Chapter 1
When I got in from work, Maddy and Henry were still there – just. Their hired van was parked in the street outside the house, and they were standing in the hallway surrounded by their stuff.
I wondered whether they’d decided not to wait for me but then changed their minds – the same way I’d almost gone for a drink after work but decided to come home instead, to say goodbye.
‘Oh, you’re here, Charlotte!’ Maddy said, with a cheerfulness that sounded a bit forced.
‘Yes!’ I said, with equally forced cheerfulness. ‘I mean, Briony and Alice were going to go to Quag’s for a cocktail, but I didn’t… I couldn’t…’
Not now, though.
Henry cleared his throat. ‘We left the keys on the hook in the hallway,’ he said.
‘We were going to drop them off at Wankerson’s,’ Maddy said, smiling as she used our joke name for the letting agent. ‘But we ran out of time, and they’ll be closed now.’
‘It’s no problem,’ I said. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘And we’ve done all the stuff with the bills,’ Henry said. ‘Council tax, water, Npower, broadband – and we’ve signed up for three months of mail forwarding. But just let us know if there’s anything we missed.’
‘Odeta’s coming to clean the place on Monday,’ Maddy said. ‘Remember, she’s going back to Romania for two weeks after that, but the agency said they’ll send someone else. I told them you’ll be in touch about the direct debit.’
‘Ollie at Wankerson’s called to say the landlord’s arranged for someone to come round tomorrow and do some stuff in the garden,’ Henry said. ‘Cut back that tree, hopefully. But he might not turn up. You know what they’re like.’
Maddy said, ‘Our new fridge freezer isn’t coming until next week, so we’ve left some stuff – ready meals, and that chilli I cooked the other night. It’s all yours. You’re so busy, Charlotte, I know you don’t have time to cook.’
‘And it’s not like we’re moving to Siberia,’ Henry said. ‘We’ll only be in Bromley. It’s only, like, an hour and a half from here on the train.’
An hour and a half on three separate trains and a bus, I thought. It might as well be flipping Siberia.
When Maddy had told me six months before, with amazed delight, that an inheritance from Henry’s grandmother was going to enable them to buy a place of their own and finally put an end to the precarious, expensive annoyance of renting in London, I’d imagined an elegant flat in one of the nearby developments, all industrial chic with a view of the canal.
Or maybe a Victorian cottage that they could lovingly restore, with original fireplaces and polished floorboards.
Instead, they’d opted for a three-bedroom semi with a big garden in actual suburbia.
I knew what it meant: it wasn’t just the physical distance; it meant that Maddy and Henry were moving on to a totally new phase of their lives.
One that would involve being close to good local schools, spending the weekends gardening, and dinner parties with Henry’s sister, who apparently lived nearby.
It meant they weren’t just buying a house, they were growing up with a massive, rocket-powered whoosh and leaving me far behind, still paying rent each month, getting the same Tube to work each day, and going to bed alone each night.
Except I’d be doing it all without my best mate there to share it.
I realised I’d been staring down at my shoes – taupe kitten heels that had looked comfortable in the shop but were viciously pointed and had been killing my feet all afternoon – and forced myself to look up again, at their concerned, guilty faces.
Then I burst out laughing. It was just as well, otherwise at least one of us would have started to cry.
‘You guys!’ I said. ‘I’m twenty-seven, you know. I can do adulting. I’ve been doing it for lots of years. I know how to pay the gas bill and let the cleaner in and harass the estate agent. I hold down a responsible job. I haven’t even passed out on a night bus for, like, ages. I’ll be fine.’
Maddy laughed too, and said, ‘God, I’m sorry, Charlotte. Of course you’ll be okay. It’s just… weird, you know. Moving. After all this time. I’ll bloody miss you.’
‘I’ll miss you, too. But, like you said, you’re only moving to south London.’
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come round tonight?’ Maddy said. ‘We can order pizza, and you can help us build our Billy bookcase.’
For a moment, I was tempted. Then I told myself not to be ridiculous, and said, ‘No way! Don’t be daft. It’s your first night in your new home. You need to be alone together to kiss the walls and shag in the kitchen and stuff. And assemble your own bloody Ikea bookcase.’
‘Are you sure, Charlotte?’ Henry asked. ‘You’d be totally welcome. We can shag in the kitchen any time.’
