When Good Friends Go Bad (6 page)

'Meg!' Jen slapped the American girl hard on the back, causing wine to shoot out of her nose. 'Behave.'

Even Georgina was laughing as Meg mopped up with her napkin. 'Well?' Georgina questioned. 'Scorching?'

'Definitely, but he is only twenty.' At that moment Jen could have bitten off her tongue. She took an enormous gulp of wine to cover up her slip. Georgina and Meg were staring at her with astonishment mixed with horror (Georgina) and glee (Meg).

'Good for you, honey.' Meg held out her glass to be clinked. 'I'll drink to that.'

'Jennifer Amanda Bedlow.' Georgina closed her mouth with a snap and looked regally disapproving. 'Are you telling me you're involved with a man eight years your junior, a virtual babe in arms?'

'Yes,' Jen stared defiantly, 'and he's at uni. An engineering student.'

'And you say,' Georgina looked primmer than ever, 'that this young man has the most gargantuan willy?'

'I said nothing of the sort!' Jen squawked. 'That was Meg. But since you insist . . . yes, he is quite well . . . built.'

Georgina abruptly threw down her napkin and stood up to summon the waiter. 'Girls!' she said decisively. 'I'd say that calls for champagne!'

Where on earth was Rowan? Appetisers a distant memory lingering on their lips and an oily mark on the tablecloth where Meg had dropped a mushroom, they'd given up the wait and were tucking into their main dishes. Jen kept glancing from her rack of lamb towards the door, as if she might still yet appear. Would she be as pretty? More sophisticated? Both Meg and Georgina had changed so dramatically.

It was dark outside and in the windows Jen could see the three of them reflected. Young women in the prime of their life. Older and wiser than the gauche schoolgirls they'd been, and, in her case definitely, more cynical. Only an untouched place setting betrayed the fact that someone was missing.

'Daddy died of a heart attack last year and Mummy lives near Godalming now,' Georgina was telling Meg, bracelets jangling as she leaned forward. 'Has the most darling thatched cottage. She's sixty-two and still extremely active. My brother Lance is a rather well-known barrister . . .' She snapped her fingers. 'Wake up Jennifer. You're miles away.'

'Sorry.' She jumped. 'I spaced out – too much champers.'

Meg stabbed a fork into her risotto. 'Lost in dreams of lover boy?'

'Course not.' But there it was again, that warm feeling. For all her flippancy, Ollie already felt like something she didn't know how she'd survived without.

'So, Meg,' she shook herself, 'what's going on with you? Are you seeing anyone?'

'Different guys. Off and on. All extremely
non-serious
and I'm not mooning over them with soppy smiles like some people.' She tossed her red mane, reminding Jen of a highly strung chestnut Arabian, ready to strike or rear. Next to her, Georgina, making a little castle of her puréed yams, was more like a shiny black Friesian horse, less flighty but not without its own heavy glamour. Which would make Jen – what? The shaggy stubborn little Shetland pony at Angela's that would carry its riders out of the schooling ring no matter how hard they hauled on the reins?

'It can't be serious though, this thing of Jennifer's.' Georgina mashed the castle flat again with her fork. 'I mean, it could never work long-term, could it?'

How odd that Jen should find her certainty offensive when it was exactly what she'd told herself for weeks. She wondered what they'd say if they knew of Ollie's latest proposal, just two days earlier while they were lying under a tree on Primrose Hill that still held the wreckage of their runaway kite. She'd pretended to consider it a huge joke, when he rolled up on to bended knee and jammed the pull top from a Coke can on to her ring finger.

'Veddy nice.' She faked a Yiddish accent as she tilted her hand, admiring it. 'But vot, I'm not good enough for Pepsi?'

'One day it'll be a diamond.' Ollie flopped on to his back. 'Straight up, Jen. I want to marry you.'

'That'll be the day,' she responded chirpily, to hide the tumult of fear and elation inside her. 'Do the words pigs and flying have any hidden subtext for you?'

'Why not?' she asked Georgina now. 'You know nothing about our relationship other than what I've told you tonight. How can you be so certain?'

Georgina looked astonished, unconsciously rotating her diamond ring, as for the first time that evening she struggled to find the words to express herself. 'Well, it's obvious, isn't it? However delightful and sexy he is, how can you possibly relate to a twenty-year-old, socially and intellectually, I mean. Even your musical tastes must differ? I can't imagine what the two of you talk about.' She made this last statement with a nervous laugh as Jen scowled on.

'Who said anything about talking?' Meg jabbed a skinny elbow in Jen's ribs.

'Exactly my point.' Georgina now nodded enthusiastically. 'When you're ready to have children, he'll still be sowing his wild oats.' She sawed into her glazed duck breast with sour cherry reduction, pausing to chew methodically in a way Jen was already beginning to hate. 'When he's in his prime, you'll be an old woman. Absolute recipe for disaster, if you ask me. Men are rotters at the best of times.'

