Rosie Thomas - Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection - Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life

Janice Frost and Marcelle Wickham were the first to notice Nina. They were in the big supermarket and in the distance, as if the perspective lines of the shelves held her vividly spotlit just before the vanishing point, they saw a tall, thin woman in a long black skirt. Her red hair was pinned up in an untidy nest on the top of her head and her mouth was painted the same colour, over-bright in her white face.

‘Who is that?’ Janice wondered. Janice knew everybody interesting in town, at least by sight.

Marcelle looked. As they watched, the woman moved away with her empty wire basket and disappeared.

Marcelle lifted a giant box of detergent into her trolley and squared it up alongside the cereals and tetrapacks of apple juice.

‘Haven’t a clue. Some visitor, I suppose. Crazy hair.’

They worked their way methodically up one side of the aisle and down the other, and then up and down the succeeding avenues as they always did, but they didn’t catch sight of the red-haired woman again.

Nina paid for her purchases, sandwiching them precisely on the conveyor belt between two metal bars labelled ‘Next Customer Please’, all the time disliking the frugal appearance of the single portions of meat, vegetables and fish. She loved to cook, but could find no pleasure in it as a solitary pursuit.

She had no car in Grafton. She had sold the Alfa Romeo that Richard had bought her, along with his Bentley coupé, in the grief-fuelled rejection of their possessions immediately after his death. To take her back into the centre of town there was a round-nosed shuttle bus that reminded her of a child’s toy. She squeezed inside it with the pensioners and young mothers with their folding pushchairs, and balanced her light load of shopping against her hip. The bus swung out of the car park immediately in front of Janice and Marcelle in Janice’s Volvo.

The next person to see Nina was Andrew Frost, Janice’s husband. Andrew did recognize her.

Nina had been working. She was painting the face of a tiger peering out of the leaves of a jungle, part of an alphabet book. For a long morning she had been able to lose herself behind the creature’s striped mask and in the green depths of the foliage. She worked steadily, loading the tip of her tiny brush with points of gold and emerald and jade, but then she looked up and saw blue sky over her head.

It was time to eat lunch, but she could find no enthusiasm for preparing even the simplest meal. Instead she took a bright red jacket off a peg and went out to walk on the green.

Andrew had left his offices intending to go to an organ recital in the cathedral. He was walking over the grass towards the west porch, pleased with the prospect of an hour’s music and freedom from meetings and telephones. He saw a red-haired woman in a crimson jacket crossing diagonally in front of him, and knew at once who she was. She had worn a costume in the same shade of red to play Beatrice.

He quickened his pace to intercept her.

‘It’s Nina Strange, isn’t it?’

Nina stopped. She turned to see a square man with thinning fair hair, a man in a suit who carried a raincoat even though the sky was blue.

‘You don’t remember me,’ the man said equably.

A thread of recollection snagged in her head.

‘Yes, yes I do. Wait a minute …’

‘“When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.”’

‘Oh, God, I do remember! It’s Andrew, isn’t it?’

‘Andrew Frost. Benedick to your elegant Beatrice.’

‘Don’t try to remind me of how long ago.’ Nina held out her hand and shook his. She was laughing and her face was suddenly bright. She remembered the plump teenaged boy who had played opposite her in the joint Shakespeare production of their respective grammar schools.

‘You were very good. I was dreadful,’ he said.

‘No, you weren’t. And your calves were excellent in Elizabethan stockings.’

Andrew beamed at her. ‘I was going to hear some music, but why don’t we go across to the Eagle instead? Have you had lunch?’

Nina hesitated.

Small fragments of memory were rapidly coalescing and strengthening, swimming into focus in front of her like the images in a developing Polaroid snapshot. She could see the boy now, inside this grown man, and as she looked harder at him the boy’s features grew more pronounced until it seemed that it was the man who was the memory. The sight of the young face brought back to her the long hours of rehearsal in the school hall smelling of floor polish and musty costumes, the miniature and tearful dramas of adolescence, the voices of teachers and friends. It was disorientating to find herself standing on the green again, almost within the shade of the mulberry tree, but clothed in the body of a middle-aged woman instead of a schoolgirl’s.

‘I can’t. I really shouldn’t today. I’m working. I’ve only come out for five minutes’ fresh air.’

It was three days since she had spoken more than half a dozen words to anyone. She didn’t want the questions to start in the saloon bar of the Eagle. She was afraid that if she was given a chance she would let too many words come pouring out, and she didn’t want Andrew Frost to hear them.

‘Working? Are you staying in Grafton?’ He was standing with one hand in his pocket, the other hitching his raincoat over his shoulder. He was friendly and relaxed, no more than naturally curious.

‘I … I’ve come back to live. I bought a house, in Dean’s Row.’

Andrew pursed his mouth in a soundless whistle, ‘Did you, now?’

Nina asked quickly, ‘What about you? Did you follow on from Benedick and find your Beatrice?’ There was a gold wedding ring on his finger.

‘I married Janice Bell. Do you remember her?’ Nina shook her head.

‘Perhaps she came after your time.’

Nina wanted to move on. It was reassuring to have made this small contact, but she needed a space to adjust Andrew Frost in her mind. She pointed to the cathedral porch.

‘You can still get into the recital. Perhaps we can have lunch together another day?’

Andrew took a business card out of his wallet and wrote on the reverse. When he handed it to her she read the inscription ‘Frost Ransome, Consulting Engineers’, with Andrew’s name beneath followed by a string of letters. Nina pursed her lips to whistle too, mimicking his gesture.

The boy’s face was swallowed up again now by the fleshier man’s.

‘We’re having a party, at home, on Thursday evening. That’s the address. It’s Hallowe’en,’ he added, as if some explanation was necessary.

‘So it is.’

‘Spook costumes are not obligatory. But come, won’t you? Janice’ll like to meet you.’

‘Thank you. I’m not sure … I’ll try.’

‘Who do you know in Grafton these days?’ He was looking at her with his head on one side.

‘Not a soul.’

‘Then you must come. No argument.’ He reached out and shook her hand, concluding a deal. ‘Thursday.’

Nina would have prevaricated, but he was already walking away towards the cathedral. She went back to her desk and bent over her tiger painting with renewed attention.

She had not intended to go. She had thought that when Thursday came she would telephone Andrew’s office and leave an apology with his secretary. But when the morning and half the afternoon passed and she had still not made the call, she recognized with surprise that her real intention must be the opposite.

Nina finished her painting and carefully masked it with an overlay before placing it with the others in a drawer of the plan chest. She was pleased with the work she had done so far. The new studio suited her, and she was making faster progress than she and the publishers had estimated. She would go to the Frosts’ party, because there was no reason for not doing so. Quickly, as if to forestall her own second thoughts, she looked in the telephone directory for the number of a minicab company and ordered a car to collect her at eight-thirty.