The Banker's Niece 40: Decision-time

SPOILER ALERT

Don't read this chapter if you've not read earlier ones and are intending to do so

Jane puts the sheaf of papers back on the kitchen table and rests her head in her hands.

    It’s a shock to come back to the present, to hear the radiators creaking and feel the sun warming her through the French windows. She still has the taste of coffee in her mouth, and in her nose is her own scent of soap and clean clothes.

    Ever since she left her safe London life – no, ever since her father died – something inside her has been crumbling. The Berlin Wall she erected between her past and her present has been falling into disrepair and memories have flooded through the gaps. Up until now however she’s managed to keep them in her head. She’s heard them and seen them but she hasn’t done anything with them.

    At the same time she’s felt propelled. Decisions have made themselves. Surprises have ambushed her at every juncture, and nothing has turned out as she planned. 

    But all that has changed with Chris’s letter.

    She’s back with the same stark choice she faced nearly forty years ago when she first met Rick. What a joke. It’s almost cruel.

She stands up and goes over to the French windows, flinging them open and stepping outside.

    There’s still a chill to the air but the slush has vanished and all she can see in her garden is brown-ness: the plants are either dead or leafless and the grass is a bog. Even the birds having a noisy argument in the hedge at the bottom of the garden are brown. Even her view is brown.

    She’s angry with Rick, of course she is.

    Not only is the ruse disgusting, an insult to both her and Chris, but it’s stupid. It could so easily have gone so very wrong. It could have destroyed her. It would almost certainly have driven her away. After all, isn’t that what Rick’s affair with Chris did to her, all that time ago?

    One part of her wants to throw plates at the wall, to march round the room swearing and kicking chairs. It would be a relief. But another part of her can’t be bothered. It wouldn’t achieve anything. It would make her feel like a spoilt child. More importantly, it would be a waste of everything Chris has done.

    According to the tabloids (which she doesn’t read any more) and soaps (which she doesn’t watch), she and Chris should by now be slinging insults at each other, if not grappling on the ground. That’s how these stories run, according to them. But in Jane’s experience that’s never the case. If anything, women gang up against men. They support each other. After all, who else do they have?

    She’ll be forever grateful to Chris for coming to see her and including her in Rick’s machinations. It was a brave, selfless thing to do. It was the action of a responsible adult. It’s an example to her.

    What choice, however, does a responsible adult make in the situation in which Jane now finds herself?

She plonks herself into one of the wooden garden armchairs left behind on the terrace by the previous owner and which Jane should have put in the shed for the winter, but never got round to. Damp seeps through her trousers but she tries to ignore it. It’s not important at the moment.

    She could ring Sharon. After all, Sharon is privy to the secrets of the higher world, or so she would have Jane believe. She would know which action is best suited to the unfolding of Jane’s life-plan. Somehow though, she doesn’t want to do that, and that’s because she knows already what Sharon would say: ‘Ah, the Prince of Wands. I’ve been expecting him to reappear. Didn’t I always say that the two of you had unfinished business? Of course you must go and see him.’

    She wouldn’t listen to Jane’s objections: that it would reopen the most painful part of her life; that it could all go horribly wrong and Jane would lose even the good memories of her time with Rick; that there would be no love left between the two of them and so nothing for Jane to believe in any more; that he would be fat and ugly; that she would still be the same inadequate person and that everything would fall apart like it did before.

    Sharon would tap her finger on the table and exhort Jane to bypass the objections and use her in-tu-ition.

    But how do you recognise your intuition? How do you decide which of the voices in your head is the right one? In spite of Sharon’s exercises, she still doesn’t know.

    She bites her fingers and stares at the ground.

    A breeze ruffles the bare branches of her apple tree and a couple of dead apples thud to the ground. She discovered the tree laden with fruit when she moved in last September. She managed to pick some of it but the rest she had to leave for the birds. Maybe this year she’ll be more organised.

    If she's still here in the autumn.

    And with a flash of something like inspiration she realises that not all her choices have to relate to Rick. As Sharon says, no situation is black and white. There’s always a third option.

