Wish You Were Here (11 page)

‘I was wondering if we should share a taxi home, but clearly not.'

‘Mimi! Wait – no!'

Too late. The door had slammed. I stared, horrified, at the paintwork. Sank back on the pillows and groaned. ‘Great. In one evening, you've cost me my best friend – and probably my flat, since her father owns it.'

‘Nonsense, you'll patch it up with her, darling. And Lucy's your best friend, not Mimi. I've done my research. And if she does turf you out, you can always come and live with me. I've got a nice little place in Draycott Terrace.'

‘Oh, don't be ridiculous.'

‘I'm not, I think we'd be good together. But, frankly,
Flora, if you don't put it to the test, we'll never know, will we?' He leaned right over me, an elbow propped either side of my head. I tried to look cross but, God, he was attractive. And when those wicked, glittering blue eyes softened, as they were doing now, he was terribly hard to resist. I'm not proud of myself, but a bit of me felt I had at least resisted for ages and, of course, once I'd let him kiss me I was in too deep, and then, naturally, it was sensational. Sometime later, I lay in his arms, staring at the dawn as it came up behind the thin bedroom curtain.

‘Darling,' Max murmured, ‘promise me, if you ever run away from me again and I have to chase you round London, don't let it be south of the river.'

I smiled, thinking I hadn't actually thought about running away, and then I fell asleep.

In the morning, of course, there was a bit of a scene. Charlie had staggered in while we were fast asleep. He wasn't best pleased. In fact, he could hardly speak he was so incandescent with rage, and Max and I took advantage of that, wriggling into clothes, finding shoes, keys, money, Max saying in a loud voice what a terrific party it had been and how kind it was of Charlie to have invited him as we hurtled past him standing bug-eyed and spluttering in the doorway. I was puce with shame and stopped to mutter, ‘Oh God, I'm so sorry, Charlie, you see –' before Max dragged me down the hall and out of the front door.

‘Never complain, never explain,' he told me as we clattered up the uncarpeted basement stairs.

Outside, the crumpet-catcher stood prettily at the kerb, all in one piece. I turned, astonished. ‘I thought you said –'

‘I lied!' he cried, arms outstretched, smiling broadly.

In
an instant he'd concertinaed down the roof and we'd jumped in. We shot out of Branksome Road, around the dustbins and the scruffy-looking cars, the cats returning from a night out, into the crisp air, which clashed violently with our hangovers, and a sunny, bright-blue morn. Off we sped. I'm sorry. But after four months with a very clever chap, having deep conversations in gloomy pubs where everyone drank beer – even the girls – the novelty had worn off. Here I was, flying across Battersea Bridge, wind in my hair, the Thames shimmering beneath me, in a bright-red sports car, beside an incredibly handsome man in a peacock-blue shirt, with nut-brown hair, similarly coloured forearms … what could I do?

We had breakfast at the brasserie at Brompton Cross: fresh orange juice and croissants slipped down a treat and there were gleeful grins and more jokes from him whilst I tried not to smile and assumed an ashamed expression, and then I refused to have any more to do with him. I refused to go back to Draycott Terrace and spend the rest of the day in bed, as he suggested, and I refused to walk in Kew Gardens and ‘get steamed up in the hothouse'. I also refused to laugh any more than I could absolutely help. It was what I'd missed, though, I realized wistfully. Laughing. Instead, I made him drop me back at my flat – at the end of the road, in case Mimi was at the window glowering – and walked, with fear and trembling, down to number 42.

From the doorstep I gazed up at our top-floor windows, to the eaves where the pigeons roosted, dry-mouthed. Mimi was good fun, but she had a temper. She was also very good-looking and used to getting the boys. Although
a bit of me thought that it wasn't as if she was going out with him I knew the sisterhood rules: knew I was in the wrong. I was pleased to see my belongings were not stacked up in the hallway as I opened the front door, and was also pleased to find her in the kitchen, making an apple pie, radio on, window open to the sunshine. Food was our big bond. We'd met on a cookery course in Paris during the summer holiday the previous year, where we'd both agreed, as we sat in pavement cafés drinking espressos and wearing short skirts and feeling very grown up, that in times of crisis and emotional stress there was nothing that couldn't be solved by making a batch of profiteroles. I thought back to that summer – exciting days when you meet a new friend, swap confidences, thumbnail sketch your life up to now and then fill in the details more thoroughly as time went by – and felt sad.

