About a Girl (33 page)

‘You know, my heart says yes, but my head says probably not,’ she replied with a scrunched-up face. ‘Although my vag says something altogether different. Maybe I actually love him. Maybe I just want to cover him in Nutella and lick it all off. I don’t think anyone can actually make sane decisions about their emotional state when they’re wearing sunscreen. Just the smell of it makes you crazy.’

‘I’ve heard worse theories about holiday romances, actually.’ I had to admit, she might have been on to something.

‘I reckon when you get home, Charlie is going to be all turned around on this situation,’ Paige said, sitting up, pouring herself another glass of champagne, and topping me off, despite my refusals. ‘He’s going to be all freaked out that you went off and did something amazing without him, and he’ll be so jealous and so worried about missing out. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Tess.’

‘Does it?’ I wasn’t so sure.

‘Yeah, definitely,’ Paige said, agreeing with herself so aggressively that she was spilling champagne all over the settee. I surreptitiously grabbed a bit of kitchen towel and dabbed at the wet mark while she wasn’t paying attention. ‘Or at least, absence makes the dick get harder. Not to be coarse or anything. He’ll be all over you like a rash. A hot rash. He’s hot, isn’t he?’

‘He is.’ I folded up the damp paper and tossed it onto the coffee table, trying very hard not to think about Charlie’s penis.

‘Let me see a picture.’ She scrambled onto her knees and passed me my laptop. ‘Come on, just one. I want to see what’s so special about him.’

With all the enthusiasm of a beached whale, I logged onto Facebook and immediately found a thousand different pictures of me and Charlie. I’d been doing so well. It had to have been at least twenty-four hours since I’d looked at them, and now it did not feel good.

‘Oh, he is cute,’ Paige said with approval. ‘Tall, too. Really, like, boy-next-doorsy. I bet he’d be dead good at changing light bulbs and playing sport. You make a really cute couple.’

‘Hmm,’ was just about all I could manage.

‘Oh, shitting hell ? I’m sorry,’ she said, slamming the laptop shut. ‘I’m doing it again. I’m not thinking. But really, I do think he probably just needs a bit of space to adjust to things. Coming here was the best thing you could have done.’

I nodded. Getting on a plane and flying to Hawaii may well have been the best thing I could have done. I’d found a great new friend in Paige, I’d remembered how much I loved photography, and, more importantly, it turned out that I was actually pretty good at it. That made me really happy. But I’d also effed my new friend’s crush, lied about my name and stolen my flatmate’s job. That made me a little bit concerned. So: swings and roundabouts.

My plan not to get wankered so I could work on my pictures was offset nicely by Paige’s plan to get absolutely obliterated so she could get right on my tits. Within an hour, she was three years deep into my Facebook photos and two bottles of champagne into her own personal pit of misery.

‘You all look really happy,’ she said with a telltale snort. ‘You and your mates. My mates are all arseholes. All my mates were my ex’s mates and now all I’ve got left are fashion mates. No one is mates in fashion, not really.’

‘But magazines?’ I tried to give her a glass of water, but she pushed it away and poured more champagne. Badly. I had to remind myself this was not my sofa and I was not responsible for the stains. ‘Aren’t there fun journo girls?’

‘I came in from the fashion side, though.’ She shook her head, clicking on a pic from Amy’s twenty-fourth birthday party. I took her to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs. She did not have as much fun as I did. ‘All the writers have known each other for ever. I don’t know, I don’t make friends that easily. Girls don’t like me.’

I took a momentary step back and watched the beautiful yet shit-faced woman knocking back booze on the sofa, still looking like she’d stepped off her own fashion shoot. She didn’t have so much as a wrinkle on her tissue-thin sweater, and it was white, for God’s sake. I was only allowed to wear white shirts on the days I only drank clear liquids. ‘I can’t think why,’ I replied.

‘Oh, it’s because I’m, you know …’ She waved a drunken hand at her general appearance. ‘Whatever. It’s fine.’

If nothing else, you had to admire her honesty.

