Would You Rather

Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

Sophie was lying in her bed, looking at the sun streaming in around the edges of the curtains, trying to find the energy to get up and open them. She knew she’d feel better when she saw that amazing sea view, but the thought of doing anything other than lying completely flat seemed impossibly hard. Even turning her head to look at the window had been a big effort.

She sighed deeply. She’d been quite relieved when Thomas and Sebastian had left the day after the party. They’d been amazing help with the unpacking, and the party had been good fun in the end, but having them there had put her on edge. As much as she tried to push it aside, their presence was a constant reminder of Matt’s betrayal, because of her permanent terror of blurting something out.

She felt like the woman with two brains.

Sophie squeezed her eyes shut to try to make it all go away. Then she just lay looking up at the ceiling, listening to the silence. Saturday morning and the house was dead. It was so quiet she could hear the blood in her ears.

From the moment the house had become hers it had been hectic with activity and full of people. Rey had stayed the first few nights and then popped up and down from London, overseeing the builders – his regular team – who had stayed with her to get it all done as quickly as possible. They had been good company and constantly hungry, which she’d loved, so she’d been kept busy cooking endless fry-ups and great batches of bacon sandwiches. It had been like having teenage boys again. Then the unpacking and the party...

She’d had some lovely time after that, just her and Jack, but he’d gone back to Brisbane the day before and now she was alone. This was what every morning would be like now, in this stupidly big house. Howlingly empty.

Sophie felt something like panic start to rise up inside her. She wasn’t strong enough to survive this level of change on her own.

Leaving London, setting up somewhere completely new, getting used to a strange house, doing it alone – all on top of losing Matt to a horrible death, while simultaneously losing him to another woman. It was too much.

Juliet. Gillette. The name came into her head as it constantly did, like some kind of grotesque earworm. Was the woman at the funeral definitely that person? The one Matt was leaving her for? The same name and a random person she’d never seen before coming to the funeral – and wearing Matt’s old biker jacket. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

But now Matt was dead, did it matter?

Sophie kept coming back to the idea that other people in her situation would be fixated on tracking this Juliet down and confronting her. But what good would it do to know more? Surely it would make things worse.

No. Sophie was going to put all her energy into making her new life.

She was hoping that, if she just let it slide, that appalling last conversation with Matt – a freakish one-off event in over thirty happy years together – would somehow fade away over time and she could just be Sophie the Grieving Widow. Sophie the Betrayed Wife could disappear forever.

Which made her decide it was now finally time to do something she’d been putting off. Sitting up, she opened her bedside drawer and took out a phone. Matt’s phone. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at it since he’d died, too afraid of what she might find there, but now she had a reason to do so.

If she could erase all mentions of the foul Juliet on his phone, it would feel like she was really wiped from her life. She plugged the phone in and tapped Matt’s birthday into the code. The phone immediately opened and she held her finger over the contacts icon, but just couldn’t get herself to tap it.

What was she going to do before she erased it all? Read their emails? See pictures of them together? She couldn’t face it.

For a moment she lay back against the pillow, looking up at the ceiling, and then she sat up again and opened the text thread between herself and Matt. Without reading them closely, she found her way back to the first hysterical message she’d sent him on that dreadful day and deleted them all right to the last one – where she’d called him a spineless bastard. Then she turned the phone off again and threw it down to the end of the bed. She’d put it somewhere obscure and let the idea of it fade away.

She’d already done that with his laptop, which was in some random box in the attic, where she hoped it would never be found again. Beau had asked her about it and she’d told him she feared the desirable Macbook had been nicked in the move.

Feeling better for making a decision, she picked up her own phone and saw she had several messages. There was one from Jack in Brisbane saying he missed her. Darling boy. One from Beau with a video of baby pandas on a slide. Also darling boy. And one from Sebastian, with one of his brilliant little drawings, depicting Sophie sitting between Olive and Agata. The Three Graces of West Hill Road , he’d written. Sophie smiled.

The next was from her agent, apologising for texting on a Saturday, and asking Sophie if she was feeling ready to discuss a possible work project.

Sophie replied, YES, PLEASE! Now she really did have a reason to get out of bed and get going.

Work was exactly what she needed. Not moving house work, renovation work, smiling at strangers work, keeping up a front for the family work and certainly not grubbing around in Matt’s sordid business work – real, absorbing work. Making beautiful food and styling photographs of it that would make other people want to cook it and eat it. Her work.

She hadn’t realised until she read that text how much she’d missed it. The prospect of getting stuck in again made her almost spring out of bed and over to the window, where she threw the curtains open.

