Valent was proving an incredible success. Seth was so supportive, the audience so warm. The director was so appreciative of how she’d impacted on the play. The designer thought she looked so enchanting in his clothes, after the run he was going to give them to her.
She and Valent were staying in his house in St John’s Wood, when one evening Bonny raised the subject of Pauline’s clothes. They were still upstairs in a boxroom, which Bonny wanted to redecorate.
‘Why don’t you send them to a charity shop, Valent, or at least give them to Etta Bancroft or Joyce Painswick? I’m sure they’d appreciate them. They might have to be let out for Painswick, but she’s so deft with her needle. You’ve got to move on, Valent, it’s the only way you’ll achieve closure.’
When he had looked mutinous, she had stripped off and begged him to make love to her on the lounge shag-pile. For the first time in their relationship, Valent had not been able to get it up. No amount of licking or sucking had worked. Bonny, saying it must be stress-related, insisted Valent consult a sex therapist.
Later, leaving a sleeping Bonny in bed, Valent had crept upstairs to the boxroom, where hung a row of dresses, crimplene and polyester, easy to iron, easy to mock. In the chest of drawers he found Pauline’s handbag, black plastic – he’d never been able to cure her frugality – which the police had returned to him after the crash, which he’d never been able to bear to open.
Inside was a jumble of pens, biros, bus tickets, pressed powder, which had disintegrated, a mirror smashed by the impact, bright red lipstick, without which she felt naked, a purse in which he found a fiver, two pound coins, her credit card and a picture of himself, Ryan and the children. Above all, her perfume in a blue and silver spray, Rive Gauche – she had pronounced it ‘gorsh’ – was still fresh as Valent breathed it in.
The poem that had most moved him in Etta’s anthology was the sonnet in which Milton described the anguish of dreaming his dead wife was alive. It ended: ‘I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.’
Last night, Valent had dreamt of Pauline. Whatever was going to become of him?
The following day he escaped to Willowwood. There he discovered the loveliest May evening, with the cow parsley foaming up to wash the weeping tresses of the willows and hawthorn blossom exploding in white grenades all over the valley. Having taken a large whisky on to the terrace, comforted slightly by the beauty of his garden and the heady smell of pale pink clematis and pastel roses swarming over wall and yew hedge, he spent an hour on his BlackBerry checking his companies around the world.
Glancing through the twilight, he noticed Etta’s white and mossy green Polo had stopped outside his gates and hoped she might be coming to see him. Then he saw her leap out and put her arm round a passing Mrs Malmesbury.
At the same time Priceless jumped out and was romping up and down the middle of the road with Oxford the foxhound. They nearly got run over by a returning Debbie, who always made a ghastly din with her horn as she came round each of the five bends in the road on her way back to the village.
Picking up his binoculars, Valent realized Mrs Malmesbury was wiping her eyes, poor old duck – or goose. Then he saw Niall arrive, also putting an arm round Mrs Malmesbury and leading her home. He could hear her geese honking their welcome.
Curious to know what had happened, Valent rang Etta and suggested he wander down with a bottle for a quick drink.
Below huge indigo clouds, a scarlet sun on the horizon had turned the white hawthorn blossom pink as candy floss. Cow parsley caressed and soothed his arthritic hands as he walked down to the bungalow. He could hear the strains of Mahler’s First Symphony.
‘Gosh – a whole bottle of whisky,’ cried Etta. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine.’
In fact he looked dreadfully tired. She wondered if sardines on toast would spread to two.
‘What’s oop with Mrs Malmesbury?’ asked Valent.
‘Oh, poor darling.’ Etta turned down the CD player. ‘A fox got her goose, Spotty, on Thursday. Mrs M nipped out to the bank at lunchtime and it was such a lovely day she didn’t shut up the geese. They were sunning themselves on the grass when