    So why shouldn’t she listen to the loud voice that has this minute joined the others and is telling her to get the hell out, to travel to the other side of the world – Australia perhaps - and make a true fresh start, not this bastard one in Devon. After all, she’s never had a gap year – they didn’t exist in her day – so why shouldn’t she have gap rest-of-life? She’s worked for it. She can afford it.

    She jumps to her feet. She'll race to the computer this very minute, before she starts to doubt, and do some research – into the cost of flights, estate and letting agents who might deal with her house, internet banking, insurance and the million and one other things involved in an extended trip, not to say move, to another country.

She charges up the stairs, buzzing like she does after a double espresso, but as she sits at her desk the phone rings.

    She doesn’t want to answer it. She’s already spoken to all the important people in her life this morning. The call can only be rubbish, or bad news.

    ‘Hello,’ she says cautiously into the mouthpiece.

    ‘Jane?’ says a trembling voice.

    ‘Yes,’ she says, her tone warmer. She thinks she knows who it is.

    ‘Jane, it’s Chris.’ She sounds as if she’s trying not to cry.

    ‘Yes?’ says Jane, her voice rising in pitch.

    ‘It’s Rick,’ quavers Chris. ‘He’s had a crash. In the back roads. You know what he’s like. Met a tractor head on . . . Air ambulance . . . Just this minute rung me . . . On my way now . . . Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital . . . May have to be transferred to Bristol . . .

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The Banker's Niece 39: The revelation

January 1978

Jane sat at an empty table in the Dart House coffee bar, nursing a cappuccino in its Pyrex glass cup and saucer.

    She didn’t normally frequent Dart House any more than she could help as it was infested with wellies. She could hear them now, behaving as usual as if they were the only people who mattered, talking about Christmas in loud voices and urging their friends to jump the queue for food and drink.

    She kept her eyes fixed on her coffee as she knew that if she looked up she might catch the eye of one of them and they might come over. She’d made the mistake when she first arrived at university and attended the rash of fresher parties of allowing wellies to latch on to her because they thought she was one of them. Now she spent her time on campus dodging those first acquaintances, which was difficult as they tended to study arts subjects like she did. (She was as bad as Heather in her own way, she sometimes thought.)

    Dart House was near the arts buildings, which was one of the reasons she was there now risking wellie contact, instead of good old Exe House with its mixed clientele, her usual haunt.

    The other reason was that she didn’t want to go back to the house.

She’d returned to Kent for Christmas and discovered that her mother had arranged for Jane a selection of parties where she could mix with the offspring of Jane’s mother’s friends, as she’d been doing since Jane was about fourteen. Jane wasn’t sure whether her mother was still doing this because she hadn’t realised that Jane was grown up and could organise her own social life or because she thought that Jane at twenty-two was on the shelf. Probably the latter.

    After all, her mother had ‘come out’ at seventeen, joining all the other ‘debutantes’ in being ‘presented’ to the monarch before plunging into a series of cocktail parties, balls and weekends at grand country houses. You were supposed to find a husband pretty smartly because you only got one shot at a ‘season’. This was partly because they were expensive to fund, what with the clothes you needed, living in London, the travel and hosting your share of the various events, and partly because you were used goods afterwards.

    Jane’s mother had avoided this shame by going on to study at Oxford University, which was hard to remember sometimes, but perhaps it was because of this that she hadn’t tried to put Jane through something similar. Or at least not so structured and overt.

    Jane could have refused to attend the Christmas parties, she supposed, but she lived in hope. Somewhere, some day, she might find a kindred spirit. She simply had to keep looking.

    But in the event, she’d spent several dire evenings hiding in bathrooms or shrinking against walls wanting to be invisible. She did try to play the game, at least at the start of the holidays, but she discovered that she couldn’t any more. She would utter something she thought perfectly normal and interesting, and there would be an awkward silence and people would start to edge away.

    For the first time she began to wonder if she was indeed past it.

   

It was strange therefore that yesterday, her first day back at university after the holidays, she’d known as soon as she walked through the front door of the house that she had to finish whatever it was between her and Gordon.

    It wasn’t that she minded the meaningless sex. The opposite in fact. The more meaningless the better as far as she was concerned as she was done with those sorts of feelings. It was simply that she feared Gordon was taking their relationship too seriously. She was leading him on. She wasn’t being honest with him. And, given that he was her second-best friend at university, that wasn’t fair.

