When we were 26, Jimmy met a girl. He’d had girlfriends before, nice, quiet, carried jute bags that had independent book shop logos on them, worked for charities, NGOs, small publishing companies – you know the kind of girl I mean. Glasses, small silver hoop earrings, likes a cup of tea intensely. They were all fine. Fine fine fine. But Jim is so laidback, so kind and well-meaning himself, that these relationships had no real drive to them. There was Louise, who obsessively kept an allotment but never showed a similar passion for anything else and faded away within a year. There was Harriet, who made more progress, sharing a house with Jim and some uni friends in Balham for a while. Their break-up was so painless it was barely noted (by me). I’d been working all hours when she moved out, and by the time we caught up for a drink it seemed like he was completely over it and I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to spend my precious free evening consoling him over a woman whose face I could no longer quite picture.
His next girlfriend was Simone, and I thought she might have been the one. She was a gallery curator and wore interesting (interesting just means angular) jewellery and brogues in a variety of colours. She was a serious person, they all were. But she liked my sense of humour and was very relaxed about the long and sometimes blurry friendship I shared with her boyfriend. Importantly, she seemed to really like Jimmy, and talked about their future together with none of those embarrassing caveats some women use in order not to scare a man away. They went on weekends away to Norfolk, and adopted a cat. There was talk of buying a flat together. And I got used to Simone, sharing Jimmy with her was no compromise for me. I might have even watched them grow old together with a sense of satisfaction. But Simone had more ambition than I’d guessed at, and she was offered a curating job at some newly opened gallery in New York just as they’d started viewing flats. I think she’d assumed that Jim would pack up his life and move to Brooklyn no questions asked, but he wavered. He’d just started at the Guardian, and couldn’t bear to give up a precious staff job at a paper where he’d always wanted to work. He wouldn’t be able to work at the same level, he’d protested. He’d flounder around as a freelancer, in a city full of them. Simone listened patiently, she countered his worries with options and emphasised how much this move would mean to her, but he grew more and more mulish. Within a week, he was barely communicating with her at all. They carried on in a muted facsimile of their previous lives while she sorted out her visa, sold her furniture and had a leaving party. Jimmy still hadn’t given her a firm no, and I imagine that she thought he might be wavering, just waiting for her absence to become a real, firm thing in his mind before he gave in and followed her to New York. Instead, she flew out on a Saturday, and he sent her a brief email the following Tuesday saying that he couldn’t do it, that he loved her, that he was so sorry. I know this because he sent it to me minutes later, with the subject heading ‘I hate myself’.
The problem with Jimmy is that he’s too comfortable and it’s made him a coward. His parents are nice, his family life was stable, loving and safe. He grew up knowing smart people, influential people who made him feel like he would be able to do anything he wanted in the world. He had amazing holidays, speaks fluent German and plays two instruments. All of this equipped him to go out and be king of whatever world he wanted. But it also made him scared to go anywhere else, because where else in the world could he be as confident and established? All of those advantages, all of that privilege and all Jimmy wants to do is live two roads away from his mum and dad and live exactly as they did. And yet, I am tied to him. His familiarity, his smell, his arms which have just enough strength to make me feel safe. It’s ridiculous and clichéd and I hate that I feel it. But I do. I’ve not known anyone as long as I’ve known Jim. I’ve not tolerated anyone else like I’ve tolerated him. And because he’s patient and kind, I let myself rely on him, let him know me (most of me), and draw on that old bond which has remained constant. I’ve never told him about who my father really is, preferring to keep the sides of my life completely separate. But apart from that, he knows me in a way that nobody else ever has nor ever will. And if he doesn’t want to be some kind of king of the world, then I’ll surge forward myself and learn to be content just to let him be by my side as I go. He used to stroke my arm as I fell asleep, knowing I would get anxious when the day came to an end. He’d lie by my side and trace the freckles on my arm. ‘You’re so smooth, Gray. Smoooo-oothe!’ he’d sing, to the tune of a song we loved. Then I’d be able to sleep.
Simone has her own gallery now. She married a well-known playwright and they have a Doberman, which feels like the height of arrogance when living in a city that really can only accommodate Chihuahuas. I know this because when Jimmy gets drunk he loads up her Instagram and thrusts his phone in my face, trying to show that he’s happy for her while also asking me whether the V-neck T-shirt her husband is wearing makes him look like a twat.
