?'
Maureen's mouth was hanging open again; she was like an ancient baby bird, or perhaps a pterodactyl, hungering for regurgitated news.
'Yes, dear, I see ... oh, that shouldn't be a problem ... no, no, I'll explain to Howard. No, no trouble at all.'
Shirley's small hazel eyes had not wavered from Howard's big, popping blue ones.
'Ruth, dear,' said Shirley, 'Ruth, I don't want to worry you, but have you been on the council website today? ... Well ... it's not very nice, but I think you ought to know ... somebody's posted something nasty about Simon ... well, I think you'd better read it for yourself, I wouldn't want to ... all right, dear. All right. See you Wednesday, I hope. Yes. Bye bye.'
Shirley replaced the receiver.
'She didn't know,' Miles stated.
Shirley shook her head.
'Why was she calling?'
'Her son,' Shirley told Howard. 'Your new potboy. He's got a peanut allergy.'
'Very handy, in a delicatessen,' said Howard.
'She wanted to ask whether you could store a needleful of adrenalin in the fridge for him, just in case,' said Shirley.
Maureen sniffed.
'They've all got allergies these days, children.'
Shirley's ungloved hand was still clutching the receiver. She was subconsciously hoping to feel tremors down the line from Hilltop House.
Part Three Chapter V
V
Ruth stood alone in her lamp-lit sitting room, continuing to grip the telephone she had just replaced in its cradle.
Hilltop House was small and compact. It was always easy to tell the location of each of the