    Of course she couldn’t explain much of that to him, particularly the sex bit, and so he hadn’t understood her sudden change of heart. He’d gone very quiet and she’d hadn’t seen him since. She missed him but she felt bad about what she'd done and so all in all not seeing him was the best option. 

    Thus her exile in the Dart coffee bar.

   

The swing doors behind her swished open and banged shut. A figure zoomed past, twirled one hundred and eighty degrees and dropped into a squat in front of her.

    ‘Neep,’ it said.

    She hardly recognised him.

    The cloak had gone. The beard had gone.

    He wore black boots, black jeans, a black polo-necked jumper and a brown corduroy jacket. Where the beard had been was stubble, a generous mouth and a dimpled chin. He looked almost . . . almost handsome.   

    ‘You, er, you look different,’ she stammered, trying not to blush.

    His eyes twinkled. They were the only part of him she recognised. But the expression in them had changed.

    ‘I went to see my parents at Christmas,’ he said. ‘My mother re-equipped my wardrobe.’

    ‘Oh, I see,’ said Jane, swallowing.

    She didn’t know what else to say. They seemed to have gone beyond small talk – if they ever had in fact been at that stage. Her ears buzzed, blocking all the other sounds around. They were in a bubble of their own.

    Hey,’ said Rick, as if taking pity on her. ‘The Albion Band are playing at the Great Hall on Saturday. D’you want to come?’

    ‘Oh no,’ said Jane. ‘I couldn’t possibly. I’ve got far too much work to do.’

    Well she had. Her finals were only a few months away, and it was vital she passed them. Her only purpose in coming to university was to acquire a degree, and hence rewarding work. For that she had to be disciplined and calm, so social life always came second. She never wanted to go back to the amoral work she’d done in London, or the frantic social life, or to be stirred up like she had been there.

    And something told her that Rick could stir her up.

    A lot.

Jane and Heather sat at their usual table in the Exe bar, not too near the wall so that they couldn’t see people coming and going, and not too near the front so that they were conspicuous themselves and had to mingle with all the show-offs lounging on the steps down to the Heffalump Trap. It was Thursday, a week and a half into term and as both had been studying hard they’d decided they deserved a night out.

    ‘Look,’ said Heather, pointing to the other side of the room. ‘Isn’t that Rick?’

    She’d softened towards him slightly after their party in November when she’d seen him cloak-less.

    He had his trousers tucked into his boots like a Cossack. He was speeding towards some woman. Small and round, dark curly hair, big smile. Pretty.

    Jane leapt to her feet, scrambled over the bodies in the middle of the room, and placed herself in Rick’s way.

    ‘Would you like to come to supper?’ she panted. ‘Saturday. At the house.’

  

‘You what?’ exclaimed Heather in horror, when Jane returned.

    ‘I’ve invited him to supper,’ repeated Jane. ‘And I’m hoping you’ll come too and give me some moral support.’

    She also invited one of her Spanish tutors to whom she owed a meal as he’d had the tutorial group over to his house the term before. Then Mike from the house, with whom she’d hardly exchanged a word as she only saw him when he was in the kitchen eating and he did that with headphones on while reading a newspaper, happened to be hanging around looking hungry when she and Heather were cooking for the party so they took pity on him and invited him too.

    Gordon, thank goodness, was still not in evidence.

    Heather cooked the usual something with mince and tinned tomatoes and Jane made a banana and lemon cake from a recipe of her mother’s. She put too much lemon juice in the icing and it slid off the cake to rest in untidy folds on the plate, but she hoped no one would mind. She decided to wear her usual jeans and jumper so as not to appear to be trying too hard.

    Rick on the other hand arrived in his magenta trousers and a sage-green shirt that looked new. Jane wondered if it was another item that had come to him courtesy of his mother. At supper he had two helpings of Jane’s cake and afterwards he sat on the sitting-room floor against a wall while Mike played his collection of Electric Light Orchestra albums. Jane perched on the arm of the sofa next to him.
    Rick didn’t say anything – in fact he’d hardly said anything all evening – but Jane could tell he wasn’t impressed with the choice of music. Even cloak-less he fitted in even less than she did, but to her he was cooler than anyone else in the room. He was different. He was exotic. He was real. He had something inside that was distinctive, particular to him, and that echoed something inside herself.