Six months after Simone left for New York and Jimmy moved around the corner from his parents, he met someone else. I’d like to say that he shook off some of his cowardice after the breakup and met her whilst on a three-day bender in some ungentrified corner of South London, but he didn’t, because he rarely leaves North London at all now except for the odd book launch. He met her at a supper party at his godfather’s house in Notting Hill. Horace is some kind of hotshot QC (he put me on to Thorpe, so I guess I’m just as guilty as Jimmy when it comes to celebrating the middle-class connections that his parents gave us) and holds monthly dinners where he invites ‘interesting young people’ to come and talk about world events. I have never been invited to one of these hideous sounding salons. I have squared this in my mind by reminding myself that Horace is a stuffy old snob and also by taking £50 out of his wallet the last time I saw him at the Latimers.
I didn’t see Jimmy for a few weeks after the dinner, because I had bigger things on my mind at that point. I’d just sent Bryony packing – more on this later – and was veering between exaltation at my progress and frustration at failing to come up with a workable way to get to Simon. The whole process had meant I’d not had much time for Jimmy. It was too hard to talk to my closest friend while I was in the middle of it all without being able to talk about even the smallest aspect of my activities. I should have known something was up though, because his texts had petered off until there had been radio silence for eight days. And then he turned up at my flat one Saturday morning unannounced with coffee and croissants. There is nothing that screams ‘I have news’ quite like ringing someone’s doorbell without texting first. It’s so self-absorbed that the only excuses would be to inform you of a terrible accident or to bang on about a new love affair. Since I knew from his face that his mother hadn’t died in a hideous jet-ski accident, the only real alternative was some new woman. As a result, I tortured him slightly by not asking anything and instead talking endlessly about plans I had for renovating my kitchen. I had no plans to renovate my kitchen. I lived in this flat precisely because it was completely serviceable, and thank God, because people who talk about remodelling plans are insufferable.
Eventually, just as I got going with a particularly monotonous soliloquy about drawer handles, he’d cracked and told me all about Caro. Caro Morton was a young barrister, working at Horace’s chambers. They’d been sat next to each other at the grim ideas dinner and Jimmy was, he insisted, set on her within minutes. They’d been on several dates in the weeks since, and discussed moving in together already. Caro, it emerged, was not a woman who played it cool and pretended that she wasn’t looking for commitment.
‘I want you to meet her, Gray,’ he said. ‘She’s met John and Sophie but she needs to pass your bar.’ I was shaken by this. Met his parents? Simone didn’t hit that milestone for months. But then, Caro was in the same circle, wasn’t she? An associate of Horace, a lawyer who doubtless went to Oxbridge and had a parent that the Latimers either knew or professed to know. Simone, as lovely as she might have been, was not. East London born, daughter of a nurse and a council worker, she never fitted in with Jimmy’s family with the ease that one of his own tribe would have. Sophie and John showered her with praise – Sophie once took her to the country house they rented in Oxfordshire for a bonding weekend where she forced them to make marmalade all day – but there would never be a true ease. I should know. Being embraced into that family is not the same as being truly accepted. Someone feeling smug for helping you is not the same as loving you.
Caro. I won’t waste time here. I hated her from the moment I met her. Intensely. I imagine you’re wondering if this is because her presence threatened to take away my oldest friend, the man I’d relied on since I was a child. To you I say: try harder. We shall have no banal cod psychology here. A month after I’d first heard about the new girlfriend, we were set to meet.
We arranged drinks at a bar in Maida Vale one Wednesday night, something I was silently furious about because I still hadn’t made any headway with my grand finale. But it was clearly a three-line whip and I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason to postpone again. Jimmy and I downed a bottle of wine as we waited for her. She was so busy with work, he explained, as he scanned his phone for an update on her whereabouts. Ten minutes later, she walked in. I didn’t need to be told that it was her – I knew. Caro pushed her way past the group of people waiting to be seated without having to say a word. Phone clamped to her ear, she had long red hair (which looked intensely natural but which I later found out was dyed. Never trust an artificial redhead – their need to be different and interesting marks them out as neither) and wore a cream silk shirt and wide-leg trousers. The only makeup I could discern was a swipe of red lipstick. And it goes without saying that she was beautiful, ethereal, captivating, blah blah. She knew it. Women always know it. And Jimmy would think that he’d discovered some untapped beauty because she didn’t wear tight clothes or bother with nail varnish. Men always think that a surface level lack of vanity is a winning trait, as if the amount of effort women like Caro put into their appearance was any different from the dolled-up girls you see on any British street on a Saturday night. It’s just a different way of approaching it. And the beauty is still obvious, but men think it’s more refined, as if beauty in women is only pure when they pretend not to care about possessing it.
