Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
‘It’s just an Airbnb.’ Zara touched a fob to a panel next to the door and I heard a muted beep before she pushed it open. It was two days later, and I’d arrived at the address she had given me a few minutes early, and almost given up and gone away again when there’d been no answer to my ring.
It felt almost like a reprieve – like having an appointment for a smear test cancelled at the last minute. I could just go home, tell Patch Zara wasn’t there, was being flaky as she often was and offer to arrange a courier to pick up the camera. I could avoid having to see her on her own turf, alone and undefended.
But just before I turned to leave, I’d seen her hurrying up to the building, gushing apologies.
A steep flight of stairs led upwards beyond a rank of letterboxes. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be here – I’m contracted to do a series of stories on the London fashion scene but if things get busy back in Paris or New York they might whisk me out again. It’s kind of like a working holiday, I guess.’
‘That sounds fun.’ She’d already reached the first bend in the stairs, climbing easily, her wide-leg trousers swishing above her high-heeled boots.
No one in London wears heels any more , I thought unkindly. Maybe you should put that in the first of your dispatches from the Big Smoke.
‘I’ve got used to embracing uncertainty over the years. Paris has been home mostly, of course, but I’ve been all over. Luckily Bisou loves travelling. Are you all right back there, Naomi?’
‘I’m fine,’ I panted. We were two floors up now and she showed no sign of slowing, but I slogged grimly on after her.
‘I could have found somewhere with a lift, but that would have cost more, and I reckon this is doing wonders for my cardiovascular fitness. You know I’ve always detested the gym.’
This was true – I remembered from back in the day how Zara seemed to never do any exercise, yet drank and often ate enormously when we were out, while remaining as thin as a shop-window mannequin. Rowan and I had once speculated that she probably lived on lettuce leaves and cigarettes the rest of the time.
‘And here we are.’ Zara finally stopped on the fifth floor – or it might have been the sixth – in front of a shiny black-painted door. She fitted a key into the lock and turned it. ‘Home sweet home – for now.’
Stepping into the apartment, I felt a pang of envy. My own house was – well, it was home. But it was nothing much to look at. Patch and I had bought it before I stopped working, when I’d still been earning enough for us to get the mortgage. We’d chosen it because it was big enough for a family and close enough to his mother, and figured on fixing it up later on.
But later on hadn’t happened yet, and our kitchen was still shabby and inconvenient, our stair carpet a threadbare trip hazard, our windows rattly and draughty. The twins had added their interior design touches too – piles of plastic toys in the living room, high chairs we’d found second hand on Facebook, and liberal felt-tip pen artworks on the fridge and of course the walls.
This was like something out of a magazine. The floor was shiny parquet, a lush green palm grew in a brass pot, a marble sculpture of a woman’s torso stood on a mid-century modern sideboard, and one wall was painted deep magenta. Even the cat looked like it had come from some swanky designer cat department store – a slinky dark brown-spotted Bengal with wide amber eyes and an implausibly long tail.
Zara scooped it up and kissed its pointy nose. ‘Have you missed me, darling? Say hello to Auntie Naomi.’
I felt a jolt like I was waking from a dream. From the moment I saw her a few minutes before, I’d let myself be swept into my old patterns of thinking and being around Zara: envy, guilt and an over-riding sense of inadequacy. That wasn’t good enough. What had happened in the past was just that – the past. Patch and I had been together for more than ten years. We were married, we were parents.
If Zara hadn’t moved on from that, it was long past time she did. And I needed her to know that I’d moved on – that she no longer had the power to manipulate me.
So I made clicking noises at the cat, cooed, ‘Hello, you,’ like meeting it was the best thing that had happened to me all day, and reached out a hand to stroke it.
The cat regarded me with disdain, then wriggled out of Zara’s arms, stalked over to a gold leather-covered chaise longue and began sharpening its claws energetically.
‘I really shouldn’t let her.’ Zara shrugged. ‘But what can you do? If they allow cats in the apartment they have to expect some damage. I guess I’ll kiss goodbye to my deposit. Coffee?’
