They talked around harmless things. George had wanted to know all about Veronica’s friendship with Sarah. He had listened with mirth to her stories from that year, as much as she could remember in any case, and at the end of it all he had declared Sarah good for her.

“I like David, too,” he told her one evening when they were grabbing a small glass of wine at The Lansdowne pub, basking in the energy of the creatives around them, pretending the passion was theirs. “He’s a salt of the earth type, isn’t he? Refreshing.”

“Yes. Sarah’s like that too. Always was.”

“Not very ambitious though.” George ran a hand through his hair and looked up at her with unusual attention. He was still in his suit, though his tie was removed, and he had selected the Piaget with the white face and simple numerals. On his wrist were the cufflinks from their wedding. There was something about a well-dressed man that was endearing to Veronica – not the price tags, but the care with which it suggested he shaped himself. Some people saw such dressing as an expression of money, or power, but to Veronica it revealed the reverse – a thoughtfulness about oneself, a concern about the opinions of others, a susceptibility.

“Sarah is. Ambitious.”

“Oh I don’t mean it derogatively,” George clarified. “It must be nice to be content with your lot, not feel a need to achieve.”

Despite the clues of clothing, this was as close as George had come in the past year to actually articulating a vulnerability. “Like you do?” she asked.

“Like we do,” he corrected.

“Do you like to achieve though, or need to?” Veronica probed carefully, her tone shifting a little towards the soft searching of their early days. This, however, was too much for George. He sidestepped her earnestness and laughed jauntily.

“It’s just like a game of rugby, isn’t it? Glory goes to the man who makes the try.”

“No stickers for participation?”

“Definitely not.”

Veronica laughed, reluctantly accepting George’s blitheness. Her legs itched and a frustration crept with it through her skin. She could feel herself growing impatient. But it was better to be talking about something than nothing. “Oh the stickers!” she declared cooperatively.

They were in safe territory now. Veronica, George knew, despised the relentless supply of stickers she was required to distribute to already sheltered children. How would they ever learn that the world wasn’t like that, she’d demanded once of George. Not everybody won, not everybody could have all that they wanted. “What if you don’t play rugby?” she asked him breezily.

“Football then. If you’re playing footie, you want to be up front, scoring the goals.”

“Like Beckham,” smiled Veronica.

“That was brilliant,” George laughed. “He’s so not a Beckham. I like him though.”

As it happened, both Beckhams had, in Veronica’s estimation, been avoiding her. Sarah had not even done her Monday school collection, sending David in her stead, and although David had conversed with apparent warmth at the classroom door, there wasn’t the familiarity Veronica had thought might have flourished over the sharing of secrets and wine. The resulting feeling of rejection stirred a dormant rage in Veronica. It wasn’t that Sarah had been nasty. It wasn’t that David was impolite. There was nothing specific she could accuse either of them of doing. But there was a lack of something, again a lack.