    Her mind went clear, as if clouds had rolled back, and a voice spoke in her head.

    ‘This man will interest me for the rest of my life. We are going to marry.’

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Look no fences: A visit to Knepp wildland

At the weekend Frog and I (sans Dog) visit my brother D and his family in West Sussex only a couple of miles from Knepp, the site of the first (I think) large-scale rewilding project in the UK and the subject of that fabulous book Wilding which I’ve mentioned several times before in this blog.

On Saturday we head to the estate for a walk. Because visitors are exhorted – extremely nicely – to stick to designated routes so as not to disturb wildlife, my well-organised brother has acquired a leaflet and chosen ours: Castle Walk. It's the longest – 8.8km.

As soon as we drive up the track to the carpark I start crying. I think it’s as much that somebody is doing something so extraordinarily brave and positive for the environment as it is the sight of the scrub and scruffy woods on either side (which as you will know if you are a diligent reader of this blog are exactly my sort of thing and increasingly hard to find).

We take a quick look at the safari office . . .

In the safari office - a blackboard for listing species spotted

. . . before entering the estate through this arch of deer antlers. It’s like entering Jurassic Park.

The entrance to Knepp's wildland

We twirl round the glamping/camping site and the yurts where yoga and other courses are held (for some of which my dear niece M does the cooking). The yoga yurt is surprisingly warm and spacious, and flooded with light from the transparent centre to its dome.

The yoga yurt (left)

We study the adjacent wild-swimming pool. It’s a bit murky and I can see slimy leg-grabbing things growing up from the bottom, but I’m almost tempted.

The wild-swimming pool

Then we head out to the bush.

It’s not long before we emerge into this. 

Our first sight of Knepp wildland. (My picture does not do it justice.)

I start crying again. I’ve never seen anything like it in this country before. There are no fences, and all I can see is scrub and trees. I feel as if I’m in a dream or a long-lost memory.

As explained in Wilding, scrub – long considered worthless - is in fact the richest wildlife habitat. Ecologists are beginning to think that our land’s natural state is not woodland but a mixture of woods, scrub, wetland and grassland. Knepp is testing this idea by leaving the land and its inhabitants to do their own thing.

Then a flock of storks appear. I'm not expecting them. I didn’t know there were storks at Knepp. They wheel over us for many minutes and I imagine that they’re performing just for us. I cry some more.

Storks. (Again, apologies for the picture. Not only did the birds keep moving but it was one of those sunny days when all I could see on the camera-screen  was myself.) 

Now we understand better some tall posts near the entrance.

Tall posts topped with untidy piles of twigs. We think they must be stork nests (or attempts to encourage the storks to nest).

Later D points me towards an article Isabella Tree (the author of Wilding) has written recently for the Guardian. It relates how storks last nested successfully in England in 1416 and are now in decline everywhere because of loss of wetlands and meadows and fatalities from power-lines and roads. The Knepp birds come from Poland and were released at Knepp only this year.

For several hours we wander the paths, looking at birds and wildflowers and fungi and a slow-worm, and eating blackberries that taste better than any I’ve eaten this year.

As well as cooking, M does postgraduate studies into the interaction between humans and their environment. We talk about our nomadic ancestors and how as humans we're meant to walk most of the time.

We take a wrong turning and stumble across a lake. Wilding tells how they ‘untamed’ the river which runs through the estate, and I've read somewhere that they aim when they can to reintroduce beavers – the best agents of waterway wilding. But this lake according to D is the result of ironworkings. We think we see a great crested grebe on it.

Back on the path, one of us points out some deer in a distant clearing, but I can’t see them. Then however on an expanse of grass next a wood we encounter an unmissable herd of cattle . . .

Wild cattle (aurochs) are extinct but these - English longhorns - are a near equivalent

. . . which look fearsome and have young with them, but ignore us.

A safari group - the first people we have encountered - is also looking at the cattle. Frog is more interested in their strange vehicle than in the animals.