‘Coffee would be great.’ I’d drink it with her like the old acquaintance I was, I resolved, then pick up Patch’s camera and get the hell out. And that would be that – no need to see her or speak to her ever again.
‘Give me a second.’ She gestured to a chrome-framed yellow sofa and disappeared into what I presumed was the kitchen.
I perched uncomfortably on the edge of the seat, turning towards the window, which overlooked a garden square surrounded by black-painted railings. The trees were leafless now, their branches skeletal against the leaden sky, and where there would be flowerbeds in summer were now only rectangles of bare, wet soil.
The cat approached me, sniffed my trainers, then backed away as abruptly as if I’d kicked it – which I hadn’t, of course – and, in a sudden burst of athletic indoor parkour, jumped from the floor to the coffee table to a low bookshelf and up on to the mantelpiece. Then it sat down, washing its face in between regarding me distrustfully.
Don’t worry , I thought. I feel just the same about this.
Zara returned with a cafetière and two white china mugs on a tray. ‘I hope you don’t take milk, because I’m afraid I never have any in. It only goes sour and I have to throw it away.’
‘Black will be fine.’
Somehow, it was impossible to picture Zara doing something as ordinary as going into a supermarket and buying a pint of milk. I bet if I’d asked for a piece of toast, she wouldn’t have had any bread in, either – I could imagine her fridge, empty apart from a bottle of champagne and a bottle of vodka, the way Kate had told us Andy’s was when he was in the throes of drug addiction, only classier.
She poured the coffee, handed me a cup and sat next to me on the sofa, perched as I was on its edge, because it was one of those pieces of furniture that if you ever managed to get comfortable on it, you’d never get up again. Except Zara probably would, having abs of steel from all the exercise she didn’t do.
‘We were in touch quite regularly before he died, you know,’ Zara said.
‘What, you and Andy?’ I couldn’t have been more surprised if she’d chucked her coffee in my face. Andy had been a notoriously fickle correspondent, occasionally sending long stream-of-consciousness voice notes then not replying for weeks if you texted to wish him happy birthday. And yet he’d stayed in touch with Zara? It was far more likely that Zara, aware of Andy’s vulnerability, had stayed in touch with him as a way of keeping tabs on the group she’d chosen to leave. Realising that, I felt a flare of anger at her for using him for that purpose.
She nodded. ‘He used to come to Paris quite often, when he was in funds. He had a boyfriend there for a while, and when that ended and he was sober again he’d come and spend weekends with me. He loved the city.’
This I could imagine – Andy, always stylish to the max, heading out on shopping trips with Zara, eating with her in fancy restaurants, going to art galleries.
‘I’m sure you had loads of fun,’ I said, sarcasm creeping into my voice. ‘Must have been a good chance to catch up on all the news from London.’
‘Oh, it was.’ Her smile was half-obscured by her coffee cup, which she was holding with both hands, as if to warm them. ‘You know how Andy loved to gossip. He told me all about your babies, and Rowan’s new chap, and Kate kicking him out of her flat. He was quite cut up about that, bless him.’
‘So you didn’t need me to tell you Patch and I had twins, and what they were called’ – I smiled sweetly, pleased to have caught her out in what hadn’t exactly been a lie, but had certainly been an omission of the truth – ‘because Andy already had.’
‘Oh, it must have slipped my mind.’ Zara had reverted to her usual airiness; I remembered now how, Teflon-like, she was always able to deflect any suggestion that she was wrong. ‘I’ve never been that interested in children and nor was Andy. He might not even have told me their names – I can’t remember. There was always so much else to talk about.’
‘I’m sure there was.’ Even as I spoke, I hated the bitchy defensiveness in my voice. I didn’t sound like myself, but like a stranger – one I wouldn’t particularly like. ‘You must have loved reminiscing about the old days – that place in Bloomsbury where you used to stay, the last time you came to the Girlfriends’ Club, Abbie’s wedding – good times.’
The cat had left its spot above the fireplace and sprung up on to Zara’s lap, its claws rhythmically piercing the wool of her trousers. She put down her coffee cup and buried her fingers in its fur, as if now she was trying to keep them warm that way.
