Chapter Twenty-Four
Lady Phoebe
That afternoon, I go to Cynthia’s. That little house in Notting Hill with the famous lilac front door, shadowed in crawling ivy and hydrangeas.
She answers the door, waving a stick of sage around.
I cough, wave the smoke away from my face as I walk in.
Her house is a fucking mess, I’m going to be honest. Statues, mannequins, sculptors, different psychedelic wallpaper on every wall, neon sofas, plants in every corner.
Not a single nook or cranny is empty or plain.
Absolute hell in the summer.
It’s exactly what you’d expect from an eccentric woman who was most definitely reincarnated after being hung in Salem.
“Had a bad feeling this morning,” she tells me, inviting me into the front reception room.
“Oh, really?” I place my bag on my lap. “Care to share?”
“No,” she says instantly, sits opposite me, places her stick of sage onto an ashtray. “I can’t burden you with my ghosts.”
“I appreciate that.”
She pours us two mugs of jasmine tea imported from Singapore in a cute little vintage teapot.
I sip on it in small doses, the repercussions of last night have yet to exit my body—even after I sat in a steam room for two hours and had a massage at Espa.
I did actually feel a bit better after that but it was when I went back home and saw Digby’s face that my stomach started to curdle again.
“What can I do for you?”
A little black kitten jumps up onto her lap, she strokes the fur like she’s had it all her life.
“I didn’t know you had cats?”
“I don’t,” she shakes her head. “But he appeared in my garden after a storm so it was a sign, I took him in.”
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter into my mug. “There’s probably some poor girl out there looking for her kitten.”
She shakes her head again, sure of herself. “No, he told me—he said, I’m here for you. Like a guardian angel.”
“Okay,” I nod, squeeze my eyes shut. I’m far too hungover for this. After a second, I sit up, face her, head on. “What would you do if you loved someone to the point of insanity but couldn’t be with them?”
She takes a sip from her tea, thinks about it for a second.
“Kill myself or them.”
“Cynthia.”
She throws her hands up. “I’m serious! I’d never love someone to the point of insanity—the only person you should love to that extent should be yourself, my love.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“If you give all your love to someone else, how will there be enough to give to yourself?” She tilts her head, looks a bit sorry for me. “Is this about Arthur?”
I nod.
“Well, in that case, I don’t understand the issue.
You tell each other everything,” she shrugs airily as if it’s as easy as that.
And I guess, for her it is. Some people are reckless when it comes to love, they do and say things without thinking of the other person—honesty is the best policy and all that.
But it isn’t. Love is a careful, delicate, often fickle thing.
It’s the thread you sow into a needle with your tongue poking out and an eye squinted.
It’s the seaweed covered rocks you cross to reach an oasis.
It’s the early morning sunrise before everyone is awake—even if there is no sun—and the entire world is quiet and it’s just you, your breath so low with the fear of breaking the peacefulness that’s so little and far between in this world.
I shake my head, hang my shoulders. “I can’t tell him this.”
“Why not?”
Cynthia reaches for her tea, takes a sip, eyes locked on mine.
“Because it’d ruin him, I think.”
“The only thing that ruined him was his brother dying and an eighties inspired drug stint.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s putting it harshly.”
“That’s putting it truthfully,” she tells me, matter of fact.
“Can’t you at least tell me one thing that I want to hear?”
“You didn’t come here for that, you came here for the truth that no one else will give you.
” She crosses her legs in her eye sore skirt.
“Now, this thing—you tell him and if he leaves, then that says more about him than you. If he doesn’t stay through anything—like you did—then he isn’t the one, Phoebe. ”
“That’s a slap in the face,” I mutter.
“You’ve been in love with him since before you could even wipe your own arse, of course it’s going to be a slap in the face—a punch, a bullet, even.”
“So…you’re telling me to tell him even though I might lose him over it?”
“You might not lose him over it. Stop focusing on the negatives.”
I sigh, lean back on the sofa.
“Heard from your sister?” Cynthia asks, a look on her face that tells me she still isn’t best pleased with Freddy’s sudden leave of absence. To be fair, she did just up and leave while in the middle of a modelling contract with Cynthia.
“She called me the other day, it was quick—she had a dinner reservation but it was just the same shit she’s been telling me. Honestly, she’s so not okay that she’s actually making me look stable.”
Cynthia laughs. “I thought she hated LA?”
