She sank into her chair and looked at Max across the candles.
‘Lovely’.
He indicated the menu.
Take a look at that. Have what you want. Have lobster’.
She smiled at him. He wore a pale suit and a strong blue shirt and he looked, Vivien thought, very distinguished. It was always a pleasure to see a man who looked after himself.
‘I don’t like lobster, Max’.
He smiled back.
‘Nor you do’.
‘What else don’t I like?’
He closed his eyes. ‘Let me think—’
‘Green peppers,’ Vivien said. ‘Rhubarb. Coriander’. He opened his eyes. ‘Battenberg cake’. ‘Battenberg cake?’ ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You don’t even know what it is—’
‘I do,’ Max said. ‘Pink and yellow squares. I bought you some once, at a motorway place, on the way up to Scotland. You threw it out of the car window’.
Vivien smiled delightedly.
‘You made that up’.
‘Never. I remember it as if it was yesterday. I’ve ordered champagne’. ‘Champagne!’
‘Why not? We’re celebrating, aren’t we?’ She turned her head a little and looked at him coquettishly.
‘Are we? What are we celebrating?’ He winked.
‘A little – rapprochement, Vivi’. Oh,’ she said, ‘is that what this is?’ A waiter put a small metal champagne bucket on the table between them. ‘Goodness—’
‘When did you last drink champagne?’ ‘Can’t remember’.
‘Well, it’s time you did. It’s time you lived again a little,
Vivi’.
The waiter poured champagne slowly into a tall, thin glass flute and set it ceremoniously in front of Vivien. ‘I bet he gives you champagne,’ Rosa had said, waving Vivi off from the sofa, in her tracksuit. ‘I bet you get the works tonight’.
Max raised his glass.
‘To—’ he said, and stopped.
Vivien waited. ‘To Eliot,’ Max said.
‘Of course,’ Vivien said, a fraction too eagerly. She raised her glass, too, and touched Max’s with it. ‘To Eliot’.
‘What about this Ro?’
Vivien made a small face.
‘Well, you have to remember that what suits an Australian beach wouldn’t suit Richmond’.
‘Come on,’ Max said, ‘this isn’t like you. Come on, Vivi’.
Vivien looked up.
‘I’ve never spoken to her’.
‘Nor me’.
‘She’s learning to be a Buddhist’. ‘A Buddhist,’ Max said. ‘Oh please’. ‘But she surfs and drinks beer—’ ‘All you could ask, really’. ‘Now, Max—’
‘We’ll let it go, shall we,’ Max said. ‘For now?’
‘We?’
‘Yes, we. He’s our son, remember’. Vivien took a small sip of her champagne. ‘And the diving?’
‘My feeling is,’ Max said, ‘to let that go for now too. If he’s still doing it, and only it, when he’s thirty, we’ll fly out and give him a rocket’.
‘Aren’t you going to see him before he’s thirty?’
Max looked straight at her.
‘Any time you’re ready, we’ll go out and see him’.
Vivien smiled at her champagne glass.
‘Oh’.
‘Say the word,’ Max said. Vivien leaned back in her chair. She said, looking away across the restaurant, ‘What happened to the air hostess?’ ‘She went back to her airline’.
‘And,’ Vivien said, feeling a small and happy surge of confidence, ‘you didn’t replace her?’
‘Oh, I tried,’ Max said, ‘I tried like anything’. ‘Should I know about this?’ He put his head on one side.
‘Only if you want to be very bored. As bored as I got. What are you going to eat?’
‘Guess’.
He looked down at the menu. ‘Avocado and red mullet’. ‘There,’ she said, ‘you haven’t forgotten’. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t’.
‘And you’ll have wild mushrooms and guinea fowl’.
‘Or duck’.
‘Oh yes, duck. I haven’t cooked a duck for four years’. Max glanced at her over the menu. ‘We should rectify that’.
‘I cook girls’ food now,’ Vivien said. ‘Fish and salads and pasta. Rosa’s on a diet’. ‘I hope you aren’t joining her’.
‘Well, I thought of it—’
‘Don’t,’ Max said, ‘you don’t need to. You’re—’ He stopped and grinned. Then he said, ‘What was I going to say, Vivi?’
‘I have no idea’.
‘What did you hope I’d say?’ ‘Stop it,’ Vivien said. ‘But you like it’. She lifted her chin. ‘Not any more’.
‘We’ll see’.
‘No, we won’t’. Max leaned forward.
He said, ‘Actually I am going to say something’.
‘Oh?’
‘I was going to say it later, but I think I’ll say it now’. He put the menu down and leaned towards Vivien across the table.
‘We had a good time last week, didn’t we?’
‘Yes—’
‘And you aren’t exactly miserable now—’ ‘Not exactly’.
‘Look,’ Max said, ‘look, Vivi. Things have changed, haven’t they? I’ve had a bit of freedom, you’ve had a bit of time to sort yourself out, Eliot’s grown up and gone—’ He paused and looked at her. ‘I was just wondering, Vivi, if you’d let me try again?’
While she was in the shower, Ruth played Mozart. It was a recording of Don Giovanni, and she turned it up very loud, so that she could hear it above the water, and the music and the water could combine in a way that would be briefly overwhelming and stop her thinking. Her mother had once said to her, when she was about fourteen, that it didn’t do to think too much, that you could think yourself out of being able to cope with ordinary life, which Ruth had then considered to be her mother’s excuse for ceaseless practical activity. She now thought her mother’s theory had possibly a certain truth to it, and that her mother’s passion for organisation and committees and busyness had been a way of dealing with not being able to use her capacities to the full. It was a case, perhaps, of accommodating yourself to what was permitted, as long as – crucial, this – you didn’t start raging against whoever did the permitting in the first place and why they’d got the power.
Ruth turned off the shower and stepped out into the bathroom and a wall of singing. She’d keep it that loud, she thought, until somebody from a neighbouring flat either complained or played something she hated at equal volume. She picked up a towel and wound herself into it, like a sarong, then went barefoot across the smooth, pale wood floor of her sitting room to her desk. She bent over her computer. There would be nothing in her inbox, just as there were no messages on her answerphone, no texts on her mobile. Apart from work, there’d been a sudden cessation of all communication, as if someone had shut a soundproof door on a party.
There was one new message on her email. She sat down in her bath towel and clicked her mouse.
The message was from Laura.
‘Dear Ruth,’ it said. ‘Just ring him!’
Ruth looked up at the ceiling high above her and closed her eyes. There was a lump in her throat.