Ah look, I have wasted time. But it pays to have a sense of her – even if it’s just so that I can congratulate myself on my restraint as I remind myself what eventually happened. She was young – younger than Jimmy and me, but she was remarkably possessed. A lawyer, as I’ve mentioned, who specialised in complex business takeovers. She explained her job as ‘the organiser if Nike wanted to buy Adidas’. I had not asked for an explanation. I think this particularly patronising description was the specific moment when I realised that I hated her. She neither tried to win me over nor did she smother Jimmy to show her ownership. She was cool with him, which of course made him even more frantic in his affection, and she was matter-of-fact with me. We spent a couple of hours circling around each other, but I didn’t really give it my best shot because all I could really focus on was how rapt Jim was. How much nervous energy he was emitting. How desperate he was for us to connect, be firm friends, link around him. I felt rising anxiety, feeling my fingers crawl up my neck, desperate to scratch. At 11 p.m., in the middle of a story Jimmy was telling about a family holiday where we ended up climbing a mountain by mistake, Caro put her hand over his and rubbed the skin between his thumb and finger and said that she had to go to bed. And just like that, the evening was over. The bill was requested, Ubers were ordered, and I was dispatched with a bear hug from Jimmy and an air kiss from Caro which did not require her to touch me. Their cab came first, and they drove off, Caro looking down at her phone without a backwards glance. Neither of them had suggested another meet up.
I knew that there was no way to play this and win. Jimmy was completely infatuated with this woman, and any sign of reluctance from me would have propelled him towards her even faster. I’ve always wondered why people get so defensive about criticism of their partners. If your mother, a person who has known you since you were a screeching potato in a onesie, thinks that the person you’re with is a bit off, why the fuck would you discount that? Tell me if the person I’ve fallen in love with seems like a monster. List the ways. Do a deep dive into it, make graphs. I want all the information. But nobody else ever seems to. And Jimmy was no different. All I could do was be nice and hope that Caro got bored. Her attitude towards him had hardly screamed ‘devoted’ and I clung to that for a while.
A night at the Latimers’ soon slashed that particular dinghy. I had long moved out by then of course but the penance I paid for escaping (middle-class kids stay at home throughout their twenties in London; they might rent a flat somewhere else for a bit, but even then they partially live at home until their parents stump up some deposit for a mortgage and they can actually have their own place for real) was that I had somehow found myself promising Sophie that I’d come for supper at least twice a month. This was a promise I really had no intention of keeping – modern life is 75 per cent cancelling plans and both parties feeling relieved – but I underestimated Sophie’s need to stay involved, to always feel as though she played a vital role in the lives of those she knew. I tried to cancel at the beginning – I’d cry off with headaches or late nights at work. Every single time I offered up a plausible excuse that would save us both from the hassle, she’d offer her commiserations and promptly suggest another date instead. And if I cancelled that date, she’d just offer up another. She didn’t really want me there, you understand, but it was a good show to keep up with the orphan that she had so selflessly taken in. I fast realised that I’d be better off picking the dates that worked best for me and sucking it up. For years that meant the second and last Sundays in every month. Always at the family home. Always an Ottolenghi recipe that called for spices that even Sophie, who spun out over local grocery shops in the way that others might salivate when they see a shop window full of diamonds, couldn’t find. As a result, every meal tasted predominantly of basil, since she could get that at any Waitrose going.
The Sunday when I saw that Caro had burrowed deeper than I’d previously realised was an unusual one, in that neither John nor Annabelle (nor Jimmy for that matter) were around to join us. Normally we were buffeted along by other people, indulging in pointless talk about how awful it was that the local library was to close, and wasn’t austerity finally revealing its true victims. The kind of politics talk that achieves nothing but that a certain type of person perseveres with because it makes them feel like they’re doing something about it just by mentioning it. God knows none of the Latimers ever went to the local library in the years I spent with them.
Sophie was completely undeterred by the concentrated chat we would now have to have with each other. Sophie never feels awkward in conversation. The way she views it, she always has something interesting to say, and what on earth could make her feel inadequate when armed with that certainty?
