Eye for an Eye

mistresses. Maybe Chloe was different. Maybe she was the one. She had at least managed to put some colour into Jack’s life.
    ‘Can you spot it?’ said Jack, and smiled at Chloe.
    ‘Spot what?’
    ‘The mural.’
    ‘Oh, right.’ Gilchrist searched the bar, looking for something concrete and grey, stuck to a wall like unpainted plaster. But the walls were mostly bare. ‘I give up,’ he said. ‘Which one?’
    Jack looked up at the ceiling.
    Gilchrist followed his gaze, but all he saw were covered windows and wooden rafters. ‘I don’t see it.’
    ‘The skylight windows,’ Jack said. ‘The coverings.’ He sat back. ‘Cool, don’t you think?’
    Gilchrist took a sip of beer. ‘I thought mural meant it went on a wall.’
    Jack laughed and reached for Chloe’s hand. ‘Andy’s never going to like my stuff. But that’s what’s great about living in a democratic society. Freedom of speech. Freedom of expression. No one’s going to drag me outside and shoot me because they don’t like how I’m trying to express myself.’
    ‘Not yet, they haven’t,’ said Gilchrist, and chuckled when Chloe burst out laughing.
     
    By the time Gilchrist took a taxi to Gail’s, he’d been persuaded by Jack to have one too many. Mum’ll understand, Jack had told him. But from past experience, Gilchrist knew not to be convinced.
    He stood alone on the front step and rang the doorbell. In the garden, he recognized plants that had been groomed to perfection in their front garden in St Andrews. Gail had not lost her green fingers. The lawn sported stripes from its last cut, and aeration holes dotted its surface in straight lines.
    The door opened.
    Gail had lost weight. As much as a stone, he thought. Maybe more. Her eyes looked tired and sunken, her hair light and short.
    ‘Jack told me to expect you,’ she said.
    ‘Well, here I am.’ He held a bunch of flowers out to her. ‘Freesias. Your favourite.’
    She took them from him. ‘You’ve been drinking.’
    ‘Liquid lunch with Jack and Chloe. It’s been a while.’
    ‘With who?’ she snapped. ‘With Jack and who?’
    ‘Chloe.’
    ‘Never heard of her. What’s she like? If she’s anything like the last one, the sooner he gets rid of her the better.’ She turned away and retreated inside. ‘Harry is in, so be nice,’ then added over her shoulder, ‘If you can.’
    Although he had never set foot in Gail’s house before, he was struck with an odd sense of familiarity. A framed photo at the end of the hall, Gail with the kids, pre-divorce, in a beach-front café in Marbella. Pre-Harry, too, he thought. Or was it? Had Gail been having her affair then?
    In the lounge, he recognized his old mahogany television stand. And the maple coffee table, which still stood on his prized Persian rug. And his grandmother’s crystal vase. It had always been full of flowers whose names he could never remember, although he did know that the white and burgundy arrangement now sprouting from it was carnations.
    But no freesias. Maybe Gail had gone off them.
    And Harry seemed strangely familiar, too, but smaller, as if being married to Gail had reduced him inch by inch, year by year. He eyed Gilchrist from behind the sofa, then left the room without a word.
    Gail took a single chair by an ugly stone fireplace, and Gilchrist sat on the sofa without being asked. He felt regret at having succumbed to Jack’s persistence, and thought he saw signs of Gail’s illness. The corners of her mouth downturned more than he remembered, and gave her scowl a permanence it never used to have.
    ‘Chloe’s nice,’ he ventured.
    ‘What a ridiculous name. Chloe.’
    ‘It suits her.’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
    ‘That once you meet her you’ll—’
    ‘God forbid.’ She slapped invisible crumbs from her skirt.
    Gilchrist gripped the arm of the sofa. ‘You always said you would never have leather furniture. But this feels nice.’
    ‘It grows on you.’
    He nodded. ‘I see you still love the garden.’
    ‘It’s a mess.’
    Gilchrist pressed on. ‘I don’t hear too much from Jack and Maureen.’
    ‘The phone works both ways.’
    It doesn’t where you and I are concerned, he wanted to say, but instead said, ‘So, how is Maureen? I spoke with her last week,’ he lied. ‘She was going to call back.’
    ‘As well as can be expected.’
    ‘Jack phoned yesterday.’
    ‘I know. He told me.’
    ‘I had no idea,’ he said, and lifted a hand, ‘about