Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Friday
EMILY
Lara sent me a text late last night. Can I call you?
Two minutes later, she was apologizing down the phone.
‘I was so unreasonable yesterday, and I’m really sorry, Emily,’ she said. ‘I’ve been worrying all day. I don’t know what got into me. Well . . . I do, but that’s not your problem and it’s a poor excuse. It’s nothing to do with me who you want to see, or who you talk to . . .’
When she finally took a breath, I seized my chance to jump in.
‘It’s fine, really. I’ve already forgotten about it.’
‘I’m not sure that’s true and I’m worried it’s going to put you off us being friends.’
‘Of course it won’t!’
‘I know I must have seemed a bit unstable.’
‘Unstable? No. Unreasonable? Maybe,’ I chuckle.
‘Like I said, it’s not your problem, it’s mine. But I want to tell you why your visit to the Thomsons triggered me.
‘OK.’ I pause, waiting.
‘Not now. I want to tell you face to face.’
When I put the phone down, Oliver was agog. ‘What’s happened? What did she say?’
I relayed her side of the conversation.
‘We came here for a quiet life.’ Oliver frowned.
‘We’ve hardly got a flawless background ourselves,’ I point out.
I think about that awful text message on his phone.
I haven’t spoken to him about it yet, and that’s because I know full well he’ll have an instant excuse ready and become ultra-vigilant in his phone housekeeping.
I’ll never see another message that comes through.
No, I’m far better playing dumb while I watch and wait.
I wait until Tim and Oliver have left for work, as she’s asked me to, and then I go over to Lara’s. She opens the door as I start to knock, like she’s been waiting right there for me to arrive.
The air in her kitchen is cool and calm, but the island looks like the aftermath of a tiny film crew explosion.
I saunter over to have a look. There’s the usual equipment and a camera on an overhead rig pointing straight down at a chopping board.
A pastel-pink, fifties-style food processor and more bowls and basins than I’d know what to do with.
Lara’s phone is also on the island, screen up. I see a text from ‘Tim’ in a neat blue notification bubble.
Can we talk? There’s stuff I need to tell you.
I pretend I haven’t seen it and she appears at my side, her hand expertly sliding the phone over so it’s face down.
‘Coffee?’ she says brightly.
‘Thanks,’ I say, perching on a stool.
The washing machine whirrs quietly somewhere behind the closed utility-room door, the drum giving a final shudder and plunging us into a few moments of silence.
I sit at the island while Lara busies herself at the machine, pressing buttons and clinking crockery. The shiny black boom mic above the island looms over me, frozen in position and appearing to wait for its star performer.
‘Is this dinner?’ I nod at a propped-up recipe card. Compressed watermelon and feta salad—Al Fresco Chic is written in an elegant, looping script.
Lara glances back and pulls a face. ‘Oh, that. It’s just another reel. People love a bit of Mediterranean fantasy in their feeds when the weather is fine.’
Up close, I can see the fine dryness at the ends of her over-bleached hair, the faint pinch around her eyes that suggests a headache. She’s not wearing much make-up today, just mascara and a smear of lip gloss, and she looks younger. More fragile.
‘If you need to get on with getting ready for your reel,’ I say, picking at a flake in the reclaimed-wood surface, ‘I can come back another time.’
‘Don’t you dare,’ she says quickly. Then softer: ‘Sorry. I just . . . I can’t focus today.’ Her hands hover over the mugs then drop to her sides. ‘My brain feels a bit like a washing machine on spin cycle.’
‘Want to offload?’
‘I’m just going to come out and say it.’ She falls silent for a moment or two. ‘Tim had an affair with Angela Thomson.’
‘What?’ My fingertips press against my lips. ‘When was this?’
‘About two years ago,’ Lara says. ‘But that’s not all. Russ attacked Tim when he found out.’
‘No!’ I whisper. ‘Lara, that’s . . . that’s terrible. I mean, I had no idea.’
I push away a vision of the four of them scrapping at our barbecue.
‘That woman is poison, Emily. That’s why I tried to warn you off. Before you know it, she’ll be sniffing around Oliver, too.’
I frown. Angela didn’t give me the impression she was some sort of insatiable man-eater.
I say, ‘If that happened, I’d like to think Oliver would resist. I’m not about to monitor his contact with neighbours “in case” he might have an affair.’
