Chapter 3
THREE
NOVEMBER 2007
As friendships go, ours didn’t get off to the most auspicious start. After all, the sidelines of a five-a-side football match in the autumn rain, with your boyfriends’ team already four-nil down before half-time, is no one’s idea of fun. I remember watching Stuart, the guy I’d been dating for about four months after getting stuck in a lift with him on my way up to the office where I worked as a junior legal secretary, miss the ball over and over, sliding around in the mud like Bambi on ice and losing his cool with the referee. This evening is not fun , I thought, and I don’t think this relationship is much fun either.
To distract myself from the carnage on the pitch, I glanced sideways at the other spectators. There was a woman in a parka, a few years older than me, sipping something from a hip flask and occasionally yelling encouragement at her husband, who’d scored three of the four goals for the opposing team. There were a couple of teenage boys, occasionally hoofing around a football of their own, clearly convinced that they could do a better job than their father. There were the reserve players, bored and resentful in tracksuits, occasionally half-heartedly stretching their hamstrings.
And, I saw through the thickening twilight, there were four other women about the same age as me. One was bundled up in a faux (at least, I assumed it was faux – later, I changed my mind) fur coat, her gleaming dark bob beaded with drizzle, the heels of her suede boots sinking into the mud.
Another was wearing faded jeans and wellies, her hair scraped into a messy bun, a too-big leather jacket clutched round her shoulders with one hand while the other held her phone.
Standing a few feet away from her was a woman with swishy mahogany-coloured hair in a long cream trench coat, who managed to look like she’d stepped out of the fashion pages of a glossy magazine; she was even wearing lipstick, which I found quite awe-inspiring in the circumstances.
And there was a curvy woman in leather trousers and trainers, an oversized red scarf wound high under her chin, emphasising her perfect porcelain skin, which – unlike mine – hadn’t turned blotchy from the cold.
As the match dragged on, the five of us began to kind of sidle closer together, exchanging pained glances and eye-rolls as the other team scored yet again – in fact, it was one of the guys on Stu’s side who’d committed the ultimate screw-up of landing an own goal.
‘God, this isn’t much fun, is it?’ remarked the woman in the wellies.
‘“Come and watch me and the lads play footie,” he said.’ The trench-coated woman’s teeth were chattering so hard she could hardly get the words out. ‘“It’ll be a great match,” he said. Not.’
‘And I worked until midnight last night so I could knock off early for this,’ said the one with the scarf. ‘I’m seriously tempted to call it right now and go back to the office.’
‘It’s freezing, isn’t it?’ I ventured, and immediately wished I could have come up with something even slightly witty to say.
‘Look, you know what’ – an immaculately manicured hand pulled the fur coat closer around the sharp line of its wearer’s jaw – ‘we don’t have to do this. We can just sack it off and go to the pub. They’ll find us there when they’re done.’
‘What pub?’ I asked, rendered stupid by cold.
‘Any pub,’ said the one in the trench coat. ‘Literally any one. I don’t care if there are fag-ends on the floor and piss in the fruit machine coin trays so long as it’s warm.’
‘They normally head to the Prince Rupert after,’ said the woman in wellies, who was the warmest and driest of us and therefore the most capable of rational thought. ‘It’s about five minutes away.’
‘Take us there,’ urged the one with the scarf. ‘Please. First round’s on me.’
And so we squelched away across the muddy field, towards the line of lights that marked the road, civilisation and warmth, five strangers with a shared goal of getting dry and getting a drink. One the way, we introduced ourselves: the one in the wellies was Abbie, whose long-term boyfriend, Matt, was captain of the team. His brother, Ryan, was dating red scarf-wearing Kate, although I could tell from her extreme narkiness that Ryan was already halfway to Dumpedville, population him. The beautiful one with the lipstick was Rowan, and although I didn’t catch her boyfriend’s name at the time, I got the impression she must be deadly serious about him to put herself through this. And the fur-clad one with the jawline introduced herself as Zara.
‘It was my fellow that scored the own goal,’ she said. ‘Which hopefully means he’ll be dropped from the team and I’ll never have to do this again. Not that I would anyway, because frankly it’s hell on earth, isn’t it?’
