Chapter Twenty-Four #2
“Enough of all that,” Connie butts in, waves his hand in the air. “Let’s get some champagne.”
“Are we celebrating?” Primrose asks shyly as if it isn’t common to have a champagne dinner on a Saturday.
“We don’t need champagne to celebrate,” Connie shrugs, orders us a bottle of 1997 Cristal but as he does, I watch Primrose's eye track Connie’s finger on the menu, her eyes bulging.
“That’s an almost ￡2,000 bottle, Connie,” I whisper across the table as the server walks away so Primrose doesn’t have to.
“Yeah, so,” he leans back into his seat, drags a hand through his shaggy blonde hair. “I’ve changed my mind—we are celebrating. We’re celebrating you and Arthur.”
I frown. Primrose looks over at me. “Are you back together?”
“There’s nothing to celebrate.”
“No,” he winks at me. “But there soon will be.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Connie grins, puts his arm over Primrose's shoulders. “Did you know she’s an artist, Phoebs?”
Her cheeks go red. “I’m not, really.”
“Oh, no, she is,” Connie insists. “Gives Picasso a run for his money, this one.”
I smile at her. “That’s honestly so amazing and I hope you go really far with that and never take creative advice from Connie but,” I swing my gaze over to him. “What did you mean about Arthur and I?”
“Uh,” he gives me a look. “Don’t be self absorbed, Phoebs, be happy for her.”
“I am!” I look back to Primrose, give her another smile. She looks like she wants the ground to swallow her up. “I trust she is a million times better than you with a pallet and a brush but what you said about Arthur and I just then—that rattled me.”
“You slept in the same bed last night,” he tells me, thanks the server, pours us all a glass. “I mean, that ain’t just nothing.”
“Yeah, I was there.” Roll my eyes, sip my champagne while Primrose twists the stem between her long skinny fingers.
The difference between someone like Primrose Moore and Daisy Faulkner is unnoticeable to the untrained eye but when Daisy showed up to the store the other week, I saw it.
The way she was wearing Levis with Golden Goose’s—that I had seen Athena wear sometime during school—and a bright, colourful jumper that she felt uncomfortable in.
Her nails weren’t manicured, just painted with a simple coat.
Her wrists and fingers were void of any fine jewellery, just decked out in the fashion jewellery—you know the kind that leaves your fingers green and were only designed to be worn on one occasion despite the price tag?
She’s never had money but now she does and isn’t sure how to act.
Primrose, turns up to dinner wearing a skirt I know isn’t real satin and a jumper that clearly isn’t cashmere but her nails are manicured and gold plated earrings dangle from her ears.
She’s what I like to call ‘gradual money’—had none, but she’s slowly getting there and spent her days surrounded by people who have never had to work a day in their lives.
She knows how to act, she knows how to dress and not because she spent her childhood reading about us but because she was there, in the flesh, observing the real thing.
Daisy, she’s studied us, read what’s trending and will change her wardrobe accordingly, even if it's something that she doesn’t particularly like. She wants to fit in because she hasn’t anywhere else.
But still—to any of these people—when they’re hit in the face by the reality of how financially irresponsible we are, it still stings. We use money like our lives are just an everlasting game of Monopoly.
“What’s going on with you and Arthur?” Primrose asks, finally taking a sip of the champagne that’s the same price as her uni debts.
I wave my hand through the air. “Nothing.”
She swallows, glances down then back up at me. “Is he all better now?”
And she asks that in such a kind voice that I almost break down crying. “He’s okay now, yeah—getting there.”
“He would’ve come tonight but he didn’t want to get in Digby’s bad books,” Connie adds.
“Since when did he care about that?”
“Oh,” Connie laughs. “He doesn’t—I just said that to piss you off—he just thought it’d be awkward, you know, after you two spent the night together.”
“Shut up about that! It’s not like we had sex!”
His eyebrows shoot to his hairline. “You didn’t?!”
“No!”
“Fuck,” he mutters to himself. “That’s a shame. I hate when Mum and Dad fight.”
“Catch yourself on.”
“No, seriously. I thought you were on the mend with him.”
“I have a boyfriend.”
“No, you don’t, you have a dick—a literal fucking walking penis, that’s what you have. Not a boyfriend.”
“What a shame it’d be to throw this champagne all over your lovely new Versace shirt—which, by the way, is fucking disgusting.”
His mouth drops open, glances to the girl who I think might be his girlfriend(?). “Primrose picked this out for me.”
“I didn’t,” she adds in quickly, big smile on her face.
“Keep your fat nose out of my business,” I tell him, looking around the dimly lit, intimate restaurant.
“But it’s so much more entertaining than my business,” he groans. “All I have is absent parents and a lunatic brother.”
I look back at him. “And how is your lunatic brother?”
“He’s fitting in nicely at Darcy,” Primrose smiles. “I think.”
Connie lifts a shoulder carelessly. “He’s fine. He’s got me.”
We leave it at that because if there’s one area that makes him uncomfortable, it’s talking about his family.
As the dinner ticks on, the more I dread going home and when Connie and Primrose stand up to leave, the more I long to grab onto Connie’s leg and beg him to take me with him, home, to Arthur.
However, that night, while I’m laying in a bed next to a man I’ve realised I don’t love, I get a text.
A text from Connie.
A text from Connie telling me to pack my bags because he’s sending me on a retreat to Paris in the morning with Arthur so we can sort our shit out.