The view was even more uplifting than she’d expected, the sea filling the horizon, properly blue in the full summer sun, seagulls wheeling around.

She was still gazing at it when her phone pinged again with a message from an unknown number.

Hi Sophie , it said. Charlie Renton here. Fizz Charlie. Got your number from Thomas. Thanks so much for the party. It was great to meet you. Come out and see the grapes and if there’s anything local you need a hand with – decent dentist, shoe menders, butcher etc – give me a bell x

Sophie smiled and created a contact for him: ‘Charlie Fizz’. She was sure Thomas had put him up to the giving-a-hand offer, but she didn’t mind. It was good to know there was someone in the area she could ask for help and he seemed like a nice bloke.

Buoyed up by the improvement in her morning, Sophie got dressed, made coffee and called her agent, who told her the project was a debut cookbook from a young woman who had a popular Instagram recipe feed.

Sophie opened Instagram on her laptop. Tamar Brown was a sweet name and she was a very pretty young woman too, Sophie saw, scrolling down the posts, with long dark curly hair and beautiful green eyes.

So the persona was great, always a good start – but the food pictures brought Sophie up sharp. They were really well done, with appealing dishes, many of them sprinkled with sparkling pomegranate seeds, displayed in lovely weathered-looking pottery bowls. Just the sort of things Sophie snapped up when she travelled.

The photographs were also well taken. Sophie could see thought had gone into them, and the accompanying recipes were great too. Simply and well explained, with properly balanced ingredients, and intros that made you curious to try them. Sophie could clearly imagine what they would taste like as she read them. She could practically smell them.

She scrolled back to read the profile.

London based, food mad, sharing the joy from my Georgian heritage. Sasiamnovnoa tkveni gatsnoba .

Sophie copied the unfamiliar language over into Google. The phrase meant ‘nice to meet you’ in Georgian. Cute. She texted her agent to say she was interested in doing the book and when her agent replied with Tamar Brown’s number, Sophie messaged her to set up a meeting.

Then she went through to her prop room/photographic studio, feeling ready to tackle sorting it out now she had a reason to do it.

She paused in the doorway, taking the room in. There were numerous stacks of jumbled plates, bowls and dishes, plus platters, cutlery, jugs and glassware in a big muddle on the floor and surfaces. It was quite overwhelming, but with the prospect of an exciting project to work on, she had a deadline to get the organising done.

Putting on a playlist called Up Cheering that Beau had made for her, she started with the plates, using the raised photographic table in the centre of the room to sort them into groups by style – white, blue and white, vintage floral, ethnic, art pottery, mid-century, contemporary and so on. Then she stood back and assessed the shelving she had meticulously designed to store everything according to how often she used them, with the most frequent at direct hand level.

She filled the first three layers of shelves, then realised she would need her step ladder to reach the next one. Fetching it from the garden shed, she put it next to the shelves and picked up a pile of plates. But when she turned back to the ladder, she realised she couldn’t step up onto it while holding the stack of china. She tried going up the ladder and then bending down to pick up the plates, but they were too far down.

Sophie stood stock still on the third rung of the ladder, frozen, letting the reality sink in. This job was crucial if she was going to get back to work, but she couldn’t finish it on her own.

Then it all rushed in. How Matt should have been there helping her...

But no. Even if he hadn’t died, he wouldn’t have been there anyway, he would have been off somewhere with his horrid little tart.

Once again, being reminded of it was almost like a physical assault. If she was still in London, there were numerous people who would have been delighted to pop over to come to the aid of the widowed – or the abandoned – Sophie. One or the other.

Instead, she was widowed Sophie and abandoned Sophie, marooned in this strange house in this weird little town where she hardly knew anyone and where she couldn’t even sort out her plates.

All the upbeat energy drained out of her and she carefully got herself down the ladder and onto solid ground. She could feel tears building up – and something more like panic.

But, she told herself, she couldn’t give in to it. This was her new reality and she had to cope. Freaking out was not an option. She needed to get back to work and to do that, she had to set up her prop room.

Bracing herself against the table, trying to think of nice things like fluffy kittens and freshly risen sponge cakes, Sophie battled to get her feelings back under control. Then her phone rang and she rushed to answer it. Whoever it was, it would be a distraction.

She squinted down at the screen. Rey! Brilliant.

‘Hello, hunty,’ he said, chuckling.

Sophie could hear loud music in the background. It wasn’t even three in the afternoon and it sounded like he was having a party.

