A Funny Thing About Love (15 page)

‘I'm bloody starving now, though, what's for dinner?' Carmen asked expectantly. Jess was a great cook who usually could be relied upon to lay on a feast. Carmen
had been looking forward to it all afternoon, having no food in the house save the aforementioned Oreos and Hula Hoops.

Jess looked slightly guilty. ‘Sorry, Carmen, I haven't cooked. D'you mind if we order pizza?'

They moved from the kitchen, upstairs to the living room. Carmen flopped on the sofa next to Kitty Kitty, a fat, bordering on obese ginger cat, while Jess expertly lit a fire. Over a bottle of red wine, and a large American hot, the two caught up on what had been happening with their lives. Carmen couldn't help noticing that Jess was knocking back the wine, getting through two glasses for every one of hers. But fair enough, she reasoned, Jess probably didn't get many nights off as Sean worked as a lawyer in London and didn't get back till late, which meant the bulk of childcare, running of the house and everything else fell to Jess on top of her own career.

During a lull in conversation, as Jess put more logs on the fire, Carmen idly surveyed the room. Jess was the polar opposite to Marcus in interior design and the living room was an explosion of different colours, red velvet sofas, fuchsia cushions, a multi-coloured rug, burgundy curtains. Every available inch of wall was covered in pictures. There were photographs of Harry, from tiny scrunched-up-faced newborn to chubby-faced toddler, to winsome-faced seven-year-old. There were pictures of Jess and Sean from their many travels BH (before Harry), mixed with Harry's early artistic endeavours to draw people, who all resembled giant eggs with enormous stick hands and no legs. The mantelpiece was
crowded with bronze candlesticks, pebbles and shells. The bookshelves were bulging with novels, everything from Dickens through to chick lit, and more pebbles.

‘I love your house, Jess,' Carmen declared dreamily. ‘It's like a proper grown-up's, you know, with the fire and the cat and the child and the husband.' It was intended as a compliment, which made Jess's reaction all the more shocking.

‘I'm not Doris fucking Day! What about the mortgage and the damp wall upstairs that needs fixing and the leaking shower and the husband who's never here, and on the rare occasions he is, is a moody git? What about being trapped in a loveless, sexless marriage?' Jess sounded so bitter.

‘Is he? Are you?' Carmen sat up, her fantasy dashed. She was used to Jess talking about life with a dry sense of humour making anything seem bearable. But funny Jess seemed to have gone on vacation.

Jess poked rather aggressively at the fire, and stared at the greedy yellow flames as they curled round the logs. ‘Yeah – it's been no bed of roses lately. Frankly I envy you being single quite a lot of the time. You can do exactly what you want and you haven't got someone on your back nagging you, saying you're a bad person and a lousy wife.'

Carmen had never seen her friend like this before. Usually they laughed and gossiped their way through a night, but then, since Jess had moved to Brighton three years ago, Carmen supposed she had seen less of her. But she couldn't imagine Jess not getting on
with Sean. They had been a couple since their second year at university, falling in love in a student production of
The Importance of Being Earnest
. Jess played Lady Bracknell, Sean, Algernon, and he always joked that she had him at ‘A handbag!' Admittedly there had been that blip when they were on a break and Sean ended up in bed with Sadie, but they'd got through that and married a year later. A year after that they had Harry. That made them the longest married couple Carmen knew after her parents. But maybe there were things going on that she had no idea about.

‘Sorry,' Jess seemed to snap out of it, ‘I sound like some embittered crone, it's just Sean and I had a bit of a row before he left and I hate parting on a quarrel. So go on, make me jealous, tell me all about your fabulous single life.'

Carmen gave a wry smile. ‘Well, I managed to totally alienate the man I fancied at work by insulting him in front of his close friends, and I also managed to be horrible to a pregnant woman at the same time. So, fabulous single life? Or total shite?'

Even mentioning the Will scenario caused a fresh wave of mortification. Jess wanted all the gory details and Carmen duly obliged, though she glossed over how very much she had liked Will and how much she missed him.

‘Forget about Will – I know an absolutely gorgeous single man who would be perfect for you.' Jess's face took on a dreamy expression. ‘Daniel Garner, officially the most beautiful man I have ever seen.' Now dreamy turned businesslike. ‘I'll have to orchestrate a meeting
for you. Maybe I'll have you both round for dinner. You won't be disappointed.'

