Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
she wondered, under the armour plate of their aggression?
Mattie sighed and directed her attention back to whatever non-task Francis had set her between fumbles and phone calls. This was the theatre, that was the thing to remember. However marginally, she was involved in the magic world at last.
At the end of the third week, Josh came. Mattie opened the door to him, and Felix saw Julia’s face when she heard his voice. It was as though a soft light had been turned on under the skin of her face. It shone out of her eyes and glowed through her bones. The blurring of familiarity lifted for an instant, and Felix saw her as if she was a stranger again. She’s beautiful, he thought.
He went on calmly slicing the aubergines he had been preparing for their meal. Their rich colour made the backs of his hands look ashy by contrast.
‘You see?’ Julia whispered, to nobody. ‘I knew he would come.’ A moment later Josh stood in the kitchen doorway with his arm round Julia’s shoulder. He seemed to fill the space with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, although in reality he was no taller than Felix. Julia was laughing at something he had said to her in the hallway, gasping a little, as if she was short of breath.
‘Hi, there, Felix,’ Josh said easily. ‘What’s new with you?’
The kitchen was so tiny that Felix noticed the sun-bleached tips of his eyelashes. He looked down at the worktop and saw the dark moon of his own face reflected in the blade of the knife.
‘Hello. Nothing new.’ He sounded stiff, but Julia and Josh were too engrossed in each other to notice. Josh swung her round so that he could look at her.
‘I’ve come to take you out. Is that okay? Or have you got a date already?’
‘If I did, I’d stand him up for you. Shall I change?’
Julia had learned from Felix. Her clothes were simpler now, and she took more care with them. She was wearing a vivid green polo-neck jumper and tight black matador pants with flat black pumps. Jessie had lent her a pair of jet earrings that Julia coveted, and they swung when she turned her head.
Josh touched one of them with the tip of his finger. ‘Don’t change,’ he said softly.
Felix felt their intimacy like an electric charge. In the second’s silence he leaned against the sink, hating the scummy detritus of potato peelings, hating his own jealousy.
‘Let’s go, then,’ Julia said.
Felix went on standing at the sink after they were gone. He saw that the enamel was badly chipped, and the shelf above it where he kept his saucepans was speckled with city soot. Suddenly he swept the potatoes and the aubergines and the chopping knife in a pile on top of the peelings in the sink. The clatter of the knife against the enamel didn’t change his feelings.
‘What the bloody hell’s the matter with you?’ Jessie shouted from her room.
‘I don’t feel like cooking tonight, that’s all.’
‘Don’t cook, then. Mat and I don’t care, do we, duck? And I don’t suppose Julia and that young man have got their dinners on their minds right now, either.’ Jessie laughed, her deep, coarse laugh, and Felix smiled in spite of himself and went through into her room. She was sitting with her bottle, and Mattie beside her with her nose in a film magazine.
‘Don’t be a dog in the manger, son,’ Jessie ordered. ‘If you were going to do anything with Julia you’d have done it by now, wouldn’t you?’
Yes, Felix thought. Yes, I would. Jessie’s right, as usual.
‘So you let her go off and enjoy herself while she can, without pulling a long face.’
Mattie lowered the magazine. ‘While she can?’
‘That’s right. What did you think I said? The boy’s big and beautiful, but he’s not a stayer. Any more than your old man, Felix Lemoine. Let Julia go while he’s here, that’s all.’
Mattie and Felix didn’t look at each other. Mattie stood up and said, ‘I’ll do the tea, if you like. You’ll have to tell me what needs doing, Felix.’
‘Supper,’ he corrected her, automatically.
Josh took Julia to an Italian restaurant where they sat and let their plates of fettucine go cold in front of them. They drank Chianti from a bottle with a raffia case, and stared at each other, sometimes not even talking.
When the bottle was empty Julia said, daringly, ‘I was afraid that you weren’t going to come. Three weeks is a long time.’ Josh’s face changed, darkening a little, and she wished immediately that she hadn’t said anything.
‘I was flying,’ he said. ‘For Harry Gilbert. I needed the money, but Harry expects good value for it.’
It was partly true. Harry’s air-freight business was doing well, and Josh had flown several trips to the Mediterranean for him, lifting materials for a hotel development in Malta. But the real reason was that Josh had been disturbed by the strength of the attraction he had felt for the thin dark girl he had watched in Leoni’s. Josh liked his girls to be willing, decorative accessories who didn’t ask too much of him. By choosing carefully, Josh could be sure of a warm welcome when he needed it, and no fuss when he didn’t. Julia clearly didn’t belong to the right category. She was hungry, and eager, and too vulnerable. Julia meant trouble for both of them, and Josh thought that she was too young for it.
But he had thought about her, as he watched the instruments in the Lancaster’s cockpit. He had decided that he wouldn’t go looking for her, but he still hadn’t forgotten her. Harry Gilbert asked him, and he shrugged. ‘She’s only a kid. When I need a kid of my own I’ll get one the interesting way.’
And then, without letting himself think about it, he had found himself at the door in the square. It was the first night he had been back in London since the dinner at Leoni’s.
As soon as he saw Julia, Josh didn’t want to think anyway. He wanted to look at her, and listen to her voice, and smile at her mixture of naivety and wilful, calculated knowingness.
He lifted her hand from the tablecloth and kissed the knuckles.
‘I’m here now.’
‘Yes. I don’t care about anything else.’
She looked at him, her head on one side, the absurd earrings winking in the candlelight. Josh imagined how he would lift the green jersey over her head and fit his hands around the narrow ridges of her ribcage. He would taste her skin, quartering it inch by inch with his tongue. Josh shifted in his chair, and let go of her hand again. She was sixteen, he reminded himself.
After their dinner, he took her to a party. It was in a flat in Bayswater, and the high rooms with their peeling cornices were packed with people. Everyone seemed to know Josh. He cut an avenue of welcome through the crowd.
‘Hey, Josh. How ya doing, man?’
‘Josh, darling. Why so long?’
Julia might have been shy amongst so many smart strangers, but with Josh she felt that they were all friends.
‘Who’s this? Your kid sister?’
‘I’m nobody’s sister,’ Julia said briskly, and a man laughed and put a drink into her hand. She floated through the party, made invulnerable by her happiness. Sometimes the crowd carried her away from Josh and she talked, or danced, and then across the room she saw his blond head turning to look for her.
I love you, Julia thought again. The happiness was so perfect that she didn’t question it. It fitted around her, as if it had always been there.
She had no idea what time it was when the party ended. Josh took her home and she watched the street lamps flick past the taxi window, shining their brief nimbus of gold light through the glass, with her head against his shoulder. Outside the door in the square Josh put his arms around her. They stood without moving, their