‘I'm so sorry, Mimi,' I began humbly, realizing I didn't even know what I was going to say. Was it ‘I won't see him again' or ‘I'm going to see him again, you'll have to deal with it'? That it depended on her?

She turned. Her face was strained, but she managed a brave smile. She looked me in the eye.

‘It's not as if I was going out with him.'

‘No, but still. I knew you liked him.'

‘And you didn't?'

‘I didn't think I did, because everyone else did,' I said truthfully. ‘But then, yesterday, I realized that wasn't a good enough reason.'

‘So now you do?'

I struggled, wondering how to put it.

‘It's fine,' she said quickly, knowing immediately. ‘I'm
not going to make a scene over a blatant mutual attraction. Go for it, Flora.'

I felt everything inside me relax. I could have hugged her, but knew from her rigid back as she turned back to roll out the pastry that it would be a step too far, so didn't.

‘Thanks, Mimi,' I breathed. I wanted to add – And we won't be obvious. Won't flaunt it in your face in the room next to yours, we'll be at his place, not here; but I knew this wasn't the moment for the geography of the coupling. For the details. Surprisingly, though, she did want to know how it had happened, and I was relieved that I hadn't sought him out: that he'd ambushed me. I wanted to clear that side of our friendship, and she even had the grace to laugh.

‘You must have got the shock of your life when you realized it wasn't Charlie. God, the audacity!'

‘He's got balls,' I agreed, before realizing that wasn't the most tactful thing I could have said.

I withdrew hastily from the kitchen and scuttled to my bedroom, leaving her to her baking. There, I drew my curtains on the day and went to bed, even though it was barely the afternoon, the sun was still shining, and the pigeons outside my window were still cooing to one another on the crumbling ledge. I needed, though, if I was going to live here with Mimi, for it to be tomorrow. I shut my eyes and snuggled down. For it not to be the day I'd cheated on my flatmate and let a man lead me, uncharacteristically, into temptation.

I didn't worry that he wouldn't call the next day, I knew he would, and he did. Luckily, Mimi was out, and I sank happily into the sofa, chatting for a whole indulgent hour, picking stuffing out of the exploding arms, before he went to his parents for lunch, promising he'd meet me tomorrow. The next day, he was waiting outside the London College of Printing, where I was trying to become a journalist in an already shrinking column-inch world, and we went for a drink in Holborn. As we sat on stools at the bar, I thought how easy it was to misjudge someone. He was just a boy. With a very nice face. Who'd driven to see his parents in the country on a Sunday, because he was worried about his sister, who'd fallen off her pony. He was as lovely as someone who was poor with an unfortunate face. It made no difference where people came from, or what they looked like.

There was also the added dimension that I'd gone all the way from hating him to liking him, so that, even then, so early on, the distance between the two made it seem dizzyingly close to love. After a few drinks, we went to the Spaghetti Opera in Fleet Street, which he'd heard about through his contacts in the music world – Max worked for an events company that staged concerts: rock, pop and classical. This particular Italian restaurateur employed impoverished music students to sing whilst the punters ate
pasta. Sounds fun, but in reality, having someone draw up a chair and croon – or blast – Puccini in your face on your first date wasn't really ideal, and so we bolted down our spaghetti
al vongole
and beat a hasty retreat to Draycott Terrace.

Those first few weeks swept by in a predictable fashion: drink, eat and retire to horizontal activities, to be repeated again when energy levels recovered. After a bit, though, we emerged and became more inclusive. We spent time with friends, his or mine, at the Surprise, the Phene, the Admiral Cod, the usual haunts. I did tease him initially about his friends, who were the green-sock, tasselled loafers, Barbour-over-a-suit brigade, but apart from Coco, who drank, they turned out to be as normal and insecure about their looks and concerned about their love lives and their jobs as the rest of us. I grew to like them as much as my own crowd. My own friends knew Max anyway, but my college ones didn't, and circled him warily at first. Once they realized he brayed but didn't bite, they embraced him and, after a bit, even Mimi relaxed, and went out with a friend of his called Bertie.

His parents were heaven, and we drove to see them regularly in Hampshire, in their lovely Georgian farmhouse, complete with rambling acres, paddocks and sheep grazing beyond a ha-ha. Although clearly well off, they were steady, sensible people: his father was a local solicitor and his mother a housewife who organized charity events and gardened. She told me quietly one day as I was helping her deadhead roses that she was so pleased Max had met me, because, frankly, some of the girls he'd gone around with before had been a bit racy. Her delicate skin on her
beautiful face had puckered thoughtfully, like tissue paper, as she'd paused, trug in hand. Not that any of them had been serious girlfriends, she'd added, resuming her pruning. He'd only had one proper girlfriend before me, an Australian girl called Tiggy who he'd met on his gap year and fallen for, but, geographically, it hadn't been ideal.