But I could see, however carefully he concealed it, that he was relieved.
Of course he was. Since he and Maddy first got together, when Maddy and I advertised for a new housemate and he moved in, and after a couple of months vacated his own room to share with Maddy, I’d been there too.
Not all the time, obviously – I work long hours, and I’d been on holiday with other friends, nights out with my colleagues and stuff (dates, though?
Not so much). But still, for the whole two years of their relationship, I’d been a third person in the household.
However well we got on – and we did get on fabulously – I knew it couldn’t always have been easy for them. For Henry, especially.
Now, they’d have space to be on their own together at last. And in five months, thanks to a swoon-makingly romantic proposal in the restaurant at the top of the Shard (don’t worry, I wasn’t actually there that night, but Maddy told me about it in minute detail afterwards, several times), they were getting married.
They didn’t need me hanging around like a needy, squeaky third wheel.
So I declined their Domino’s-and-flatpack invitation again, more firmly this time, and helped them carry the last of their things to the waiting van.
‘You won’t be here on your own for long, anyway,’ Maddy said, looking a bit teary again. ‘The new girl’s moving in on Sunday.’
‘Yes.’ It seemed like a very long time ago that we’d posted the ad for the room online, and even then I’d only skimmed through emails from people wanting to move in, partly because there’d been so many of them but mostly because I was in denial about this day ever actually happening. ‘What’s her name again? Pansy?’
‘Something like that,’ Henry said. ‘I can’t quite remember.’
‘But Henry really liked her,’ Maddy said. ‘He thinks you’ll get on great. It’s a shame we couldn’t be here to meet her, though.’
‘Yeah, I’m really sorry about you having to do the showing-around thing at the last minute,’ I said to Henry.
‘But we’d arranged all the viewings and then there was that major Brexit thing when Theresa May invoked Article 50, or triggered it or whatever she did, and I got home at four in the morning because Colin made everyone stay in the office in case the markets went mental. ’
‘Oh, don’t worry about it! Anyway, I was doing an after-hours shift at the surgery,’ Maddy said. ‘But yeah, she sounds really nice. And she might be able to get you amazing discount clothes from The Outnet.’
‘Not The Outnet,’ Henry said. ‘The other one. She’s a buyer there, or something.’
‘BrandAlley?’ Maddy said.
Henry shook his head.
‘Luxeforless?’ I said.
‘Think that’s the budgie,’ said Henry. ‘Anyway, Tansy – that’s her name, not Pansy, my bad – said she’ll turn up on Sunday. I told her she’ll have to pick up the keys from Ollie tomorrow, so if you could drop them round, Charlotte, if it’s not too much hassle…’
I said it was no hassle at all. It wasn’t like I had an action-packed weekend ahead of me, after all. Since when did I ever?
‘Although I might not be here when she arrives,’ I said, ‘because we’ve got brunch, remember, Maddy? Third Sunday of the month, like always?’
It was Maddy’s turn to look down at her shoes. They were battered Converse that had been white, once upon a time, and I bet they weren’t hurting her feet one bit.
‘Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to make it this month,’ she said sheepishly.
‘It’s just – you know. We’ll have so much to do in the new place.
The guy said he’d start tiling the bathroom this weekend, and if I leave Henry to sort it out we’ll end up with a brick pattern instead of herringbone.
So, yeah. Sorry to be flaky. I was going to post on the WhatsApp group, I just haven’t had a chance.
But the others will be there – Molly, Chloe…
And you’ll get to hear all about how William’s sister’s wedding went last weekend. ’
‘That’s right.’ I brightened briefly. ‘And Molly wore her cerise satin slip dress and pants of steel. How could I forget?’
It was true – Molly had kept us entertained for the past few brunches with tales of her sister-in-law-to-be’s bridezilla antics, while saying, ‘God, I really need to go on a drastic diet if I’m going to fit into that stupid dress and look so stunning William will propose to me on the spot,’ then stuffing her face with bottomless steamed buns and Bloody Marys along with the rest of us.
But I knew that Maddy was reminding me of it to distract me from feeling sad that she wouldn’t be there, and wondering how many times in the future she would also not be there because she and Henry were doing couply, weddingy things that were more important.
Fortunately for her, Henry was on back-up distraction duty.
‘And then in a week or so, Adam’s moving into my old room,’ he said.