CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I was sitting in the garden of the pub, the heels of my open-toed mules sinking into the grass, peering critically at the crescent of white at the base of each of my scarlet toes. My three-week-old pedicure had well and truly grown out: I’d have to invest in some polish and clippers in the chemist and DIY them back to their former glory. I shook myself. The ball didn’t matter. God willing, I’d never have to see any of these people, bar Lysette, after next week.

‘It’s just not practical, darling.’

‘No. Of course,’ I said, aware of a tinge of passive aggression – blood in the water – that was creeping into my voice. I knew he wouldn’t be able to – why was some childish part of me taking his inevitable pass as a rejection? ‘I get it.’

Patrick was walking and talking, shouldering his way down a busy London street in search of a late lunchtime sandwich. I could hear the crackle and buzz of it, so different from the humid stillness of the pub garden.

‘I would if I could.’

‘I know,’ I said, although I didn’t really. I felt an all too familiar stab of loneliness – would work always be his mistress? ‘It was always going to be a long shot. How’s it going today?’

‘Oh, you know,’ he said. ‘Had an aromatherapy massage this morning and I’ll be leaving at five. How about you?’

I tore my gaze away from my disappointing toes – I’d sat around having coffee and speculating about what truths lay beneath honeyed words. An image of Lysette loomed up at me – hypnotised by her coffee cup, lost and distant. Her resignation about Sarah, her prickly awkwardness with Ged – even if it looked like frothy cappuccinos and chat, I’d been working hard. I’d be working hard tonight too. She was my mission, more than anything.

I snapped back to the conversation. ‘I saw Joshua first thing.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘You know – Sarah’s husband. Max’s dad.’

‘Oh yeah, of course. How’d it go?’ He paused, and I wondered if he was going back over what I’d told him about my strange, sad session with Max. ‘What do you reckon – Pret or Eat?’

No – he was thinking about cheese.

‘It was fine,’ I said, my voice flat. ‘You like that baguette in Pret, don’t you?’

‘The cheese and ham one? I do, it’s true. I swear, Mia, you know me better than I know myself.’

Did I? The distance between us seemed so obvious again, as if all the ‘knowing’ we’d built up in the two years prior to it was a shallow puddle, not the deep lake that I’d arrogantly believed it to be.

‘I should go,’ I said, aware I needed to avoid blowing this up into a self-created existential crisis. ‘You get to your sandwich.’

‘Don’t hang up. We’ve got the whole walk back still.’

‘No, I should. I’ve got the session with Ian that he cancelled yesterday, and then I’ve got to go to Kimberley’s with Lysette to get ready.’ The very thought of it made my skin prickle – why had I agreed to tonight? ‘He’s the headmaster.’

‘I know that,’ said Patrick. ‘Can I have a very, very strong black coffee, please?’ he said, having reached the counter. ‘The kind your spoon stands up in?’

Hearing him – his acute Patrick-ness – made my heart clench tight in my chest. I would wish soon after that I’d shared my rush of affection – that I’d grabbed that small, seemingly insignificant moment and made something of it.

‘I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I miss you.’

‘Are you mad with me?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said, determined to take the harder route and be honest, not defensive. ‘I’m just a bit disappointed.’

‘Sounds way worse.’

‘I wanted you to meet them all so you knew what I’d been droning on about. And Kimberley makes me feel like a spotty twelve-year-old at the best of times, let alone when her celebrity husband’s trailing in her wake.’

‘I’m sorry, Mia,’ he said simply.

‘I get it, I really do,’ I said.

I didn’t. Unhappily for me, I’d only come to realise that fact when it was too late.

*

Lysette texted from outside, and I manoeuvred my way down the creaky staircase that connected my garret to civilisation. There on the landing was April, coming out of her room. It seemed too convenient.

‘Mia!’ she said, her smile garishly red. ‘I’d offer to show you my room, but then I’d have to kill you.’ She giggled. ‘Oops, inappropriate!’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got to run anyway.’

‘Anywhere nice?’ she said, clocking my bulging weekend bag and thick make-up. I’d been trying to leave myself with the minimum amount of grooming left to do: I didn’t need Kimberley unleashing her ‘team’ on me.

‘Um, just this . . . this do that Kimberley Farthing’s invited me to. Some charity thing her husband’s organised.’