‘Who are you? My pimp?' Carmen joked back; however gorgeous Jess's single man was, she wasn't interested.

‘If I got you two together, you would get down on your knees every day in prayer to thank me. You'd probably have to set up a shrine for me.'

‘Whatevah!'

‘Oh God, don't say that! It's what I get from my students, it drives me mad! Anyway, you haven't mentioned the bitch whore from hell. Every time I switch on Radio Four she seems to be on it. I've had to go over to Radio Two about ten years before I should, and I swear I'm in the wrong demographic for it.'

‘Don't you think enough water has gone under enough bridges and you could actually forgive Sadie?' Carmen asked cautiously. ‘It would be so good if we could all get on again.'

Jess shrugged. ‘Sometimes I think it would be better if she had gone off with Sean.'

‘I'm sure you don't mean that,' Carmen replied, but Jess didn't answer.

By now it was after midnight. Carmen suddenly felt exhausted. ‘D'you want a cup of tea?' she asked. Jess shook her head and poured herself another glass of wine. Carmen couldn't help thinking that tea might have been a better option. She was only gone a few minutes making her peppermint tea, but when she returned Jess was fast asleep on the sofa. Carmen leaned over her. ‘Jess, don't you want to go to bed?'

Jess batted her hand up and mumbled something unintelligible, so Carmen went upstairs intending to grab a duvet to put over Jess.

She switched on Jess's bedroom light and froze in her tracks as she saw two empty bottles of wine on the dressing table. Surely Jess wouldn't have knocked those back on top of the bottle and a half they'd shared? Downstairs Jess was still out for the count. Carmen gently laid the duvet over her friend and sat on the rug by the fire watching the last dying embers. She felt as if she had been in the grip of a mini whirlwind and was only now emerging from the other side. But she was going to be strong, she was going to focus on her writing, she was not going to obsess about Will or about the baby thing. She turned and looked at her friend again, and not wanting to leave her on her own when she was so out of it, tracked down a sleeping bag and went and slept on Harry's bunk bed.

Harry's current obsessions were Dr Who and dinosaurs, and the walls around the bunk were plastered with pictures of a variety of prehistoric beasts and daleks. As a child Carmen had been petrified of the daleks. The only thing that had stopped her having even worse nightmares about them than the ones she already did was the constant reassurance from her dad that daleks were (a) not real and (b) could not climb stairs. Thank goodness she wasn't a child now and confronted with the
über
upgraded flying daleks. She would never have slept again! She was just dropping off to sleep when she quite clearly heard the voice of
a cyberman saying, ‘You will be deleted.' WTF! She sat up and cracked her head on the bunk. Swearing profusely, she tracked down the source of the sound to Harry's toy box, the culprit, a Cyberman mask. She picked it up. ‘You will be upgraded,' intoned the mask.

‘Oh shut it!' she shot back, switching it off. ‘You were never as good as the daleks.' Back in her bunk she slept badly and dreamed she was being pursued by a herd of creatures who were scarily half velociraptor and half dalek, but was rescued in the nick of time by David Tennant.
Damn
, she thought, emerging from sleep,
I'd much rather it had been Christopher Eccleston
. No disrespect to David, who was a very good actor, but she'd always had a soft spot for Eccleston. It seemed to be the story of her life right now that even her dreams let her down. She gave herself five minutes to indulge in her favourite fantasy – the one where Will had forgiven her, they'd moved beyond the flirtation stage and were lovers. It was all lovely scenes of them lying in bed together, blissed out in each other's arms, though she did have some saucier versions, then hanging out by the sea in Brighton or strolling along the South Bank with Van Morrison's ‘Have I Told You Lately that I Love You' providing the soundtrack to their affair. Okay, so maybe the Van Morrison was a bit predictable, but it was
her
fantasy. A clattering in the kitchen downstairs disturbed her and reluctantly she got up.

Jess was already dressed, in yet another tunic and jeans combo, and tidying the kitchen in something of a frenzy.

‘Hey!' she exclaimed when Carmen shuffled in, ‘Coffee and toast? Sorry to fall asleep like that – I was just knackered.'

‘Nothing to do with the amount of wine we drank?' Carmen said carefully.

