The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher

Author:Susan Fletcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Union Square & Co.

22

Friday-Night Daiquiris at Alphonso’s Place

As Florrie wheels herself home, it’s Gretchen who comes to mind. Gretchen Jones, a woman she’s never met. How had she been, as she’d traveled on the Bakerloo line? Tall, surely. In a long summer dress that accentuated her waist, perhaps; the sort of woman who could be encircled by a single arm, or carried over a threshold without risk of embarrassment, without the carrier sweating profusely or slipping a disc. And Florrie wonders, then, how Stanhope might envisage Victor Plumley. That is, if Stanhope is indeed envisaging her former husband, or trying to—which he probably isn’t. But if he did envisage, what might he see? It makes her smile—because no one could ever envisage such a wonderful man. So many times during their marriage she’d looked up to see him—crossing a lawn or laughing at a party or meticulously drying between his toes after a hot bath—and smiled in amazement at her own good fortune. She’d think, There he is.

Having returned from Africa, she’d been wary of outstaying her welcome in Kew Green. After all, there can’t have been many young husbands who’d be content with a third (plump, distracted) person living in their marital home. But Jeremy chided her for this. “We’re delighted to have you. You regale us with stories, you cook an excellent coq au vin and you put a spring in my beloved’s step. In fact, we may forbid you from ever leaving. Isn’t that right, Pinks?”

“Absolutely. Do as you’re told, Butters.”

How much Jeremy knew about Florrie’s past, Florrie was never quite sure. Pinky would never have told him the truth of what had happened to his wife’s friend’s hands—but she must have told him something because of his kindness to her, and the fact he didn’t pry. But, equally, Florrie felt that Jeremy genuinely liked her company. It can’t have been false delight when she taught him how to bat in the garden; he can’t have been pretending when he laughed so hard at her joke about the African village that came out to observe her, squatting in a bush, that he sprayed sauvignon blanc through his nose and had to lie down on the chaise longue. “You’re doing us both good,” he assured her in the kitchen. “Pinky can find things … hard.”

What was hard for Pinky—for both of the Tophams—was trying to conceive. Eighteen months of marriage and no children. “The fault,” Pinky sniffed, “must be mine.” So this, too, was a reason why the Tophams seemed so grateful for the duck à l’orange set down on the table, the evenings of Scrabble, Florrie’s tales of chasing away that dog from the steps of L’Hôtel Petit Palais, a broom in her hand, at which Pinky hooted, hands in the air. Jeremy Topham’s eyes would shine with love when he saw his wife laugh like that.

Nor could it have been forced kindness when Jeremy came home one evening, set his briefcase on the sideboard and informed Florrie that there was a secretarial post at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

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