As she poured me a glass of wine and shoved the aged cat off the sofa, she began to gush about Caro. ‘Lovely girl – Jimmy said you’ve met her. She’s actually the daughter of Anne Morton – you know, the last foreign sec, and Lionel Ferguson. He writes fabulous books about the British empire. We knew them fairly well from an NCT class we took when I was pregnant with Annabelle – we both had these big bumps and bonded over the ridiculously judgey group leader we had. We saw them at parties over the years but of course Anne had a demanding job and by then they’d moved to Richmond. So remarkable that our boy has ended up dating little Caro.’
Oh God. Of course. That kind of self-assuredness that Caro had didn’t come from nowhere. Her father was called fucking LIONEL. Her mother was a politician. And on top of the privilege she’d been born with, she was striking and smart too. I used to flick through the society pages of Tatler in the office sometimes, usually to see if Bryony was featured, where the women in the photos were always the daughters of earls or dukes as standard. But it bothered me that they were also ethereal, limby, beautiful. How did the luckiest in society also get to be physically superior? I’d assumed the breeding pool for those kinds of people was so small as to ensure genetic weakness, but here they all were – the Caros floating around looking effortless and perfect, gliding through life with the confidence that they won the birth pool jackpot.
Sophie carried on gushing. Caro had sent her a limited edition of Toni Morrison’s essays last week. Caro had cooked for the family round at Jimmy’s. The chicken had been perfection. Caro had suggested a weekend in France in the spring. I traced my fingers along the scratch marks the spiteful old cat had made on the arm of the sofa and nodded. Sophie didn’t much want me to contribute anything here. And I didn’t have anything to contribute that she’d want to hear anyway.
‘Yes, it’s soon but John and I were only together for a few months before we shacked up in that little flat in the Angel,’ I heard her say. I looked up and rewound the conversation. They were moving in together! It had been … I cast my mind back … a little over two months since they met. What kind of needy lunatic shacks up with someone when they haven’t even admitted that their favourite movie is Die Hard and not, as they’d said on date two, Il Postino? I mean, I don’t think Jimmy has even seen Il Postino. Maybe he’d say some obvious Tarantino film.
Caro didn’t strike me as needy. She didn’t give off the desperate vibe that so many high-flying women do who really yearn for a good man and a chance to endlessly look at paint samples for the vintage dresser they bought together. Why was she pushing this? Jimmy might be head over heels but he wouldn’t have suggested moving in – he didn’t have any get-up-and-go, no drive like that. For Jim, everything plodding along nicely was the ideal state of play.
‘Of course, it’s very heartbreaking for yours truly that he’s moving into hers – Clapham is absolutely miles away – but her flat is divine and much nearer her work, so I do understand.’ Sophie looked up from stirring the risotto and smiled at me. ‘You’ll be a bit unsettled not having him around so much, I think? We’ll have to find you your own Caro.’
I was unsettled. I wouldn’t admit that to Sophie, who has always been slightly nervous about just how close I am with her son. Not that she’s ever blatantly discouraged it – nothing so blunt. I think she just found it strange that her son could spend his entire teenage years hanging around with a girl without ever falling for her. Or at least, never saying it outright. Sophie and John don’t really have friends of the opposite sex – it’s always couples at their dinner parties, or the occasional single pal that they tried to set up with someone, normally in vain. I still suspect that she spent our teenage years hovering outside the den, just waiting to swing the door open and find us naked together. She never did. I think that was even more disconcerting for her than if she had. At least then she’d understand the dynamic.
The thing is, Jimmy has probably always been in love with me. Oh, he’s never said it. He’s probably not even aware of it on a conscious level. Jimmy isn’t one for deep introspection. But I’ve known it forever. You just know, don’t you? And normally, that would be a friendship breaker – at some point, someone confesses, or lunges, or starts acting out. But not Jimmy. He loves me fiercely. I’m a part of him. But it never tipped into anything of note. Well, we wobbled just that once, when we were just on the cusp of adulthood and I didn’t want him to pull away completely. But mostly I held the line – never giving him a suggestion of something more, or encouraging him to explore the possibility. No lingering looks, no drunken hugs that feel just a little too intense. I’ve played it well and kept my friend. I knew that any potential exploration of deeper feelings would break us in ways that we couldn’t fix. And why would I fuck it up for some idiotic attempt at a relationship in our teenage years, when nothing meant anything? I always stored it away, thinking that it was something to revisit when we were both older, when the mission that had driven my life was finished. A bond that I’d made over years and years would reward me with a simple and uncomplicated future. But I couldn’t think of any of that yet, not while I had such work to do. I’d not even entertained it properly, never imagined the specifics of that life. It was just a vague sense, but one that was strong, and always there. And now I could see that Caro was going to derail it all. You cannot account for the Caros of the world, no matter how tightly you try to control things. People like her take pleasure in striding into your world and taking what they want from it. Not even deliberately, the bonus of your loss is just a nice extra. I might be able to carry out a ruthless line in fairly epic revenge, but I didn’t know how to stop love. That felt completely beyond me and it made me feel like I was drowning.