Her mouth curved down cynically and for a brief moment she suddenly looked extremely weary.

'Can we drop the subject?' Jen pleaded, knowing she'd overreacted but unable to joke about this with Meg and Georgina any further. Suddenly she felt moody and depressed, perhaps she was getting a bout of PMT. With a monumental effort she pulled the conversation back to school. 'Hey, remember the way we used to volunteer poor Rowan for science experiments when Mr Isaiah, that teacher with the wonky eye, asked for assistance?'

'Yes, only his name wasn't Isaiah,' Meg laughed. 'We just called him that cos one eye was higher than the other.'

'Was I in that class?' Georgina asked.

'Of course.' Meg played with the wax dripping from the candle and stuck it into the flame. 'God, he was awful. Every experiment went wrong or blew up. And Jen used to goad him by asking, all innocent like, "Do you reckon this one will work, sir?" ' She poured herself and Jen another drink from the rapidly emptying bottle.

Suddenly Jen and Meg were batting names back and forth while Georgina looked bemused.

'. . . when that little nerd with the bottle-thick glasses locked the biology teacher in the cupboard . . .'

'. . . tennis courts flooded so they canoed on them instead . . .'

'. . . detentions all round . . .'

'. . . those rumours about Linda Petroski and six boys in the back of an old Bedford van . . .'

'Linda Petroski was like the biggest liar on earth.' Halfway into their second bottle of wine, Jen was enjoying herself hugely. 'Said she went to the Vatican to meet the Pope, sang backup with the Sex Pistols
and
that she was best friends with Kim Wilde.' Her eyes shone. 'Remember Mr Trance, who used to sneak off with the cutie Canadian commerce teacher?'

'Was he the one who'd have his flies undone and his hand in his packet?' Georgina perked up.

'Packet?' Jen said, puzzled.

'Pardon me, I meant pocket.' Her face turned rapidly crimson.

'Know what you were thinking, honey,' Meg sniggered,

'It really was the most grim establishment.' Georgina regained her dignity. 'Kids throwing chairs. No classroom discipline. Third-rate teachers. Daddy threatened several times to take me away and move me back to private education.'

Yeah, right. Jen could picture Georgina's perfectionist father in his pristine suit, a sneer on his dour face. His sole interaction with his daughter was to criticise and rage if she got less than As. The bastard wouldn't have cared about Georgina's unhappiness and her mother would never have noticed.

No wonder they never wanted to go to Georgie's. Her mother was a snob, unbelievably posh, far too loud and gushing, her lipsticked smile wide and fake. They lived in terror of breakages, spills and mud on her Axminster carpet. The house on its gated estate was half the size, apparently, of their previous home and so crammed with furniture and antiques that it was difficult to move about.

Mrs Carrington had been devastated when the family business collapsed and they'd all moved to Sussex. The woman had never met a Martini she didn't like and she positively doted on Georgina's older brother Lance, but that affection was not extended to her chubby, graceless daughter. Poor Georgie, thrown out of expensive private education into the horrors of Ashport Comp. Her lunchboxes always held lettuce, carrots and apple slices, so she'd spend her pocket money on the school dinner: fried chicken, greasy chips and stodgy, cream-laden puddings.

It was her grandmother on the mother's side, an aristocratic lady who rode to hounds even in her seventies, who'd bought and paid for the ponies. A self-avowed man-hater, she had some feud going with her son-in-law and the rest of the Carrington males, promising Georgina that when she died all her vast wealth would go to her only granddaughter. No wonder Georgina had been such a peculiar mix of vulnerability and surface arrogance.

'The bullying was out of control,' Georgina said now, signalling to the waiter to clear her plate. 'That atrocious punk girl, Yvonne Spitz, her cronies Maureen whatever her name was and Linda Petroski made my life a misery. Pulling off my towel when I was in the showers . . .' She broke off, burying her nose in her water glass.

For a few awkward moments they averted their gaze, not sure how to respond. Then Meg perked up. 'Say, Jen, I'll never forget our first week at school when that big second-year lout made Georgina cry and you went over and started beating up on him.' She began to laugh. 'And he went wailing to the teacher on playground duty, who spun around looking for the bully and there you were, this little shrimp with your fists up.'

Georgina had recovered her composure. 'I do remember Jen fighting a lot. She was a little spitfire.'

'You saved me loads of times too,' Jen reminded Meg. 'What about when Yvonne's gang had me cornered by the tennis courts and said they were going to beat me to a bloody pulp? And you turned on that hose the caretaker had left out and soaked them. They wanted to kill you.'