‘Ooh! Where is it?’

I hesitated. ‘Just in Cambridge.’ I made an awkward gesture towards the stairs. ‘I should go. My friend Lysette’s downstairs.’

‘Sounds fun. It’s good that they’re able to put it all behind them, isn’t it? Let life move on?’

‘I don’t think they’ve put it all behind them. Anyway . . .’

‘Don’t you?’ said April, eyes bright.

‘No,’ I said firmly, thinking yet again of the sadness that was etched so deeply into Lysette’s face. ‘Anyway – nice to see you, April.’

‘Yeah, you too, darling,’ tinkled April, opening her bedroom door. Was she going in or coming out – it didn’t quite make sense. ‘I’ll miss our evening tipple.’

‘Me too,’ I lied, over my shoulder, taking the wooden stairs two at a time.

*

Lysette’s battered car was parked outside the pub, its wheels up on the kerb at a jaunty angle. It was the kind of thing you’d have got a ticket for in five minutes flat in London, but didn’t matter a jot in Little Copping. I climbed in, still a little awkward with her. Lysette leaned over the gear stick, hugged me for almost too long.

‘Hello, mate,’ she said, her words muffled by my hair.

‘Hi,’ I said, drawing away. She clearly hadn’t joined me in applying her make-up obsessively early: her skin looked grey and drawn, those dark circles I’d observed earlier even more obvious close up. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she said, her smile unconvincing.

‘I don’t, no. Tell me.’

‘Full of the joys of spring,’ she said, turning the key in the ignition. ‘How was Ian?’

How was Ian? We’d talked in more detail about how to talk to his young pupils about death – how to neither avoid the subject nor traumatise them more. He’d seemed to find it useful, had asked for it, but I’d come away somehow feeling like the session was more for me than for him. Like he was paying lip service to the process. I’d gently probed his feelings around the footage, but he’d slammed the door on it, his jaw tight and clenched. I couldn’t share much of it with Lysette, but she read between the lines.

‘He’s not going to be feeling good about any of it,’ she said, her eyes trained on the winding lane.

‘What, all that business with Kimberley and Peter?’ I said hesitantly. ‘The quiz night?’

‘Sarah was on top form that night,’ she said, a note of defiance in her voice, and I wondered what she meant. The only thing I’d heard from Kimberley was about her shameless use of an iPhone.

‘How so?’ I asked, even though it felt risky. We had such a brief sliver of time alone: I needed to bridge the gap.

‘She never took any shit,’ said Lysette. ‘She didn’t let her friends take it either.’

‘What, so she defended Kimberley?’

‘No,’ said Lysette, as the grand iron gates of Kimberley’s palatial house loomed up in front of us. ‘She defended Peter.’

Her words felt almost electric. Defended him against what, against Kimberley? Or was it Ian, shifty and uncomfortable Ian, who was the villain of the piece here? We’d arrived a minute too soon. No, it was only too soon for me – I sensed that for Lysette it was perfect timing. She hit the buzzer and the gates drew apart – glacially slowly, as if they wanted to make it clear who was boss. She parked the car on the sweeping drive, turned to me.

‘Forget it. What about you? We can’t keep talking about me the whole time.’

She sounded so like her old self in that moment, I could almost believe that the last few weeks were a dream, a ridiculous plot contrivance on a daytime soap.

‘I’m OK. I’m – I’m better now,’ I said, our eyes meeting in a silent apology.

I wanted to go further – seal the still fragile truce by having the conversation that simmered and bubbled beneath the surface – but it wasn’t the time. Not here, a discarded rice cake in the footwell, Kimberley’s rambling home casting its long shadow.

‘Is Paddy Cakes going to make it up the motorway tonight?’ she asked, opening her door. I nearly asked her to shut it: instead I reluctantly swung mine open.

‘No, he’s stuck in the office.’

She must’ve heard the insecurity in my voice. She smiled at me across the bird-poo-splattered roof of the car, incongruously parked next to Kimberley’s gleaming 4×4.

‘And you’re not . . . you’re not late any more?’

‘Nope,’ I said, turning towards the house.

Lysette threaded her arm through mine in solidarity. ‘I know I must seem the old woman who lived in a shoe with all those kids, but I do get it. Saffron took her time to arrive. It’ll happen when you’re not expecting it.’

