Chapter 11
11
Cate placed her quilted handbag on the empty chair beside her. Natalie instantly regretted chucking her tote bag onto the floor. Cate’s aura of sophistication had her feeling as though she were still an unworldly schoolgirl. She found it hard to tear her eyes away from her ex-classmate’s silky, white-blonde hair, line-free forehead that attested to a top cosmetic surgeon on hand and quietly luxurious clothes, all creams and golden browns. Cate Beresford was a far cry from the lanky Cathy Laidlaw whose single-parent dad had battled to get her to school fed and dressed and didn’t have the time or money to worry about fraying cuffs or unpolished shoes.
‘I can’t believe it’s really you! This is just so weird. It must be nearly twenty-five years,’ Cate said. She shrugged off her gold-buttoned blazer. It wasn’t warm inside the trattoria; perhaps Natalie’s old classmate wasn’t feeling quite as cool as she looked.
‘I know! After all this time!’ Natalie opened one of a pair of leather-bound menus. The sooner they ordered, the sooner she’d be out of this awkward situation. ‘Shall we take a look at the menu? What do you fancy?’
The tension in Cate’s jaw almost imperceptibly softened; it seemed she too was glad to steer the conversation to a nice neutral subject. Natalie dropped her head to scan the short selection of antipasti , primi and secondi .
‘ Risi e bisi – rice and peas; that sort of risotto usually has pancetta in it, doesn’t it?’ Cate gave the impression she ate out all the time. She probably did.
‘I’ll have the spaghetti al nero di seppia ,’ Natalie said, glad of the English translation. It sounded delicious but she hoped the squid ink wouldn’t stain her teeth; they already didn’t bear comparison to Cate’s top-class dentistry. ‘Then I’ll have the seabass; it says it’s cooked in a rock-salt crust.’ She snapped shut the menu, twisting her neck to look for a waiter. A cold glass of something from the extensive wine list might help calm her. And she needed a drink right now .
‘Meat for me, after the risi e bisi but definitely not the liver. I don’t care how much of a speciality it is here; that’s one thing I won’t touch. Do you remember that time Mrs Nickson forced me to eat some?’
‘She stood over you, making you finish every morsel to teach you a lesson after she’d caught you flicking a lump of mash at Julie Paine.’
Cate laughed. ‘I used to hate Julie. I don’t know how she and I ever ended up as friends.’
By ganging up on me. By deserting me when I needed you most . Did Cate really not know what she’d done?
Natalie turned to the hovering waiter, his electronic tablet an incongruous sight amidst the traditional, white tablecloths, glowing wall sconces and old wood panelling.
She ordered, as did Cate, who pronounced her choices like a born Italian.
‘Did you keep in touch with her?’ Natalie asked.
‘Who, Julie?’ Cate smoothed her hair over one shoulder. ‘Not once I’d left school. I lost touch with everyone when I went to Durham Uni. But I did see Julie again once, though not to speak to. It was last Christmas. The big car park at Fernbank Shopping Centre was full so I parked up at Tesco. Julie was there, just outside the double doors, washing down the trollies. It gave me such a shock to see her there. Not that there’s anything wrong with working at Tesco but I expected her to end up doing something exciting: running a scuba-diving school in the Maldives, selling carpets in a souk in Marrakech. She seemed so daring…’
Natalie took a large gulp from her thankfully acquired glass of white wine. ‘We were in awe of her. When she got those tickets to see the Spice Girls, we were so envious. She got her hair dyed like Ginger Spice, do you remember?’
‘It didn’t suit her at all.’ Cate laughed.
‘You’re right, but that didn’t seem to matter back then.’
‘Julie seemed so important, the queen bee of the school. But she was just a stupid little girl, we were all silly… immature, I guess.’
Natalie drank her wine, not sure of how best to respond. Were Cate’s words a half-baked apology for how she’d behaved back then?
The arrival of the waiter bearing two steaming bowls saved her from the need to reply. She dug into her black spaghetti, trying to focus mindfully on each bite. They’d both moved on, she told herself firmly. She couldn’t let the past derail Luxe Life Swap ’s crucial Venice leg.
‘When did you stop calling yourself Cathy?’ Natalie savoured another mouthful of pasta.
Cate rested her fork on the side of her bowl. ‘As soon as I got to Durham. It was such a change for me, living up north – I’d never been much beyond the M25. A different set of people, a new start…’
‘And your husband calls you Cate?’
‘The only person who ever calls me Cathy is my father.’
How formal she sounded.
‘Did your father,’ she deliberately used the word Cate had chosen, ‘ever remarry? I thought he was old back then, everyone’s parents seemed old, but he was really young, wasn’t he?’
‘He was eighteen when I was born; both of my parents were just teenagers. He never remarried and now he never will. He’s in a nursing home: early onset Alzheimer’s. I didn’t even know it was something people could get in their fifties.’ Cate’s voice was as emotionless as if she were reciting the bus timetable but her fingers worried at the button on her silk cuff.
‘I’m sorry,’ Natalie replied automatically.
‘Just one of those things. The Evergreens is very good. I see him twice a week, not that he always knows who I am. But we were never close. Not after that trip to Venice.’ Cate pushed the last grains of rice around her bowl, took a sip of wine. ‘Maybe you did me a favour that day, Natalie, by telling me what my father was really like. Because now I can deal with this. If Dad and I had been close, seeing him like this would rip me apart.’
‘I—’ Natalie began.
‘No! Don’t say anything. I needed to know what Dad had done. I was na?ve before then, thinking he loved me and wanted the best for me.’ Cate gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I would have found out the truth eventually; you just helped me to find it out sooner.’
Cate signalled for the waiter, tapping lightly on her empty wine glass. ‘Another one of these, please… Natalie, anything for you?’
‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ Natalie lied. She prayed her fish would come soon, then she would be one quick coffee away from leaving the restaurant, getting away from Cate. This trip to Venice was going to be the longest fortnight of her life. Natalie had been wrong to say the things she’d said that night but if Cate hadn’t ganged up with Julie, Natalie would never have slipped away by herself. And everything would have been different.