Stella's love-making was frenetic but not violent. She did not grab. In his embrace she seemed to have no bones, a slender snake.

Even in the eager beginning, Marilyn had never been like this. No one had, that he could think of.

When they had exhausted themselves, Stella for Star had made bacon and egg, which she served with a hollan-daise sauce. She did not cry or carry on when he left. She did look wistful. She did not reckon he would come back.

He called her in the middle of the night, from his office in the annex.

"Nobbi," she said, "I wish you were here."

"Don't wish that, Star."

"No, I don't mean… I just mean, if you could have stayed the night."

Outside the grapeleaves, young and tender, rustled on the pergola. With the year the grapes would bud and turn to green and purple. The cleaning woman would pluck them and take them home. By then, Star and he would be an established thing, but he did not know this, then.

"I just wanted to tell you," he said, "you were lovely."

"Was I, Nobbi?"

"You was wonderful, Star."

"Was I?"

At the caress of her voice, his erection strove upward, longing for her hands and lips, the velvet tunnel of her loins.

"Sleep tight, Star. I wish—I wish I bloody well was in there with you too."

At the checkout was a dowdy woman with her handsome husband. He spoke to her in knife cuts.

He's ruined her, thought Stella for Star. So many shits of men.

Her own father had not been much. They had been happier after he was gone, her mother and she.

Star had loved her mother. But she loved Nobbi more. She loved sex with Nobbi. She loved sleeping with Nobbi, back to back. His hard bare buttocks against her own.

She loved his goodness. His shyness. His loyalty to Marilyn and Tracy. Yes, she even loved that.

She paid for the food.

One day.

One day she would go home, and Nobbi .would be there, working on his accounts at her table. They would have a big dog, and a cat, bought together in infancy so each believed the other was a version of itself, a meowing dog, a barking cat.

And, it might be, if it did not take too long, that she could give him a child.

Why not? It happened all the time, mothers of forty-five and more. She was fit and strong.

A girl. He would want a girl.

Another Tracy, but better. A Tray brought up to appreciate him.

She thought of Nobbi pushing a little girl on a swing. And stopped herself.

She had to wait.

God knew, she had waited long enough for love.

The bus came, and she lugged the heavy bags of food, merrily in her strong arms, aboard.

"Foggy old night," said the woman beside her.

"Terrible," agreed Star. She had not noticed.

CHAPTER 29