‘Hardly,’ I said, ‘I married Fred and I have been trying and failing to lose this extra stone for a very long time.’
‘I’ve always thought one would lose it in a flash if the weight you lost went to someone else,’ Harriet said. ‘Wouldn’t that be marvellous. One minute some supermodel is slinking down a catwalk here in Milan, and the next she is the size of a hippopotamus and is falling over and rolling off the edge into the audience. In fact, where does the weight loss go, I wonder? And caffeine when they take it out of coffee, or fat out of yogurt. Or gluten out of flour? Where do all those things go?’
‘Perhaps there is a huge fat reservoir somewhere that never gets reported,’ I said, ‘and a caffeine lake.’
‘But then it would get full,’ Harriet said thoughtfully, ‘and every so often it would have to be emptied. Using big dredgers.’
‘And then where would it go?’ I laughed. ‘Perhaps it would be blasted off into space? So in fact those rings around Saturn are actually decades of accumulated debris from us.’
‘No, I expect it’s processed and made into that awful packaging that looks like snow pellets, and then it’s used to fill sofas,’ Harriet said firmly. ‘Ultimate recycling.’
‘You two are crackers,’ Anna said.
‘Well, it has to go somewhere,’ I said. ‘Don’t they say nothing is ever lost, it’s just transformed into something else?’
‘Even wishes and thoughts?’ Harriet said.
‘I suppose they are still stored somewhere,’ Anna said. ‘I read once that all the transmissions from old television and radio programmes are still moving away from the Earth, out there in space. I don’t know if it’s true or not. In which case some aliens might even at this moment be intercepting the first episode ofTorchy the Battery BoyorCoronation Streetand wondering what the heck is going on down here.’
‘And love? Where does love go when it dies?’ I asked, suddenly feeling more serious than I had.
‘That’s a Def Leppard song, isn’t it; you’d have to ask them. I read it’s all to do with the brain and chemicals,’ Harriet said, finishing her wine and putting her glass down on the table with a decisive thump. ‘Rupert might know, he was a brain surgeon.’
‘Surely there’s more to it than that?’ I said.
I must have loved Fred once. After all, I had married him. The trouble was I couldn’t remember. And gradually over the years things had changed, as of course they always do when the first excitement of love fades to be replaced by something else.
‘Can you remember what it’s like to be in love? I can’t,’ she said, echoing my thoughts. ‘Perhaps Anna is the only one who can.’
Anna looked embarrassed. ‘I still love Rupert, of course I do, but in a different way. Those butterflies I used to get in my stomach when I saw him have turned into moths. He’s very predictable and irritating sometimes. And occasionally I wonder if he feels the same way about me. We have been together for such a long time, he’s like an old jumper I wear for gardening. Familiar, and I don’t have to worry about it when I put it on. It does the job. Is that still love? Or is it habit?’
‘I think it’s all to do with hormones,’ I said. ‘One minute you adore the little whiffly noises they make when they are asleep and the next you are resisting the urge to hold a pillow over their face.’
Harriet gave a disbelieving snort.
‘Whiffly noises? Don’t make me laugh, Bruce could rattle the roof tiles when he had a cold.’
‘Rupert has always talked in his sleep,’ Anna said. ‘For years he used to call out for Daisy and I got very suspicious for a while until he told me it was the name of his dog when he was little. Now he just occasionally rants in his sleep about the government. He’s very rude too. He uses words I didn’t know he knew.’
‘I don’t think I have it in me to love anyone again,’ I said. ‘It’s too difficult. All that disappointment and suspicion. Isn’t it easier not to bother?’
‘I love snuggling up to Rupert on a cold night,’ Anna admitted, ‘He never complains about my cold feet. And he always brings me a cup of tea in bed every morning.’
Harriet was impressed. ‘Does he? That’s amazing.’
‘Yes, he does,’ Anna said, looking rather wistful, ‘and actually if I’m honest, I’m really missing him. I didn’t think I would. Even though he can be really annoying and grumpy sometimes. I’m going to ring him later and see how he’s getting on. He promised to paint the back door while I was away. I bet he can’t find the paint, never mind the brushes. And if he can he is quite capable of painting the wrong door. Silly old thing.’
‘I’ll just go and check the announcement board,’ Harriet said. ‘It’s only twenty minutes until the train to Venice leaves, so the platform number should be up soon.’
Anna leaned towards me with a mischievous smile. ‘No sign of your new friend then? The handsome writer.’
‘He’s hardly my friend,’ I protested, ‘just someone I keep bumping in to.’
‘It’s the stars aligning,’ Anna, said, wiggling her fingers in front of her, ‘bringing the two of you together.’
‘Rubbish,’ I insisted.
But secretly I wondered if she was right. After all, Jack was the first man I had talked to for any length of time for ages. And he had laughed with me, not at me as Fred used to do. That in itself was refreshing.