‘What, like when there’s been no actual sex of any kind?’

We giggled.

‘The nuns really did a number on you,’ hissed Lysette, as the heavy front door swung open.

It was Lori who was behind it, Kimberley bobbing up behind her, her blonde hair looped up in large rollers, a satin robe pulled around her. She was all slippery gloss and it was only teatime.

‘Perfect timing!’ she shrieked. ‘Lori, off you go.’

Lori scuttled off, giving me a quick, tight smile of recognition, and Kimberley shooed us towards the kitchen like we were badly trained puppies. There we found Lori already twisting the cork out of a bottle of champagne, three flutes lined up on the granite counter. I shot a glancing look at Lysette: the corner of her bottom lip was trapped between her teeth, a nervous tic I remembered from exam time at school. I’d been dreading tonight, but now I suspected she’d been dreading it even more. Was that short line of glasses just serving to remind her that Sarah wasn’t here to knock hers back?

‘Cheers!’ said Kimberley, once we were each holding one, her excitement palpable. She must have seen our faces. ‘To Sarah,’ she added, suitably sombre. ‘I still can’t believe she’s not here. It’s so wrong that she’s not.’

Lysette’s face crumpled, her glass making slow progress towards Kimberley’s. Kimberley put hers down and crushed her into a hug.

‘We’ll have to enjoy ourselves doubly hard to make up for the fact she’s not here,’ she said, speaking the words directly into her ear. It felt too intimate somehow, like I was a peeping Tom.

‘We will,’ agreed Lysette, the small phrase thick with sadness. I stood there, observing the two of them, muddled together in a mass of complicated emotion. Kimberley’s eyes briefly met mine over Lysette’s shoulder, two cold rock-pools.

‘Right,’ said Kimberley, pulling away and clapping her hands. She took a deep glug of champagne, and shook her head like it was a hit of tequila. ‘Operation Glamazon. We’ve got ninety minutes before Nigel pulls up in the car. The clock is ticking!’

She filled each of our glasses to the brim, signalled for us to follow her. I looked back as we left the kitchen. Lori had stopped to watch us leave, the kitchen cloth she’d been scrubbing with no longer tracing soapy circles on the counter. I wanted to stop, talk to her, but I knew it would be seen as a small, dangerous mutiny.

‘Lori, bring the bottle!’ shouted Kimberley, as we ascended the curved staircase.

‘I could nip back down,’ I said, but she waved the idea away with an airy hand.

‘We need the ice bucket.’

I looked at Lysette, hoping for a tiny moment of scorn, but she seemed utterly accepting of Kimberley’s caprice. We followed her down the plush hallway, me cringing as we passed the scene of the crime – the upstairs bathroom – and eventually arrived in Kimberley’s bedroom. It was predictably huge, the large bay window giving a panoramic view of the beautiful landscape, an elegant rococo bed the centrepiece, a few silk pillows strewn across it.

‘What a gorgeous view,’ I said, as Kimberley flung open a pair of doors to reveal a dressing room.

‘The pièce de résistance,’ she declared. ‘I made Nigel build me this. Feel free to rootle around in there.’

Lysette perched on the bed, her champagne glass already half empty. How had she managed to drink and walk with such frightening efficiency? I waited for her to say something, but she seemed to have retreated inwards again.

‘Honestly, Kimberley, just chuck me any old thing. Something you don’t care about too much. Have you got something in mind, Lys?’

‘There’s that red one I borrowed before,’ said Lysette, as Lori appeared nervously in the doorway, ice bucket dripping onto the thick cream carpet.

‘Just top us up and put it in the sink,’ said Kimberley. Neither of us had made much of a dent in our glasses, but Lysette wiggled her half-empty one in Lori’s direction. ‘Let’s mix it up. Try a few things on you.’ She swung round to look at me, her eyes critically scanning my body. I backed towards the bed, sat down. ‘I’ve got a few things that might work on you,’ she said, and I tried not to think about the recent spate of calorific pub lunches and lack of yoga.

‘Honestly, anything,’ I protested, but she was already trawling the rails with ruthless efficiency, throwing out a mountain of dresses as she went.

‘You OK?’ I mouthed at Lysette.

