jeans, but maybe not the denim jacket. And shoes – flip-flops, or sandals, they suggested, as long as I painted my toes. ‘Don’t wear those old trainers,’ Ailsa said, and then laughed. ‘As if!’ I replied. She gave me a lipstick she didn’t use any more and on the doorstep, joked: ‘Nothing to frighten the horses.’ For all her attempts to seem light-hearted, I got the impression she was deadly serious. Appearances, I told myself, matter when you are married to a man like Tom.
On Saturday, the activity started shortly after lunch. Two women turned up in a blue Berlingo van and offloaded polythene-wrapped trays and Tupperware. Ailsa went out in the car and shortly afterwards Delilah arrived on foot, her arms full of flowers. Tom opened the door and a little while later I heard them in the back garden together. She was asking him where he wanted pots. ‘You better ask the guv’nor,’ he answered. ‘You wuss,’ she said and it struck me how relaxed they sounded, how his voice was loose; how she spoke on the gurgle of a laugh.
I felt a growing agitation, a tightening of nerves, over the course of the day. When it was time to get ready, I thought again about Ailsa’s bossiness over my outfit. Was she fearful I’d embarrass her? Or had she, in a kind way, anticipated my stress and tried to ease it? I put on the top, and the jeans, and applied purple varnish to my toe nails from Faith’s box of make-up, but I lost confidence in the flip-flops. Nobody wants to see a middle-aged woman’s feet, even when they are daubed with plum. At the last minute, I tried out Ailsa’s lipstick, but I wiped it off and lay down on my bed, overcome by a memory of the last time I had put on so much make-up, feeling it creep into my thoughts.
I stayed there for a couple of hours – Maudie curled up next to me – listening to the music, the bass thumping through the brickwork, the chatter slipping through the cracks in the windows, until eventually I gave myself a talking-to. Ailsa would be hurt if I didn’t attend. A party was an enormous undertaking at the best of times, let alone when your marriage was in trouble. I owed it to her to at least show my face.
Two people were leaving as I arrived, the door opening, a blast of light and noise behind, and his arm around her shoulders, tripping down the steps towards me, the swish of silk, the click of heels, laughter around the corner.
A woman in a black trouser suit held the door open and a man stepped forwards, holding a tray bearing glasses of prosecco. I took one, and the door closed behind me.
The house was dark and yet bright, lights flashed, candles flickered, shadows looming. Vibrations shuddered through the floor; there was a sharp, disorienting smell of spiced orange. The kitchen was a throng of bodies, backs of heads, flicking hair, limbs and heels, voices and laughter.
I turned into the sitting room, joining a crush of people – a few of whom I recognised, including several of the women from the pub quiz, and Sue and Andrew Dawson, Ailsa’s neighbours on the other side. I smiled but they didn’t respond; I’m invisible to them, or at least they pretend I am – which I suppose has its plus points (they’ve never complained about my clutter). It was loud, a wall of voices and music, the occasional shriek. I stayed by the door, touching the wood behind me with the tips of my fingers. It felt damp. I could stay here for a little while, and then creep back to the safety of my own house. It was too crowded for Ailsa to know if I had come or not. ‘What a squeeze!’ I imagined myself telling her the following day. ‘Such fun. I had a ball!’
A tray passed and I took a canapé – mushroom? No, fish! – and stood there, smiling as if I were having a lovely conversation with myself. I nodded my head and clicked my fingers a bit to the music. Hits from the 1980s; I recognised some of the playlist from my own student days.
People were dancing at the other end of the room, and I edged along the wall to get a better view. Two women in jeans and tiny tops were camping it up, trying to involve Bea