domestic animal – a cow, say – that had wandered onto that land.
I knew Tom and I hadn’t warmed to each other. But I didn’t like the thought of him talking about me. Who wants to be thought of as a waif – a thin, shoeless ragamuffin? Or a stray – cow or dog or otherwise? Well, I was anything but. I had my own house, thank you very much. And, even if I were a waif and a stray, I’d like to know what long ranks I was joining. Who else had she ‘collected’? And who was he to dismiss what I assume were nothing other than unlikely friendships? It said more about his contempt for Ailsa than it did about me.
I almost didn’t go up to the house at 8 p.m. In the end, hunger won out. I had only had that one sandwich all day; even the promised cup of tea had never materialised. These days, I am very well aware that I irritate Ailsa. ‘Stop fussing,’ she said to me this morning, when I asked if I could bring her a piece of toast. But in my opinion it’s better to bombard one’s guest with offers of nourishment than to neglect them.
The low murmur of voices reached me as I climbed the steps; a burst of laughter, the chink of glass on stone. A bird, clucking, flew low across the lawn. It was still light, but the house was lit up and fairy lights were strung over the bushes. Bea, Melissa and the other teenage girl were in the kitchen – I could see them through the window at the table on their phones – but everyone else was outside on the terrace, around the fire pit. Gary and Rose were next to each other on the bench, opposite Delilah and Tom on wooden chairs. Max and Ferg were crouched between them, poking sticks at the smouldering logs. Ailsa was closest to me, on one of the deckchairs, lower than the others, and at a necessarily backwards recline.
I hesitated at the top of the steps. I hadn’t realised a change of costume was in order. The women were in dresses, both men in brightly patterned shirts. Ailsa was wearing a neon pink cotton kaftan. It was tighter than her usual decorative sacks.
She startled when she saw me standing in the shadows. ‘Not Maudie,’ she said – too quickly. ‘She’s not smelly.’
‘I like Maudie,’ Rose said. ‘We’re talking about someone else’s dog.’
‘The farmer’s,’ Delilah said.
Tom smirked.
‘How’s life in the pigsty?’ he said.
‘The piggery,’ Ailsa corrected.
‘That’s what I meant.’ He stood up and dragged another chair across from the table. ‘Tutoring go OK?’
‘Very good,’ I said, sitting down in the chair and nodding my thanks.
Gary looked up from his paper. ‘I hope Ferg acquitted himself.’
‘He certainly did.’
Tom let out a mannered groan. ‘I expect he showed Max up.’
Max, sitting on his hands, hunched forwards. I resisted the temptation to stroke his head. He threw his stick in the fire, and watched it burn.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘They were both equally focused.’
Tom poured a glass of champagne from a bottle on the ground, and handed it to me, balanced on the palm of his hand. ‘There we go, my dear,’ he said, putting on a posh voice and bowing obsequiously. ‘Thank you,’ I said, trying to match his tone, but getting the intonation wrong and sounding like a schoolmarm putting a naughty child in their place. Ailsa caught my eye and winked.
Tom sat back down on the chair next to Delilah. Her dress had a long slit and she was rubbing the side of her thigh as if massaging the muscle.
One of the logs sent off a spark.
Rose apologised to me for their presence, ‘for gate-crashing’. They were heading down to Cornwall the following day, where Gary and the kids were to spend the summer. She herself could only take two weeks out of the office. ‘Muggins here has to work,’ she said, ‘to keep the rest of my family in the manner to which they are accustomed.’
Ailsa asked a few questions about the Cornish house. Had they knocked through to make a bigger kitchen in the end? What had they decided about the barn? Planning permission was OK for that, was it? Even in an area of outstanding natural beauty?
‘How lovely,’ she kept saying, even when Rose had just mentioned the need for a new roof. ‘How love-ly.’
Gary was sitting on the other end of the bench