The Other Passenger by Louise Candlish

Author:Louise Candlish [Candlish, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471184536
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2020-06-24T23:00:00+00:00

26

24–26 December 2019

If I’d been anywhere else but the Armstrong household over Christmas I might not have been able to compose myself, but Clare’s parents, Rod and Audrey, were a balm for my inflamed pride, my animal wounds. Like their Georgian apartment in Edinburgh’s New Town, they were elegant and patrician: there was little chance of a raised voice here, much less a raised fist.

The four hours’ kip I got on the train helped. Clare had booked first class and it was comfortable enough for me to rest properly, even if she did toe me a couple of times from the seat opposite to try to jolt me from snoring.

‘Three whole days without clients,’ she told her parents, luxuriating in the first fireside drink of Christmas Eve. The tree was hung with dozens of wooden figures from The Nutcracker, all with movable joints and golden chains. ‘I turned my out-of-office on last night.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t die of heartbreak,’ Audrey said. She couldn’t have known, of course, that her de facto son-in-law did have reason to pine – for his young, married lover, with whom he was unlikely to be able to connect over the Christmas break. As Clare talked about the freefalling London property market and an asking-price offer on a house in Blackheath she was hoping to receive on Friday, I realized how out of touch I’d become with her work news. I knew more about the lettings arm.

‘What happened to your hand?’ Audrey asked me.

‘He burned it on the coffee machine at work yesterday,’ Clare said. ‘He didn’t even notice it till this morning.’

‘I did,’ I corrected her, ‘I just hadn’t bothered bandaging it. I had to run out to meet people for drinks.’

‘Enough drinks to kill the pain, presumably,’ Rod said. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘It did when I woke up, but I’m maxed out on paracetamol now, so I can’t feel a thing.’ The same went for the bruising to my collarbone caused by a savage headbutt from Kit. I wondered if I’d marked him in our squalid little tussle.

‘Careful about mixing the painkillers with the booze,’ Rod warned, but he needn’t have worried: I intended Christmas to be an exercise in moderation, right down to the pleasing economy of the single call I would make to my family on Christmas morning (never more than a few feet from an Armstrong, I would not be making one to Melia). On Monday night, I’d resented the lack of interest shown in me by Gretchen’s young colleague, but now I relished sharing as little of myself as I could get away with, concentrating gratefully on my hosts. I could tell Clare was pleased with me. In the weeks since our argument after that unpleasant last drink with Kit and Melia, she’d not sulked – that was not her style – but I’d been aware of a withdrawal on various counts: physical affection, humour, the benefit of the doubt. In no position to object, I’d lain low and we’d co-existed peacefully enough.

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