We see a platform in a tree . . .

Tree platform

. . . and climb up to it. To one side is another lake (or an untamed river) . . .

View from the tree platform

 . . . and to the other, tree canopy which makes me feel like a child again and climbing trees.

The view the other way

Further on, deep in the woods, we nearly collide with a pig the exact colour of the dead bracken . . .

A Tamworth pig, a substitute for the wild boar for which Knepp does not have a licence

The walks leaflet exhorts us not to get close to the animals but we have no choice. It takes no notice of us however.

Another pig lumbers in our direction snorting. We think she’s going to attack us but at the last minute she puts her nose down and starts rooting for food. Perhaps she was simply saying hello, we think, or excited at the thought of eating.

The pig which lumbered towards us

Some piglets squeal in the undergrowth but I only catch glimpses of them and it’s too dark to take a photograph. I worry that they’re frightened. ‘No,’ say the others. ‘They’re annoyed because their mother’s gone.’ I move off anyway.

We cross a road and enter another wood and, even though it doesn’t look that different from the one we’ve just been in, we all speed up.

    ‘This isn’t part of the estate,’ says my brother D. ‘It’s not rewilded.’

    ‘It’s as if we sensed that before we knew it,’ I say to Frog.

    ‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘There’s no “dawdle factor” here.’

We arrive at the deer park in front of Knepp Castle where Isabella Tree and her husband live. On the edge of a wood in dappled shade we see red deer.

Red deer

For the first time in my life I hear a red-deer stag make his autumn, rutting-season cry – a loud throaty moo designed I presume to scare off rivals. It’s impressive. He then scampers off after a couple of hinds who have run away. I feel sorry for them.

Red deer stag, pausing his mating behaviour briefly so as to stare at us (and pose for his picture)

In the distance, way out on the grassland, we spot wild (Exmoor) ponies.

We’ve now seen each of the four species of animal Knepp has introduced in order to ‘imitate the mix of herbivores that would have grazed this land thousands of years ago’ (as the wildland leaflet says). Each I realise favours a slightly different habitat, none of them anything like the uniform fields in which we plonk their domesticated versions. They all look healthy and none has fled from or attacked us as farm animals do. It’s as if they see us as equals. We’ve been happy wandering – as our nomadic ancestors did - and the animals seem happy about us being there.

We find a bird hide over a third lake and sit down to rest and chat about water-birds.

Four hours have gone and we’ve missed lunch but there’s one more thing to see – the remains of the original Knepp Castle which was destroyed by the Roundheads in 1648.

    They haven’t left much.

The remains of the first Knepp Castle

Around the ruin, fences have gone, the grass is rough and yellow not bright green and cultivated, and the river is crammed with reeds. I hope this is because the area is a new addition to the rewilding project.

We’ve been exploring the southern section of the estate, now 15 or so years into rewilding, but the northern section is not part of the project. I hope too that this will be one day be included.

For me there can never be enough wilderness. In a previous post I wrote about my vision of a future in which the current situation is reversed: in which wild countryside is the norm and reserves are where we grow our food. Now I wonder whether that goes far enough.

There are many good scientific reasons for rewilding (and Isabella Tree explains them with her usual aplomb in Wilding) but for me it’s a spiritual thing. It’s about releasing control. It’s about remembering that we are small and nature is big. It’s about relearning how to be simple.

I know that the visit to Knepp is one of the key events of my life.


If you want to know more about rewilding in general as well as other rewilding projects, have a look at the website of the four-year-old charity Rewilding Britain.

The Banker's Niece 38: Cloak-man

1977

As far as Jane knew, not that she bothered much with history, Exeter’s ‘Quay’, an area next to the River Exe ten minutes’ walk from the city centre and a good half an hour from the university campus as well as the house where she lived, was once used by sea-going ships. That however was before a local countess decided she didn’t want them sailing through her estate and blocked the river with a weir. The Customs House was now a museum, and the brick storage tunnels under the hill behind the wharf, transformed into workshops and night-clubs: Smugglers, Pirates and The Barrel.

    Jane stood with Gordon next to the dance-floor in one of them. They were so similar, she could never remember which one she was in, even though she’d visited all three many times over her years at the university for one reason or another. There was always an excuse for a party.

