Four months before Lucian
‘There you are!’ says Jack, coming up to our table just as we’re about to leave.
Celia is right behind him, without her baby for once, and dressed for night-time it seems, in big, bold earrings and a low-cut top.
‘Catherine! Great to see you again, it’s been so long,’ says Jack, stooping down to kiss her on both cheeks.
She stares up at him in wordless confusion.
I feel a little confused myself.
Pleased to see him, guilty that I’ve somehow broken my promise to Catherine.
‘This is Celia, my wife,’ Jack says.
‘All right if we join you?’ He’s already scouting the terrace for extra chairs.
‘Actually, mate, we’re just leaving,’ I tell them, hating how cold I sound but also aware of the look on Catherine’s face.
Not quite horror, but something close.
‘Catherine and I haven’t got very long together so we sort of need to spend it on our own.
Don’t mean to be unfriendly.
’
‘You are joking? The girls are on their way down, Harry and Ling are coming over. We’re all meeting at yours.
We popped in just now and Mary said you were here.
’
‘We booked a babysitter,’ Celia says.
‘We did try to let you know but your phone was off.’
‘It’s meant to be a surprise.
A good one.’
Jack laughs but Catherine doesn’t.
She’s staring down at the table; she hasn’t said one word.
I take her hand in mine but it’s like holding a dead fish.
I’m not sure what to do.
I watch as Jack leans forward, shouldering his way into Catherine’s line of vision, forcing her to look at him.
‘Catherine?’ he asks, with his calculated, fail-safe smile.
‘Surely it’s OK if we come over for an hour or two?
The girls really want to see you.
We all do. It’s been so long.
’
‘Sure. It’s fine.
’
Her voice is flat and unenthusiastic, kind of rude.
She doesn’t smile back.
‘Let’s make it a quick one,’ I say, and Jack looks at me and rolls his eyes.
‘Like that’s going to happen,’ he says.
Jack and Celia follow us home in their Land Rover, and though the journey takes fifteen minutes, Catherine barely speaks.
‘Honestly, it doesn’t matter,’ she says, when I try to explain that I had no idea my friends were coming over.
‘It’s nice that they want to see me.
But I can’t stay long.
I’ll have to get home.
’
‘Just give me an hour and I’ll get rid of them,’ I tell her, and she nods.
‘Of course,’ she says, but the afternoon’s colour has faded.
I’m not even sure what happened.
It’s as if there is a barrier between us, a paper-thin sheet of something dark and unformed.
The library is empty so we head on to the kitchen and hear the girls’ voices, a wall of noise and loud, shouty, overindulgent laughter.
I do love them. It does thrill me to hear them, even after all this time.
‘Think of it as a reunion,’ I tell Catherine just before we open the door.
‘Which is what it actually is.’
She pulls off a weak smile.
‘Rather than the lions’ den, which is how it actually feels?
’
We walk in to a shattering volume increase, mainly Alexa screeching at Catherine.
‘Catherine! Oh my God. I can’t believe it!
’
They were once so close, Catherine and Alexa.
I feel a sharp little moment of grief at the way it all ended; not just our love affair but the friendships too.
She grabs Catherine into an intense, bosom-crushing hug and I love her for it, but it leaves me and Rachel eyeing each other on either side of the island, and ten seconds later, which comes as no relief whatsoever, we are dealing with the arrival of Jack and Celia.
We are all connected by sex, is what I find myself thinking, somewhat inappropriately, and suddenly the age-old foibles and indulgences, the background wallpaper to our comfortable, me-centric lives, begin to feel awkward, ungainly, wrong.
Me, Rachel and Catherine.
Jack, Celia and Alexa.
‘Cocktails?’ I suggest. ‘Library?’
I’ll make cosmopolitans.
Vodka, cranberry, a little grenadine, a dash of lime.
Ingredients, I hope, with the power of change.
In the library, Celia hijacks Catherine onto one of the sofas while Jack, Rachel, Alexa and I loiter around the bar like a circle of misfits.
So much to say and none of it sayable: it’s often this way with us.
‘Make them fucking strong, darling,’ Rachel says, which is enough.
‘Aren’t you seeing Max tomorrow?
’ I ask her, remembering now the long-awaited lunch.
‘Yeah. And I’m meant to be in the office.
Crazy to come down probably, but I needed to take my mind off it.
’
The three of us run with this reasoning, even though we all know she is here because of Catherine.
‘Where are you meeting him?’ asks Jack.
‘Byron Burger. Hugo’s choice; I can’t stand the place – all those nasty wipe-down tables.
But Max is a burger fiend these days.
Apparently.’
Hugo, Rachel’s ex, is a good guy, basically, whose drug intake tailed off once Max was born whilst Rachel’s seemed to escalate.
Rachel couldn’t hack it, her one-time party partner metamorphosing from ally to judger, but the thing that really derailed her was her son’s decision to separate from his mother.
I hate the way Rachel hurts.
This buried wound, guilt and shame branded into her soul.
I’d change it if I could; I have tried, though perhaps not as hard as I might.
The drinks are made and Harry arrives with perfect timing, a bottle of Don Julio tequila held high above his head and his wife clinging to his arm.