Lara’s mouth gives a sceptical twist. ‘I always thought that of Tim, but she wore him down. We had a happy marriage, but he said she wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
She seems eager to absolve her husband of any responsibility and blame the other woman. Isn’t cheating a character problem rather than necessarily a marriage problem? I decide to take the safest option and stay quiet.
‘I just felt I should warn you.’ Lara sniffs and checks the coffee machine. ‘Tim would kill me if he thought I’d discussed our personal business with you, Emily, so please don’t say anything. This is just between us.’
I don’t want to continue with this debate, so I say, ‘Thanks, Lara, I appreciate you sharing it with me.’
I accept the coffee she slides across to me and follow her to the comfy sofa by the big window.
‘So,’ she says. ‘Is Vanessa popping round every five minutes yet?’
I sip my coffee and shake my head. ‘The opposite. She seems to be thinking up a never-ending list of reasons to get my husband around there.’
Lara’s mouth forms an ‘O’ shape. ‘No way! Tell me more. What’s on this never-ending list?’
I trace a circle on the rim of my mug. ‘Not the usual things. She sends messages to Oliver . . . texted him earlier. “Need your advice on something, are you free to pop over?”’
‘Oof. That’s bold. And the invitation was just for him?’
‘Yeah. It’s technically research, or that’s how she’s framing it,’ I say. ‘Oliver’s being open with me—at least, he tells me when she texts him. Says there’s nothing in it and it could be great for his new business.’
Lara frowns and picks up a knife. ‘How so?’
‘Property chat. She’s thinking about buying abroad, apparently.’
‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ Lara says. The knife presses down. Pink watermelon flesh splits open with juice bleeding on to the board and running down her manicured fingers. ‘She’s been banging on about Spain for months. Ever since the court thing finished.’
‘She did tell us about that. It sounded messy’.
She drops the knife, reaches for kitchen roll and wraps it around her hand like a bandage.
‘Charles Lambert made a lot of money,’ she says.
‘His company sold home repair insurance. You know, where people pay each month to cover accidental bills like plumbing, heating repairs, that kind of thing. You might’ve used his company at some point—half the country did.
He flogged it at the perfect time, sold off a load of rental properties, too.
Then he died, and his delightful children decided they’d been hard done by.
’ Lara shrugs. ‘Even when the whole mess was over, so much damage was done. Everyone knows she’s loaded now, and where the money came from.
The minute someone like that is on their own, people start sniffing around.
She told me, before she moved here, she was getting letters every day.
Some of them begging for cash, others abusive and threatening.
So I get it if she’s thinking of moving to Spain. ’
I press my hand to my mouth. ‘That’s awful.’
I picture Oliver bending his head to listen as Vanessa laughs, that husky little ripple of hers he’s already mentioned in passing.
‘Oliver has been over there a lot, though,’ I say carefully. ‘More than I first realized.’
Lara slots perfectly square cubes of feta between the chunks of watermelon, her movements precise and determined.
‘I’ve seen him go in there a few times,’ she admits.
‘Slipping through the side gate. Very cloak and dagger.’ Her mouth twists.
‘I assumed he was helping her with boring house stuff. Wi-Fi, utilities, that sort of thing. Rich widows aren’t always tech-savvy. They don’t need to be.’
‘He says he’s advising her about Spanish property,’ I repeat, a little irritated at her comments. My voice comes out tighter than I intend. ‘Oliver’s good at that. Talking and advising.’
Her eyes flick up to my face.
‘I’m being silly,’ I add quickly. ‘It’s probably nothing. I just . . .’ I trail off.
‘You’re not being silly,’ Lara says. ‘Trusting your instincts is in no way silly. Vanessa seems lovely, but . . . well, nobody but her knows for sure she didn’t plan to get Charles’s money all along.’
It’s the seriousness of her tone that unnerves me. She sets the knife down, leans on the island, sticky hands splayed on the wood.
‘Vanessa is lonely,’ she says. ‘And people like her, lonely, well-off people . . . they love the idea of someone who “gets” them, if you see what I mean. Someone who treats them like a person, not a walking bank account or a tabloid headline.’ She sniffs.
‘That sort of thing can get messy, unless people are clear on where the lines are.’
‘You’ve seen it happen before?’ I ask.
Lara hesitates. ‘Not exactly.’ She looks past me, to the blank black screen of the monitor on the far wall.
Her reflection stares back: pale, shoulders slightly hunched, nothing like the glossy domestic expert from the reels.