'They'd have had to catch me first.' Meg's eyes danced in the candlelight with the hint of the wild child she'd been. Jen had always admired her heroic fearlessness, her willingness to tackle situations head on and with a cheerful lack of restraint that somehow persuaded the teachers to let her get away with murder, and meant tough girls like Yvonne rarely chose her as a victim. She could still see Yvonne, Linda and Maureen, the slutty bleached-blond thugs who ruled their playground, mascara running, hair straggling wetly on their skulls and bras visible through soaked shirts. Attacking them with the hose had been one of the greatest triumphs of their school career, even if they'd had to hide for the rest of term.

'If you had a problem, she was the greatest person to confide in,' Meg mused, and they instantly knew who she was talking about.

In the end every conversational byway that evening had led back to Rowan. It felt plain wrong for the three of them to be there without her.

'I always remember her blushing,' said Georgina, daintily dabbing at the corner of her mouth with the linen napkin. 'I've never seen anyone go so scarlet. You couldn't even be jealous of how stunning she was because she wouldn't look a boy in the eye. All that long silky black hair – so wasted on her.' She poured herself more sparkling water, looking like a contented cat, basking in the glow of a perfect life now she'd escaped the horrors of adolescence.

'Speaking of looking at boys, you realise we've been here hours and you haven't told us one thing about your husband?' Jen declared, just as the waiter came by with the dessert selections. There was a hiatus while they chose.

'What's he like?' she probed as the trolley was wheeled away. She wanted to hear that the fat, lonely, unloved Georgina had found her fairy-tale ending.

'Yeah, Georgie,' there was the faintest hint of slurring in Meg's voice. Her green eyes gleamed as she refilled her wine glass. 'What's the big mystery?'

Georgina threw her hair back, looking distant again. 'No mystery,' she said coolly, and glanced at her watch. 'I just haven't had a chance with all your yakking. And talking of mysteries, Rowan has officially bloody well stood us up.'

'She wouldn't,' Jen said, contradicting the obvious. 'Something must have happened.'

'Does anyone have her cell number?' asked Meg.

'I never thought to ask,' Jen said guiltily. 'She called me from a payphone. Maybe she doesn't have one.'

'She cut off from me before I had the chance,' said Georgina. 'I did a 1471 but the number was withheld.'

'Are you sure we have the right hotel?' Meg's eyelids were looking suspiciously heavy, her head propped on one elbow. 'I can just imagine ditzy old Rowan sitting a hundred miles from here, wondering what happened to the three of us.'

'There's only one Marlow Arms in Warminster,' Georgina said sniffily. 'It was my suggestion anyway and I gave her clear directions.'

'Should we call the hospitals?' Automatically Jen's mind went to motorway pile-ups, flashing police lights, ambulance sirens. 'We don't even know if she's married, she could have changed her name. Did she tell anyone where she was living?'

'Not me,' Georgina said in a let's-calm-down kind of way, picking up a fork as the desserts arrived in front of them. 'But Rowan always was spacey. I love her to blithery but I can't say this is completely out of character.'

'We did a play at the end of last term about this woman who's in a car crash,' Meg chipped in. 'She comes out of a coma and doesn't remember a thing about her life.'

'Great. How reassuring,' Jen joked, trying to squash her worry. Anything could have happened, it didn't have to be bad. Rowan's car wouldn't start. An unexpected visitor had arrived. She had a conflict in schedules, or simply forgot. Admittedly it was odd she hadn't called the hotel, left them a message, but Rowan
had
always been dreamy. She'd probably turn up tomorrow night, wondering why they weren't there. There was no reason for Jen to have this uneasy feeling about it, no reason at all.

As they traded tastes of each culinary masterpiece – roast caramel pears with mascarpone cheese for Georgina, passion-fruit mousse for Meg and vanilla soufflé for Jen, drizzled with the most delicious chocolate sauce – she still couldn't shake off this strong sense of dread. It was as if . . .

'Oh jeepers!' Georgie squealed uncharacteristically. Her eyes were fixed on a large, imposing figure who had caught Jen's attention when she first walked in. 'I know who that woman is. It's been bothering me all night. She's Bella Stringent!'

'Bella Stringent?' Meg's spine straightened like an interview candidate when her prospective boss arrives, and she swivelled in her chair. 'Where?'

'Who's Bella Stringent?' Jen craned her neck.

'Don't stare. She's just finished Lady Bracknell at the Strand. "A
handbag?" '
Georgina's voice mimicked the aristocratic bellow in a muted fashion. 'They say she's up for an Oscar for that Merchant Ivory film she did.'

'No shit!' Meg took a gulp of wine. For someone who hadn't originally wanted the Sauvignon Blanc she was doing a manly job of destroying the second bottle, especially since Georgina, true to her word, had only tasted a little. 'Should I go over and talk to her? After all we are both in the biz.'