Renée dyed her fringe pink and flew to Nashville just six days after her graduation ceremony. She was apprehensive – she’d never been to America before, wasn’t sure if it would be her kind of place – but Andy, one of her best friends from home, had managed to recruit her into his door-to-door bookselling team. He was taking a group of twelve students, mainly university friends from Cardiff, and he was hoping to make an absolute fortune – it seemed he was operating some kind of pyramid sales model that meant the more people he took, the more money he made. He’d done it the previous year too, and had come back bragging about how he’d made thirty thousand dollars in less than three months, how it was so easy, how people had loved his accent, how complete strangers couldn’t wait to let him into their homes, buy his books, serve him iced tea, even feed him lunch most days. Renée wasn’t daft. She knew Andy was romanticising the experience, that selling encyclopaedias door to door must be way harder than that, but she didn’t know what else to do now that she’d graduated. She hadn’t even thought about getting a job yet, she had no money for a holiday, and she couldn’t face the prospect of going home to live with her father, in his big empty house near Clacton that was as good as falling down and looked as tired and unloved as he did. She’d shuddered at the thought of the summer at home: silent meals on grimy trays in front of depressing shows like Morse and Murder, She Wrote, the atmosphere shot with dark resentments that were better left unsaid.
So when Andy had offered to lend Renée the money for the flight (that’s how keen he was to have her on his team, sure that with her looks and sassy, irreverent charm she’d be totally brilliant at it) she’d thought why not, it was something to keep her busy while she decided what to do with the rest of her life; plus it would help pay off some of her debts.
What had surprised Renée was that it was Sissy of all people who first decided to join her. She never thought Sissy had it in her, or that she could bear to be parted from her lovesick boyfriend for ten minutes, let alone ten weeks. But Nigel was off to stay with his uncle in Sydney, had booked it months ago, before Sissy and he were even going out, and then he was planning on backpacking all the way up the East Coast of Australia with his cousin – and even though Nigel had asked her to come too, Sissy had said it wasn’t fair on Brett, that it really wouldn’t work with the three of them.
Renée did her best to persuade Natasha to come bookselling too, but Natasha said no way, claiming she could see right through the hype. And anyway, she insisted, she was moving to London to stay with Camilla straight after graduation. She didn’t have the time or money to go gallivanting off to America over the summer, she wanted to get on with finding a proper job as soon as possible – she just wasn’t prepared to risk ending up broke back in Glasgow, she said.
It was only when Juliette finally caved in to Renée’s charm offensive and agreed to come that Renée had felt better about going – until she found out that Stephen was planning on tagging along. Although he’d always seemed nice enough, there was something about him that Renée had never been sure of, and besides, he would only monopolise Juliette as usual. Renée’s friend Andy hadn’t minded though – the more the merrier, he’d said, presumably thinking of the extra commission for him.
Renée had been irritated enough about Stephen muscling in, but the situation was made even worse when Juliette landed herself a fantastic job on the milk round and decided she wouldn’t come after all. She was really sorry, she told Renée, but she didn’t think she’d be remotely any good at traipsing round knocking on strangers’ doors trying to sell them encyclopaedias, and now that she had a job and the promise of money to come, she could afford to go and chill out on a Spanish beach with her old school-friend Katie. Renée just about forgave Juliette, as she knew the real reason (although Juliette hadn’t explicitly told her, of course, unwilling to be disloyal to her boyfriend). But privately Juliette had insisted to Stephen that if they were going to end up together, like he wanted, the whole thing stood way more chance if they’d both had some time to date other people first. Stephen had been furious, he wasn’t used to being dumped, but for a change sweet, compliant Juliette refused to be swayed – she said he could do what he liked, but she was going to consider herself a free agent. She had only just turned twenty-two, she reasoned, she’d only ever had one proper boyfriend before him, and that just wasn’t enough for a lifetime.