‘I just know what it’s like to be on the outside looking in.
And what people with money are capable of when they decide you don’t fit their standards. ’
Something in the way she says it makes the hairs on my arms lift.
‘It sounds as if you have experience of that,’ I say softly.
Her lips press into a thin line. ‘Tim’s parents are complicated.’ She gives a small, sad smile. ‘From day one they thought he could do better.’
‘Better?’ I frown.
‘Yeah. “Better” meaning someone with the right family pedigree, who went to the right sort of school and has the right way of saying “bath”, if you get my drift.’
I picture her in one of her fancy reel dresses, standing awkwardly at the edge of some country-house event.
‘That sounds upsetting,’ I say.
‘It was.’ She swallows. ‘Is.’ Her gaze drops to her phone, still face down on the counter. ‘They’re really wealthy but cut Tim off financially when he chose me.’ She breaks off, shakes her head. ‘Sorry. You don’t need to hear all this.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘We’re friends.’
The words surprise me a little, but they’re true. I’m tired of the stage-managed small talk now. I like the crack in her voice when she mentions his parents, the way the mask slips and I catch a glimpse of the real woman behind the Insta image.
‘Anyway,’ she says briskly, shoulders squaring, ‘it’s just me being dramatic. I get grouchy when I’m hungry.’ She pops a cube of watermelon into her mouth and pulls a face. ‘God, that’s under-ripe. But my followers will never know once I colour-correct it . . . mwahaha!’
I smile, but my mind is still on the image of Oliver slipping through our side gate, on Vanessa’s husky voice floating across the hedge.
On the way his phone lights up far more often than it used to.
Although I know what’s behind his interest. Vanessa is probably nearly twice my age.
She’s in good nick, but it will be her money, not her body, that’s caught his attention.
She seems genuine, and I’ve taken everything she’s spoken about so far as gospel. But what if it isn’t?
‘Orchard Lane is supposed to be a new start for us,’ I say slowly. ‘But sometimes I think I want that more than Oliver does.’
‘I get that,’ Lara says. ‘Men always think they’re doing us a favour by settling down.’
I laugh, in spite of myself. It’s a relief, and a bit surreal, the two of us standing here surrounded by ring lights and sticky bits of watermelon sharing a moment of cynical solidarity.
‘I don’t think he’d . . .’ I stop, because I almost said it: I don’t think he’d go back to the old tricks. That’s not a sentence I’m ready to explain to her, or anyone else. Ever.
‘I don’t think he’d ever cheat on me,’ I correct myself. ‘Not with another woman. But with . . . opportunities.’ I lift a shoulder. ‘That’s a different kind of temptation, isn’t it?’
I’ve still managed to say too much. Why did I do that?
Lara studies me, her head tilted. ‘You know him better than anyone,’ she says eventually. ‘If something feels off, it probably is. Rest assured, Vanessa isn’t stupid. She survived the courts, the newspapers, Charles’s nightmare family. She could be up to something.’
‘You sound like you admire her,’ I remark, thinking how spot on she is.
‘I suppose I do, in a way.’ Lara wipes her hands on a tea towel, leaving faint pink smears behind. ‘I imagine her as the sort of woman who could walk through a room like she owns it, even when everyone is whispering about her. I wouldn’t have the courage to do that.’
There’s that flicker again: the echo of something painful and humiliating.
Her phone buzzes again on the counter between us, rattling against the wood. For a moment we both stare at it. Then Lara flips it over.
I shuffle on my stool and finish my coffee. ‘I’ll get off in a minute and leave you to it.’
‘They say communication is the key to a healthy marriage, don’t they?’ Her tone makes it sound like she’s quoting from one of her own captions. ‘I’d better finish this and get cleaned up.’
‘You could always cancel the reel,’ I suggest. ‘Leave Al Fresco Chic for another day.’
‘No chance. If I stop posting, the algorithm forgets I exist. And honestly, I’d rather be chopping fruit than sitting here picturing worst-case scenarios.’
I slide off the stool and pick up my handbag. ‘I’ll let myself out. Good luck.’
‘OK, thanks,’ she says, forcing brightness into her voice. ‘The show must go on, right? Three, two, one . . .’
I hesitate at the door and watch as she hits record. The red light blinks on.
The Lara her followers know and love appears like a hologram, smoothing over the inadequacies of real life and real women.