‘I mean, I don’t mind so much in summer,’ said Abbie. ‘When you can wear shorts and sit on the grass with a bottle of wine. But this…!’
‘Wine in summer sounds all right,’ I admitted.
Already, I was imagining the five of us being friends – at least, to be more accurate, I was sure I wanted to be their friend. Whether they’d want to be mine was another matter. Glancing surreptitiously at each of them in turn as I sheltered with Zara under her giant umbrella, I confirmed my first impressions of Rowan’s beauty, Zara’s glamour, Kate’s confidence, Abbie’s air of serene self-assurance.
In contrast to these women, what did I have? An ordinary job I was averagely good at; a just-getting-off-the-ground relationship with a man who’d never made my heart soar; a disparate circle of friends left over from school, university and part-time jobs who were gradually dispersing in different directions.
According to my nan, I made the best cup of tea in the whole world, but I couldn’t imagine putting that one forward as a reason why these women should embrace me as a friend.
So I kept quiet and listened while Zara and Rowan chatted.
‘My God, that coat is so lush,’ Zara said. ‘It’s Burberry, isn’t it? Must’ve cost a bomb.’
‘Actually’ – Rowan smiled sideways from her position on the other side of the umbrella – ‘it was a freebie. I do a bit of modelling and I was wearing it for a shoot and butterfingers here spilled nail polish on the cuff. Oops. So they let me keep it.’
‘Strong work,’ Zara said. ‘I’m a fashion editor and you won’t believe the stuff that gets minor damage during shoots. People are ever so careless.’
They both laughed, complicit in their experience of a world I’d never be part of.
Then we arrived at the pub and the warmth and dry, the smell of beer and stale cigarette smoke and the familiar babble of voices made me feel better, more at home.
‘There’s a table over there,’ Abbie said. ‘Why don’t you three nab it, and a few extra chairs, while Kate and I get a round in?’
‘Merlot do everyone?’ Kate asked. ‘It feels like a red wine kind of evening, doesn’t it?’
‘You read my mind,’ said Rowan. ‘And how about some crisps as well? Or better still, pork scratchings.’
My stomach rumbled at the prospect of food – maybe we could order burgers and chips later, or soup with crusty bread.
Then Zara said, ‘Anything that comes in a packet’s safe enough, I guess. Anything from the kitchen in a place like this…’ And she drew a finger across her throat and rolled her eyes theatrically.
Rowan hurried ahead of us, swooping down on a table for twelve with practised ease, turning a megawatt smile on the group of guys who were vacating it. As they moved towards the exit, I saw at least two of them looking longingly back at her, like dogs being taken for a walk just as you’re getting the roast beef out of the oven.
‘So what do you do for work, Naomi?’ Zara asked, slipping into the chair next to mine. As she shrugged off her coat, I got a waft of her perfume, heady with vanilla and neroli.
Here we go , I thought. Now comes the bit where I bore you to death. ‘I’m a legal secretary, but I’m hoping to do a law conversion course in a year or two and qualify as a solicitor.’
‘Blimey.’ Zara fixed me with eyes as wide and green as a cat’s. ‘So you’re bright and motivated. That’s a new one on me. The clever people I know are all lazy fuckers and the ones who work hard are thick as mince. And you must tell me about your hair. Is the colour natural?’
Automatically, I tugged a strand over my shoulder and looked at it, like I’d forgotten what colour it was – as if twelve years of being called ginger minger and copper crotch at school could be forgotten. ‘Yeah, unfortunately for me.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s glorious. And so on trend right now, like Julianne Moore. Don’t ever change it. I’m a closet blonde and the upkeep is hideous – I even have to wax off all my pubes. It’s totally not worth it.’
Then why do it? I wondered, but I could feel myself thawing, not just from the warmth of the pub, but from the glow of Zara’s friendly attention – oh, and the massive glass of red wine I’d almost finished.
‘Look,’ Rowan said. ‘Here come the boys. They don’t look too happy – I can hardly see Paul for mud.’