    It was early and no one was dancing. A revolving mirror-ball sprinkled light flakes, and taped music played out softly from the empty DJ booth at the far end. They were the only romantic features of the room since without the crowds Jane noticed only too clearly the threadbare velvet on the chairs, the cheap shiny tables and the olfactory undertones of alcohol and cigarettes seasoned with sewage.

    Already she was regretting accepting Gordon’s invitation. They’d never been out together in public before – their encounters had always taken place in Gordon's room at the top of the house – and she feared it was a step too far for her.

    Not only that, but it had been a nightmare trying to find something to wear. What with her weight fluctuations and her general despair about her appearance she hardly ever bought clothes. She lived in one pair of jeans and a couple of thigh-length baggy jumpers which hid both the ever-present fat wobbling over the jeans’ waistband and the safety-pins necessary after she’d had a binge and couldn’t do up the zip. As a bonus, the jumpers stopped Jane’s mother being able to pick on Jane’s weight when reciting her usual litany of everything that was wrong with Jane.

    Unfortunately Heather had the same problems with food as Jane did and, while this was another bond between them, it didn’t help. Jane had introduced Heather to muesli – a packet of which they could finish between them in one sitting – and Heather had introduced Jane to cheesecake, likewise demolished. It was almost fun being in on it together, if you didn’t think about what followed, about hating everything to do with yourself and longing for something terminal because you couldn’t bear it any longer.

    But then, what female student didn’t have problems with food – either not eating it, like Jane in her teens, or not being able to stop eating it, like her and Heather now?

    Anyway, she’d ended up in a bright pink summer skirt with an elasticated waist, a baggy pale pink t-shirt she knew Gordon didn’t like – ‘The colour doesn’t suit you’ - and her brown boots which made her taller than Gordon but were better than the brown moccasins she wore with her jeans as she didn’t have any tights and could hardly go out in November with bare legs. (If only the clubs allowed women to wear trousers, things would be so much simpler.)

People began to trickle in and the noise of voices started to drown out the music. The DJ appeared – Jane could tell he was the DJ because he was older and smoother than most - and stood next to his booth chatting with a circle of admiring women. Queues formed at the bar.

    ‘We ought to start thinking about getting our drinks and finding a table,’ said Jane.

    ‘OK,’ said Gordon, turning from the dance floor.

    In a flurry, like fresh snow whipped up by a gust of wind, a figure materialised in front of them. He wore a threadbare whiteish shirt that might once have been blue. Flyaway light-brown hair, looking freshly washed, fluffed out around his head like Strewwelpeter’s. He was muttering under his breath.

    Gordon edged away but Jane waited. The man seemed distressed and she was curious. The muttering grew louder and she began to make out what he was saying.

    ‘They took my cloak. They made me leave my cloak in the cloakroom. It’s not a coat. It’s a cloak. It’s what I wear. They made me leave it in the cloakroom. I can’t go out and about without my cloak. They made me leave my cloak in the cloakroom . . .’

    Slowly she made sense of what was happening. This had to be Strider, the loony, the man she and Heather had been seeing in the Exe bar. Who else wore a cloak?

    ‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I,’ she said in an attempt to halt his tirade.

    The man glanced at her and then returned to his mad mutterings.

    ‘Why do you wear it?’ she said a bit louder.

    He ignored her.

    ‘What I mean is,’ she continued, ‘you obviously wear the cloak as a disguise, as something to hide behind, but at the same time it makes you so conspicuous. Is it that you want people to look at you, or is it that you don’t?’ She really wanted to know.

    The man pulled up short and stared at her.

    For a few seconds there was silence.

    Then he spoke again, but in a completely different – almost normal – voice. ‘That depends on who it is.’

    Now it was Jane’s turn to stare. She knew this man. She knew everything about him. She’d met him before, in a previous life, in previous lives. The past stretched out behind her like a long echoing corridor.

    She clutched Gordon, afraid she was about to fall over.

    ‘Take me away,’ she whispered. ‘I need that drink. Now.’

    ‘Who was that?’ she asked as they neared the bar.

