think you should give him another chance. Probably he’ll never do it again.’
‘No,’ Harriet said, leaving no margin for contradiction. ‘He will do it again, because he’s done it before.’
She laughed once more. ‘Do you know, I think it might have been different if he hadn’t tried to cover himself up with his shirt?’ The absurdity of it made her want to laugh harder. ‘As if he had something mysterious down there, that I shouldn’t see.’
Then she caught sight of her mother’s face, and the laughter subsided. She went to Kath and put her arms around her. ‘I’m sorry if you’re disappointed. I’m sorry for Leo and me, too.’
‘Is that all?’ Kath demanded.
Harriet thought. It seemed so little, after so much.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘It appears to be.’
She dropped her arm from her mother’s shoulder, walked back to the garden doors and looked out at the big tree again. Its leaves were beginning to show autumnal colours. The tree of heaven drops its leaves every winter, Harriet told herself bracingly. It would be a sentimental mistake to regard it as an emblem.
‘May I stay here for a day or two? Until I can rent a place? I can go to Jane’s, if it’s a nuisance.’
Her childhood bedroom was across the landing from Lisa’s, kept nowadays for visitors.
‘How could it be a nuisance? Of course you can stay. What shall we tell Ken and Lisa?’
‘The truth, of course.’
As Harriet had guessed, Kath’s anticipation of their shock and outrage was much greater than the reality.
‘He’s a stupid bugger,’ Ken pronounced. ‘You do whatever’ll make you happy, love. Or I can go round there and thump him for you, if you want.’
‘Well no, thanks,’ Harriet murmured.
Lisa came back only just in time to change for a date with her latest love. Harriet sat on the corner of the bed and watched her half-sister diving between the wardrobe and the dressing table.
There were too many years separating the two of them, and too many differences, for them ever to achieve friendship. As children they had fought bitterly, too different even to enjoy the satisfaction of being in the same competition. It was to Kath’s, and especially to Ken’s, credit that the girls had always been treated even-handedly. But still, even in adulthood, the two of them didn’t fully trust one another. They existed in a state of uneasy truce, always aware that hostilities might break out again.
Kath’s younger daughter had her mother’s fair, curling hair and the same full, soft lower lip. Harriet’s features were thinner and stronger. Lisa was easy-going to the point of laziness, except when there was the faintest threat that she might not get her own way. She was like her mother, too, in that she would go to any length to avoid scenes, preferring that everything should be pleasant and comfortable. Harriet preferred clarity and justice.
‘I think Kath believes I’ll go back to him,’ Harriet said.
‘And will you?’ Even before she had finished speaking, Lisa’s attention returned to her mirror. She was busily painting her mouth with a fine brush. Harriet remembered that ten years ago she had been absorbed in similar preparations herself and Lisa had been a plump, complaining nine-year-old. She had no desire to go back to those days, with or without the help of hindsight.
‘Of course not.’
Lisa snapped the cap back on to her lipstick, rolled her lips inwards over her teeth and then pressed them forwards into a pout. ‘I can’t say I blame you. But it’s a big decision, isn’t it? Couldn’t you try to forgive and forget? Leo’s not bad, even though he’s usually the first to tell you so.’
Harriet accepted that for Lisa this was an unusually profound speech.
‘I don’t love him.’
Lisa shrugged. ‘Then that simplifies it. Are you afraid of being on your own?’
Harriet thought of her married home, with all its symbols and reminders, stuffed with domestic comforts, the possessions of strangers.
‘It would be a relief.’
Downstairs the doorbell delivered its double chime. Lisa sprang to her feet, no longer listening. ‘Have a good time,’ Harriet called after her, feeling her age.
Kath and Ken were watching television downstairs. Harriet read a book, an Agatha Christie belonging to Kath, and went to bed very early. She lay in the dark in her old bedroom. She could hear the drone of the television below her. It reminded her of being a little girl, despatched to bed so that adult life could go on in her absence. From those long wakeful evenings she knew the contours of this room and its predecessors, the patches on the ceiling and the exact, unseen position of the picture rail and wardrobe and armchair. The creak of furniture and the hissing of pipes behind the skirting boards was like a language spoken after a long silence.
The familiarity of the room, the very smell of it, should have been oppressive, but after she had been lying there for a few minutes Harriet began to experience a strange sensation. She felt light, lighter than air. She felt as if she might bob up off the mattress, if it were not for the weight of the covers over her. It was as if she had had a great deal to drink, but without the dizziness or the confusion of drunkenness. Her mind felt very clear, and she knew that sleep was a long way off.
It occurred to her after a little while that what she did feel was free. She was on her own again.
It was exhilarating and also frightening. With her fists clenched on the bedclothes, as an anchor, Harriet reflected on what she might do. Her responsibilities to Leo, to marriage itself, seemed leaden in retrospect. The future possibilities, by contrast, shimmered around her. They were limitless, and there for the taking. She was afraid, but her fear was of failing to recognise the opportunities when they came. The thought of missing more of her chances than had already slipped past her, while her horizons were obscured by Leo, made her heart thump and panicky gasps rise in her chest. She made herself breathe slowly, in and out, to calm herself again.
The visions of freedom that came to Harriet, lying in the darkness of her old bedroom in Sunderland Avenue, were all of what she might achieve. She was briefly, thrillingly convinced that she could direct herself whichever way she wanted to go. She could reach out and pick off success for herself, as if it grew on the tree of heaven outside her window. She felt the power of it in her fingers.
The images of success and fame and happiness drifted in front of her. None of the visions had anything to do with love. She had had Love, and it had turned out to be Leo.
Everything that Harriet saw for herself was clear and vivid, but it was like a hallucination. When she tried afterwards to recapture the splendour of it all, or even to remember the simple steps that had carried her to such glory, she could come up with nothing at all. It had gone as conclusively as a dream.
She didn’t know how long the sensation lasted. After a while she felt her limbs growing heavy once more. She closed her eyes and was immediately too tired to open them again. A moment before she had felt that sleep was impossible, now it was catching up with her. She made no effort to resist it. Harriet gave a deep sigh of contentment and fell into a dreamless sleep.
Harriet and Kath were talking. At Harriet’s suggestion, because the pine bastion of the kitchen oppressed her, they went out into the garden and sat on folding chairs in the shade of the tree of heaven. It was a warm day for late September and the garden was suffused with yellow light. The buzz of Sunday afternoon lawnmowers drifted over the fence.
Harriet saw the neat suburban tableau with extra clarity, as if layers of dust had been washed out of the air by a thunderstorm. The memory of her waking dream had stayed with her, through a night’s sleep, through a family Sunday morning spent with Kath and Ken and Lisa. She knew that the dream had been profoundly significant, although she had no specific recall of the alluring images that