Chapter 41
‘This is an evening of wonders, indeed!’
Afew weeks later I found myself at Alice’s kitchen table. Alice and Dylan had moved out of London, bought a rambling cottage with roses around the door and an apple orchard at the back, and had produced a small, perfect son called Ollie. It was domestic bliss bathed in a palette of Farrow a semicircle of glossy-haired, cashmere-wrapped women perched around the table.
Most of them had followed the same migration pattern: London careers, then marriage, children, countryside.
Their lives had timelines. Milestones. Narrative arcs that made sense.
As Alice’s oldest friend, I was absorbed instantly into the fold with kisses on cheeks, chairs shuffled to make space, a glass pressed into my hand before I’d even taken my coat off.
My divorce, return from California, the collapse of that life – it all carried a certain fascinating glamour. A cautionary tale.
‘How are you really?’ one of them asked gently.
And in a sudden surrender to the safety of the room, it felt good to talk about it, to say the words out loud, in a warm English kitchen thousands of miles from the Bay Area and Bunny and Chase and all the brittle, shiny surfaces of that world.
The Jamie Oliver chicken risotto Alice had made was disappearing fast, bowls scraped clean while conversation bounced around the table.
Someone’s toddler vomiting spectacularly across the back seat of a brand-new 4x4, a heated debate about primary school catchment areas, a brief but intense discussion about whether husbands were more irritating after thirty or if it had always been that way.
I laughed, and I even forgot myself for stretches at a time. But underneath it all sat a growing awareness: everyone else was mid-story. Careers humming along, mortgages being paid, marriages evolving, children growing. Forward motion.
Mine felt like someone had ripped up the middle chapters, then told me to start again, right from the beginning. So here I was, back in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house, wondering what on earth came next.
Alices stood up, and in true theatrical form, clapped her hands. ‘Right,’ she announced. ‘Enough life admin. Let’s talk about the book.’
The chatter softened. Wine glasses were topped up. Books appeared from handbags like props in a rehearsal.
She held up the battered copy of Pride and Prejudice from our school days, its spine barely clinging together with strips of yellowing tape.
‘I didn’t actually read it,’ confessed Selina. ‘Watched the BBC series on DVD. You know, the one with Colin Firth. Boots, breeches, brooding. Honestly, it’s basically medicinal.’
A chorus of agreement broke out.
Amanda leaned forward, eyes shining. ‘I binge-watched it while Mark was golfing. Completely forgot to put the roast in. We had to have fish fingers from the freezer. Honestly? Best Sunday I’ve had in months.’
The conversation detonated from there into a full-scale Darcy appreciation session. The lake scene. The shirt. The walk. The breeches. Galloping on horseback versus wet-shirt intensity.
Minna, lifelong equestrian and therefore self-appointed authority, declared Colin a superior rider. Selina insisted no man had ever looked that good emerging from water before or since.
Alice attempted to restore order. ‘We’re discussing the book,’ she protested. ‘Not Colin Firth.’
But the moment had gone. Darcy had completely hijacked the table. Laughter was rising, and fantasies being confessed with increasing abandon. Something loosened inside me. There in the dark was a flicker of uncomplicated happiness.
That was when Alice flicked through the pages and pulled out the folded sheet of paper.
‘Ladies,’ she announced, holding it aloft, ‘allow me to present The Darcy List. Compiled by myself and Flo, circa a very long time ago when we were impressionable teenagers with too much imagination.’ She handed it to me. ‘Go on. Read it.’
My handwriting stared back at me, sloping, over-confident, the pen pressed hard enough to dent the paper beneath.
I could almost feel the sixteen-year-old certainty behind it, the absolute conviction that life would deliver exactly what we’d ordered if we were patient enough.
For a moment, the room blurred, past and present folding together, and I wondered what that girl would make of me now.
I took a deep breath and read aloud:
The Darcy List – by Florence Elliot and Alice Winters
Really fit in all ways – tall, devastatingly good-looking
Can dance in a cool way
Can gallop on a horse, but doesn’t necessarily have to really know how to do that. He can be good at driving a car instead, a cool, sports car
Is rich and lives somewhere like Pemberley
Isn’t a big flirt, only looks at the one he loves
Has one or more good mates who are cool so you can go out as a crowd and have fun
Is smart and witty
Is like the smouldering Darcy at the end of the book, not the one at the beginning when he was being a complete, aloof tosser.
‘I want that man!’ Selina declared, raising her glass. ‘To a man like Darcy!’
We toasted, swept up in the collective romance of it, a fictional archetype stitched together from longing, hormones, and the naive certainty that life would eventually deliver exactly what we ordered.
Alice turned to Selina with a wicked grin. ‘So you’re saying Andrew doesn’t make the cut?’