‘Just calling in to say hi to my best gal. How are you doing?’

‘I’m good, thank you, Reysie baby,’ she said. ‘I’m just sorting out my prop room—’

‘Open another one,’ he was saying before she’d finished speaking, in a voice that Sophie could tell was directed at someone else. ‘The Veuve. Sorry, darling,’ he said, coming back to her. ‘Tippy has come down and, as you know, he always brings the party with him. Oooh, I love this track...’

Sophie felt a twinge of resentment. She would have so loved to ask Rey to come and help her with the plates, but she hadn’t even known he was down that weekend and there was no chance of it happening with Tippy on the scene.

Even as she thought it, she rebuked herself. Rey had done so much for her already.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘just checking in to see if you want to come out with us tonight. We’re going to that fabulous pub, the Fountain. It’s a drag night and Tippy wants to check out the competition. She might do a show for them. We’re in negotiations.’

Sophie knew Tippy well. Tippy Molong, a drag queen of great repute in London circles. Rey called him ‘she’ in the drag context, but he was happy with whatever pronoun anyone wanted to throw at him – that’s what he’d told Sophie one night, while dressed in a full-length gold sequin gown and a huge bouffant red wig, with his scruffy black beard.

‘So,’ continued Rey, ‘do you fancy having a little party time? I’m working on having my first St Leonards hell hangover.’

Sophie paused. Was that what she needed? A complete distraction from all this? Alcoholic oblivion, even? Or would she put a dampener on their fun? She didn’t want to become the sad friend who people had to include out of guilt.

No, she had to work out how to do this. How to live this weird new solo life that had been thrust upon her.

‘That’s so lovely of you to think of me, Reysie pops,’ she said. ‘But I’ve got to get on with what I’m doing, so I won’t come out out, but I am going to pop down for a quick swim in a minute, so I’ll swing by yours to say hi to Tippy, if that fits in.’

And then, she told herself, if she felt like it, she could still run away from reality with Rey and Tippy and their always generous stock of booze. Keeping her options open seemed like the only way to cope with these strange days.

‘Can you pass me that stack with the gold rims, please?’ Sophie asked from the top of the stepladder.

‘Righty ho,’ said Charlie, passing the pile of plates up. ‘Not much to go now. It’s looking great.’

‘Thanks to you. I hope you didn’t mind me taking you up on your offer of assistance so soon.’

She’d had the idea to ask Charlie if he could help with the plates while she was having her swim.

‘I’m delighted to be useful,’ he said. ‘And Saturday is always a good day, because I usually come in to St Leonards to have breakfast and mooch about, to be among humanity a bit. So I was already in the ’hood when I got your text.’

‘I’m not normally so pushy,’ said Sophie, taking the pile of plates from him. ‘But I’m getting back to work soon. It’s my first project for months and the first time I’ve worked in this kitchen and studio, so it’s quite a big deal for me.’

‘I can understand that. Thomas has told me about your work with the cookbooks. He’s very proud of you.’

‘Really?’ she said, turning to look at him in amazement. ‘I didn’t think he even knows what I do.’

He laughed. ‘Well, he does stop boasting about himself long enough sometimes to take in what other people get up to,’ he said. ‘Underneath all that nonsense, I’ve always thought old Tommy boy is a little bit insecure. When we worked together as youngsters, I used to hear a lot about how he came from a creative family, but he’d chosen to channel his creativity into making money.’

Sophie paused to take that in, then glanced at Charlie. He looked different to how she remembered him from the party. Perhaps it was because he wasn’t wearing the pink cord trousers and matching wellies. He was in jeans and an ironed shirt, a nice belt. She noted the H buckle, rather sophisticated for St Leonards, where it was all vintage workwear and authentic heritage brands. He was quite unusual, not having a beard. Or thumb rings.

‘Well, I never knew that about Thomas,’ she said. ‘So you’ve known him a long time, then?’

‘We were terrified little City of London baby beans together, starting out, pretending to be tough, and we’ve always stayed in touch, had each other’s backs – not just to stick a knife in. Thomas was always one of the good guys. So many of them are absolutely vile.’

‘Is that why you gave it up to make wine?’

She saw his face fall a little before he recovered himself.

‘Yeah,’ he said, a little too brightly. ‘That was mostly it. I’d had enough of the nonsense, plus the family land was sitting there doing nothing much after my folks shuffled off and it seemed like the time to leave London. As you have.’

Sophie made herself nod and smile at that, wondering if a shadow had just crossed her own face.

