22
‘What looks good?’ Roxy said, scanning the menu, and added: ‘That’s my new line on dates, by the way. They always say it on American dramas. It’s sophisticated, like you care what the catch of the day is and aren’t going to have the burger like you always do.’
Harriet laughed and filled their water glasses.
‘Not to sound like Chris de Burgh but I’ve never seen you looking as lovely as you do tonight, and you look lovely a lot,’ she said, enveloped in the bosky aroma of the expensive tobacco perfume that Roxy favoured.
Harriet was in a chambray pinafore dress and red lipstick. She’d imagined she’d made a special effort, until Roxy arrived in something silky-strappy, bosoms pointing aloft without any identifiable means of support. Harriet felt like the plain, lowborn companion employed to carry Roxy’s bags on a trip to Monte Carlo.
Roxy snorted and patted her chignon.
‘Ta. Just a hun with a messy bun, getting things done. I don’t look like that one from the Peru Two, do I?
‘No! Haha.’
‘I can’t do the lock-in, by the way. I’ve got two viewings tomorrow morning and I don’t want to repeat the puking-in-a-planter PreggoGate hangover.’
This had been Roxy’s worst event of the previous year and Lorna and Harriet’s favourite. She’d got to a house she was showing, a £1.2 million mansion at that, early. Rough as arseholes thanks to a night in her local and unable to keep her breakfast down, she treated herself to a healing vomit in an empty pot on the terrace. Unfortunately the interested buyers, with their young kids, turned up while Roxy was crouched down on her knees, stilettos up, barking into the bowl making animalistic nnnnhhhunnnngh noises.
Always enterprising when in a fix, Roxy said she was pregnant and had morning sickness, in a single stroke transforming their judgemental disgust into warm sympathy. Naturally, they bought the house, and throughout the purchase process Roxy had to work out how far along she was meant to be when they asked after her and the baby’s health.
‘For Roxanne, a son: Gregg Bean-Melt,’ Lorna had said, and she and Harriet had been rendered incapable of speech for several minutes.
Tonight, getting a meal at The Dive was a tremendous novelty and Harriet was determined to make the most of it.
It wasn’t that Lorna disliked them being there, more that it never made sense to socialise in a situation where Lorna was by necessity, mostly absent. She had a head chef but as she’d said: ‘Leaving your restaurant to look after itself is a bit like leaving builders to work in your house. You can do it, but chances are you’re going to wish you’d overseen it.’
She and Roxy waved at Gethin’s table, which Lorna had cannily placed on the far side of the room, making their joint presence look less like the set-up it was.
Lorna breezed past from time to time in a halterneck Pucci dress and snakeskin heels, and Harriet reminded herself to tell her later what a great outfit it was. She liked that Lorna’s mate-attractant outfits were even more Lorna-ish, and not chosen for the male gaze.
‘Have the heirloom tomatoes with whipped feta,’ she said, scribbling their order down. ‘Roxy, we’ve been over the fact that is not code for old tomatoes.’
The food was great as per, the cocktails were great as per, but as for the company, Harriet felt Roxy was distracted.
Eventually she started talking about work, and it became clear why – her colleague Marsha was leaving to start her own firm and wanted Roxy to come on board as partner. The hour to become a self-employed entrepreneur seemed to have arrived, and Roxy was in the quandary: go with her, it tanks, and she’d have lost a handsome salary. Stay where she was, and if Marsha’s agency took off, she’d be laden with regret.
‘Is Marsha good?’
‘Shit hot,’ Roxy said, making as an emphatic face as was possible concurrent with a mouthful of vodka rigatoni.
‘You’re shit hot,’ Harriet said. ‘This seems like a good bet? Shit And Hot PLC.’
‘I don’t have any savings,’ Roxy said, which wouldn’t come as a huge surprise to her closest friends. Every year, Roxy and her sister spent a fortnight at the exclusive Nikki Beach in Marbella. When Harriet and Lorna nearly fainted at the cost, she said it’s a signature white mattress resort with poolside cabanas! and Lorna said, ‘Is it, aye,’ as if either of them knew what on earth that meant.
‘If we mess up, I literally can’t pay my mortgage,’ Roxy said. ‘I don’t mean “would have to wind my neck in”, I literally mean I literally couldn’t pay it. Literally.’
‘Could you tell her you’ll join her in a year, then save like mad?’
‘I could but to be honest, Marsha’s nobody’s fool and after a year, if she’s doing great she won’t want me as equal partner anymore. I can’t blame her; I’d be the same.’
‘Tricky. All I can say is in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve sold houses like they’re cold beers on the hottest day of the year.’
