And it was all right. George could do the bluff repartee about cars and sport if pressed. But it was like being a sheep in the Nativity play. No amount of applause was going to make the job seem dignified or stop him wanting to run home to a book about fossils.
“They’ve got big clients in Germany. The company were trying to get me to shuttle back and forth to Munich. Knocked that one on the head. For obvious reasons.”
The first time Katie had brought him home, Ray had run his finger along the rack of CDs above the television and said, “So you’re a jazz fan, Mr. Hall,” and George had felt as if Ray had unearthed a stack of pornographic magazines.
Jean appeared at the door. “Are you going to get cleaned and changed before lunch?”
George turned to Ray. “I’ll catch you later.” And he was away, through the kitchen, up the stairs and into the tiled quiet of the lockable bathroom.
5
They hated the idea. As predicted. Katie could tell.
Well, they could live with it. Time was she’d have gone off the deep end. In fact, there was a part of her which missed being the person who went off the deep end. Like her standards were slipping. But you reached a stage where you realized it was a waste of energy trying to change your parents’ minds about anything, ever.
Ray wasn’t an intellectual. He wasn’t the most beautiful man she’d ever met. But the most beautiful man she’d ever met had shat on her from a great height. And when Ray put his arms around her she felt safer than she’d felt for a long time.
She remembered the grim lunch at Lucy’s. The toxic goulash Barry had made. His drunken friend groping her arse in the kitchen and Lucy having that asthma attack. Looking out the window and seeing Ray with Jacob on his shoulders, playing horses, running round the lawn, jumping over the upturned wheelbarrow. And weeping at the thought of going back to her tiny flat with the dead animal smell.