The Perfect Fit by Louise Kean

Author:Louise Kean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

SIX

Killing Love and Sex over Dinner

Children are screaming and swirling around my legs, grabbing hold of Adrian’s trousers as they spin past us to stop themselves toppling into the balustrades of the stairs or the large glass Philippe Starck thing in the hallway. Charlie, who doesn’t pay me any attention although we have met before, is chasing two very young girls in jeans and citrus-coloured T-shirts. The girls squeal and giggle and call out to each other.

‘Poppy!’

‘Gabriella!’

‘Poppy! Poppy!’

‘Gabriella!’

Sweet high voices and perfect diction, they could read the ten o’clock news–and now over to Poppy for a breaking story on the CIA in Afghanistan–and back to Gabriella for predictions of the chancellor’s third budget tomorrow, and incidentally, Gabriella, is it true that you are only five years and two months? Yes, yes it is, Poppy, and is it true you will be four in three weeks’ time? Yes, Gabriella, that’s right!

Clean curls bounce on their little shoulders, dancing and twirling, playing kiss chase and escaping from boys, splashing about in a perfect childhood. As they run off into the kitchen, hotly pursued by Charlie, I see a little red head and freckles peeking out from behind a stable door, but as we catch each other’s eyes, Dougal disappears. I grab behind me for Adrian’s hand, but he has already moved through into the sitting room.

My heels announce me on the wooden floor as I take three steps through the doorway, and everybody looks up in my direction with wide friendly eyes, but they all forget to smile. I shouldn’t have had sex with Adrian before we left. I feel like everybody knows, and it makes me a whore. Deidre will introduce me to her neighbours, perched on the edge of the sofa reeking of Amnesty International and back-garden rosemary, as ‘Sunny Weston, the whore who saved my son’.

Adrian has just sat down in the last available armchair in the corner of the room, and he pats its slightly worn purple arm for me to come and sit with him, but I don’t. Deidre flies out of the room as she hears an alarm buzzing angrily in the kitchen, mumbling back over her shoulder that Terence has popped out to Oddbins but will be back in minutes; he didn’t feel they had the right white.

There is one other armchair, and Cagney James is sitting in it. I quickly look away. Standing by the fireplace is a tall handsome man in an impeccable suit who looks totally familiar, but I can’t place him. I try not to appear frantic with nerves, but instinctively pull at the front of my dress to make sure it isn’t caught up in any rolls of fat. I always pull too hard, because there isn’t anywhere for the material to be stuck now. My dress is claret silk and knee length, simple and fitted, with a scoop neck and elbow-length sleeves. I am wearing chocolate brown Mary Janes, but no tights, because of the heat.

Christine and Peter Gloaming from next door introduce themselves with big smiles as the parents of Poppy and Gabriella.

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