rented in Birmingham. Everyone – well, Jodi – had tried to push Karen and Bill together at uni. As if it was some stupid American sitcom where everyone had to pair off in the end. Almost Shakespearean, almost incestuous, as if there was no one else in the world but the Group. The blonde Swedish bird of Bill’s, she’d been sexy, if a bit older, but Callum hadn’t liked the cool appraising way her eyes passed over his face, the few times they’d met. And she’d been four inches taller than him. It wasn’t right, in a woman. And Karen had some fellas over the years, some builder or something, slumming it with manual labour. It had amused him and Mike to ask the guy his opinion about the tax system, see him stumble. The lecturer was smarter but wasn’t ageing well, already grey and cracked round the eyes, and you could tell Karen wanted something else. She wanted Mike, and she’d never get him. Callum had known before her that Mike was ending it. Poor bitch. Poor stupid bloody bitch.
It was maybe this that had made him follow Karen into the garden. He’d gone to the loo – Bill was in bed already – and when he stumbled back out Mike was passed out in the swing seat. Pathetic bastard. It was dark, a pitch-like dark you never got in London, and turning cold. Mike’s jumper was on the decking and without thinking he’d pulled it on, rubbing at his arms. It was soft and expensive, Mikey flaunting his cash again. And Karen, poor cow, had gone wandering across the lawn wringing her hands, pissed and sobbing. His heart broke for her and without really thinking he was lumbering after her, to hug her or share something, share their pain – Hey, Kar, I know how you feel, Mike’s a bastard, a bastard who always comes up smelling of roses no matter what he does, and my wife is up the duff with some German sperm and I’m obsolete. I have to pay women to fuck me.
And maybe the thought was there, that Karen was sad and desperate, and she’d had some shockers in the past, as they always liked to remind her in their bantz. Maybe that thought was there as he put his hand out to steady her, on the back of her neck, like a frightened horse. He didn’t remember what happened after that, not until he was lying on the sofa and everyone was shouting and Karen was screaming in the kitchen. But he had a feeling that the memories were there inside somewhere, like the bugs that scurry and run when you disturb a woodpile. And he didn’t want to see those bugs.
In the car the next day, going home. Jodi driving, by tacit agreement, as he was still surely over the limit. She was mad at him, he thought, for getting drunk again, but that happened so often it was hardly worth mentioning. No discussion about what had happened all the way home to Pimlico, a silent drive without even the radio on. Afraid to hear news bulletins. Man arrested on suspicion of rape after Bishopsdean party. Karen was sure it was Mike, positive. She’d been so drunk.
Mike was his friend. But Mike had shagged Karen, over and over, and got away with it, hurt her, hurt Ali, and all Callum had done was a silly misunderstanding. That was all. Reached out to hold Karen, and then she’d seemed to want him, but then she’d changed her mind and he’d just tried to make her be quiet and listen, understand what they both had to lose if she kept screaming. But she’d been so pissed she couldn’t tell one man from the other. And wasn’t that her fault too?
It was easy in the end. He kept waiting for Jodi to bring it up, tell him she knew something, but she never did, and neither did he, and they slid back into their lives, work and the baby and the house, so easily it was like dropping into a moving stream of cold clear water.
Chapter Thirty-Six
He talked. He talked so much, in a stream of words that sometimes made sense and sometimes didn’t, as if half the conversation was happening in his own head. ‘She was so, you know how she was. Flirting her ass off. That dress. Throwing herself all over Bill and, and I was so drunk, Al, and I just felt