* * *
I have derailed myself. My mother used to do this and it always enraged me. A story about a trip to the supermarket would veer off into some sad tale of the local café owner and her back problems and I would sit there scratching at my arm wanting to bark at her to hurry up. Nobody gives a shit about the stupid café woman, I wanted to say. Stop caring so much for strangers who don’t even know your name and figure out a way to get the heating back on. All of this is to say, I could write an entire book about the trials of Caro, but it is not the most interesting story I have to tell, and also, she’s dead. So I was the victor. Except I wasn’t. Because Caro was never going to let me win with any ease, was she?
The facts are these. Jimmy moved into Caro’s immaculate flat in Clapham. His communication with me crumbled almost immediately. Long chats on the phone late at night were out first. Then impromptu coffees or meet-ups in the pub we’d frequented since we were old enough were next to go – after all, Clapham is another country when you live north of the river. The text chain was not erased entirely, but I was the initiator more often than not, which made me feel pathetic and furious. Worse, whenever I did see Jim, she usually inserted herself into the plans. Drinks (with her friends), dinner at the Latimers’ (where she would greet me at the door), occasional parties at their flat, where she would make a great show of introducing me to incredibly dull, ruddy-faced men in chinos and then abandon me and walk off looking amused.
I took it all. I didn’t engage in the game. I had bigger things to do – I was gearing up for my final assault on the Artemis family and I was frustrated enough by my lack of a proper plan, I wouldn’t compromise that to indulge a bored posh girl who wanted me to care enough that it made Jimmy seem more of a prize. Instead, I watched her. And I learned four things:
Caro had a raging eating disorder
Caro had a not insignificant drug habit
Caro flew into rages with Jim which often became mildly physical (from her side)
Caro was desperately unhappy
What a fucking cliché.
He proposed on her birthday. I don’t mean to imply that Jimmy has no spontaneity but people who propose on big meaningful dates lack imagination. I cannot envisage a worse day to get down on one knee than a family Christmas where your dad started on the Buck’s Fizz by 11 a.m. Sophie was beside herself with excitement. Even John was beaming at the celebratory lunch. The Morton family were invited, and the old family connections were fast revived over couscous and a nice assortment of Italian white wines that Lionel brought from his cellar. Caro was her usual collected self, wearing a silk jumpsuit and showing off her ring only when requested, nails short and free of varnish. Jimmy smiled a lot at her, but he was quiet, following her around, only really speaking when she asked him a question.
There was one fun little moment at the lunch, when Caro’s mother started talking about how shocking the death of Bryony Artemis was. The group collectively leant forward around the table, gossiping like old women about a young woman they’d never met, offering up theories about her demise and talking about how ghastly her family was.
‘Gave £50,000 to the government trying to be made a lord, I hear. As if we need more barrow boys in the house. Men like that make a mockery of the entire system.’ I sat there quietly, sipping my wine and enjoying the hypocrisy of these people who pretend to be above such salacious stories suddenly finding themselves more animated than they’d been all day. The following conversation about the latest Ian McEwan novel wasn’t nearly as lively, I can tell you.
Two days after the lunch, I broke. I had taken my eye off the ball, so consumed with panic about my master plan and the rising impotence I felt about access to Simon. I stupidly assumed I had more time to deal with this lesser problem, but I was gravely mistaken. I asked Jim to meet me at the Southbank, where I greeted him with coffee and we walked along the river. He traced the freckles on my arm absent-mindedly, like he used to when we were teenagers and saw ourselves as a unit of two. Not charged with a frisson of anticipation but warm with the familiar. He called me ‘Gray’ as he always used to, and teased me about the new shoes I was wearing.
‘So flashy, Gray, your footwear doesn’t have to look like modern art.’
I retorted that his new silk scarf made him look like an old Italian count, and he had the good sense to look embarrassed. We both knew Caro had chosen it. After a while, I asked about wedding plans, introducing the subject with a light touch which felt obvious. He was vague, talking about Caro’s wish to have the dinner at a private club her dad belonged to. Jim didn’t sound too keen, and he kept his eyes on the water flowing next to us. A lull in the conversation gave me the push to get to the point.
