‘Si really isn’t that keen on Portia, is he?’ A few days later it’s a slow afternoon in Bookends, and Lucy’s helping me tidy up the stock room. She tries to look nonchalant, but it doesn’t work, and I know that this isn’t the end of the question, that Si’s reaction every time Portia’s name is mentioned has only served to sow the seeds of doubt in Lucy’s head.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, come on, Cath! There’s something going on, isn’t there?’
All the colour drains out of my face, and, I swear, my heart actually misses a beat.
‘What do you mean?’ I speak slowly, trying to keep my voice calm and steady, and managing somehow, even though the voice sounds nothing like my own.
‘For starters, you look like a ghost every time Portia’s name is mentioned, and Si looks as if he’s about to murder someone, probably Portia. What on earth is going on with her?’
Oh God, what do I do? Do I tell her? Should I confess? This is, after all, one of my closest friends in the world, and would I not be a better friend by telling her of Josh’s betrayal?
What if the roles were reversed? Would I want to know? If I were with, say, James, and he was being unfaithful, and Si or Lucy found out about it, wouldn’t I be more furious if I discovered that they knew and hadn’t told me?
But then they say it’s always the messenger who gets shot, and maybe it isn’t any of my business. or maybe I should just pray that it is, after all, a phase, and just cross my fingers and hope that it’s all over soon.
I take a deep breath and look into Lucy’s eyes, and I know immediately that I will not be the one to tell her, to hurt her in this way.
‘What’s going on with Portia?’ I repeat, stalling for time.
‘Yes, have the three of you had some kind of falling out or something?’
My relief is palpable.
‘It’s ridiculous that you and Si were so excited about seeing her again after all this time, and suddenly she’s become persona non grata, and I can’t understand why.’
I shrug. ‘You know,’ I say, after a while, ‘it isn’t anything tangible. I think that both Si and I have realized that ten years is a long time, and people change enormously in ten years, and I just don’t think we have that much in common with her any more.’
Lucy’s about to say something else when the door creaks open and Si staggers in, clutching his head and groaning in mock-agony.
‘Fine, thank you,’ I laugh. ‘Nice to see you too.’
‘Sssh,’ he says. ‘Hangover.’
‘Let me guess… Turnmills again?’
He nods.
‘So you’ve been out clubbing all night and you probably got home at, what, six this morning?’
Si nods.
‘Which would explain why,’ I look at my watch, ‘at five minutes to four in the afternoon you’re still feeling like shit. I hope it was worth it.’
Si looks up as a grin spreads all over his face.
‘Uh oh,’ Lucy laughs. ‘I hope he was worth it.’
‘Well, you know what they say,’ Si sounds, and looks, brighter than he has done in ages. ‘The best way of getting over someone is to find someone new.’
‘No! Already?’
‘Well, not permanently,’ Si says. ‘Definitely not relationship material, but gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, and let’s just say a good time was had by all. Meanwhile back at the ranch, how did the new sexy Lucy go down on Friday night?’
Lucy sighs. ‘Going down was the last thing on my mind that night.’
‘Now Lucy,’ Si admonishes her, ‘didn’t I tell you it should have been the first.’
‘I tried. Really, I did, but he didn’t want to know…’
‘Oh, Lucy,’ I stroke her arm, and, fuelled by cappuccinos and carrot cake, the full story comes out.
Josh phoned early Friday afternoon and said he had a meeting but wouldn’t be back later than eight thirty, so Lucy ran up the road to the beauty salon and had her legs waxed, even though they didn’t really need it, just to be on the safe side. Then up to Waitrose, where she strode round the aisles smiling to herself, because here she was, playing the archetypal fifties housewife, shopping mid-afternoon for food for her husband’s dinner, when tucked inside her cupboard at home were bags of gorgeously sexy lacy underwear with which to tempt him later that night.
She went home and slapped on a cucumber face mask while chopping and peeling, switching the radio on in the kitchen and dancing around in time with the music, feeling, for the first time in a long time, as if she were getting ready for something special.
