Rumors is one of those seafront bars that manages to look chic, even though it hasn’t been refurbished since 2004 and doesn’t have electronic shutters but plastic sheets that steam up when it rains. Yet it does have trendy cocktails with names like Anna Banana, and yacht-owning clientele with Rolexes and silk caftans that remind me of the meme tell me without telling me. That you’re rich.
I love Rumors though. I was one of their first customers when they opened, and sometimes I’m one of the last to leave. During storms, I like being on the other side of the plastic, listening for the irregular toll of the bell buoy. On summer nights I rest in a deckchair by the firepit, watching the lighthouse blink. There’s a rhythm to the bar that I’m familiar with and while I’d be exaggerating if I said everyone knows my name, it wouldn’t be a lie that they know my drink.
I’ll have what she’s having, and that’s when I always point to Jam.
As I head up the wooden steps two at a time, I hear her before I see her. She’s in our usual place, a table near the bar that overlooks the sea while sidestepping its gusts. It took us a while to find this spot and we think of it as ours. Jamillah doesn’t shrink from the challenge of evicting intruders, which is when I tend to make a quick trip to the bathroom.
Tonight, she’s laughing with the staff, her hair in a high ponytail, her face flushed and shiny as she shouts something about liquid Viagra.
“Oh, hey,” she says, leaning across the table to kiss me. She smells of cheese and onion—she can eat chips like no one else.“There’s a new cocktail…” She lowers her voice. “And a new guy.” She gestures with her thumb to the bartender. “Check him out.”
“It’s basically Jägermeister and Red Bull,” he calls back to her.
He’s handsome, but not much older than Will, the thought of which makes my tummy wilt.
“Sounds good. We’re going for it,” she calls back. And then I have her full attention. She places her hands flat on the table between us. “So, how was it? Catastrophic?”
“Worse.”
She laughs. “Oh, come on. It can’t have been that bad. And she is coming home again, you know.”
“I know. But it’s…” I shrug, setting my jacket on the back of a chair, running my hands through my hair. It only takes a few steps along the seafront for the air to batter it.
“It’ll get easier.” She taps my hand. “Or it won’t.” Biting open another packet of chips, she lays it out flat between us.
“It’s all just so…I dunno…depressing.”
“This…” she waggles her finger at me “…is why I didn’t want kids. All that crap and hard work, just for them to leave you.”
“There’s still time for you yet,” I say, as the bartender approaches.
She snorts a laugh. “You’re joking! I have gray pubes!”
An older lady at a nearby table turns to look at us in disgust, but luckily the barman steps in front of me, blocking her from view. “There you go, ladies. Two Liquid Viagras.” He smiles, flicking his surfy hair. “Enjoy.”
“Oh, we will,” Jam says, lifting her glass speculatively. The liquid is blue, the straw radioactive yellow, a lime hanging on the rim. “Not bad.” She tastes it, winces.
I try mine. It’s not great, but it’s our ritual, working the cocktail menu. We’ve been friends for so long there are rituals aplenty, most of which we can’t remember. We met when neither of us had any family and agreed to fill the gaps. In Jam’s case, she didn’t want children, whereas I was focused on multiples—in the end settling for two, as reality bit.
She looks glamorous tonight in a Bardot top and PVC leggings she’ll have to peel off. I don’t know how she manages to stay in such good shape. She’s addicted to junk and only does Pilates on Fridays. That must be some class.
“Let’s not talk about the kids.” I sip my drink, watching the disapproving lady at the other table. Her husband looks like he could use this cocktail. He’s slumped over his pint, barely speaking. It must be so disappointing to get to that age and have nothing left to say.
“I wasn’t,” Jam says.
“Hey?”
“Talking about kids.”
“Oh.” I sigh. “So, how’s Nate?”
“Nate the Great?” she asks, even though there’s only one Nate that I know of and she’s married to him. “You know how it is.” She puffs out her cheeks. “If it’s on TV, he’s watching it.”
I nod, looking at the old man again, wondering whether his game plan is to slide downhill, very slowly, for the rest of his life—whether he has a plan at all.
A tiny ripple of appreciation for Fred forms: he does at least leave the house. But then the ripple stops; he plays too much golf. At least, that’s what he says he’s doing. Whereas Nate is like a teddy bear—loveable, inert. His reluctance to go out drives Jam mad and I have to say, she deserves more. So much more.
A tear trickles down my cheek before I can stop it. Jam stares at me, probably thinking she can’t remember the last time either of us cried in public.
I expect her to glance awkwardly around the bar, but she doesn’t. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says. “You’ve got this.”
As she sets her eye on me, I know she’s acknowledging that dark place in me that I spend so much energy hiding, and then she scrapes back her chair. “Sod this for a game of cards. Let’s get more Viagras.”
I watch her at the bar, bangles glinting as she sets her hands flirtily on her hips, throwing her head back to laugh so loudly that everyone turns to look at her, even the yachties.
