CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Raina convinced Tom to stay with her sister while she ran up the stairs to track down Pepper.
She had to check multiple bedrooms before finding the right one.
The room prior to Pepper’s contained two people rolling around on top of the bed.
The man’s face hidden beneath the woman’s dress as she writhed on the sheets.
‘Sorry!’ Raina yelped into the darkened room before slamming the door. ‘Carry on!’
She found Pepper in her parents’ bedroom. She was sitting on the window seat, looking completely haunted. Raina ran over to her and clasped her hand.
‘It’s him, isn’t it? He’s here. Downstairs.’
Pepper was frighteningly still, staring out of her parents’ window. It overlooked the grounds and all of the cars that were parked up around the house.
‘He’s never come before,’ Pepper finally whispered, her breath causing the window to mist. She wiped it away with her finger. ‘Why now?’
Raina had no idea what to say. ‘Maybe it’s been enough time, you know?’
‘Enough time,’ Pepper repeated sadly. ‘All these years, I thought he was staying away because he’s mad at me. Then I saw him walk in with her . . .’
Raina sat with her friend and looked down. The handsome man from Pepper’s hidden photograph was mingling with some other guests in the courtyard below. A pretty redhead stood beside him, smiling politely at people.
‘Maybe they’re just friends,’ Raina said carefully.
‘Nah.’ Pepper laughed humourlessly. ‘He’s too great.
Always was. She’ll be someone super worthy.
And if he were a petty, wretched person like me, he would have brought her here to rub my nose in it.
But he’s not. He’s just here to be nice.
And that hurts worse than anything I’ve fantasized about over these last few years. ’
She sniffed and Raina dived towards the bedside table to grab a box of tissues. Pepper accepted it gratefully and blew her nose.
‘You know how some days you really just feel like you’ve made a complete mess of your life. Made every wrong choice, said every wrong thing.’
‘Said every wrong thing? Pep. I’m autistic.’
Pepper laughed through tears. ‘Stop. You’re more sensitive to people’s feelings than anyone else I know.’
‘Ah, you didn’t know me in the early noughties.’
Pepper’s breath hitched and she dabbed at her eyes. ‘You’re trying to cheer me up.’
‘It is your birthday, Pep. So, you can sit in here and cry over a guy. Or you can go down and remind him exactly who it was he liked all those years ago. Tastefully. Respectfully. While being nice and polite to the woman he’s brought with him.’
Pepper made a snarling sound. ‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes. That woman has done nothing wrong. Be a gracious hostess.’
Raina helped her friend get to her feet and they looked at one another.
Raina dabbed some tissue under Pepper’s lashes, wiping away any trace of smudged mascara.
She fixed her hair. She helped reattach the armour like a knight’s squire before a joust, stopping the outer world from spotting a single flaw in the metal.
She was readying her friend for a type of battle, and she was behind her should the lance strike too hard.
As they left the bedroom and set off down the long corridor to the top of the stairs, they spotted Ottie coming from the opposite direction.
Her stride was determined but slightly off balance.
She swayed and tripped up a little, and seemingly took no notice of either of them.
She went straight to the room Raina had walked into earlier, the room where the couple had been enjoying each other.
She banged on the door with such fury it made Raina and Pepper freeze.
‘This isn’t good,’ Raina whispered.
‘Can’t help you, not listening, love the drama,’ Pepper muttered back.
‘We should go.’
‘Nope. I live here now. Number One Messy Drama Street. Occupant: me.’
Ottie still seemed oblivious to the two of them as she finally kicked the door open. She grabbed hold of the handle and leaned into the unlit bedroom.
‘Fuck you for doing this here,’ she gurgled, her voice a mix of anger and pain. ‘Take her out to the fucking car if you have to. Or the bushes. Just not somewhere that actual people might see.’
Raina ached for her. A part of her wanted to storm into the room and drag Seb out herself.
When he emerged, doing up his belt and completely lacking in any remorse, her anger turned to horror.
Horror that a man who’d recently proposed could be so nonchalant about this kind of disloyalty.
The woman he’d been with skirted out from behind him and dashed away, heading down the long staircase with such speed, she clearly thought she was being pursued.
‘Sloshed already?’ Seb asked Ottie, in a voice Raina had never heard him use.
‘Die,’ Ottie replied softly.