‘I’m fine,’ said Lysette, perfectly audibly. ‘I’m not fine. Fine, not fine,’ she sing-songed. I could already feel my shoulders tightening and I tried to talk myself down: there was no need to start bracing against her two glasses of champagne. It’s funny how those early survival mechanisms kick in, even thirty years later. I no longer craved Curly Wurlys, but I still hated that insidious way that booze could body snatch the people I loved, making them there and not there, all at once.

Kimberley emerged, laden down with options.

‘This pile is for you,’ she said, handing me a bundle of fabric, ‘and these are for you,’ she said, handing Lysette a larger heap. She looked at us expectantly.

‘Can I just . . .’ I said, gesturing to the en suite.

‘We won’t stare at you, will we, Lysette?’ said Kimberley. I’d stripped to my underwear in too many teenage bedrooms and Topshop changing rooms to give a hoot about Lysette seeing my cellulite, but there was no way I was exposing it to Kimberley. I kept my face still. ‘Of course. Go for it,’ she said, waving an imperious hand.

‘Unless you want it?’ I asked Lysette.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she giggled. ‘Trust me, Kimberley’s seen way worse!’

It was silent as I padded my way across the carpet to the bathroom, but it was the noisy kind of silence. I could feel my skin prickling.

It was predictably tasteful in there: retro without being twee. There were two top of the range electric toothbrushes side by side above the enamel sink, with its burnished copper taps. The bath stood on chubby metal feet, expensive unguents perched on the wooden shelf above it. I studiously ignored the medicine cabinet, which looked like it had been salvaged from a wartime chemist. I shook out the first dress, a petrol-blue sheath in a satiny fabric, slashed across the shoulder from left to right. I looked at the label: it wasn’t one of those designers that felt like a naughty but occasionally justifiable splurge, it was one of those names which I’d only ever seen between the pages of Vogue. I unzipped it, and gingerly stepped in. Well, at least I tried to step in, but it showed absolutely no desire to slither its way over my hips.

‘How’s it going in there?’ trilled Kimberley.

‘Give us a twirl,’ called Lysette. Was I imagining that slight slurring?

‘Um, no – this one’s not right,’ I protested, just as the door swung open, revealing my body bent double, my knickers proudly displayed in the wide frame of the zip, which was still in no danger of closing.

‘Oh,’ said Kimberley, cocking her blonde head. ‘I thought that might work, it’s one of my favourites, but I see what you mean.’

I let the dress drop around my ankles, then yanked it up around myself like an inadequate sheet in an attempt to cover my half-naked body. Lysette was clutching her glass, a short-sleeved red dress in a flattering jersey fabric already in place.

‘First time unlucky,’ she said. ‘What do you think of this one?’ she added, striking a pose.

‘You look . . .’ The truth was, whilst the dress suited her, lovely didn’t feel like the right word. It was more than churlishness: her face looked hollowed out, permanently in shadow, and the haunted quality in her eyes robbed her of even more. ‘It’s lovely.’

Hurt flitted across her face, that tiny distinction not lost on her. She knew me too well to think that it was mere semantics. Why hadn’t I trotted out the well-worn line that her question demanded? It wasn’t bitchiness, it came from a better place than that, but the effect was just as devastating.

‘What are you going to go for next?’ asked Kimberley, busying herself with the rest of the pile, which I’d left draped over the lip of the bath. I sat down on the faux antique wooden loo seat, trying to rationalise away my sense of humiliation.

‘Maybe that black one?’ I said.

‘Oh, the black one!’ said Kimberley. ‘I wore that to a drinks reception Sam Cam organised at Downing Street for this wonderful addictions charity. You must try it on.’ She perched on the rim of the bath expectantly, but I didn’t move a muscle. ‘Oh, sorry!’ she said.

Lysette waved a dismissive hand in my direction as they stood up to leave.

‘You’re skinny as ever,’ she said, ‘you’re still all sushi and yoga. You wait – if you do manage to get yourself pregnant you’ll know about a real paunch in no time.’

A slow smile spread across Kimberley’s face.

‘Are you trying to get pregnant, Mia? That’s wonderful.’

My heart was beating too fast now, blood thumping in my ears. I wanted to believe it was just tipsiness, but I couldn’t help thinking that Lysette was sharing my most vulnerable place to punish me. I grabbed a pristine cream towel from the rail, wrapped it around me, then busied myself with the black dress.

