Close Relations by Deborah Moggach

passers-by through their dark glasses. She felt uncharacteristically skittish. She smiled at a street-sweeper and wiggled her fingers at a taxi that stopped to let her cross the road. She passed the Algerian Coffee Stores, breathing in the aroma. She heard the wind chimes tinkling outside the Thai restaurant; they danced to her dancing heart. She was shopping for Stephen. She was going to cook for him and sit there with him, in the company of other guests, around her dining table. How normal this sounded to normal people: how extraordinary for her! Even her qualms about Maddy had vanished in the sunshine.
    Stephen’s wife was a vegetarian. Prudence went to Bifulco and bought a joint of beef. She hadn’t cooked such a thing for years but tonight she was going to be a woman feeding her man. She queued for vegetables in Berwick Street market. How marvellous were the fruits of the earth, heaped up in their diversity! Her guests would leave early; she and Stephen would pounce on each other. Cabbage leaves were arranged around a mound of potatoes; they cradled them like the hands of a woman cupping her sweetheart’s balls. Prudence smiled at the stall-holder. He called her
darling
.
    Prudence bought cheese and artichokes and warm Italian bread from Lina Stores. She walked back towards the office. Everyone cherished their lunch-hour but over the past year she had felt proprietorial about hers; this segment of day belonged to her and Stephen. Unable, except on rare occasions, to see him alone, her hour with him was packed with such emotion it took her most of the afternoon to recover. She imagined a prisoner must feel like this when released into the fresh air for one hour out of the twenty-four.
    She and Stephen had their favourite places – a bench in Russell Square, various pubs situated at a discreet distance from the office. Happiness transformed them into tourists, for lovers have nowhere to go and find everything curious. They wandered into art galleries and sniggered at the installations. They browsed in the sort of second-hand bookshops visited by American professors; leafing through the volumes, they caressed each other beneath their coats. They pointed up at buildings – pediments, crenellations – looking upwards as people do in any city but their own. They even gave money to buskers. They didn’t dare hold hands; they walked along so close to each other that when they bumped together, hip to hip – they were the same height – they felt they must give off sparks like dodgem cars. This was their hour.
    Tonight, however, she would have him for longer – a whole evening. It was the first time in nearly a month. She walked into the lobby. Muriel greeted her with a conspiratorial smile; surely, after all these months, she must have guessed something was up? Prudence went into her office and dumped down her carrier bags.
    Suddenly she was flooded with joy. Something momentous was going to happen that evening, she could feel it. Little did she know that the momentous event would happen not to herself, but to somebody else.
    The doorbell rang. Stephen stood there holding a bottle of champagne. Prudence threw her arms around him: ‘Darling!I didn’t think you’d make it.’
    It was true; he had let her down so often in the past. He dumped the bottle on the floor; he undid her blouse and slid his hand under her bra.
    The doorbell rang. She jumped back and buttoned herself up.
    It was Maddy and Erin Fox. Maddy said: ‘We met on the doorstep.’
    Prudence, flushed, introduced them. ‘This is my sister Madeleine – Maddy. Erin, this is Stephen Miller, our editorial director.’
    Prudence hadn’t seen Erin since the day she had thrust the manuscript into her hands. What a magnificent woman she was – tall, powerful, with a strong nose and hair tied in tiny braids. She wore a long velvet dress and boots. When she moved, her jewellery rattled. Maddy was