‘Aw, thanks Harry.’ Roxy smiled, but she still seemed slightly out to sea somehow, mind further away from the substance of their conversation than Harriet’s was.
Lorna conveyed by WhatsApp that Gethin’s companion Tom had to head back, but he and Ste might be up for a late one, Ste was waiting on a pass out.
‘Rox has to get off. Do you want me to find a reason to go with her?’ Harriet messaged Lorna, who replied from the kitchen:
NO NO NO. NO. x 10 NO. Plus I’d already said you could stay out. It’s a legal quagmire.
Unfortunately, Ste didn’t get his pass out and Harriet was left worrying she was a third wheel.
‘This place is out of this world, well done,’ Gethin said to Lorna, once service had wound down and she was off the clock.
Gethin was easy to have around. He seemed far more interested in others than talking about himself, always a positive sign in a man, Harriet thought.
‘I can’t tell you how much I admire you for taking the plunge,’ he said. ‘While I’m still Mr “Have You Tried Turning It On And Off Again”.’
‘Thank you, I do love it. It’s not the whole life plan, though,’ Lorna said.
‘Oh yes?’ Gethin said.
‘At some point I want to buy a dilapidated rectory with acres of land, for a song. I’ll live in a motorhome outside in the grounds while I do it up.’
‘Oh no, not the dilapidated rectory. She’s that many drinks in, is she?’ Harriet said, and Gethin hooted.
‘The dilapidated rectory dream is real, you hater.’
‘Apart from the fact it’s a dream,’ Harriet said.
‘I would not live in a motorhome,’ Gethin said, and Harriet clinked glasses with him.
‘Nor would I, and pertinently, nor would Lorna.’
‘Are you DIY handy then?’ he asked Lorna.
‘Ish. No, not really. How hard can it be though? A few YouTube tutorials and I’d be rewiring a poltergeist-ridden castle, no problems.’
Harriet enjoyed watching Gethin respond to Lorna, impressed by her but not at all intimidated. Gethin eventually announced his intention to get home ‘before I disgrace myself’ and insisted he should leave cash for his liqueurs.
‘It’s on me,’ Lorna said, to his voluble objections.
‘Why should you pay?!’ Gethin said.
‘Because I’m rich and fun.’
Then, with Harriet feeling agonised to be in the way of a more private conversation, Gethin added: ‘I’d really like to see you again, Lorna. On a night when you don’t have to cook, as great as that was.’
‘You’re on,’ Lorna said. After a pause, where Harriet held her breath, she added: ‘I would like that.’
Lorna poured out more shots.
‘Did I reek of sincerity?’ she asked, as soon as Gethin had gone.
‘Yes, you did!’
‘It took considerable effort. No nervous jokes if he asks me out, I had told myself. What’s the catch here then? I like him, he seems to like me. I can’t wait for God’s great prank to be revealed.’
‘There isn’t one. You already know about Bubbles Hussein. Secret wife and kids?’
‘Doubtful. I’ve investigated him so much online it was practically a colonoscopy.’
‘Scott was at the wedding I did yesterday,’ Harriet said, gasping through the mouth burn from the Limoncello, the only way she felt able to force the words past her lips. ‘He was the best man.’
Lorna’s eyes widened. ‘Scott as in your ex?’
‘Yes.’
The mood was immediately extinguished, as if they’d snuffed a candle by pinching the flame with wet forefinger and thumb. There was a reason Harriet had held this back until the bitter end and it wasn’t just because she wanted to be hammered. He was still a sore topic between them, one they avoided. They had no other conversational No-Go zones as friends, but Scott was uniquely poisonous to the mood.
‘We didn’t speak other than to do hellos, as if we didn’t know each other. He was with his fiancée, who looked terrorised.’
‘No doubt,’ Lorna said quietly.
Harriet grimaced. ‘I’ve been stewing on what I’m going to do about it for twenty-four hours and I’ve made up my mind.’
‘Do about it?’ Lorna said, sceptical. ‘There’s something to do?’
Harriet explained her very simple, powerful and necessary course of action, to deepening furrows in Lorna’s brow, as she spoke.
Afterwards, Lorna shook her head, firmly. ‘Two things, one, that is mad. Secondly, I am too drunk to deal with this articulately. I’ll drive over tomorrow at midday for a walk in the park and we’ll discuss why you won’t do this. Deal?’
‘Deal to the walk, at least.’
Harriet might be drunk too, but the previous night she had lain awake until three a.m. thinking it through. Eventually, she’d got out of bed and written nonstop until five a.m. She had been a woman possessed. She had got so absorbed in it, it looked like an epic once she’d finished, yet she couldn’t and wouldn’t edit it, either. Whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Harriet was absolutely sure of one thing: she would send this letter to Scott’s fiancée.