Without hesitation, she shook her head and said, ‘No.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. When he hugged her she just stood there. He handed her the umbrella. Then he opened the front door and she stepped out into the puddled area.
‘I’ll phone you later,’ he said, as she shoved the umbrella open.
‘Okay.’
‘See you.’
Without turning as she started up the metal steps, she kissed her fingers and waggled them in the air.
*
In the early evening he took the Number 19 to Highbury and Islington. From his seat at the front of the top deck as it plied its way through the wet twilight, he tried Freddy again. He needed to pass on what Miller had said. Miller had said, first of all, that the mare had been assigned a mark of eighty by the handicapper, which he thought was a touch on the high side. ‘Shouldn’t stop her, though,’ he said. (And James was worried by that shouldn’t— he would very much have preferred won’t. He was planning to wager every penny he had left on her, and was attached to the fantasy that it was impossible that she would lose.) And then Miller said, ‘Listen, I don’t think you should be at Huntingdon tomorrow. Not your mate either.’
‘Oh?’ James said. ‘Why not?’
‘Looks like you weren’t expecting it to win that way.’
‘I see,’ James said. He wanted to be there when she won, however, so he said, ‘Is that necessary?’
There was a stubborn silence.
Then Miller said, ‘I think it is.’
‘You’re sure?’ James said.
‘I’m sure. So give Huntingdon a miss tomorrow. Okay?’
James needed to pass this on to Freddy. He also wanted to emphasise to him, not for the first time, the importance of putting the money on properly—meaning in small quantities throughout the London area. Not all in one place. And not on the Internet, that was very important. Freddy said he understood. When he had finished speaking to him, James pocketed his phone and stared at the blue perspective of Theobald’s Road.
He was on his way to a dinner party in Highbury Fields. It was in a small first-floor flat that had been done up like a large house, so that it felt like a doll’s house, a very expensive one, obsessive in its attention to detail. The hostess—an ex of his from long ago—was trying to live, and entertain, like her parents. Thus the ten diners were squeezed into the little living room, in which there was also—somehow—a table set for ten. When they sat down to eat, it was extremely hot. Faces shone with sweat in the candlelight, and people kept apologising for elbowing each other. Shoehorned in next to a man who used to be in the army and was now in insurance, and a woman whose face was vaguely familiar from somewhere, he was not properly engaged with the situation. He talked a lot without any interest in what he was saying or in what was being said to him. While the main course was being served, he manoeuvred his way out of his place and withdrew to the minuscule loo. On his own, it struck him that he was quite drunk. He made some excuse and left straight after dessert, and it was like a liberation to walk out into the fresh night air and unurban quiet of Highbury Fields. The old street lamps made pools of pale light in the wide darkness. And now that the day was done, now that all the last preparations for the ‘touch’ were in place, his mind was empty except for one insistent thing—
Is everything okay?
No.
Everything is not okay. Standing in Highbury Fields—he has stopped walking and is just standing there, listening unsoberly to the wind in the trees—he feels a terrible need for things to be okay. From where he is, he would be able to walk to her flat in twenty minutes. Less.
‘I’m in Highbury,’ he says. ‘I’ve just been to a dinner party. Is it okay if I come over?’
‘Of course,’ she says.
And now he is walking quickly towards Essex Road. The way she said Of course—that on its own has helped immensely. He is practically jogging towards Essex Road now, through the Islington streets and squares he used to know so well.
He finds her watching television with Summer. They watch television for an hour. Later, when they are in bed, he starts to talk about last night. She says, ‘I was upset because you didn’t say anything. That’s why I was upset.’
He says, ‘I didn’t say anything because I felt so bad.’
‘Well…’ She seems exasperated. ‘Say something! Maybe if you said something you wouldn’t feel so bad.’ He just stares at her. She touches his face. ‘I don’t care about what happened. I don’t care about that! If you don’t talk to me, though, if you don’t say anything, if you just go to sleep… How do you think that makes me feel?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘You’ve been feeling bad about it all day, haven’t you?’ He nods and she strokes his hair. ‘I’m sorry I was mean with you this morning. That wasn’t very nice of me.’
‘It’s okay. We had such a lovely time on Friday,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘Why was that so lovely and yesterday such a fucking disaster?’
She laughs. ‘I don’t know. Why?’
‘I don’t know either.’
‘You see, I didn’t even know that you thought that!’
‘Thought what?’
‘That yesterday was a fucking disaster.’
‘Of course it was.’
She shoves him playfully. ‘Well, how do I know you think that if you don’t say anything? I thought you thought everything was okay.’
‘No…’
‘That was the worst thing for me.’
‘I didn’t think that…’
‘Say something!’ She sits up and has a drink of water. Then she says, ‘Do you want some water?’
The way she says words like ‘water’. The way she meticulously enunciates the Ts in the middle of those words—it makes him want to kiss her. Why that? he wonders, shaking his head—he does not want any water. Why does that make me want to kiss her? Why does it matter why? Whatever. It just does. He pulls her towards him and kisses her.
5
Four o’clock on Monday morning and Simon Miller is up in the washed-out light of the laptop monitor. His face looks puffier in that light—his eyes peer out from over a whole series of seamed, sleepless pouches. Two-fingeredly he types in a password, thinking of last Wednesday night in the horse transport, pulled over in a shuttered Sussex lane with the hazards flashing. Then he had little Kelly Nicholls out of them poncey jodhpurs at last, though it weren’t easy, they were that tight… Logged in, he mouses his way towards the two o’clock at Huntingdon. And horses kept fartin of course. That’s one problem, having it off in a horse transport… The market for the two o’clock is now on the screen and still sleepily savouring the memory of Wednesday—precious memories! — he scrolls down looking for his horse.
She is hardly a proper outsider at all. The top price on offer is less than twenty to one. He scratches his head and wonders who has been forcing the price in. Officially only five people know about the touch. Himself. The owners. Piers. And Tom. Word will be out though. Owners always talk, or take young Tom. He were shaggin that scrawny thing, the vet’s assistant. He woulder told her. Probably fockin desperate to impress her, what with her being taller and intelligenter and posher than him. (None of which is that hard, mind.) He lights his second Marlboro of the day. He knows the markets. There is pressure on the price already. He’d be surprised if she was more than twelves with the firms in the morning.