    ‘Oh him,’ laughed Gordon. ‘Bit of an idiot, isn’t he. Works in the department as a technician. Name’s Rick.’

They found a table and staked a claim to it with their drinks glasses.

    ‘I must circulate,’ said Gordon. ‘Lots of people I should talk to. Want to come?’

    ‘Oh,’ said Jane. ‘No. I think I’d rather dance.’

    She slipped off her boots and joined the crowds massing on the dance-floor. She loved dancing.

    Some time later – she had no idea how long – thirsty, sweaty and tired, she returned to the table. There was no sign of Gordon and she gulped her drink peacefully.

    Cloak-man – Rick – did his materialisation trick again, appearing in front of her without her being aware of his approach.

    ‘There’s something I have to ask you,’ he said, leaning over the table, looking serious.

    He had a beard, she noted, surprised she hadn’t seen that before. It had the same clean fluffiness as his hair, and obscured most of his face except for his eyes, green and slightly sad.

    ‘OK,’ she said.

    What harm could there be in letting him ask a question? It was lucky though that Heather wasn’t there. She would be squirming under the table.

    ‘What star sign are you?’ he asked.

    Ah. That wasn’t what she expected. Perhaps Heather was right after all.

    ‘Why d’you want to know?’ she said.

    ‘Well, this astrologer-lady said that I was going to meet a Libran woman.’

    ‘I’m Cancer,’ said Jane, relieved.

    ‘Oh,’ he said, looking disappointed.

    Jane rummaged in her bag. She didn’t like him being disappointed.

    ‘Here’s an invitation,’ she said, handing him a card. She carried a sheaf around with her for occasions exactly like this. ‘It’s to a party in a couple of weeks’ time in the house where I live.’

    ‘Oh, thanks,’ he said, looking pleased.

    He stuffed the card in a pocket of his trousers and she wondered if he’d ever find it again.

    He wouldn’t turn up of course, or at least she hoped he wouldn’t.

It was she unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately – who opened the door to Rick. He swept in, whisking off his cloak and flinging it over the banisters. She couldn’t help noticing his well-fitting magenta jeans, held up with a broad leather belt.

    ‘Food and drink in there,’ she said, pointing to the kitchen behind her. ‘Dancing there,’ she said pointing to the door off the hall that led to the sitting- and dining- rooms which they’d opened into one.

    Then she scarpered, doing her best to melt into the throng.

    For the moment, she’d solved her sartorial problems. She’d found in Dingles department store a floor-length dress in thick cotton, black with red flowers, tight over the bust – which was OK as her bust was the only part of her that never changed size – and then gathered. She didn’t have to wear tights, she didn’t have to wear shoes and she didn’t have to worry about her stomach. Nor did she have to wear a bra if she didn’t want to but she did because without one she didn't have a bust.

    She danced around the house, chatting to people, quaffing wine, and feeling slightly giddy. She was glad they’d all got together in the household and decided to pool their friends. Parties made her feel like a normal carefree student, instead of someone old and tired.

    The only problem was Rick. Everywhere she went she found him standing there in his red trousers, waiting and watching like Banquo’s ghost.

    At last he cornered her in the hall. ‘Tell me about yourself,’ he said.

    Against her better judgement she did and to her surprise he listened, scrutinising her with his deep green eyes. She didn't say anything important, at least she didn't think she did, but while she babbled she realised that he lived in exactly the same world as she did and that she’d never met anyone else who did or came close to doing so. Certainly not her family, not even dear Ollie. But she didn’t want to live in that world. It was dark and dangerous and filled with monsters.

     So, when Gordon passed, she grabbed his arm and followed him into the dancing.

    ‘I need some normality,’ she mouthed.

    Gordon nodded understandingly.

    In the early hours of the morning when the house had emptied and she made her way towards the stairs and bed, she found Rick standing alone in the middle of the dining-room. 

     He looked so lost, she kissed him on the cheek.

    ‘I’ll find you a blanket,’ she said.

    The next morning when she went down for breakfast, he was still there, still in his red trousers, leaning against a wall in the kitchen.

    When she returned to her room, she found a note on the pillow.

    ‘Thank you for the party, thank you for the blanket, and thank you for being you.’

    Oh no. What had she started?

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