I want to laugh just to see them: the mind-bending wonderfulness of my awkward friend finding love long after we had all given up hope.
Ling accepts a drink, which surprises me.
In the few times I have met her, she has asked for Coke or water.
‘I thought you didn’t drink?
’
‘Hardly ever. He’s been corrupting me,’ she says with a small smile.
‘In other words, she’s realised she’ll die of boredom in this godforsaken backwater unless she gets a habit like the rest of us.
’
Harry takes his drink and pulls Ling in the direction of the sofas, leaving me alone with Rachel for a moment.
‘So,’ she says, that one tiny word apparently a summation of all that has happened between Catherine and me.
‘I’m guessing this is Liv’s doing and that’s why she came to the funeral?
’
‘How did you know?’
Rachel shrugs.
‘Obvious really. Why else would she be there? It’s not as if she knew your mother.
What about Catherine’s husband?
What about her kids?
’
‘He had an affair and they’re taking a break to work out what they should do.
I don’t know what will happen.
’
‘Just hope you don’t get hurt, that’s all.
’
‘Me too.’
The faintest, slightest fragment of a smile from Rachel and my heart pulses a little at this shared realisation, this information swap, my decade and a half of loving the wrong person, or perhaps the right one, just not this one, not Rachel.
I watch Rachel take a deep slug of her drink.
‘I’ll always be your friend, Lucian,’ she says, though she turns away from me as she says it and I know, without seeing them, that her eyes are filled with unshed tears.
‘Same,’ I say, but Rachel is already walking away to the other side of the room.
Catherine seems safe enough in her place on the sofa, still cornered by Celia and now with Ling on the other side of her.
I watch her from across the room and try to work out what she’s thinking, how the close proximity of my friends feels after all these years.
Her long hair falls across her face and I cannot easily see her expression, but she sits, as if perched, on the edge of the sofa, listening to Celia and, less frequently, talking.
Are my friends really so bad?
I don’t think so. I understand that my long-running on–off affair with Rachel makes this first meeting uncomfortable; I saw her coolness with Jack just now at Colton.
And him so pleased to see her.
It makes me wonder if she disliked him all along.
People often get Jack wrong.
He’s loud and overconfident in that rather public-school way; he gives the impression of having been born to wealth, though of course, I know differently.
I remember his parents begging to be let off the last year’s school fees, the lack of holidays (Jack didn’t go abroad until I took him to Paris at eighteen), their despair at not being able to fill up the oil tank.
The thing about Jack, which most people don’t get, is that he is rampantly insecure.
There is a splinter of dissatisfaction running through him, the sense that whatever he has is never quite enough.
For some reason I can’t even begin to understand, he wishes he was me, pure and simple.
He actually said it once, even with the dipso mother, dead father and indifferent sisters.
‘I wish I had your life,’ he said one night when we were up late drinking.
‘Fill your boots,’ I told him.
‘What’s mine is yours, brother.
’
As to the others, well, Harry is the definitive Mr Nice Guy, with his old-fashioned charm and Edwardian manners (perhaps Ling can bring him into the twenty-first century; none of us ever managed it).
And Alexa, high-octane, over-the-top Alexa, only wants to be Catherine’s friend again.
How hard can it be?
‘Who’s up for tequila?
’ calls out Rachel to the room in general, and there’s a heartbeat of quiet while we all realise at the same time that she’s slurring.
‘Careful, Rach,’ Harry says.
‘Remember you’re seeing Max tomorrow.
Maybe save the tequila for another night.
’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!
Who do you know who can handle a bit of a party better than me and still cope perfectly well the next day?
’
‘Yes, but it’s Max, and you’ll have to get up early, and you’re going to want to be feeling good for it.
’
‘Oh fuck it,’ Jack says.
‘For God’s sake let’s have one.
I know I need it.’
He heads over to the sideboard to fetch a bottle, and on cue Celia looks up from the sofa.
‘Jack? I told the babysitter we’d only be a few hours at the most.’
The room falls silent, as it so often does when Celia draws attention to herself.
It is partly I think because she tends to misjudge the mood and tone of an evening.
She’ll ask Rachel about Max when it’s clear to everyone but her it’s the last thing Rachel wants to think about.
She’ll try to engage Harry in a conversation about politics when he just wants to get wasted.
Also we know, better than Celia it seems, where her husband’s priorities lie.
I couldn’t ask for a more loyal best friend, but as a husband?
I’m guessing it’s tough.
Yes, he’s still remarkable-looking, that blonde-haired, blue-eyed thing that seems to make most women swoon.
Yes, he probably loves Celia in his own way, but what of the nights spent here, drinking too much vodka while Celia waits in her designer farmhouse for a husband who may not return before daybreak?
‘Why don’t you go on ahead,’ Jack says, adding ‘sweetheart’ as an afterthought.
He looks over at the sofa.
‘I haven’t really had a chance to catch up with Catherine yet.
’
Catherine, who must surely have heard this exchange, doesn’t turn her head or break her conversation with Ling.
Celia relents. Relief buzzes around the room.
‘So long as we’re home by eleven,’ she says.
The tequila is poured, eight shots lined up like medicine on a Chinese lacquered tray.
The evening is gathering pace.