And so that’s how it happened that the unlikely trio of Renée, Sissy and Stephen were squashed together on a United flight from London to New York one drizzly early-summer’s morning. From there they would catch another flight to Nashville, where they would meet up with Andy and the rest of the team for their week-long sales training course. Renée had been in a foul mood from the moment she’d arrived at Heathrow, and when they’d boarded the plane she’d insisted on sitting by the window, even though that was actually Sissy’s allocated seat, but she couldn’t bear to have to sit next to Stephen, with his rugby-playing thighs that were so broad they were bound to encroach into her space. Sissy sat in the middle, tense and irritating, fussing about ridiculously improbable potential catastrophes: picking up every last peanut she’d dropped down the side of the seat in case the cleaner didn’t find them and the next person had a child who went on to choke on one; wanting to know exactly where her lifejacket was, just in case; making sure her bag was lodged tight into the overhead locker so it couldn’t possibly fall out and injure someone. Sissy was always so anxious about everything, so opposite in nature to Renée that Renée sometimes wondered how they were friends at all. But the thing about Sissy was how loyal she was, and reliable, and just an all-round good person, and Renée had recognised that quality in her from the instant they’d met each other on that terrifying first day of term. And from that time on Sissy had filled a need in Renée, a chronic need to be looked after that Renée did her best to hide but was always there if you looked close enough, stamped forever on her little crumpled four-year-old face on the day her daddy had told her, as kindly as a man raging with resentment can, that her mummy had left and wouldn’t be coming home.
Stephen sat in the aisle on the other side of Sissy, and to be fair to him, he just put on his headphones and Renée could forget for a while that he was there. She had never been quite sure what Juliette had seen in him – with those eyes and that hair she was so gorgeous she could do infinitely better, but Stephen was one of those powerful types who always seemed to get his own way. He had set his sights on Juliette, had even admitted to her months later that he would watch for hours out of his window for her to leave her halls of residence, and as soon as he spotted her crossing the car park he would dash from his own room, and run all the way round to the other side of campus, so that just as Juliette was making her way down the main precinct, he’d be sauntering casually in the other direction – and he would be sure to stop her and say hi and get her chatting, until she really felt like she was getting to know him, like he was almost becoming a friend. When Juliette had confided this to Renée, not sure whether to be flattered or freaked out, Renée hadn’t known whether to be admiring or scathing of Stephen’s efforts either. One thing she had been sure of though, even then, was that Stephen was ruthless – he would go to limits beyond what other people would, to get what he wanted. It was true that he could be charming, but there was something about him that Renée didn’t trust, and sometimes she worried about Juliette, about how she may well even end up with him if she wasn’t careful – and if so whether he would quash her eventually. Renée sighed and put on her own headphones and shut her heavily kohled eyes, willing her mind to concentrate on the throaty thrum of the aeroplane’s engine, as it headed relentlessly over the never-ending ocean below.
Renée found Nashville freaky. It felt alien, larger than life to her, especially through the prism of jet lag. She was shattered – they had endured two flights, been treated like criminals at immigration, taken a bus to the hotel to dump their bags, and then headed straight downtown to meet up with Andy and the other students in a country-music bar. For Renée it was like stepping back thirty years, back into the movies that she’d watched with her dad as a kid, into a world where people still wore cowboy hats and the men were butch and rugged-looking, and the women’s boots were white and studded and their hair was golden and flowing under their Stetsons. The bar was warm and glowing, full of tangerine lights and orange wood, and its walls were plastered with publicity shots of handsome men with fantastic names like Chesney or Kenny or Bud.
Renée felt weird, aloof from life, as she drank bottles of beer and the music twanged with life-lived sadness – almost as if she wasn’t there at all. She wondered how Camilla was getting on living back at her mother’s in Holland Park (with both her boyfriend James and Natasha), whether Juliette was in Marbella yet, what Siobhan was getting up to; but mostly she questioned what on earth she was doing here. Had she made a huge mistake, she wondered. She found the other students nice enough but she was so tired she wasn’t really in the mood for talking, plus there was one girl called Melissa who never seemed to shut up, and from first impressions would give even Siobhan a run for her money in ditziness. Just as Renée was about to suggest to Sissy that they head back to the hotel, Stephen, who seemed already to have had one drink too many, leaned in from nowhere and licked her face, big-tongued and slurpy, like a dog, and she realised with revulsion that now Juliette had released him he was going to be after her and Sissy, either of them or both of them.