Dead Romantic Read Free

Keith favoured, and a more interesting repertoire that came from her home background and her more middle-class former marriage. Apparently without strain or awareness of any incongruity, she would switch from one to the other according to her company. Because Madeleine was there on her own, Aggie had cooked goulash. Had Keith also been present, they would all have eaten chops with mashed potatoes, carrots and peas.
    As Madeleine had this thought, she realised how rarely she and Keith actually were there together for a meal. Whenever she was round, he seemed to be off somewhere . . . snooker, darts, the pub. It was an arrangement that suited her well, but for the first time she wondered whether he deliberately avoided her. This raised the question of Keith and Aggie talking about her together, actually discussing her. She did not like the idea and put it from her mind. Some things she preferred not to think about.
    She watched Aggie as her sister cleared the plates and went out to the kitchen. Again the pity welled up. Life seemed to have dealt Aggie such a lousy hand: first, her unexceptional looks; then, the illegitimate daughter; continuing problems with unsuitable men. Even the pregnancies, the fruits of her relationships, had not been trouble- free. A baby lost at four months; an incompetent cervix, the doctors had said. And the two children of her former marriage only born after seven months of lying on her back (during the second of which periods Aggie’s first husband had found time for a new distraction, a dental nurse, for whom he left her). Aggie’s seemed to be a history of gynaecological disaster. She had even reacted badly to the pill, and been taken off it after an alarming rise in blood pressure.
    As ever, by comparison, Madeleine felt herself privileged. She also felt something else, an emotion she did not choose to define, but which in her rare moments of introspection threatened to be identified as glee.
    As ever, when this cycle of thought started, it climaxed in pity for the fact that Aggie had never known real love, love that worked.
    At least Madeleine had had that.
    â€˜Any dishy students in this new lot?’ asked the object of her pity, entering with the fruit-bowl.
    Madeleine tinkled a laugh. ‘Certainly not the Iranian with mumps. He has a five o’clock shadow the minute after he’s shaved. A distinctly prickly prospect.’
    â€˜Others?’
    â€˜There’s a rather sweet boy who’s just started with me. Got disastrous grades in his A-levels at Sixth Form College in the summer. Mother desperate for him to get to university – and, since his grades aren’t good enough for anywhere else, she’s set her sights on Oxford, of all places. Seems to think I can pull the famous trick yet again.’ Madeleine sighed at the extravagance of such expectations, yet there was no humility in the sigh.
    â€˜And do you think you can?’
    â€˜Have to see. He’s certainly not stupid. Whether he could carry off the interview, I don’t know. Very nervous. You know, that coltish jumpiness of adolescence.’
    â€˜Name?’
    â€˜Grigson. Paul Grigson.’
    â€˜No doubt already got a crush on you.’
    Another tinkly laugh. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’
    But she did not deny the possibility. It didn’t seem important whether or not an eighteen-year-old dreamt of her. But there was something else in her life, something new, that could, perhaps, be very important.
    She damped down the thought, and let out a dramatic sigh. ‘It’s John’s birthday today.’
    Aggie looked properly solemn at the reference.
    â€˜He would have been thirty-nine.’
    â€˜So how long is it. . .?’
    â€˜Nineteen years. Nineteen years and three weeks since he died.’
    Aggie was respectfully silent, as she always was when John Kaczmarek was mentioned. It was as if she knew that nothing she might say could compete with her