‘Actually,’ she said, with one of the sudden switches from merriment to mournfulness I remembered, ‘we didn’t talk about those things. I preferred not to remember how it all went wrong. Having Andy with me reminded me a bit of how it was before all that, only without the feeling of being…’
I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. I heard my voice asking, ‘Being what?’
‘Being the odd one out. You know, among the five of us. If someone made a sitcom, like Friends or something, Kate would be the successful one, Abbie would be the nice one, Rowan would be the beautiful one and you’d be the clever one.’
I knew what she wanted me to ask, and in spite of myself I asked it anyway. ‘What would you be?’
‘I’d be the one who wasn’t important enough to be in every episode,’ she said sadly. ‘On the fringes. My name last in the credits.’
And here it was again – Zara’s familiar pattern of making herself appear marginalised and hard-done-by, all the while also making herself the centre of attention. But this time, her words resonated with me. I remembered that first meeting, looking at my new friends (at least, I already hoped with all my heart that they’d become friends), and categorising them: Kate, the chic City professional; Rowan, strikingly beautiful even with the rain frizzing her hair and mud on her shoes; Abbie, so at ease in her own skin people would gravitate towards her wherever she was. And to that list, of course, I’d added Zara, who wore an air of mysterious glamour with the same assurance she wore that coat that might or might not have been real fur.
It was I, back then, who’d felt out of place, not good enough. Compared to the others, I was just ordinary – not particularly good looking, not particularly successful, just muddling through my life while I waited to discover where it would lead and what kind of person I’d become.
That feeling had persisted for a long time, I realised. I couldn’t quite remember when I’d stopped worrying and realised that my friends loved me for who I was. It was probably round about when Patch and I got together, or when Zara stopped being part of the group.
I didn’t really want to think about why those things might have coincided, or speculate about whether Zara might have realised all along how I felt and how that knowledge could have influenced her behaviour towards me.
‘That’s why it was so important to me that you and I were friends,’ she went on. ‘I felt that you and I… we had something in common.’
No. I’m not letting you do that. I’m not having us painted as fellow outsiders.
I forced a laugh, hearing myself adopt the same tone I used when one of the children launched into a complaint about the unfairness of life. ‘Don’t be silly. You were always at the heart of the group, even though you were living in Paris. We tried our best to include you in things. It was you who was always wreaking havoc, you who decided?—’
‘I had no option! They chose you, same as Patch chose you.’
I was silenced. I didn’t want to go into the details of how Zara’s version of the truth might differ from mine, but I couldn’t deny that fundamental reality.
But even if I’d known what to say, Zara didn’t give me a chance. ‘And speaking of Patch, let me go and fetch that camera for you. It’s in the bedroom somewhere.’
She lifted the cat off her lap, draped it over her shoulder and drifted out. I gulped the rest of the bitter, cooling coffee and stood up. The apartment didn’t feel spacious and elegant now – it felt stifling.
I waited impatiently for Zara to return, hearing her moving about in the next room, making scraping sounds as she dragged what might have been a suitcase across the floor, chattering away to her cat.
‘Here you go,’ she said at last, returning with a black nylon camera bag in her hand, the cat following her. ‘I’ve got no idea if it even still works, but I expect Patch will be glad to have it back. Would you like another coffee?’
I shook my head. ‘Thanks, though. I need to pick the children up from nursery.’
‘Of course you do.’ Her smile was wistful. ‘It’s been lovely talking to you, Naomi. Maybe we should do this again? I feel like there’s so much you and I need to talk about.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ I said. ‘There’s no point raking over ancient history. We’ve all moved on now. And besides, I’m really busy with Patch and the children and everything.’
I hadn’t meant to, but I realised I sounded spiteful, like I was rubbing her face in all the things I had and she didn’t.
‘I understand. Take care, Naomi.’
I said goodbye and left, the camera slung over my shoulder with my battered leather handbag. Before I reached the bottom of the stairs, I became conscious of the familiar, creeping feeling of guilt. I wished I hadn’t come – I felt as if I’d opened a door that should have remained closed.