It was at that moment, while Seb walked back towards the party with a swagger that made Raina wish she had an axe to aim between his shoulder blades, Ottie turned and noticed she had an audience. Her face flickered through multiple emotions but finally settled on mortification.
Raina couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘Ottie, I’m so sorry. Are you all right? Come with us. We can—’
‘Don’t talk to me,’ she snapped, glaring at Raina as though she were the one who’d just betrayed her. ‘Don’t even look at me. You don’t know me. Us. Who the hell are you to speak to me right now?’
She turned on her heel and stumbled towards one of the bathrooms. Pepper made a noise of disparagement and headed back to her birthday party, but Raina couldn’t give it up.
She couldn’t abandon someone after they’d walked in on their partner doing that.
She followed Ottie and knocked gently on the door.
‘Ottie? I’m so sorry. I’m here if you need anything.’
‘Fuck off.’
Raina sighed and was about to obey when she heard a crashing sound. She opened the door and burst in. Ottie had slipped on the tiles, one of her Jimmy Choos dislodged while she sat sprawled on the bathroom floor.
‘Hey,’ Raina said softly, stepping inside and locking the door behind her. ‘Do you want me to ask Pepper if she can get them to leave? Would that help?’
‘No, you moron,’ nipped Ottie. ‘Don’t tell anyone about it. We have an open relationship.’
The words were shaky and forced. Raina could see the public relations spin in motion behind Ottie’s eyes. She was too proud to have the truth come out so she was manufacturing a lie that she could live with, rather than lose the things she couldn’t live without.
Raina sat down beside her, unsure of what to say. She took in the bathroom, in all of its white and powder-blue splendour.
‘Size of my first flat, this bathroom,’ she said delicately. ‘This whole house is insane. I couldn’t live in it. But this is excellent cleaning work, I must say. And I would know, I used to be a cleaner.’
Ottie looked Raina up and down, black streaks of mascara infused with tears visible on her face. ‘That checks out.’
Raina didn’t mind that Ottie was lashing out at her.
‘Cleaning is hard but it’s not the worst job I’ve ever done. What about you?’
‘We’re not doing this,’ Ottie said, yanking some toilet paper free so she could clean her face. ‘This bullshit sisterhood crap. We’re not friends. I know you have some kind of disease that means you can’t read social cues or whatever, so this is me saying fuck off.’
Raina got to her feet and made to leave the bathroom. ‘I’m sorry, Ottie.’
‘You know you’re not one of us, right? Not just because of your . . . whatever. There’s other things. You don’t belong here. Tom would choose us over you.’
Her words were garbled and not entirely coherent.
Raina spoke softly, the way she did when invited to speak about neurodiversity at a junior school.
‘I would never ask Tom to choose between me and his friends, Ottie. You know that, right? That’s not a healthy thing to do.
He won’t ever have to choose. Unless he wants to. ’
Those words caused something to harden in Ottie’s face. Something that made Raina wonder, for a moment, if she’d underestimated the other woman. Ottie stared up at her, with calculating eyes and a cold, appraising smile.
‘I just don’t get it. I’m prettier than you. I’m lots of things more than you.’
Raina smiled sadly. ‘You’re probably right.’
But Ottie was expecting to win a prize for a cruel, ancient game that had always been a lie.
There was no reward for being prettier or meaner than other women.
No prize worth winning, at least. There was an old joke about two people who had to outrun a lion.
The first saw the second stretching and readying his shoes.
The first said, ‘You can’t outrun a lion.
’ To which the second responded, ‘I only need to outrun you.’
If Ottie thought she just needed to outrun other women to find whatever was at the finish line, she was going to be disappointed.
Raina knew women like her only extended solidarity or friendship to others like them.
Other rich women. Other white women. Other allistic women.
But it always hurt. Each time, it stung.
‘Hope you feel better and work things out,’ she said gently. ‘You deserve to be happy.’
Then she left, wincing as she heard muffled sobs behind her.
As Raina made her way back down to the party, she spotted Tom standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking concerned.
‘There you are,’ he said upon her arrival. ‘When Pepper came back without you, I was worried.’
‘All good,’ Raina said. She looked behind Tom at Dexter and his date. ‘That’s Dexter. Pepper’s lost love.’
‘Yikes,’ Tom said softly, looking surreptitiously over at the couple. ‘She okay?’
‘She will be. She just needed a moment.’