Free Muddy Waters by Judy Astley

A lot more than OK, actually.’ She’s shameless, Stella thought, half-admiring Abigail’s lack of tact. Generally relatively polite as she was to chosen friends, she was just the kind of woman who’d come swanning up to those less favoured at a party and say, ‘Goodness, darling, have you still got that ghastly jacket?’ without her brain connecting fast enough with what her mouth was saying. Stella used to find this rather enviable, and had done ever since Abigail had queried a low essay mark she’d been given by bluntly challenging her male tutor with, ‘Are you quite sure you aren’t marking me down because you’re shorter than me and feel inadequate?’ It must be bliss, Stella imagined, to come straight out with whatever daft thing was in your mind without having the thought of possible consequences hopping in first and slamming the emergency good-manners brakes on. She tried a practice attempt at being blunt, ‘So why did he want to go and have an affair in the first place? What was going wrong? Was it sex?’ Abigail’s eyes widened and she fiddled with her cigarette lighter, turning it over and over, watching the gold catching the light. If she’d been a child, Stella thought, that might be construed as guilty fidgeting. For once, she really was choosing carefully what to say.
    â€˜Everyone all right? Not finished the wine? Good.’ Adrian came bustling in, reached across the table and picked up the bottle to top up his own glass. ‘Sorry, am I interrupting?’ he asked cautiously, wary of their silence.
    â€˜We weren’t talking about you, if that’s what you were thinking.’ Abigail beamed a sweet smile at him, reaching out a hand to caress his fondly as if she was reassuring her cat. Sweet of her, Stella thought, to be as pleased to see Adrian as to see her – men could be so nervous of women
ganging up
.
    â€˜Never crossed my mind,’ he assured her, scuttling nervously backwards to the door, suddenly eager to return to the TV and the second half of the match.
    â€˜You didn’t answer my question,’ Stella reminded Abigail. There was more to this than she’d been told, she decided. Martin’s defection might not be so completely out of the blue as she’d been encouraged to think. At college, though she’d probably now deny it could possibly have happened. Abigail had once set herself a personal target of sleeping with a different man every night for a week. Stella remembered her joking about having knickers with days of the week embroidered on them, peering under her skirt and joking with something like, ‘If I’m wearing Wednesday it must be Paul.’ One of the men, a brawny rugby player with far less sexual experience than bar-room bragging would have the rest of the team believe, had even left a grateful £20 on the pillow which Abigail had been so thrilled about she’d taken Stella out and treated them both to extravagant steak and chips at the pub. It had been there that she’d confessed with a lot of drunken giggling just how ill-gotten was her sudden windfall. Perhaps, Stella thought, she still liked a spot of casual, anonymous sex now and then, in the same way that Ellen MacIver had joined a local sports club because she still nostalgically enjoyed the occasional schoolgirlish game of lacrosse.
    Abigail was again saved from being trapped into an honest reply by a sudden urgent rapping on the door. Peggy came in without waiting for an answer, bringing with her the cool spring night air. Abigail sprang to grab her cat before it escaped into the night. ‘Council man just came round again. Sneaked round in a rowing boat in the dark, the bugger. They usually come in two’s, nice and nasty like on police programmes, but this time it was Nasty on his own,’ Peggy said to Stella glumly, eying what was left of the wine. She sat down heavily next to Abigail who clutched