‘Fuck no,’ Selina replied promptly. ‘Pass me the list.’ She scanned it, muttering. ‘Maybe… maybe… no… no… yes… oh God…’
‘Solid B,’ Alice announced. ‘But hey, you’ve got a Georgian house and a wardrobe I’d kill for.’
We went round the table scoring husbands and partners like Olympic judges. Minna trumped everyone, her husband could apparently ride like the wind, which earned immediate bonus points.
Inevitably, it came to me. I took a long sip of wine, buying myself a second or two. A lifetime seemed to sit between the girl who’d written that list and the woman holding it now. I took a deep breath.
‘When we wrote this list we were in a Darcy froth, creating an idealised checklist version of the perfect man. But the real Darcy, Austen’s fictional character, was different.
For half of the book, he’s kind of awful.
Proud. Condescending. So convinced of his own superiority he proposes marriage like he’s offering a job.
And when Elizabeth refuses him, it doesn’t just bruise his ego, it forces him to confront himself.
Who he is. How he treats people. Whether he can be better. ’
I took another sip of wine to ease my throat, which now felt tight and dry. ‘I think that’s what makes him romantic. Not the house, horses or brooding silences. It’s that he listens and learns. He becomes someone worthy of the woman he loves.
‘My ex, Chase, never had that second act in him. He was all performance and curated charm to turn on and off when it suited him. And when things got rocky, when I said no or asked for change, he didn’t evolve.
He just got more obnoxious. Darcy changed.
Chase didn’t. One is fiction. The other, unfortunately, was real. ’
Silence. I hadn’t planned on saying all that out loud, especially not to a group of women, only one of whom I knew well. The words had just… slipped out, too honest to stop once they’d started.
Alice reached for my hand, gave it a squeeze. ‘Christ, Flo.’
Selina leaned forward, brows drawn together, glass forgotten. ‘That thing you said – about the second act. That’s it, isn’t it? Some men don’t have one.’
Minna nodded slowly. ‘Mine had a second act. But only after I threatened to leave. And even now, the lid occasionally blows off the simmering pot of arrogance inside him.’
We laughed.
‘I think,’ said Alice, ‘what Flo’s saying, delivering a better character analysis than the years we spent studying English Lit, is that Darcy earns it. Love, I mean. Not just Elizabeth.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘He earns her respect and trust. He doesn’t just buy a house and carry on as if he’s still the big bachelor about town.’
There were murmurs of agreement. I relaxed into the soft, warm buzz of women rallying around one of their own.
‘Honestly, Flo,’ said Amanda, ‘you’re better off without the Fuller family and monogrammed towels. Chase sounds basically like the complete, aloof tosser at the beginning of the book.’
‘That,’ said Alice, raising her glass, ‘goes on a T-shirt.’
When the others had gone home, Alice and I were left in the quiet of post-dinner clear up. Ronson, her terrier, was licking the plates as pre-wash for me to then stack in the dishwasher.
‘They’re a nicer bunch than I expected.’
‘Book club has that effect,’ she said. ‘Makes us talk about stuff we’d never touch on over coffee. We all wear a mask until someone brings up sex and swordsmanship in the same breath.’
We laughed and cleared the final glasses.
‘Right then,’ she said, reaching into a cupboard and bringing out a bottle of tequila. ‘That’s the entertainment portion of the evening done. Now. What are you actually going to do with your life?’
She poured us each a shot, handed me mine, and gave a silent 3-2-1 countdown with her fingers.
The warm fire burned down my throat. I leant against the Aga, heat radiating through the back of my jumper. Ignition. ‘Step one: find somewhere to live that isn’t my parents’ attic. Step two: figure out how to earn actual money.’
‘London?’
‘Not if I can help it. I want countryside.’
‘Great. Selfishly for me that is the right answer. I missed you when you were a million miles away across the Atlantic,’ she said. ‘It has to be very near me.’
She paused. Then her face lit up. ‘I’ve heard on the grapevine that there’s an old cottage a couple of miles from here that’s going up for rent. Needs work, but it’s got potential to make a nice home.’
‘I’ll take potential,’ I said. ‘Potential is currently top of my wish list.’
‘And what about work?’
I hesitated. ‘I don’t want to do IT support again. The only reason it was enjoyable was because it was at Rivertide.’
‘Something creative then,’ Alice continued. ‘You’ve got good taste and actual opinions – which, trust me, is rarer than you think.’
‘Maybe. Interiors… freelance, if I can get the work. Might need to do some time in a shop until something comes up.’
‘Or,’ she said, ‘you could be brilliant. Like you used to be in your family business. And not care if it terrifies everyone around you.’
That stopped me for a beat.
‘Too soon for a pep talk,’ I said.
‘Fine. Then let’s just find you a roof over your head and get you settled.’