Chapter 30
Tits Out
IVY
Becks arrives twenty minutes later in a way only Becks can, the cabana curtain whisks back, she is already mid-sentence, and she has a tote bag the size of a small suitcase over one shoulder.
“This place is obscene! I came up in the lift with a man who was wearing actual yachting shoes. It’s fucking perfect. You nailed the brief! Now put down that glass and stand up and let me look at you.”
I stand up, smiling, but when she sees the cut she does a double take, her eyes wide.
“Ivy.”
“Hi!”
“What the fuck.”
“It's healing.”
“What the actual fuck.”
“It's fine.”
“It is not fine. Look at it. Look at it. That’s… that’s an inch from your eye!”
“I know.”
“You said you got knocked about.”
“I did get knocked about.”
“You said you got knocked about. Like you took a tumble. Like you fell off a horse. You did not say your face was a crime scene.”
I am about to answer when she pulls me in.
She is shorter than me but she has always hugged like a woman trying to keep someone from falling out of a moving car, and she does it now.
I put my chin on her shoulder. Her hair smells of the perfume she has worn since she was sixteen and the gum she has been chewing since lunch.
“I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry,” I say into her shoulder.
She makes a sound that is half laugh and half something else.
“What the actual fuck, Ivy. You didn't want me to worry. You almost died. You almost… you almost fucking died, and you did not want me to worry. You. Are. Out. Of. Your. Mind.” She holds me out at arm's length again.
She studies the cut. She studies the rest of my face.
She makes a noise low in her throat that is pure Becks—the sound of a woman processing information by way of inner profanity.
“Champagne,” she says.
“Is that your professional prescription?”
She picks up both flutes, hands me mine, takes hers, sits down on the daybed, and pats the spot beside her.
“From the beginning. Slowly.”
I tell her what I can. That Elena Kuznetsova came back, that Brumilde was the one who saved Alex's life. That Alex has a scar on his forehead that matches mine. I get through it without crying, but I see tears in my best friend’s eyes. The Aperol spritzes arrive at some point.
“Saint Ives.”
“Yes.”
“You and I are going to drink quite a lot today and I am going to pretend not to be furious that you did not call me the moment any of this happened.”
“That seems fair.”
“And then in a week I am going to be furious about it.”
“Also fair.”
She squeezes my hand. Her eyes have gone very bright. “All right.” She lifts her spritz. “Drink. Sun. Tits out. Recovery.”
We get into the pool eventually. The sun has moved an inch.
The Aperol is doing what Aperol does. Becks is in a super skimpy black bikini that she bought specifically to make Dr. McFilthy stupid and which is achieving its purpose on at least three of the men currently pretending not to look in our direction.
“They are staring, Becks.”
“They are welcome to.”
I laugh.
“This is a bacchanalia,” she insists. “People stare at bacchanalias. It would be insulting if they didn’t. Worse, it would mean we are doing it wrong.”
She floats on her back. I float on mine. The water is warm. London sits around us like a painted backdrop. I can see the tip of the Shard from this angle. “Tell me about McFilthy.”
“Oh, Ivy. My very favorite subject. But where do I begin?”
“Begin anywhere.”
“He came back from Yemen on Tuesday. He has not slept properly in days. He arrived at my flat at one in the morning with a duffel bag and a stubble situation and the look in his eye of a man who has not had sex since approximately the Crimean War.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“How are you walking?”
“With difficulty.”
I guffaw.
“He had me up against the front door before I had taken my coat off, Ivy. The coat was still on. He had his hand under it inside ten seconds. I had not even put my keys down.”
“Becks.”
“My keys, Ivy. My keys were still in the door.”
“Where did you—”
“Floor. Sofa. Floor again. I tried to get up to go to the bedroom. Poor man hadn’t laid eyes on a proper bed in days, and he said no.”
“He does this thing. And he watches my face the whole time. It is the most—Ivy. Ivy. I think about it in queues at Pret.”