And, of course, he in turn met my mother, who adored him, principally because he played backgammon with her for hours on end and laughed at all of her jokes whilst pouring the vodka, all of which encouraged her no end. But he seemed to genuinely enjoy her company.

‘Yes, I do,' he agreed, when I put this to him. ‘She's good fun.' He nudged me. ‘She's where your lighter side comes from.'

I'd grinned, but knew we were both wondering where the darker, more serious one came from. And, like other friends before him, Lucy in particular, he'd asked if I wasn't intrigued.

‘Oh, I know the possibilities, I've narrowed it down,' I assured him, and reeled off the names of a captain of industry, a fashion photographer and a musician, and he'd tried to persuade me to discover more. The furthest I'd gone was to take him to a house in the Boltons, where we'd peered down into the well-lit basement kitchen together, where the musician, now a successful producer, was pouring a drink for his wife as she peeled potatoes. Two young children were curled up, watching television on a sofa in the corner.

‘I'd be the worst sort of bad news,' I told Max as we stared. ‘I don't want to be that. Don't want to be a nasty
shock in a letter, or standing on the doorstep. Ruin four people's lives.'

‘Change,' he'd said. ‘Change their lives and, in time, they'd come to love you. You'd be the cool older sister.'

I made a face. ‘Not for a long while, and not to the poor wife. I'd be a horrific jolt, and I don't want that. The other families are all much the same, incidentally. I've checked. Incredibly happy.'

‘But what about you? What about your happiness?'

‘But I wouldn't be happy, knowing I'd made everyone miserable. I'd be wretched.'

‘OK,' he said slowly, ‘but what about the truth?'

‘It's just a word. Rhetoric. It's not an emotion. A feeling.'

‘So not important?'

‘Oh, very,' I said vehemently. ‘But it doesn't take precedence just because it resonates on moral high ground. It doesn't beat wrecking a family. Anyway, I'm fine, I've got Mum.' I smiled, knowing he couldn't dispute this and that, despite her frivolity, he saw a different side to her: a brave one.

‘Brave?' I'd said, astonished, as we'd left her house in Fulham one night after midnight. ‘Reckless, you mean.'

‘It takes courage to be that happy. Not to let regret overwhelm you. And she's solvent. She's done all that on her own.'

‘Done what!' Mum hadn't worked since her early modelling days.

‘Made her own money, invested it in property and managed to hold on to it. So far.'

‘Well,
all she did was stand in front of a camera …' I said dubiously.

‘Does it matter if it's beauty or brains you're blessed with? Surely it's as much of a crime not to use one as the other? If a first-class brain who could be studying at Oxford was running a sweet shop, you'd say what a waste.'

‘I suppose.'

‘She's used her assets.' He shrugged. ‘Same thing.'

‘And had immensely rich boyfriends.' I thought of our fine Parisian years, with Philippe, who was then the French finance minister. I wasn't sure Mum had paid for anything when we'd lived in the beautiful apartment he'd bought for us in Montmartre: I was pretty sure he'd paid for me to go to school, too, in the darling little Madeline ensemble with cape and straw boater.

‘Oh, sure, she's taken her chances, but a few years in Paris is just the same as accepting a sabbatical at Harvard. Getting a break for being clever.'

I laughed, loving Max's refreshing view on life, knowing he was good for me, that I could be too critical of Mum sometimes, too judgemental. But then I was allowed to be: she was my mother. And other people, with their cosy, deadheading, trug-wielding, Yorkshire-pudding-making mothers could afford to find her enchanting. They only dipped in.

Max was four years older than me, so I wasn't totally surprised when, after eighteen months, as he was approaching twenty-eight, he asked me to marry him. Girlfriends and I had already discussed this beneficial side effect of dating the slightly older man. Oh, we laughed as we said it, but there was a glaring reality, which obviously couldn't be
repeated on the floor of the
Evening Standard
, where I was now working as a fledgling restaurant reviewer under the great Fay Maschler. And I was the happiest girl alive. I'd got my gorgeous Mad Max, who complemented me, just, as everyone said – Parrot, Lucy, Gus – I did him. I'd calmed him down a bit, apparently. I was the brakes, and my friends, who might have initially thought him a bit flamboyant, loved him too now. We happily planned an engagement pary, on my twenty-fourth birthday.