‘It’s quite a collection you’ve got here,’ said Charlie, looking round.

Was he changing the subject? And if he was, was it for his sake or hers? Either way, she was relieved.

She followed his gaze, taking in the transformed space, the shelves now full of plates, bowls and serving dishes of all different kinds in neat groups. A set of copper pans hung from hooks, and there were areas for jugs, vases, gravy boats and her collection of pressed glass, with cake stands, dessert bowls and even banana-split plates, baskets with cutlery and table linen. There were vintage tea sets, a whole shelf of assorted teapots and a deep stack of old wooden chopping boards propped against the wall.

‘Kind of a life’s work,’ she said, feeling a deep sense of satisfaction, something she realised had been entirely absent since she’d left London. None of the work on the house had made her feel like this. ‘Even when I was a teenager I couldn’t go past a white dairy jug in a charity shop – and of course, in those days, there was so much great stuff out there. It’s getting harder to find good things all the time.’

‘Well, you’ve moved to the right place for that.’

‘Yes, the junk shops were one of the attractions for moving here,’ said Sophie, laughing and simultaneously pushing away a memory of Matt’s delight in finding a yard in the Old Town crammed high with crap – or treasure, depending how you looked at it. He’d bought a vintage Canadian snowshoe; just the one, which had amused him.

‘I think it’s just these interesting rhomboids to go now,’ said Charlie, holding up a pile of particularly ugly dinner plates.

‘Yes, those really are hideous,’ said Sophie, shaking her head.

‘You might still come across food plated like this in some of the older restaurants down here. They are reluctant to let all the details of nouvelle cuisine go.’

‘I’ll stick to the hipster joints then,’ said Sophie. ‘I hate square plates with a passion and these are even worse – I think they make all food look wrong, but every now and again a client wants them, so I have to have some, but they are going all the way up here, on the very top shelf, in the hope I won’t ever need them again.’

She was still at the top of the ladder when there was a loud knock on the front door.

‘I’ll go,’ said Charlie. ‘You need to arrange the rhomboids.’ Sophie wondered who on earth it could be, until she heard a familiar voice wishing a cheery ‘G’day’ to Charlie.

‘Wow,’ said Olive, walking into the studio, ‘this looks beaut.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sophie, coming down the ladder. ‘I’m starting work soon, so I had to get it done and Charlie very kindly came to help because realised I couldn’t do it on my own...’ Her voice caught, dammit.

Olive came over and put her arm round her. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘You’ll be right, darls. Just one of those hidden rocks on the widow’s walk that come out of nowhere and trip you up. They’re fuckers. But always remember you’ve got me next door any time you need help. Don’t even knock, just walk in.’

‘It can be tough getting used to living on your own,’ said Charlie. ‘It still punches me in the guts sometimes. So, as Olive says, just ring me if you need help with anything – anything at all.’

‘Thank you,’ said Sophie, smiling at them both, knowing they meant it.

‘You’ve got some nice pots here,’ said Olive, turning over a small bowl with splashes of lighter glaze against shades of brown. ‘Where did you get these? They’re natural glazes, like I use. I’m a ceramicist, can’t remember if I ever told you that.’

‘No. I didn’t know. How wonderful. My mum made them in the 1970s. Went to evening classes.’

‘You can’t beat the touch of the human hand,’ said Olive.

‘The best use of a hand regarding the plates up there,’ said Charlie, pointing to the rhomboids on the top shelf, ‘would be to hold a hammer to smash them.’

They laughed and Sophie felt completely relieved from her mini wobble.

‘Thanks to you, Charlie, I think we’ve done it in here,’ she said. ‘Would you both like a cup of tea? I’ve got cake... Or a drink? It’s nearly six, if that’s your yard arm, and I’ll be starting supper soon, so why don’t you both stay and eat with me?’

Please , she thought, not feeling ready for her first solo dinner in the house yet.

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Olive. ‘Why don’t you come round to mine? That’s what I popped over to say.’

‘I’d love to,’ said Sophie. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Stop being so fucking English,’ said Olive. ‘Come at seven and bring some grog. And don’t be late, that’s another English thing that gives me the shits. Seven. And you’re welcome too, of course, Charlie.’

‘Oh, that’s very kind, Olive,’ he said. ‘I would have loved that, but I’ve got something on.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I better trot off actually.’

Sophie showed the two of them out, giving Charlie a sincere hug of thanks and telling Olive she’d see her later.

As she walked back into the studio and moved the jugs of cutlery a bit to the left and then back again, she realised she was humming the theme tune from Neighbours .