“Becks.”
“In Pret. On a Tuesday. Looking at the chicken caesar wraps.”
I am laughing so hard I have to grab the edge of the pool.
“And he calls me ma'am, Ivy. He calls me ma'am. Like a soldier. In bed. The first time he did it I laughed at him and he just looked at me like he was very, very disappointed in my failure to take this seriously. So now I take it seriously.”
“You take it seriously.”
“I take it seriously.”
I roll onto my front in the water and my forehead nearly hits the pool edge and Becks pulls me back by the elbow without breaking pace.
“There is more, Ivy. There is so much more. He has this… Ivy, he has this thing he does with his fingers.”
She stops. She looks at me. “I have a confession.”
“Yes.”
“Don't react. Just let me say it. And then we move on.”
“All right.”
She floats on her back and looks at the sky.
“I have not been with anyone else since McFilthy.”
I look at her.
“How long has that been?”
“A month.”
I sit up in the water. “Becks.”
“Don’t you dare say the M-word. I just have not… I have not got round to anyone else.”
“You have not got round to anyone else. You, who fucked twins on a yacht.”
“That was years ago.”
“That was last summer.”
“Don't pin me to a timeline, Ivy.”
“You who sometimes dates three people at the same time on three different nights of the week.”
“Stop it.”
“Becks.”
“Don't say it.”
“You're being monogamous.”
She pretends to be affronted. “You take that back!”
I am laughing again. She is splashing me with one hand. “I am not being anything,” she says. “I just like him. I just want to go home to him. There is no thing. Don't make it weird.”
“How am I making it weird?”
“You are making it weird with your face.”
I laugh out loud again.
“Your face is doing the thing where you have opinions.”
“My face is full of joy on your behalf.”
Becks splashes me again and then floats with her eyes closed and her mouth in a line that is trying very hard not to be a smile.
The second bottle of Ruinart is in the bucket by the time I remember the meeting I’d missed. “So. The Foundation.”
Becks rolls onto her elbow on her sun-bed. “Right. Yes. The Peckham problem. The Charity Commission have got us locked in this absurd loop where we cannot get sign-off on the community health program without a senior medical authority attached to the application.”
“How long until we lose the space?”
“End of the week.”
I flush. “Fuck.”
“And you know how hard it was to secure.”
“Becks. I am so sorry. The Foundation is supposed to be my life’s work and in this last week I have left you with all of it.”
“You have. But also you did almost die so I feel like I can let you off the hook this time.”
“That’s very gracious of you,” I reply.
“What can I say? Cabanas and insanely expensive champagne brings out the best in me.”
I laugh. “I do like that about you.”
“So, I have an idea. I’ve hesitated to bring it up because it feels like a—a thing.”
“I’m listening.”
“A thing where I am suggesting my own boyfriend for a job at my best friend's foundation.”
I don’t react immediately. McFilthy at the foundation? It’s not a terrible idea.
“I know. I know. But Callum. He has the credentials. He has the senior medical bona fides. He has been published in the Lancet six times. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that he’s part of Doctors without Borders but it would also be nice to have him around for longer than a few days at a time.
And in theory he could help more people through this well-funded program than with his own hands. ”
I sit up. “Becks. He's perfect.”
“You're sure?”
“I am sure. Obviously sure. He is exactly what we need. Will he do it?”
“He'll do it if I ask him.”
It is somewhere around the bottom of the second bottle that Becks reaches across the gap between our sun-beds and takes my hand again.
“Saint Ives.”
“Yes.”
“I'm really glad you're okay.”
I open my mouth to say thank you and what comes out is nothing. I don’t want to cry at The Grosvenor & Vine in front of three men in yachting shoes.
“Don't cry,” she says. “You'll mess your eyes up. The boy with the spritzes has been giving me significant looks and I want to leave with my dignity.”
The server offers another round of Aperol Spritzes and we shrug and say why not.