In they trooped, and the next few minutes were taken up with post-match recriminations, a pretence that they’d been sure we’d dumped them en masse because they’d been so hopeless, and another round of drinks orders.
Off the football pitch, I found it even harder to sort out which of the mud-splattered, heavy-footed men was which. Stu, of course, I knew, although I found myself thinking how much I’d prefer spending the rest of the evening with my new female friends than with him. The two tall men must be brothers, and therefore belong to Abbie and Kate. The earnest-looking one with the beard had kissed Rowan and sat down next to her, apparently all set to monopolise her for the evening.
So Zara’s boyfriend must be… Oh. The one who’d just come back from the bar, a tray of drinks balanced on one hand, a rueful grin revealing teeth that were just shy of perfectly straight, a lock of dark hair flopping down over eyes the colour of strong coffee, and a body that would make a Greek god cancel his gym membership because it was too depressing using the same changing room.
The tray still held aloft, bicep flexing impressively, he unloaded drinks on to the table.
‘Pint of Guinness for you, sir. Stella for you, mate. Two Peronis, one IPA and a bottle of merlot. Oh, and all the crisps. Phew.’ He dropped a kiss on the top of Zara’s glossy head and sat down, resting a hand casually on her thigh. ‘How’s it going, Zee?’
‘I could ask you the same thing, David Beckham,’ she said, giving him a sideways stare under her eyelashes. ‘Made a right arse of yourself back there, didn’t you?’
‘Oh God.’ He pressed a hand dramatically to his face. ‘I’m shit, right, but not normally that shit. Must’ve been stage fright because we had an audience.’
‘Don’t worry’ – Zara grinned – ‘we won’t come again. We’ve already discussed it and we’re in agreement. This is Naomi.’
The man smiled at me, and for a second I felt like I was the only person in the world – and, disloyally, as if poor Stu had never even existed. His gaze was level, direct and warm. He extended a hand across the table and I took it, expecting three hundred volts to shoot through me, but it just felt like a hand – albeit an exceptionally warm, strong, callused one.
‘Patrick,’ he said. ‘But everyone calls me Patch. Good to meet you.’
‘And you,’ I said.
I wasn’t lying. I was elated to meet him, filled with a thrilling sense of new possibilities opening up with this group of new potential friends.
‘Anyway,’ Zara was saying to him, ‘now that I’ve endured this, you’ve got no excuse whatsoever not to come and visit me in Paris next weekend. None.’
‘Not exactly a hardship, is it?’ Patch asked, and Zara brushed a finger over his cheek in a way that made me turn away from them, feeling suddenly superfluous.
‘This wine is practically taking the enamel off my teeth,’ Abbie was saying. ‘It’s like I’m experiencing tomorrow’s hangover today.’
‘It’ll be totally worth it though,’ Rowan replied. ‘You know there are some hangovers where you wake up and think, Why did I even do that? and some where you’re like, Fair do’s, I’ll take how I’m feeling right now ?’
I laughed. ‘When you’re trying not to spew on the Tube, but at the same time you’re looking round at everyone else and thinking, I bet you wish you had as good a time as me last night .’
Abbie glugged some more wine. ‘And your boss gives you a bollocking for being late and you just grin inanely at her.’
‘And then you go and buy a bacon roll and a KitKat and you’re instantly cured,’ Rowan chipped in.
We all laughed, and I was sure we already knew we’d still be friends tomorrow. I barely registered when another man joined the party – a blond, movie-star-handsome guy who seemed to immediately hit it off with Kate.
‘What’s your favourite colour?’ I overheard her ask.
‘Purple, obviously. The colour of royalty, mystery and of course Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Yours?’
‘Purple too,’ Kate replied, and the two of them burst into laughter so infectious the rest of us couldn’t help joining in, even though we hadn’t heard the lead-up to the question and had no idea what was so funny.
But my pleasure in the evening was tinged with something else – a sense that something had changed that night. That because of this random meeting on the side of a rainy football pitch, my life was going to travel in an entirely different direction from the one it had been on before.
And as it turned out, I was right.