By the time she’s back with the drinks, I’m no longer teary. But something else is bothering me, something that needs saying, out loud.
“Jam…” I look around me, checking no one’s listening in. “I have to tell you something.”
“Ooh, sounds juicy,” she says, slurping her drink.
“It’s…personal.”
Taking in the seriousness of my expression, she leans toward me, frowns. “What is it?”
I stir my drink, watching the liquid swirl. “It’s Fred.”
“What about him?”
“I want out.”
“Out? In what—?”
“I want him to leave.” I smile, my mouth tremoring. “I want a divorce and for him not to get the house.”
She laughs dryly. “Well, that ain’t gonna happen. But are you actually serious?”
“Yes. It’s over.” I look around the bar again, gazing at the miserable old man with his pint. “He makes my flesh crawl.”
“Really?” She’s looking at me curiously, head tilted. “It’s that bad? I mean, I knew there were issues, but…really…?”
“Yes. I don’t love him anymore. In fact, I hate him.”
“Oh, wow.” She bites her lip, leaving a trace of lipstick on her front tooth as she smiles, trying to make light of this. She likes Fred, is going to defend him, the way people always defend marriages when there are kids involved. But ours are twenty and eighteen years old. They barely count in terms of emotional damage. Which I know isn’t true, even as I think it.
“Well, I get where you’re coming from,” she says. “He’s creepy.” Flicking her hair, she drinks her cocktail, avoiding eye contact.
Is she joking?
“What do you mean, creepy?”
She still won’t look at me. “I knew you’d make something of this.”
I reach across the table, touch her hand. “Jam, tell me what you mean.”
She looks at me then, a full-on stare she uses when urging a client to buy a property they can’t afford. I’ve seen her do it. “You know what I mean.”
The barman approaches, towel slung over his shoulder, setting a bowl of roasted almonds between us. “On the house,” he says.
We don’t respond. The tension between us is too consuming, even though we’re in agreement.
“Let’s face it, Gabs: he’s not been the same since you got the house. Everything changed then and it’s taken you this long to be brave enough to admit it.”
My face flushes. “Because of the kids.”
“Because of the kids,” she repeats, nodding.
Music starts to play—jazz for one of the yacht owners. There’s a few of them scattered here tonight, in slacks and polos, knitted sweaters draped over their shoulders. And with them, dotted around the peripheries, like herring hoping to attach themselves to whales with their powerful suction mouths, are the beautiful young women who work alone, waiting to catch an eye, quicken a pulse.
This little patch here, the small town of Shelby, boasting the most expensive properties in the world and the second largest natural harbor on earth, is famous for gold diggers, or GDs. Jam deals with them at the real estate agency a lot more than I do. Whereas not many sexy young women wander into the Dorset council buildings where I work.
Despite my own personal history, I don’t mind them all that much, have grown to accept them, but they get under Jam’s skin.
Fred likes them though.
Ever since we got the house… That’s the thing I haven’t been able to admit. Jam’s right: he changed practically overnight.
Over in the corner someone moves, catching the light, and I look that way, trying not to stare. “They get younger,” Jam says, following my gaze. “And more pumped.”
She’s talking about the breasts—so firm they gleam. Dressed in a plunging slip dress, her legs demurely crossed, she’s holding an old hardback with a plain cover.
“Yeah, right, like she’s reading that.” Jam scowls. “Bet the book’s upside down.”
I’m about to suggest another round of cocktails when her phone rings. “What,” Jam answers flatly. “Hey? How d’you manage that?” She claps her hand to her head. “But I’m with Gabby. I… Okay. Just hang on.”
She drops her phone into her bag. “He’s locked himself out on the patio. What a tool bag.” She turns to unhook her jacket from her chair. “I’m gonna have to go. Sorry. Want me to come back in a minute?”
“No, I’m leaving soon.” Standing up, I follow her outside to the decking.
“Why not come now?” She looks at me suspiciously. “You’re not going to wallow, are you?”
“No. Honest. I’m just going to sit here a while.” I point to the empty deckchairs. “Get some head space.”
“Well, text me when you’re home.”
“Okay.” We hug loosely, tension still standing between us, and I know it’s because of her creepy comment.
But Jam isn’t one to leave things unsaid and before she leaves, she turns back. “Lunch, tomorrow? Continue the Fred talk?”
“It’s a date.” I sit in the deckchair, which seems a very long way down tonight. The cashmere blankets smell faintly of dog, but it doesn’t bother me. I drape one over my legs, feeling a lot older than I am.
A lull of silence falls over the decking and then it’s just me and the sea. No one is passing by, not even a boat. I’m always a bit morose in autumn, even more so when looking at this view. To me, it signals death, loss.
I’m so far into my self-induced darkness I don’t notice any movement around me until she’s suddenly there, dazzling, not a herring but a great white shark, capable of power and strength and anything she wants. All in a dress so slight I could use it to wrap my lunch in.
And then she smiles, bleached teeth glowing in the dark. “Hey, I’m Ellis. Mind if I join you?”