Unfortunately, I was felled by horrific stomach cramps for the two days leading up to it, and on the morning of the party, dizzy with painkillers, I collapsed at work and was taken to hospital. An already erupting appendix was removed from my abdomen and burst as it was placed in the kidney dish. Disappointing, obviously, but it was also a relief that it wasn't more serious. I rang Max drowsily from a phone a nurse wheeled to my bed when I came round from the anaesthetic, and he came rushing in. His face was pale and worried, and he held my hand tight, but gradually, as I talked, he was reassured and relieved, too. I told him to go ahead with the party.

‘Don't be silly, it's our engagement party. And your birthday!'

‘Yes, but everyone's been invited, and everyone's coming, and it's tonight. In four hours' time. Please, Max. I'll feel wretched if you don't. And it's only our friends in your flat, it's not like it's anything grand.'

Reluctantly, he did go ahead – the alternative, pre-texting and pre-Facebook, being to sit on the phone for the rest of the afternoon. The next day, when I was feeling much better and sitting up, a whole gang of our friends – Max,
Fiz, Lucy, Mimi – came in to see me and said it hadn't been the same. That they'd missed me terribly, but they'd toasted me at midnight and Max had made a short speech about his darling girl. I'd glowed.

The arrangements for the wedding, six months hence, began. I had a gorgeous few days trying wedding dresses on with Mum, who wanted me to go for something elegant and fitted and steered me, quite rightly, away from the shepherdess costumes. We had a heavenly girly time of it, tasting champagne and flicking through folders full of pictures of cakes: Mum, always defiantly feminine, can be quite traditional when she feels like it.

And then, one day, I was in the Coopers Arms in Flood Street, fingering veil material and waiting for Max, when I looked up and saw Coco, on her own, at a table in the corner, dwarfed in a huge camel coat. She looked dreadful and was clearly already plastered. I went across with my drink and sat next to her.

‘The blushing bride,' she slurred, the corners of her beautiful mouth lurching with the effort of trying to speak.

‘I hope you'll come, Coco? To the wedding?'

She looked at me through dull, dead eyes. ‘It's made you bold, hasn't it? This engagement? You used to be scared of me. Now you're trying to be kind. Patronizing. Of course I'll come, he's my cousin.' She seized her drink and knocked back the remains of it. I smelled whisky. ‘Who d'you think you are – Diana Spencer? Snaring the prince, so now we all have to cosy up to you? Be your best friend?'

I glanced around, wishing Max would arrive. She got up to go, thank goodness. Wobbled a bit.

‘I'll
be your best friend, Flora,' she said suddenly, placing both hands on the table for balance. ‘I'll tell you something you should know, and that no one else will tell you. On the night of your engagement party, Max fucked Mimi. That's what you should know, and no one else will tell you.'

She staggered from the pub.

I sat, shocked, rocked and immobile at that table in the corner. A few minutes later, the door flew open, and Max arrived on a blast of cold air. He was full of apologies about the bloody Tube and his boss keeping him hanging on and wanted to know how long I had been here. Then he saw my face.

‘What is it? What's wrong?'

I told him. And then watched as his face turned grey. And I knew. He sat down and put his head in his hands. Ran his fingers through his hair. Slowly, he looked up, ashen. The party had gone on quite late, he told me. And, eventually, he'd gone to bed, leaving a hard core staying up drinking, playing cards; telling them to let themselves out quietly. Sometime later he awoke to find a naked girl beside him. At first, in his confusion, he thought it was me, then realized it was Mimi. She was already on top of him, working her magic. He told me he had absolutely no excuse. Except that he was quite drunk and very disoriented.

‘It was my birthday.'

‘I know.'

‘My engagement party.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'd been under the knife, having an operation.'

He didn't answer.

‘You
came to see me the next day. She came, too. She brought me flowers.'

The horror of the deception threatened to overwhelm me. I felt terribly sick.

I managed to leave the pub. Managed to walk, not home, but to Mum's. She took one look and poured me a very large drink and we sat whilst I cried and told her, and she held my hand. She didn't offer any advice, she didn't tell me what to do, she just looked very sad and very wistful, and once or twice she seemed to be a million miles away, back in her own past. I didn't want to be her in twenty years' time. Didn't want history to repeat itself. I'd never asked Mum why none of the men she'd been with had ever married her, I knew it was too painful.