I told him that her outbursts were concerning me, that I’d seen the scratches on his neck at lunch. I said that Caro had monopolised him, rubbed out all the things that made him him, and that I thought that marrying her would be a bad idea. I’d got it into my head that this was courageous, and that whatever happened, he’d want me to say it. He looked away as I said it, put his cup in a bin, and then walked over to the river barrier and breathed deeply.
‘I understand that this is weird for you. Our friendship is intense, wonderfully so. You’re my family, my best friend, my surrogate girlfriend, I suppose. For a lot of our life I guess I thought we were bound to be together – but you never let it happen, did you?’ I must have flinched because he powered on. ‘Grace, you didn’t! You kept us at a level you felt safe with. People want to love you and you’re repelled by it.’ He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled. ‘Anyway, fine, you made it clear and I went with it because I know you give what you can. But Caro wants more. I love Caro, and she loves me. And I can’t indulge this, Grace. I just can’t. I knew you wouldn’t be able to just be happy about it – Mum warned me, C warned me. I understand it. But that doesn’t mean that you can do this again.’
He looked at me then, with a soft smile, and rubbed my hand. ‘We won’t change. But you can’t talk about her like that anymore. You need to see this for what it is. I’m not abandoning you. I’m not your dad – this is just what happens in life.’ He gave me a little hug and walked off towards Waterloo. I didn’t say a word. I hated myself for being so weak. I hated that he was right. I hated that I had buckled. I hated them all.
Caro and Jimmy held their official engagement party a month later.
We hadn’t spoken much in the intervening weeks, but I went because I was invited and because if I didn’t, then it would become a thing. And worse, she’d think that I was devastated and she’d enjoy it. I wore a dark bottle green velvet suit with a white silk T-shirt and ignored the slight nausea I felt at how much the whole ensemble had cost. Red lipstick was applied. We dress for other women. It’s a banal cliché but it’s true. She’d take my meaning from it. That was worth the credit card bill.
I got there at 10 p.m., having had a drink around the corner at a local bar when I judged that I’d arrived too early. Caro’s parties usually didn’t get going until at least 9.30 and I wasn’t going to waste time with her guffawing friends when everyone was still sober. Their flat was on the fourth floor of a mansion block with views over the park. The building was beautiful, with marble steps and an original lift with brass gates. I never saw anyone else in the lobby or hallways. Rich people owned these flats. Rich people who have several homes around the world which they call ‘bases’. None of them homes which have overflowing junk drawers or old bicycles clogging up hallways.
The party was loosening up when I walked in the door. A smallish group of Jimmy’s mates congregated in the kitchen – a few school friends that I liked well enough, and some dull blokes from university that he refused to shrug off completely. But mainly, the flat was full of Caro’s friends. Girls who were nervous level thin, dressed in muted silk dresses. They all had posh-girl hair – you know the kind – thick, shiny, long, looks careless but the highlights alone cost £500 and are anything but. The men were all in identikit chinos and blue shirts. Occasionally there was a loafer on display, but mainly it was trainers in an attempt to look more relaxed than they really were. Pretty much everyone was white. The music was turned up loud but nobody was dancing.
I nodded at a few faces I recognised but kept moving towards the drinks table, grabbed a glass of wine and headed out onto the balcony. I’ve never been someone who enjoys parties. The amount of small talk involved depletes my energy and makes my whole body tense up. Not because I’m shy, but because it’s so boring it makes me want to die. Life is so short, and we spend so much of it talking to terrible people about the minutiae of their nothing lives. I cannot do it with any enthusiasm. It’s no better in prison, you know. You might think that there would be less bullshit filler chat. You’re in jail, you don’t need to talk about the weather, or your commute or your kid’s art project. But prison makes people even smaller than usual, desperate to cling on to reassuring normality. That means there’s a lot of chat about breakfast options or discussion about what’s on TV that night. And unlike in normal life, I cannot escape it.
