Page 63 of Last Letter Home
‘He stays with his parents, I suppose. Can’t you go, too?’
‘If I’m not working, but you know me. I’m not really a country girl. And his parents are very nice, but I’m thirty-eight, for heaven’s sake. We shouldn’t be spending every weekend with our parents.’
Briony laughed. ‘I s’pose not, but his seem laid-back. Didn’t your mum give Luke his own room last time?’
‘That was so embarrassing. No, his ma and pa don’t do that, but the bed there creaks and I always feel guilty if we have a lie-in.’
‘Me too, if I go home. My stepmother clears up after me. I daren’t leave the top off my toothpaste or my coffee mug unwashed!’
‘Thirty-eight! We’re like oversized cuckoos, aren’t we? D’you think it would be different if we were respectably married with kids?’
Briony thought about it. Her brother and his wife Ally did seem to have a different status when they stayed, but perhaps it was that the grandchildren deflected attention. Her father and Lavender adored Will’s two children, and Ally was always so tired she was glad to be relieved of them by her in-laws. Last Christmas she trailed around with a glass of wine and enjoyed being spoiled while it was Briony who helped with the cooking.
‘I feel I’m living in a sort of limbo at the moment,’ Aruna continued. ‘Luke stays at mine most of the time, as you know. It’s much more convenient for me than going out to his place, miles from a tube station, and he’s got a mate living there now paying the bills, but I haven’t got anywhere he can keep all his gardening stuff, so it’s difficult long-term. We really need to sell our flats and find somewhere together, and frankly I’d like to get on with it. Mum and Dad keep asking when we’re getting married, you know what they’re like. And Mum’s desperate for me to have children.’
‘And you? Would you like them?’
‘Sometime, yeah. I suppose I’d like to be sure that I can have them if I wait a year or two. It would be awful to leave it too long and find there’s a difficulty.’
She looked wistful now, and Briony felt suddenly sad for Aruna, seeing how much getting settled meant to her.
‘What about Luke, does he want kids?’
‘I always thought he did, but lately he sounds annoyed if I even bring the topic up. I don’t know what to do, Briony.’ She tore off another hunk of bread and dipped it in the oil, then simply stared at it.
‘Listen, Ru, I’m not a great person to ask, with my poor record, but surely if you love each other and want to be together, then that’s the most important thing? The rest will come along behind.’
‘I suppose you’re right. It’s only that lately . . . Well, it was Luke I was texting just now. We’re supposed to be going to see my parents on Sunday, but now he says he can’t go. Can I see if he’s got back to me, pretty please? I know it’s rude.’ Hardly waiting for Briony’s answer, Aruna reached into her bag, consulted the phone then slipped it back again. ‘Nothing. Oh, never mind . . .’
At that moment the slender waiter returned bearing great white dinner plates: steaming buttery rice and fish sprinkled with fresh parsley for Briony, and sizzling cheese-covered cannelloni for Aruna. A couple of twists of black pepper from an oversized mill and an ‘Enjoy,’ delivered with a mock bow, and he left them to it.
Aruna stared down at her food miserably, then picked up her fork and transferred a blob of cheesy pasta to her mouth. Her expression changed as she realized it was delicious and she began to eat as hungrily as the heat of the food allowed. Briony picked up her fork too and for a while each was lost in her own thoughts.
Briony found she was struggling between natural sympathy for Aruna and a sense of confusion about Luke. What was he up to? Why was he making Aruna so unhappy? She felt simultaneously angry with him and concerned. She’d always thought him absolutely devoted to Aruna and yet his recent behaviour was undermining that view. She glanced at her friend, who appeared cheerful again with food inside her.
‘I didn’t realize I was so hungry,’ Aruna said. Her kohl-lined eyes shone with pleasure as she shared out the last inch of wine from the bottle, of which it had to be said she’d had the greater part. ‘I feel much better now.’ Briony had always loved this delightful element of the child about her. Aruna’s mood would change like the weather in April.
Aruna drained the last drop of wine. ‘Another bottle?’
Briony shook her head. ‘I’ve work to do later. Don’t let me stop you, though.’ There was an awkwardness between them, but Briony couldn’t put a finger on why, exactly. After her recent confidences Aruna seemed to have drawn back.
They ordered coffee, and while they were waiting for it, Aruna went to find the loo. When she came back and slipped onto the banquette, she changed tack.
‘Did you ever get any further with the research you were doing? Your grandfather and the other soldiers?’
Briony shook her head. ‘After Robyn Clare became ill I ran out of people to ask. I wrote to someone who had interviewed Derek, the Baileys’ evacuee, in case they had an address for him, but I never heard back. Now I’m too busy.’
‘A shame,’ Aruna said in a desultory fashion.
‘Still want to make a radio programme about it?’ Briony smiled and took a sip of her cappuccino. It was creamy but unpleasantly bitter so she tore open a sachet of sugar.
‘I don’t think so. There’s not much of a story, is there?’
‘What do you mean?’ Grains of sugar scattered over the table.
‘You’ve only got one side of the correspondence. And that man Paul, no one knows what happened to him.’
‘I thought you were interested. I’m still finding out, you see.’ Aruna was hiding a secret, Briony felt sure. Then she remembered what she needed to ask. ‘Aruna, when Luke and I were in the Villa Teresa and you were waiting for us outside, did something happen?’