‘I like you,’ I offered, taking the dead bottles of booze into the kitchen and putting on the kettle. Paige might be halfway to hangover heaven, but I was knackered and I still had stuff to do. ‘And I’m a girl.’

‘Yeah, but you don’t care, do you?’ She rested her head against the back of the sofa and gave me a sloppy smile. ‘You’re not competing.’

‘Right.’ I slapped my hand on her thigh, hard. ‘I think it’s time you nicked off back to your cottage and I got some work done. I’ll have the photos over to you in the morning.’

‘Fine,’ she said from inside the wine glass. A bottle and a half ago, she had realized she could get much more champagne in a red wine glass than a champagne flute. ‘I’m tired anyway. What is it, two a.m.?’

I glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was half past eight in the evening.

‘It’s very late,’ I replied gravely. ‘You should probably go to bed.’

‘Yeah,’ she nodded, hoisting herself off the squishy sofa. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks, Tess.’

‘Get back safe,’ I called as she tottered out in her heels. The cow still looked amazing.

‘I’m going thirty feet away,’ she laughed, reaching for the door frame and missing. ‘You worry too much.’

Even as she was saying it, I was trying to work out the likelihood of her falling in the pool and drowning on her way home.

As the door swung shut, I closed my eyes, breathed out and thought, for all of fifteen seconds, that I might be allowed five minutes’ peace. Until my phone started to rattle across the tabletop. It had been on silent since the shoot and I’d forgotten all about it while I was managing my favourite new alcoholic, but now she was gone and there was no one loudly complaining about how hard it was to be so beautiful, I heard the quiet buzz of vibrating iPhone against paperback book and spotted a flashing screen over on the bookcase, where it was charging. All I wanted to do was let the kettle finish boiling, make my tea and pretend I hadn’t seen it. But it was Amy. And I had already hung up on her once in twenty-four hours. Twice absolutely would not fly. Better to just get it over with.

‘Hey.’ I pulled the charger out of the phone and flopped down on the settee, stretching out from top to bottom. ‘Dear God, today was horrible.’

‘Hi, Amy! How are you, Amy? Have you got a new job yet, Amy? I’m so worried about you, Amy.’ She started her rant before I had even finished my sentence. ‘I’m doubly sorry I’ve been ignoring your phone calls and haven’t been in touch for days, and I’m even more sorry that today you found out that your ex-fiancé got engaged again because his new girlfriend of half a fucking second is pregnant.’

‘Ohhh.’

‘But no, please do go on. Tell me all about your horrible day.’

The silence that followed was not comfortable.

‘Amy, I’m sorry.’ I didn’t really know where to start. I’d only been away for five minutes and it felt like a lifetime. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Of course I’m not all right,’ she said with a choking sob. ‘He’s engaged. He’s having a baby. I haven’t got a job, my mother hates me, and I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing with my life. Come home, I need you.’

‘I’ll be home on Sunday,’ I promised. ‘Don’t get this upset over someone so rubbish. You don’t want to marry him, you don’t want to have babies with him. He’s crap, remember?’

‘I don’t know,’ she sniffed, her voice still woolly and unreliable. ‘It wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t unhappy.’

‘You weren’t happy,’ I reminded her, telling her everything that she had told me when she’d dumped him in the first place. ‘You were settling. You ended things because you’re brave and you know what you want and you’re better than a miserable relationship in a sad semi in Ruislip with a man you don’t love.’

‘It was a nice semi,’ Amy replied. ‘And how are things better now? Honestly, Tess?’

‘You’re not wasting your life?’ I wanted to shake her so badly. Amy wasn’t one to get maudlin and self-indulgent, but when the mean reds really took hold of her, it was impossible to drag her back out without a metaphorical kick up the arse and, on occasion, a literal slap. ‘You’re not plodding on day in and day out with someone else’s plan?’

‘I’d rather be with Dave than be on my own,’ she whispered.

It was a good job I was thousands and thousands of miles away. I really would have booted her up the backside for that one.

‘No, Amy. Just no.’