‘I mean yes, me and Patrick do want to have a family. We’ll be getting married next summer, so . . .’

I pulled the dress up lengthways by its shoulders, pretended to admire it, hoping they’d take the hint. My heart was still pumping like a piston.

‘Oh, so you have set a date?’

‘I keep saying to her, it doesn’t always happen in five minutes flat,’ said Lysette. ‘But when you’ve had straight As your whole life . . .’

I refused to look at either of them.

‘It’s such a mystery, isn’t it?’ said Kimberley in a honeyed tone. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to leave it too long.’

I didn’t bother to engage with the blatant contradiction between the two ideas, nor tell her that most women trying to get pregnant in the autumn of their baby-making years had simply failed to meet a suitable man till September, rather than fallen prey to some kind of fertility amnesia. Instead I turned my back on them, told them tersely I should get on with finding an outfit, and then cried silently for a good five minutes, scrubbing at my face with the Farthings’ mercifully multi-ply toilet paper and cursing my decision to apply two thick coats of mascara before I came out in a pointless effort to assert some control.

The black dress was also doll-sized – by now I was convinced her choice of tailored fabric cages was no coincidence – but I squeezed myself into it, enjoying the sound of a stitch giving up the ghost as my hips snuggled in. I looked at myself in the small square mirror of the medicine cabinet, forced myself to take some deep breaths. I didn’t like what was going on here. I didn’t like what it had done to Lysette. I would watch Kimberley like a hawk, work out what her agenda was, and hit back where it hurt. I wiped the last traces of my mascara on her fluffy cream towel and stepped out of the bathroom.

Kimberley and Lysette were on the far side of the vast bedroom by the dressing table, their heads bent in towards each other. They were talking, but their voices were low. Kimberley spun round slowly to give me the full effect: she was wearing a floor-length black number with a fish tail, delicate blue flowers appliquéd across the shoulders. The deep V of the neckline revealed a complicated necklace that was either diamanté or diamonds, probably the latter. Strappy, vertiginous heels completed the look – in our knee-length cocktail dresses, we looked like her ladies in waiting.

‘There you are!’ she said. ‘We were starting to get worried. Do you want to come and do your face? We’re all done.’

I saw Lysette take in the inky smudges around my eyes, which I’d tried so hard to eradicate. She at least had the grace to look sheepish.

‘No make-up artist?’ I said sweetly. ‘We’re slumming it, are we?’

Kimberley came back, quick as a flash.

‘I just thought – it’s a charity event, after all.’

‘The dress looks nice,’ said Lysette, giving my hand a quick squeeze as I crossed to the dressing table.

I could see from the window that the metal gates were slowly parting, a black Mercedes twisting up the curve of the drive.

‘Nigel’s early!’ said Kimberley. ‘I’d better go and get a bit wifely. Chop chop, girls, we don’t have long.’

As soon as she’d swept out, I turned on Lysette.

‘Why did you tell her that?’ I hissed.

‘I’m sorry, OK? It just came out. But you know what, it will be fine.’

‘You don’t know that,’ I said, comforting myself with the thought of the picture Georgie had sent yesterday, her face tired and jubilant all at once, staring down adoringly at the tiny bundle in her arms. She’d gone through three cycles of treatment before he’d arrived. ‘And anyway, it’s not the point. It’s up to me who I tell. And I would never have told her.’

‘She really likes you!’

Was she naive or was I paranoid? And which was worse? I sank down on the stool, reached into my make-up bag for my mascara.

‘Did she get on with Sarah?’ I asked casually, running the wand through my lashes.

‘Yeah, on the whole,’ said Lysette, pulling the champagne out of the ice bucket. ‘Do you want a top-up?’

I didn’t really.

‘Go on then,’ I said, and she divided the dregs of the bottle between our two glasses. ‘So how about the quiz night? Was that just a blip?’

‘The truth is, they both went a bit too far,’ said Lysette. I caught her eye in the mirror, saw how stricken she looked. ‘I can’t . . . I can’t go there right now. I want to tell you . . .’ That haunted look again. ‘If I think too much about Sarah – about her not being here – I won’t have a chance of surviving tonight.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, wrapping my arms tightly around her. Her shoulders started to shake. ‘I’m sorry she’s gone.’

We should have stayed like that. Keeping close would have kept us safe.