At six o’clock, when the casserole was firmly in the oven, the pastry had been carefully laid out over the tarte tatin, Lucy poured four capfuls (‘Four capfuls!’ exclaimed Si) of luxurious and horrendously expensive bubble bath into the hot running water, and lay back feeling excited, and sensuous, and completely relaxed.
Max, for once, seemed to be on his best behaviour, and after dinner and a story he climbed into bed, had a goodnight cuddle, and went straight off to sleep, leaving Lucy to finish her preparations.
She tipped her head upside down once her hair was dry and sprayed hairspray all over, so when she tipped her head back she looked wanton and sexy, in the way that Josh had always said he loved, although she could never be bothered to do it these days.
She stood in front of the bathroom mirror, a magazine laid out on the closed seat of the loo, its pages open to a beautiful blonde model advertising lipstick, and Lucy, not being an expert with make-up but being none the less exceptionally creative, tried hard to copy the make-up, brushstroke for brushstroke, line for line.
She shrugged off her huge old slightly grubby towelling robe and carefully pulled the new underwear out of the bag, folding the tissue paper and putting it back so as not to disturb the perfection.
And slipping her feet into her highest heels, she opened the wardrobe door back as far as it would go, and examined herself carefully in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of the door.
‘Well hello, big boy,’ she said to herself, in an accent as close to Mae West’s as she could manage, a slow kitten-like smile spreading on her face. ‘Why don’t you come up and see me some time?’
Si laughs briefly, breaking the spell, and even Lucy has to join in. ‘I bet you looked fantastic, though,’ he says.
‘You know what?’ A genuine smile breaks through. ‘I actually did, although I didn’t look like me in the slightest. I looked in the mirror and there was this sexy, curvaceous glamour puss staring back.’
‘What do you mean, it didn’t look like you? You are a sexy, curvaceous glamour puss.’
‘Oh, Si, I do love you. No, I’m not, nor would I normally want to be, but I didn’t think I even had it in me any more to look like that.’
‘Anyway, go on, what happened?’ I’m getting impatient.
Lucy slipped a little black dress over the top and went downstairs to pour herself a glass of champagne, which always gets her in the mood for romance. The table looked beautiful. No kitchen, not tonight. The dining room was sparkling, candlelight glinting off crystal, and sleek silver candlesticks. Everything was perfect.
At twenty past eight Lucy took the casserole out of the oven and replaced it with the tarte tatin. She ran upstairs and blotted the shine off her nose, reapplied lipstick and a dash of lip gloss to give her a sexy pout, and took the ice bucket and champagne into the living room.
There she lit ylang ylang scented candles, put Nina Simone on low, and watched herself in the mirror as she waited for the front door to open.
After fifteen minutes she picked up a magazine lying on the coffee table and started idly flicking through, not really concentrating. Fifteen minutes is nothing, she told herself. Who could, after all, predict exactly when a business meeting was going to end?
She was telling herself the same thing forty-five minutes later. And again at ten o’clock.
But at a quarter past ten she stopped waiting. She kicked off her shoes and put the casserole – which had grown cold long before – into the fridge. The empty champagne bottle went in the bin, and the tarte tatin – Josh’s favourite pudding – was tipped on top of the champagne.
And just as she finished clearing the dining room, disappointment, sadness and too much champagne making her movements slow and heavy, the front door opened.
‘Sorry I’m so late,’ Josh said, hardly glancing at Lucy. ‘The bloody meeting went on for hours. I’m exhausted.’ He was pulling his tie off as he put his briefcase down in the hallway, and finally looked at Lucy as she stood in the doorway in her little black dress and stockinged feet, lipstick chewed off, hair pulled back in a scrunchie, and for a minute her heart lifted.
‘You don’t mind if I go straight to bed?’ Josh said, looking at her but most definitely not seeing her.
Lucy, deflated, shrugged, sighed, and took the champagne flutes into the kitchen, whereupon she threw them, slowly and deliberately, against the back door.
‘Jesus!’ Josh came thundering back down the stairs to survey the shards of crystal littering the kitchen floor. ‘God, you must be more careful. Look, leave it for Ingrid to clear up in the morning. I’m off to bed. Night.’ And he kissed her distractedly on the forehead, then went to bed.