Jess laughed. ‘Yeah, we did cane it a bit, didn't we? I definitely can't drink as much as I did in my twenties.' Jess didn't look great. There were dark shadows under her eyes and her pale skin had a slightly sweaty sheen. When she poured out a coffee from the cafetiere, her hand shook. Carmen wanted to reply that no
we
didn't, but maybe she was being unfair, maybe Jess was just kicking back after a full-on week.
Maybe
.

‘I've just texted Daniel, the gorgeous man I mentioned last night, and he's up for coming to dinner on Friday, so keep that date free,' Jess told her.

Carmen groaned. ‘You didn't make it out to be some kind of blind date, did you? That's so cringey.'

‘No, no, I just said I was having a few friends round, including my very sexy, single friend who has just moved down from London. I had to get in quick, Carmen, he's in demand. I just hope no one gets their claws into him before my dinner.'

Carmen treated her to a major eye roll.

‘You'll thank me for it,' Jess told her.

Carmen shook her head and tucked into a bowl of muesli.

After breakfast Jess said she had to get on with her marking, so Carmen had no excuse not to go home and continue work on her sitcom.

‘Leo has just blown me out, he's got to be in New York for some high-profile corporate something-or-other. Please say you'll come to the Comedy Awards with me.
Please!
' Marcus sounded in a complete panic. For all his confidence on stage and on TV, he absolutely hated going to big events without Leo. ‘It's on Friday, and I know it's short notice, but I will be eternally grateful.'

‘I'm supposed to be going to dinner at Jess's. She's lined up some sexy single man for me.'

‘Please, Carmen, I really need you to come.'

Carmen groaned inwardly. Along with letting down Jess, who wouldn't be impressed, if she agreed to go with Marcus it would mean a whole day out of her writing schedule, maybe even two, as she'd have to do that whole pre-event preparation malarkey of having her hair blow-dried, getting key bits of her body waxed, plus finding the right dress to wear. More importantly, Will was bound to be there and she really didn't know if she was up to seeing him. She'd still not heard from him and she hadn't felt up to contacting him again. But if she didn't go Marcus would be gutted, and she was dependent on his charity right now, because
without Marcus she would be homeless, since her Hornsey flat was on the market and already had a buyer.

‘Please, Carmen,' Marcus repeated. ‘I'll sort out the frock.'

‘Designer?'

‘I thought you were channelling Gok, patron saint of the high street,' Marcus said sarkily. ‘I was going to recommend a little number from the house of Top Shop, or isn't New Look coming into its own these days?'

‘Bollocks to that! If you're paying I want designer all the way!'

‘I can't believe you're so shallow,' Marcus shot back. ‘Have you suddenly morphed into Sadie? I thought you would become less shallow now you lived in Brighton and were away from all the temptations of London town.'

‘In my heart I'm still a Londoner.' Then she laughed. ‘It's okay, you don't have to buy me a dress. I'll come anyway.'

‘Buy? I'm going to call in some favours from that designer boutique I go to all the time, and as this is TV they should be glad of the publicity.'

How could Carmen possibly say no after that? She cancelled Jess, who as predicted was narked and told her she'd be lucky to get another chance with Daniel, booked her blow-dry, got waxed and tried not to obsess about seeing Will again. The reality was of course that she spent much time wondering what she would say if
she saw him again, and how she would look. Cool, calm and sexy would be her motto for the night, she decided.

On top of the lure of a free outfit, the other good thing about going to the Awards with Marcus was that Carmen got to indulge in one of her all-time favourite fantasies – the I-live-in-Mayfair one. Marcus and Leo owned a flat on the highly prestigious Mount Street. Addresses didn't come much posher: off Park Lane, with the swish Scott's Restaurant at one end – (such a hit with A-listers) and the impressively grand Connaught Hotel at the other. When she'd lived in London Carmen got to indulge in this fantasy on a weekly basis as she'd go round for dinner with Marcus, usually when Leo was visiting his daughter. It had been one of their traditions that they'd eat Thai food, which Marcus loved and Leo didn't, and then slob in front of the TV watching comedy series – everything from
Ab Fab
to
Green Wing
– and eating sweets from M&S. Carmen had her Wobbly Worms, the green ones saved for Will, and Marcus tucked into Percy Pigs and Pals.