“She does. All she’s ever told me was that there was too much Botox, not enough authenticity, too many memberships, and a load of sun that melts everyone’s plastic!”
“She’ll come back around.”
“And if she doesn’t?” I ask with too much force because everytime the thought pops into my head, I can never tell if I’m angry, upset, hurt or confused.
“We’re talking about Freddy, she will.”
She holds her pack of cigarettes, offers me one, I take it and lean in so she can light the end. She might be crass, slightly classless and a little vulgar but she’s not judgmental and I think that’s the best quality anyone can have.
? ? ?
Later that evening, I go for dinner with Connie. He either feels sorry for my hangover that still hasn’t subsided or what happened this morning.
“Can’t you just cancel on him?” Digby tells me in the car, as he drives me over to Park Chinios. “We can just stay in?”
“He’s my best friend. I’m not cancelling.”
He side eyes me, the car rolls to a stop in a long line of typical London traffic. “You’re still pissed at me for this morning?”
“No.”
“Yes. You are.”
“I’m not, I don’t even care.”
“See!” He slaps the steering wheel. “There it is!”
I laugh, pull back. “What are you talking about?”
“If anyone has a right to be pissed off, it’s me, Phoebe.”
Tilt my head, stare at him in pure, unfiltered, disbelief. “How so?”
He turns his head toward me. “You spent the night in your ex-boyfriend's bed, Phoebe!”
“He’s…” I search for the word but yeah, he’s right. I did. “Arthur for good sake. Arthur!”
His knuckles turn white with how hard he’s gripping the steering wheel. “That’s exactly my fucking point. If you weren’t pissed there’d be no denying that you would’ve slept with him!”
“That’s not true.”
He gives me one last look before focussing back on the road. “History doesn’t lie.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “And what does that mean?”
His chest puffs with a dry laugh. “What? You don’t think I’m aware of the fact that the only reason your relationship with him stood was because you dropped your knickers for him at every possible opportunity?”
I think my heart stops beating. Like, actually, for a second, I think it stops. All the air inside of me traps in my chest and suddenly I can’t breathe at all.
“Let me out.”
Digby shakes his head. “What? No.”
“I can’t breathe—let me out.”
“I’m driving, Phoebe! Stop it!” He shouts and amongst the blurring of the city lights and the confines of the car, it’s the only thing that cuts into my ever spinning mind.
“Let me out!”
“No!”
I try opening the door, it doesn’t budge. “Let me out, Digby!”
“I’m fucking driving!” He shouts louder.
I spin my head around. “Don’t swear at me!” I try the door again. “Now, Digby! Let me out of the fucking car.”
I think my voice must’ve dwindled down into a cry because he pulls over and unlocks the door. When someone shouts, they’re too angry to do anything. When they quiet down, they’ve had a moment to process—therefore more likely to do something.
He doesn’t say anything as I scramble for the door handle and haul myself out onto the pavement.
Part of me wants him to stop me, take me home, kiss me, take my clothes off.
Part of me wants him to drive off and never come back.
Another, smaller part of me, is disgusted with myself.
Grossed out in my own skin, a foreigner to the part of me I should know better than anyone else.
But as Digby drives off, I realise I've never known that part of myself; I handed it over to Arthur as soon as I could. He still hasn’t given it back to me so I can give it to someone else, either.
I fetch a cab, arrive at the restaurant a lot less worked up. Knocked for six when I walk in and see Primrose sitting beside Connie. Kind of hoped he’d ambush me with Arthur, instead.
I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know what’s going on with them.
No one ever brings it up to him because he gets funny, walks away, makes a joke out of it.
She’s only ever in London for a couple of days at a time and then she goes back to Uni.
But for those couple of days, Connie isn’t the Connie I’ve known for half of my life.
He changes in the way we all do when we’re around someone we want to be better for.
“Phoebe, hi!” Primrose stands up, hugs me. Big, pleasant smile on her face that I’m not used to seeing these days.
Changed a lot since school. Taller, clocked on to Connie’s obsession with her, put on some makeup, dressed in a way to fit the criteria of someone she thinks Connie would date.
Still got massive curly hair, though. I mean—it’s truly magnificent.
Each trundle carefully curls down her back, stops at her waist, frames her face.
She’s beautiful. Got this pure, innocent look about her.
You know, the kind of look that hasn’t been changed by the rags or the papers or the cameras.
“How are you?”
I sit down opposite the two of them, pop my bag on the spare seat next to me.