‘Do you know how I felt?’ Lucy asks, sitting here with us now. ‘I felt relieved that he hadn’t even noticed, because if he had seen me, seen what I was wearing, seen the effort I had made, I would have been embarrassed, and that’s the one thing I couldn’t stand.
‘And, as much as I hate to admit it, it does rather seem like dignity is about the only thing I’ve got left in this blasted marriage right now.’
‘God, Lucy, it sounds horrific.’ I take her hand and squeeze it, as Lucy rubs her eyes as if to rub out the memory.
‘It’s actually almost funny. It was like something out of a bad film. If we had ever actually got around to getting a dog, I probably would have told him his dinner was in the dog.’
‘Given that it does actually sound like something out of a bad film,’ Si says, ‘I suppose we can assume that by the time you actually got to bed Josh was snoring like a baby, and lying on his side with his back towards you.’
‘I know you’re in the film business,’ she says sadly, ‘but do you always have to be so right about everything?’
And then none of us says anything, because although her last remark was punctuated with a brief smile, it isn’t like Lucy to say something like that, and I know then that she is hurting far more than she is letting on.
‘We could always go to plan B,’ Si says, after a while.
‘And plan B is?’
Si shrugs. ‘God knows, but give me five minutes and I’m sure I’ll be able to think of something.’
Lucy gets up and goes to the loo, and as soon as she’s out of earshot I lean forward towards Si. ‘I think maybe you should talk to him.’
‘Me? Why me?’ Si’s voice is now back to its usual level, and he sits back in his chair, pointing at his chest indignantly before leaning forward again conspiratorially. ‘Why not you? Josh has always listened to you.’
And it’s true, Josh has. I’m not sure why, but perhaps because I’ve always had a proper job (as opposed to Si’s sporadic bursts of creativity), because he knows I’m independent, he has somehow trusted me, and, although I do not want to do this, I think that Si may have a point. That if Josh will listen to anyone at all, he might listen to me, and at this point in time I can no longer sit back and watch his marriage disintegrate.
Since I saw him and Portia together, we haven’t actually had a proper conversation. He used to call me in the office for long, cosy chats, but now that I’m in the bookshop, with Lucy, he only ever phones to speak to her, and even when I pick up the phone he usually sounds far too busy to talk. I don’t even remember the last time Josh phoned me at home for a long chat, but then again I suppose I haven’t exactly made much of an effort either.
But once upon a time what Si has just said would have been true, and perhaps it still is true. Si can see that his point has struck, and that I am thinking about it, so he carries on, telling me that Josh trusts me, and that we owe it to Lucy, and then finally that it’s all my fault that Portia’s back anyway, so I should take responsibility for getting rid of her again.
‘Si! That’s not bloody fair. You can’t pin this one on me. There was no way I could have known what would happen with Josh, and anyway you used to talk about her all the time as well.’
‘I know, I know. I’m sorry and I didn’t mean that, it’s just that I feel so bloody guilty. It is kind of our fault. I mean, if you and I hadn’t dialled her number, this wouldn’t have happened.’
‘You know what? I don’t believe that. Ultimately this is Josh’s decision, and neither of us is to blame. We shouldn’t get involved at all, but I love Josh and Lucy too much to ignore this, so I’ll do the only thing I can.’
‘Which is?’
‘Tell Josh that we know, and remind him of what he’d be losing if he and Lucy broke up.’ But the very thought makes me feel sick to my stomach.
‘And what if he says that Portia’s the love of his life and she’s the only thing he cares about?’
‘First of all, Si, stop being so bloody negative, and second, I just don’t believe Josh would do that, I just can’t believe that.’
Lucy comes back to the table with a bottle of champagne that’s part of our secret stash, well hidden in the stock room.
‘Look at you two with your heads together, whispering furtively. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were planning a secret rendezvous.’
‘You might say that,’ Si sniffs, standing up and getting some glasses out, ‘but I couldn’t possibly comment,’ and with that he pops the cork and the three of us start to drink.