* * *
I light a cigarette on the balcony, slotting myself in between two groups of people I don’t know, and turn away so that it’s clear that I’m not trying to join in the conversation. I smoke my cigarette (I aim for one a week, like Gwyneth Paltrow does – and that is the limit of our shared experience) and listen to the conversation going on around me. Someone called Archie is going skiing at Easter with his new girlfriend and someone called Laura is pretending to find it sweet but her increasingly shrill cooing suggests that she hopes said girlfriend falls off the mountain. Someone on my right is telling a story about how he once met our dreadful Prime Minister at a bar off the Kings Road, and thought he was ‘genuinely a very funny bloke’. The conversations all come to a stop when Caro emerges onto the balcony. Her tiny body is sheathed in an emerald green slip dress, which requires no bra (posh girls don’t need bras), her hair is loose, and she’s barefoot. That suggests a sort of next-level nonchalance, doesn’t it? As though you’re usually holidaying in villas where maids sweep the floors constantly and someone comes to give you regular pedicures. Everyone cheers when she steps into the group, quick to proffer fags and wine. She spots me, and draws me towards her with a slim wrist.
‘Hello, darling, so good of you to come. I see you’ve got a drink. Jimmy is inside panicking about glasses but I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see you – go and find him. I know he’ll be so relieved that everything is … OK.’ She looks at me with a tiny raise of an eyebrow, just the hint of a smile. He told her. Of course.
I go inside, not wishing to talk to Jim but desperate to get away from Archie and Laura and some guy called Phillip who’s now loudly suggesting that someone bust out the Charlie. It’s not 1989, Phil, you fucking embarrassment.
I find Jimmy on the sofa with a nice girl called Iris who he works with. I am given a bear hug, the kind that only a big man can give, and I know that he’s determined to forget our conversation and he’s very physically trying to tell me to do the same. So I do. Tonight he pats me on the back and grins with relief that everything is well between us. The flat fills up, booze is consumed until the only bottles left are the kind of chardonnays you find in Tesco so I switch to vodka. By 1 a.m., I can tell most of the people still here are high. I’ve never taken drugs – a classic need to stay in control – and I’m never offered them. But I can see the signs, the glassy pupils, the inner gum chewing, the fucking inane conversation (though frankly, that could just be the company). Caro is swaying in the middle of the room, rubbing her own arm. Jim walks over to her and takes her hand. She pulls away abruptly, says something and turns away. He tries again and she shoves him. Not hard, but sloppily, visibly.
‘Let’s all wake up a bit, you guys are getting sleepy,’ she says, and heads to the kitchen. I look across at Jimmy and make a face – trying to convey that I’m here and also less obviously that his fiancée is a nightmare – but he looks at me with something veering on contempt and sits down. Caro emerges from the kitchen with a silver tray teeming with shot glasses and people assemble around her.
‘To my betrothed,’ she says, before downing her glass and slinging an arm around a brunette next to her. She doesn’t offer Jimmy one. I can feel the rage build up again, at her for being a bitch, at Jimmy for letting her behave like this. Someone has brought a cake, covered in chocolate ganache and bearing the letters C and J in pink icing. It has been forgotten by the baker in the frantic desire to get drunk. I grab a knife and start carving it up into rough slices. Putting one on a napkin, I hold it aloft.
‘Caro, have some cake. I know it’s not your usual fare but you’ve got to keep your strength up, don’t you? Don’t want to lose that famous right hook of yours.’
The group huddling in the doorway titter. Caro looks at me, her mouth frozen in fury and stalks off. Jimmy, who was too far away to hear what I was saying, walks towards me with purpose and pulls me into the toilet.
‘What are you doing?’ he hisses, leaning on the sink and pushing me down onto the seat. ‘Are you trying to pick a fight with her at our engagement party? I thought we’d agreed that you were going to at least try and be happy for us.’
‘How can I do that when you’ve agreed to marry a narcissist who seems to actively dislike you?’ I said, standing up. ‘I want to respect you, not pander to you. Why do you expect me to be kind but you don’t ask the same from Caro?’ I push past him, and past the queue of people waiting for the bathroom to become available.
The night has ramped up now, it feels frantic and sharp. It’s not a happy show of love, we aren’t here to celebrate a union, we’re here to indulge Caro. But in what? I want to leave, but I can’t abandon Jimmy here with a drunk fiancée and a group of people who probably don’t even know his full name. I sit in a corner of the sitting room and pretend to be on the edge of whatever group is nearest. I pretend to check emails, I break my strict limit and smoke more cigarettes. The party thins out, people stumbling into the bedroom to get their coats, pulling away from Caro as she entreats them to stay. She keeps pace only with herself, her small body unable to stay still. Jimmy hasn’t even attempted to try to engage her again, but he won’t look at me. Eventually, at 3 a.m., it’s just the three of us and one other woman left in the flat. The woman is talking earnestly to Jimmy, and over the music (which Caro has cranked up) I catch some words: ‘Worried …’, ‘Eaten?’, ‘Again …’ I imagine they’ve both seen this version of Caro before and are waiting to intervene and get her into bed. But Caro is in her own world, changing songs every minute or so, pouring another drink, numbing herself. I sit and watch, wondering whether to call a cab and leave them to sort her out, but abruptly, she stops dancing and looks at me.
