The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher. Hilary Mantel

felt the lack of it, the chill, and in my ear a whisper, like the whisper of wool; a shawl around my head, a softness like lambswool: a forgetting.

      It must have been twenty-five years. It could have been thirty. I don’t go back much: would you? I saw her in the street, and she was pushing a buggy, no baby in it, but a big bag with a spill of dirty clothes coming out; a baby tee-shirt with a whiff of sick, something creeping like a tracksuit cuff, the corner of a soiled sheet. At once I thought, well, there’s a sight to gladden the eye, one of that lot off to the laundrette! I must tell my mum, I thought. So she can say, wonders will never cease.

      But I couldn’t help myself. I followed close behind her and I said, ‘Mary Joplin?’

      She pulled the buggy back against her, as if protecting it, before she turned: just her head, her gaze inching over her shoulder, wary. Her face, in early middle age, had become indefinite, like wax: waiting for a pinch and a twist to make its shape. It passed through my mind, you’d need to have known her well to know her now, you’d need to have put in the hours with her, watching her sideways. Her skin seemed swagged, loose, and there was nothing much to read in Mary’s eyes. I expected, perhaps, a pause, a hyphen, a space, a space where a question might follow … Is that you, Kitty? She stooped over her buggy, and settled her laundry with a pat, as if to reassure it. Then she turned back to me, and gave me a bare acknowledgement: a single nod, a full stop.

The Long QT

      He was forty-five when his marriage ended, decisively, on a soft autumn day, the last of the barbecue weather. Nothing about that day was his plan, nothing his intention, though later you could see that every element of the disaster was in place. Above all, Lorraine was in place, standing by the cavernous American fridge, stroking its brushed steel doors with one lacquered fingertip. ‘Do you ever get in it?’ she said. ‘I mean, on a really hot day?’

      ‘It wouldn’t be safe,’ he said. ‘Doors could swing shut.’

      ‘Jodie would miss you. She’d let you out.’

      ‘Jodie wouldn’t miss me.’ He understood it only when he said it. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s not been that hot.’

      ‘No?’ she said. ‘Pity.’ She stretched up and kissed him on the mouth.

      Her wine glass was still in her hand and he felt it roll, cool and damp, against the back of his neck, and make a creeping down his spine. He scooped her against him: a motion of ample gratitude, both hands around her bottom. She murmured something, stretched out an arm to put the glass down, then gave him her whole attention, her open mouth.

      He had always known she was available. Only not found her alone, on a warm afternoon, her face a little flushed, three glasses of Vinho Verde from complete sobriety. Never alone because Lorraine was the sort of girl who moved in a crowd of girls. She was round, kind, downmarket for the neighbourhood and easy to like. She said droll things, like, ‘It’s so sad to be called after a quiche.’ She smelled delicious, and of kitchen things: plums and vanilla, chocolate.

      He let her go, and as he relaxed his grip he heard her tiny heels click back on the floor. ‘What a little doll you are,’ he said. He straightened to his full height. He was able to picture his own expression as he gazed down at her: quizzical, tender, amused; he hardly recognised himself. Her eyes were still closed. She was waiting for him to kiss her again. This time he held her more elegantly, hands on her waist, she on tiptoe, tongue flickering at tongue. Slow and easy, he thought. No rush. But then, crudely, his hand snaked around her back, as if it had a will of its own. He felt for her bra strap. But a twist, a flinch told him, not now, not here. Then where? They could hardly shove through the guests and go upstairs together.

      He knew Jodie was rattling about the house. He knew – and he acknowledged this later – that she might at any moment blunder in. She did not like parties that involved open doors, and guests passing between the house and the garden. Strangers might come in, and wasps. It was too easy to stand on the threshold with a burning cigarette, chatting, neither here nor there. You could be burgled where you stood. Picking up glasses, she would push through groups of her own guests, guests who were laughing and passing mobile phones to each other, guests who were, for Christ’s sake, trying to relax and enjoy the evening. People would oblige her by knocking back what was in their glass and handing it over. If not she would say, ‘Excuse me, have you finished with that?’ Sometimes they made little stacks of tumblers for her, helpfully, and said, ‘Here you go, Jodie.’ They smiled at her indulgently, knowing they were helping her out with her hobby. You would see her off in her own little world, her back to everyone, loading the dishwasher. It was not unknown for her to run a cycle before the party was an hour old. The time would come, after dusk, when wives got maudlin and husbands boastful and bellicose, when spats broke out about private schooling and tree roots and parking permits; then, she said, the less glass there is about, the better. He said, you make it sound like some pub brawl on an estate. He said, for God’s sake, woman, put down that wasp spray.

      All this he thought, while he was nibbling Lorraine. She nuzzled him and undid his shirt buttons and slid her hand over his warm chest, and let her fingers pause over his heart. If Jodie did come in, he was just going to ask her quietly not to make a scene, to take a deep breath and be more French about it. Then when the people had gone home he would spell it out: it was time she slackened the rein. He was a man at his peak and must see some pay-off. He alone by his professional efforts kept them in hand-built kitchens. He was pulling in an amount seriously in excess of anything she could have expected, and his shrewdness had made them near as dammit recession-proof; who could say the same, on their patch? And after all, he was prepared to be fair. ‘It’s not a one-way street,’ he would say to her. She was a free agent, as he was. She might want an adventure of her own. If she could get one.