After the Party by Lisa Jewell Page A

party like an Englishman. Two more of these, please,” he said to Avril, “and can you make them doubles?”

Chapter 11
    J em quite liked the feel of the house without Ralph in it.
    It was odd, because when he was there, but not there, when he’d gone into town for a drink or down to Shirley to see his aging father, when he was due back, she missed him a lot. And when he was here, but not here, when he was upstairs in his garret, when she could hear his bare feet pad-pad-padding around above her and all the domesticity, she willed him to come down and join in. But now that there was no imminence of his presence, she felt more relaxed. She tried to analyze this and got as far as thinking that it had something to do with the fact that if he wasn’t there then he couldn’t fail to help her with the tea/look after the kids while she went to the gym/put Scarlett’s shoes on before they left the house/empty the dishwasher or pop out to buy nappies. Neither could he secrete half the household’s collection of mugs in his garret, permeate the lower floors of the house with the smell of old cigarettes or huff and puff when Blake woke him up in the night in the manner of someone who has an early flight to catch the next day followed by a performance of open heart surgery, rather than a man who was just going to potter around all day splodging paint onto canvas, untroubled by any form of appointment or intellectual challenge.
    Yes, life was less irritating without Ralph. But there wasmore to it than the simple removal of a source of friction. She was enjoying more than Ralph’s absence; she was also enjoying her own presence, the sense of being herself. She felt more capable, more open to new things, more spontaneous and more confident.
    And it was with this newfound sense of increased substance that Jem set off for the playground the following afternoon with both her children, a bag of chocolate croissants and an umbrella.
    It was not the ideal weather for a visit to the playground. The air was viscous and the sky laden with clouds as thick as heavy quilts. But this was her first afternoon as a single mother and she needed to be out and about doing something that would make coming home feel extra nice. She also thought it might be quite nice to bump into Joel.
    Bumping into Joel.
    It seemed to be happening more and more frequently.
    Which is not to say that she was stalking him, because she most definitely was not. They were purely chance meetings. And that is also not to say that anything of any significance was happening during these chance meetings, because it was not. They smiled. They said hello. They waved at each other across the street. Sometimes days lapsed without a chance meeting. Sometimes they met twice in a day. It was all entirely innocent and meaningless. But strangely magnetic.
    And she’d felt it just now, as she was pulling on Scarlett’s Wellington boots: He’ll be there .
    And he was.
    There, on a bench, reading the Observer (of course) in a thick blue overcoat, his breath making a cloud around his head. On the bench next to him was a paper cup of something hot with a corrugated cardboard jacket, and Jessica’s pink mittens. Jessicaherself was halfway across a wooden bridge, high enough up that if it had been Scarlett up there, Jem would probably not have been absorbed in the Sundays, but hovering around on the wood chips below, ready to catch her should she miss her footing. Jessica stopped when she saw them and threw her arms in the air: “Scarlett!” She turned to her father. “Look, Daddy, Scarlett!”
    Joel looked up over the top of his newspaper and smiled when he saw them. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Hello, Scarlett.”
    Scarlett stared at him icily for a moment, before dropping Jem’s hand and running toward the climbing frame to join Jessica.
    â€œSay hello!” Jem called out after her, but it was too late, she was gone.