‘Have you got any tobacco? I need a fag, it’s so hot in here.’ Jimmy gets up and starts to suggest we all call it a night but she cuts him off and I pull out my cigarettes and tell her I’ll come with her. Jimmy finally looks at me.
‘It’s fine. Stay here. I’ll sort this,’ I say as I usher her down the corridor and onto the balcony.
Caro stumbles outside and leans against the balustrade. I produce cigarettes and light her one. I stand over her, aware of how tiny she seems.
‘You are behaving like a lunatic,’ I say, as I drag on my fag. She doesn’t look at me. ‘You have made this night a nightmare. I can only assume you’re desperately unhappy to behave like this. Why are you marrying Jim? Break it off and find someone who has a nice family estate and will let you starve yourself to your heart’s content as long as you look nice on his arm. It’ll be easy. You’ll be happier, Jim won’t be gradually destroyed. I won’t have to pretend to tolerate you. Go on, Caro, you know I’m right.’
She pulls herself up onto the lip of the balcony so that she’s sitting astride it and throws her head back. She’s laughing. It’s the most natural she’s been all night. Caro coughs, sits up straight and tucks her hair behind her ear.
‘You are so stupid,’ she drawls. ‘You are SO STUPID. I don’t want to marry some bonehead with a trust fund. Of course it’s what I should do, but I’d die of boredom. I want to marry Jimmy – he’s kind and he adores me – not like some fusty banker who’d treat me with disdain and fuck his secretary at any opportunity. I want Jimmy.’
I can’t help but roll my eyes. ‘Such a cliché, Caro. Wouldn’t therapy have been cheaper? At least it might help with some of your other issues. They’re not going away, no matter how hard Jim tries to help. Why make him a wreck too?’
There is no point to this, I think. She hates me, we are trying to wound each other with words and neither of us will really land a fatal blow. Caro’s pupils are enormous, black and boring into me.
‘Oh stop it. You don’t get to have an opinion here, you fucking single white female. Wearing green to upstage me at my own engagement party. Christ, I shouldn’t even have to indulge your jealousy and delusions. Everyone’s a wreck, Grace, you should understand that. But we’re adults. We’ll work out a good understanding. I’ll earn the money and he’ll be an upstanding chap and our life will be nice. Simple. Normal. I want normal. He won’t be like Lionel, never there, never warm, always desperate for the next thing.’ She draws on her cigarette. ‘It’ll all be just grand. But for that to happen, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that you probably need to not be A. THING.’ She emphasises those last two words, looking at me, not laughing now.
‘Jimmy loves you, you’re like a weird sister wife, aren’t you? Always around, but not quite his. Part of the family, but you’re not – not really. Sophie is obsessed with a good deed. You were just one of them. Why didn’t you take the hint when you hit 18 and slink off? A grown adult with a boring job isn’t quite the prize that a child with a dead mother is. You’re no use.’
She’s almost shouting, flailing her cigarette in the air. My hands are curled into tight little balls, and I can feel the urge to pull at my throat welling up in me. I move towards her and she leans back, her eyes widening just a little. My head is boiling hot now, and I take one useless deep breath, trying to dispel the adrenaline I can feel flooding my entire body.
* * *
What might I have done differently in that moment? Would I have pushed her violently, right in the chest, forcing her backwards over the balcony? Would I have grabbed at her foot as she fell, realising my impulsive rage and trying to rectify it – all in the space of a second? Or would I have loomed over her and said something equally as devastating in the hope that I would somehow gain a valuable point or two off her? It’s something I’ve mulled over many times, an interesting little ‘choose your own adventure’ where the path you take leads to dramatically different end scenarios. In all my revised scenarios, I deal with it less impulsively, with a little more style. But then, that’s hindsight for you. In reality, I did nothing. Caro fell off that balcony all by herself, her thin little body unable to cushion her fall. She was dead within seconds. I told you I won. That is, of course, until I didn’t.