Free The Ex-Wives by Deborah Moggach Page A

earth could she hope to spot her? She couldn’t possibly hang around outside every pasta restaurant in Soho waiting for somebody to emerge from the flat above. She didn’t even know what this Penny looked like. She was probably out at work anyway.
    Celeste walked into Soho Square. She sat down heavily on a bench. A one-legged pigeon hopped away. It was hopeless. She should have realized that.
    Back home there was another note to Waxie, sellotaped to the door. ‘
See you at Bim’s at
5.’ In this huge city, so huge she could never glimpse the edge of it, people were connecting up. Unknown people called Waxie and Bim, even with names like that they were finding each other. In the flat upstairs, music wasplaying. Footsteps thudded across the ceiling. Through the walls they laughed their loud Waxie laughs and left notes for each other.
    She wasn’t lost; she mustn’t panic. She had stepped out of the past into this windy city, she had woken up from the long, false sleep of her youth. She had sub-let the maisonette back in Willow Drive, she had finished with all that, and finally she had found Buffy. He had embraced her outside the patisserie, holding her in a bear hug. His girth, his warm tobacco breath . . . He seemed to need her. He had mumbled into her hair ‘I want to dissolve you in water and drink you up.’ At least that’s what it had sounded like. Did he really say that? Was it possible?
    It was all so confusing. She had never felt like this before. Oh, she had felt desire – the flush and moistness of it, the dryness and the dizzy spells, the whooping clarity of the streets. She had kissed men in cars and she had even been to bed with one or two of them, but nobody had really entered her. With Buffy it was different. She didn’t know what she was feeling, she didn’t dare to think, but the next day, at work, there she was watching the door and waiting for him to come in. She borrowed a tester and rubbed blusher into her cheeks; she applied more lipstick. Still he didn’t come. She stayed in at lunchtime; she just ate a sandwich in the backroom, pausing when she heard the
ping
of the door and casually leaning forward to look into the shop.
    No time passes more slowly than an afternoon in an empty shop. Nesta didn’t notice anything, but then Nesta never did. Her friend from Nautilus Fitness down the road came in – business was slow there too – and took out her wedding photos. Nesta spent a long time over each one, sighing. It was four o’clock now. Celeste made up little ploys. If she went out to the lavatory he would come in . . . If she closed her eyes and counted to ten . . . Suddenly, ridiculously, she needed him. Maybe he had forgotten all about her. Maybe that tea had meant nothing.
    â€˜Shame his little face is out of focus,’ said Nesta. Celeste turned. For the first time, she looked at what they held in their hands. Photos.
    The package from the photographic lab was delivered at 4.30. It was her job to take out the individual wallets of photos and put them into the desk drawer, ready to be collected by the customers.
    At six o’clock Nesta cashed up. Mr Singh opened the door to let the last customer out. In the street, the Honda puttered to a halt. Celeste slipped behind the counter, opened the big beige envelope and took something out.
    She walked home along Kilburn High Road, pastclosed shops with their ghostly displays of shoes, past the illuminated pavement stalls selling jewellery. The bracelets winked at her confidingly. She felt like a criminal with a bomb in her pocket. She felt guilty, and deeply embarrassed, that she had borrowed Buffy’s photos. It seemed such an intrusion into his life. She hadn’t looked at them yet; she was putting it off, almost luxuriously, until she got into her flat. She passed
Afro-Caribbean Hair Beauty,
a big, busy place advertising
100% Human Hair Sold Here
. It was still open; within