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There’s a short delay then before Alix sees that Josie is typing a reply. She stares at her screen waiting for the message to appear.
If it was social he’d probably come? As long as your husband was there? Maybe dinner?
Wednesday, 10 July
‘I was thinking of inviting Josie and her husband over for dinner this weekend? For my project.’
Alix has been gathering the nerve to make this pronouncement for over an hour, since she and Nathan woke up this morning. She’d been awake half the night, oscillating between feeling utterly convinced that it was a perfectly good idea and just another way of doing her job and feeling utterly convinced that it was the worst idea she’d ever had. Right up until ten seconds ago she had still been uncertain which way she was going to go. But the words are out now, and she bites her lip as she waits for his response.
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I know. It’ll be weird as fuck. But I really think it’s going to move this project along.’
‘But do I have to be there?’
‘Yes. Yes, I think you do. Sounds like he’s a man’s man. I don’t think he’d want to hang out with only two women. And I could just interview him, but I get the feeling I’d get more out of him in a social setting. With alcohol. You know.’
She throws Nathan a pleading look and his faces softens. ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Anything for you, my love.’ He says this with sarcasm, but also, Alix knows, with a touch of sincerity, an awareness of how much he currently owes her.
Alix exhales with relief. ‘Thank you,’ she says, then picks up her phone and texts the invitation to Josie.
8.30 a.m.
Josie glances at her phone and, seeing Alix’s name, snatches it up from the kitchen counter.
How about you and Walter come to my place for dinner on Friday night? Let me know! And see you tomorrow for another session?
Josie stills. Her gaze flicks across the room to Walter, sitting on the sofa, watching BBC Breakfast and eating toast, in his dressing gown. She returns her gaze to the message again and then lets it percolate for a while, as she waits for her toast to cook. Occasionally her eyes go back to Walter, to the thatch of wiry white hair on the back of his neck that grows horizontally, to his fluffy earlobes and patchy stubble.
‘Walter,’ she says. ‘You need to go to the barber’s.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I was going to go on Saturday.’
‘We’ve been invited for dinner on Friday. At Alix’s house. You need to go before Friday.’
He turns briskly and narrows his eyes at her. ‘What?’
‘Dinner. At Alix’s. We’re going. OK?’
‘The woman with the same birthday as you? The woman you’ve been seeing so much of?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why the hell does she want to have us for dinner?’
‘I told you. We’re friends. That’s what friends do.’
‘Where does she live?’
‘One of those roads that runs between the park and Salusbury Road.’
His left eyebrow shoots up. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Seriously, Walter. This is important. You need a new outfit too. I can’t take you in any of your clothes. When was the last time you bought anything new? Eh?’
The atmosphere in the flat shifts into a new realm with every word that she utters. It’s like she’s smashing a fist through a sequence of invisible walls with each one, getting closer and closer to something approaching the truth of everything.
Walter puts up his hands into a gesture of surrender. ‘Jesus Christ, Jojo. Chill out. I’ll sort it, OK?’
