Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Other People’s Marriages, Every Woman Knows a Secret, If My Father Loved Me, A Simple Life. Rosie Thomas
leave you to it,’ Vicky said, bearing away her six-year-old Mary who screamed at being removed from the fun. ‘See you later. I’ll be wearing my white thing. You can distinguish me from Moby Dick by my scarlet face.’
After she had gone Marcelle frowned. ‘Vicky’s not so good this time, is she?’
Janice was preoccupied. ‘She’ll be okay once it’s born. Look at the time. Toby, will you get out of here? Please God Andrew gets himself home soon.’
‘Shouldn’t bank on it,’ Marcelle said cheerfully.
Nina chose her clothes with care. She was not sure what Andrew had meant when he said that fancy dress was not obligatory. Did that mean that only half of the guests would be trailing about in white bedsheets?
In the end she opted for an asymmetric column of greenish silk wound about with pointed panels of sea-coloured chiffon. The dress had cost the earth, and when she first wore it Richard had remarked that it made her look like a Victorian medium rigged out for a seance.
And as she remembered it, the exact cadence of his voice came back to her as clearly as if he were standing at her shoulder.
She stood still for a moment and rested her face against the cold glass of her bathroom mirror. Then, when the spasm had passed, she managed to fix her attention on the application of paint to her eyes. At eight-thirty exactly her car arrived.
The Frosts’ house was at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac on the good, rural side of the town. From what was visible of the dark frame to the blazing windows, Nina registered that the house was large, pre-war, with a jumble of gables and tall chimneys. There were pumpkin lanterns grinning on the gateposts, and a bunch of silver helium balloons rattling and whipping in the wind. Nina’s high heels crunched on the gravel.
When the door was opened to her she had a momentary impression of a babel of noise, crashing music, and a horde of over-excited children running up and down the stairs. Something in a red suit, with horns and a tail, whisked out of her sight. She stopped dead, and then focused on the woman who had opened the door. She was dark, with well-defined eyes and a wide mouth, and was dressed in a good black frock that probably hid some excess weight. On her head she wore a wire-brimmed witch’s hat with the point tipsily drooping to one side. She looked hard at Nina, and then smiled.
‘You must be Andrew’s friend? Nina, isn’t it? Come on in, and welcome.’
The door opened hospitably wide. Once she was inside, Nina realized that Andrew’s wife had spoken in a pleasant, low voice. The noise wasn’t nearly as loud as it had at first seemed, and there were only four children visible. Nina understood that it was simply that she had undergone a week’s solitude, and was unused to any noise except her own thoughts.
‘I’m Janice,’ Janice said.
‘Nina Cort. Used to be Nina Strange, when Andrew knew me. I’m sorry I haven’t come in fancy dress.’
Janice waved her glass. ‘Your dress is beautiful. I only put this hat on at the last minute, and Andrew is defiantly wearing his penguin suit.’ Her mouth pouted in disparagement, but her eyes revealed her pride in him. ‘Come on, come with me and I’ll get you a drink and introduce you to everyone.’
Nina followed her down the hallway towards the back of the house. The man in the devil suit was sitting at the foot of the stairs, and he glanced up at her as she passed. His eyebrows rose in triangular points.
Andrew Frost kissed her in welcome, and gave her a glass of champagne. Nina drank it gratefully, quickly, and accepted another.
She was launched into a succession of conversations, but felt as if she was bobbing on a rip tide of unfamiliar faces. The effect was surreal, heightened by the fact that some of the faces were ghoulishly made up, swaying above ghost costumes or witches’ robes, while others sprouted conventionally painted from cocktail dresses or naked and pink from the necks of dress shirts constricted by black ties. The man in the devil suit prowled the room, flicking his arrow-headed tail. A delectably pretty girl of about eighteen threaded through the crowd offering a tray of canapés and the devil man capered behind her, grinning.
Nina loved parties, but for a long time Richard had been there for her like a buoy to which she could hitch herself if she found she was drifting away too fast. Now she was cut loose, and the swirl of the current alarmed her.
The room was hot, and confusingly scented with a dozen different perfumes. There was a woman in a long white dress, majestically pregnant, and another, younger, in a shimmering outfit that exposed two-thirds of her creamy white breasts. There was a dark man with a beaky profile, two more men who talked about a golf tournament, a thin woman with a reflective expression who did not smile when Nina was introduced to her.
Nina finished her third glass of champagne. She had been talking very quickly, animatedly, moving her hands like fish and laughing too readily. She realized that she had been afraid of coming alone to this house of strangers. Now she was only afraid that she might be going to faint.
She wanted to hold on to someone. She wanted it so badly that her hands balled into fists.
She held up her head and walked slowly through the chattering groups. It was only a party, like a hundred others she had been to, perhaps a little rowdier because these people seemed to know each other so well. Grafton was a small place.
The kitchen was ahead of her, more brightly lit than the other rooms. There were people gathered in here too, only fewer of them. In the middle of them was Janice, without her hat, and another woman in an apron. They were laying out more food on a long table.
‘Can I help?’ Nina asked politely.
‘No, but come and talk,’ Janice answered at once. ‘Have you met Marcelle? This is Marcelle Wickham.’
The woman in the apron held out her hand and Nina shook it. It was small and warm and dry, like a child’s.
‘Hi. We saw you in the supermarket, Jan and I. Did she tell you?’
‘I’ve hardly had a chance to speak to her. I’m sorry, Nina. I’m just going to tell everyone that the food’s ready …’ Janice pushed her hair off her damp forehead with the back of her hand.
‘We wondered who you were,’ Marcelle explained.
Nina’s hands moved again. ‘Just me.’
‘Who, exactly?’ a man’s voice asked behind her.
‘Look after her for me, Darcy, will you?’ Janice begged as she hurried past. The man inclined his head obediently and passed a high stool to Nina. She sat down in the place that Vicky Ransome had occupied earlier.
‘I’m Darcy Clegg,’ the man said.
He was older than most of the Frosts’ other friends, perhaps in his early fifties. He had a well-fleshed, handsome face and grey eyes with heavy lids. He was wearing what looked like a Gaultier dinner jacket, conventionally and expensively cut except for a line of black fringing across the back and over the upper arms and breast, like a cowboy suit. He had a glass and his own bottle of whisky at one elbow.
‘That is a spectacular dress,’ Darcy Clegg drawled.
Nina liked men who noticed clothes, and bothered to comment on them.
‘How long have you been in Grafton?’ he asked.
Sitting upright, in the kitchen light, Nina sensed that the inquisition was about to begin.
She explained, as bloodlessly as she could, who she was and what she was doing. Darcy listened, turning his whisky glass round and round in his fingers, occasionally taking a long gulp. This new woman with her green eyes and extraordinary hair was interesting, although evidently as neurotic as hell. There was some strange, strong current emanating from her. Her fingers kept moving as if she wanted to grab hold of something. Darcy wondered what she would be like in bed. One of those hot-skinned, clawing women who emitted throaty cries. Nothing like Hannah.
‘And has