‘I can’t hear the planes,’ I say.
‘You want to try living here,’ she says.
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Do you live locally?’ I can still feel Erica’s eyes on me.
‘Just down the road.’
‘This side of the runway?’
‘Just.’
‘I like the planes,’ I say, leaning back in my seat.
She directs her tired gaze at Erica, whose cheeks, I notice, are tinged pink.
‘He does,’ she goes on, for Erica’s benefit, ‘he wants to try living here.’
‘Yes,’ I say, so that she looks at me again. ‘I do. I do want to try living here.’
‘It’s no fun when you’re tossing and turning and a great big bloody jumbo jet goes over,’ she says, her hands planted assertively on her hips.
‘Well, I beg to differ,’ I say, just about able to remember Susan Ashton. Her Golf GTI. Hatton Cross Tube station car park.
The waitress shrugs as a way of bringing the subject to a close and asks if we have finished with our starters.
Erica is looking around the room. Anywhere but at me, I suspect. I follow her gaze. We are the youngest people in, by some way. Most of the other diners are couples. Golfers and their wives. Golfers and their husbands. The acoustics are such that you can hear conversations from other tables quite clearly even though no one is speaking especially loudly. You try to distinguish one table’s chat from another, as if angling a boom mic from one group of diners to the next, but find you can’t. You watch one white-haired man’s lips move and realise the voice you can hear is that of a retired headmistress on the other side of the room.
The waitresses, meanwhile, are wheeling a trolley towards the table in the far corner. On it are two plates, each covered with a domed silver lid with a small knob on top for a handle. They deposit the plates on the table in front of an elderly couple, and then, with practised ease, lift the lids in perfect synchrony with a flourish that comprises a girlish swing of the hips with the slightest genuflection like a half-curtsey. The elderly couple do not react; they’ve seen it all before. They’ve been coming here for years and now barely have the energy to lift their cutlery. For the waitresses the reveal is clearly a tiresome routine, one they yearn to leave behind, but it goes with the territory. If they had a contract, it would be written in.
The trolley is wheeled back into the kitchen and I swivel to look at Erica. She turns at the same time and our eyes meet for an awkward moment. I look down and my gaze snags on her amber pendant. She has large breasts. The clingy material of her pale-blue top wraps itself around one of them like a promise. I have to tear my eyes away.
‘Are you married?’ she asks suddenly.
‘Kind of.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘She died,’ I say. ‘She’s dead. Or she’s enjoying eternal life, depending on what you believe.’
At that moment the two waitresses arrive at our table with their trolley. On it are two plates covered with the same silver domed lids. The girl with the ponytail and cheekbones places mine in front of me while the other waitress, a middle-aged woman with short, dyed blonde hair, serves Erica. Then they each delicately grasp the nipple-like handles and their eyes meet. On a signal invisible to us they swing, bend and lift in one fluid movement. All it lacks is someone to say ‘Ta-da!’ in an ironic tone of voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Erica as the waitresses withdraw, and she sits forward to communicate sincerity.
I look back at her and don’t know what to say.
‘Who does work there?’ I ask eventually.
‘Where?’ she says, taking my non sequitur as a sign that she may start to eat.
‘In the Pyramid.’
‘Mortgage people. Business and personal banking. Smile.co.uk. Computer banking, training. All sorts. Why are you so interested? Are you a bank robber?’ she asks before closing her lips around a piece of salmon caught on the end of her fork.
‘No, more of a grave robber. You know, like Howard Carter.’
‘Howard who?’
‘Never mind. The Pyramid offers the promise of eternal life. I’m interested in that.’
‘Who isn’t?’ she says, tipping wine into her mouth.
‘I have a particular interest in it,’ I say.
There’s a pause before she apologises again and then there’s a further pause while we both eat.
I see that she has finished.
‘Shall we get out of here?’ I say.
‘I thought you had to write a review.’
‘I’ve seen enough.’
We cause a bit of a stir by paying on the way out. The staff handle our sudden desire to leave with tact and aplomb; it’s among the remaining diners that we detect the lightest of tuts and softest of glares.
‘A short walk?’ I suggest, heading away from the car park down Ringway Road. I watch the little houses on our right. The waitress with the ponytail will return to one of them later. She will down a glass of vodka, neat, then strip to her underwear and crash out.
On the left is a small layby where before 9/11 you could park to watch and listen to the planes thundering overhead. The landing lights loom over the fence on our left, burning in the darkness, casting a gauze of yellowish sparkles into the night sky above the road. I take hold of Erica’s arms and pull her towards me. I place my lips on hers. At first she neither yields nor resists, then she softens, but I feel nothing. I move my head to one side, while still holding her close to me. In the sky above the Moss Nook Industrial Area on the north side of the road, twin white lights can be seen growing steadily larger and brighter. At that distance they will have passed over the Pyramid and be approaching Cheadle Royal. Erica tries to say something, but her mouth is pressed against my shoulder, her voice muffled. I can hear the plane now. It’s a medium-sized passenger aircraft, a 737 or an Airbus 320. I can feel Erica squirming beneath me, trying to get free. The plane flies overhead, its deafening roar filling my ears. I turn my head to watch it overfly the landing lights and I release my hold on Erica.
From the layby you can’t quite see touchdown, but you can hear it. The sudden exhilarating explosion of reverse thrust. The application of speedbrakes. The squeal of rubber on tarmac.
I look down. Erica is straightening her clothes. She seems upset.
‘I’ll take you home,’ I say and turn and lead the way back towards the restaurant.
Several cars remain in the car park as we leave it, turning left to go back the way we came. The streets are quiet, splashed with pools of orange light. In the car neither of us speaks. When I look to the left to check for traffic, I see her face reflecting the glow of the city in the night.
As we approach Northenden I think about taking a short detour to Marie Louise Gardens and driving from Dene Road West into Mersey Road by going straight across Palatine Road without stopping. At this time of night there would be very few cars on Palatine Road. We would be unlucky to be hit. I stop at the lights at the end of Church Road. Right for Deane Road West, straight on for Kenworthy Lane. Either or.
The light changes to green. I sit there undecided. Erica’s eyes are on me; she’s wondering why I don’t move forward. Eventually, as the lights are changing back, I do.
On Kenworthy Lane I stop outside the little house where I had picked her up at the start of the evening. She gets out without a word, then bends down to look back in before closing the door. I turn towards her, but her eyes are hard to make out, the wrap top and its contents lost in shadow.
‘Goodnight,’ I offer, my eye drawn by the amber pendant, which swings clear.