chapter five
STUART, TEN YEARS EARLIER
She has that look about her. It’s clear as day, despite the neatly combed hair, the collared jacket, the little white dog at her feet. It’s only just gone midday. It’s Tuesday. She might want the world to think that that’s a glass of soda water on the table in front of her, or even a lemonade, but I know, and she knows, that it’s a vodka tonic. A double. I can see it in her eyes, the sad gleam of relief as the vodka diuses into her bloodstream. I can picture her, all morning, counting down the seconds, the minutes, the hours until the time turns from 11:59 to 12:00, from uncivilized, unthinkable morning drinking to being just like everyone else in this pub in the back streets of Hampstead. She drinks here instead of at home because then she’s not drinking alone. She’s drinking with other people who are drinking. The other people drinking here are not like her and she knows it, but still, it makes her feel more normal. Less like she has a problem. But she does have a problem. I know she has a problem, just by looking at her.
I lift my fresh pint from the bar and carry it toward her table.
“Nice dog,” I say. “Westie?”
She nods.
“How old?”
“Nearly a year.”
“Oh,” I say. “Still a baby, then. He’s being very good. Surprised he’s not
trying to drag you out of here.”
I regard the dog, my pint, the woman.
“Do you mind if I join you?” I say.
She looks horried, which is fair enough. I’m a strange man approaching her on a Tuesday lunchtime in her local pub. I see her eyes go from my pint to my
face to the door and back again.
“Why?”
“Because I thought you might prefer company to drinking alone?”
“I’m not drinking al—”
I cock my head to one side; my eyes go to her drink.
“I’m ne,” she says. “But thank you.”
I nod. “No worries,” I say. “I’ll be over there if you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” she says with the kind of pursed-lipped smile that was trained into her by parents who cared about appearances.
I take my pint to a table at the other side of the bar and scroll through my phone for a while. Within half an hour I see her at the bar, ordering another drink. Her back is tight and narrow through her smart jacket. I can see the tips of her shoulder blades. I see that her shoes are old-fashioned and scued. She is not a Hampstead yummy mummy, far from it, but she is not bad-looking.
Thirtyish. Well-spoken.
By 3 p.m. she is four vodkas down and unsteady on her feet. I see her check the time on her phone and head to the bar, where she orders herself a double espresso. She drinks it down in two gulps, gathers her dog, her bag, her coat, and leaves. I don’t follow her. I’ve got the size of her. She’s gone to collect a kid from school. She’ll eat mints or chew gum on the way. The mothers at the gate will talk about her. She’ll get home having probably picked up another coee on the way and tell her husband, her partner, whoever, that she and the dog had a wonderful walk on the Heath. I can guarantee she’ll be back here tomorrow.
And so will I.