She let out one more reflexive howl, and I waited until her crying calmed to a ragged squeak.

‘I’ll be home on Sunday,’ I said again, closing my eyes and trying very hard not to think about what that would mean. ‘Don’t work yourself up over Dave. It’s been years. You know you’re happier without him.’

‘But how come he’s getting married and having a baby and I’m not getting married and having a baby?’

Ahh. Now we were getting somewhere. Her tears gave way to a temper tantrum and the volume of her voice went right up to eleven.

‘What did I do wrong? Why don’t I have someone?’

‘You know there isn’t an instruction manual for life, lovely.’ I was trying to calm her down, to sound as comforting as possible. My best friend needed a hug and I wasn’t there to give her one; it felt horrible. ‘Everyone gets there in their own time. I’m hardly waltzing down the aisle either, am I?’

‘Yeah, but that’s because you’re fucking stupid,’ she said bluntly.

‘Sorry?’ So much for trying to calm her down.

‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ I could hear her trying to flap away her insult down the line. ‘You don’t have a boyfriend because you’ve been waiting for Charlie to wake up and realize he’s in love with you for the last decade, and now what ? the second you decide you’re over him, you’ve got some random bloke drooling all over you? I don’t exactly feel sorry for you.’

‘What, so I don’t deserve to be in a happy relationship because I’ve got legitimate feelings for someone?’ Didn’t seem exactly fair. ‘Sorry I haven’t been shagging my way around London for the past ten years, hoping to accidentally fall on The One’s penis.’

‘Are you calling me a slag?’ Amy went from loud to quietly pissed off. ‘Don’t beat around the bush, Tess, just say it.’

‘I didn’t call you a slag,’ I replied. I was far too tired and too stressed to have this conversation. ‘But it’s not like you haven’t done your fair share of research in the boyfriend department, is it?’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ she snapped back. ‘I know you’re happy being a sad nun, but some of us actually have a life. I’m sorry if that’s upsetting to you.’

‘I don’t want to fight with you,’ I said, and realized as I chose my words that they were more of a warning than an apology. ‘Today has been shit. I’ll be back Sunday. Either we can talk about this calmly now, or we can fight about it then.’

‘Oh, yeah, I forgot ? please do tell me more about your dreadful day in paradise.’ Apparently she wanted to fight about it now. ‘Has everyone worked out you’re not actually a photographer? Probably didn’t take long. Were you as shit at that as you were at your amazing job that you were so amazing at that you got the sack for nothing? Or did your new boyfriend bin you off like Charlie?’

I didn’t even reply. Instead, I hung up and threw my phone across the room. And immediately regretted it when I heard the clunk, chunk, shatter of a broken iPhone.

‘That wasn’t about you,’ I said out loud, my blood pressure building and building until I thought I might actually start shooting Popeye-style steam out of my ears. ‘She was being mean on purpose. She was trying to hurt you.’

And she had succeeded. How dare she say that to me? She knew I was stressing out about all of this; she knew I was scared. In a heartbeat, I went from being so tired I could have slept on the kitchen floor to being so full of rage that every limb felt like it was going to shoot off in a different direction. My shoulders shook and my hands were clenched tightly into tiny little fists. If only there were something or someone in the vicinity to punch. I paced the kitchen and the living room, opening kitchen cupboard doors and slamming them shut again. Not even snacks could calm me down. It was serious. I wanted to do something drastic like cut all of my hair off or send her Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in a box. Or maybe something in between that didn’t involve a sharp blade. In my temper, the light, airy cottage seemed too small and utterly claustrophobic. Not bothering with shoes, keys or any of the other dozens of items I usually couldn’t leave my house without, I stormed out of the door and out into the night air. The freshness of the ocean hit me like a wet slap with a cold kipper and stopped me dead in my tracks.
Breathe
, a quiet voice said in the back of my mind.
Calm down and breathe
.

‘All right there?’

Nick was sitting outside his cottage, book in one hand, drink in the other, his laptop on the table beside him and a bemused look on his face.

‘Something wrong?’

‘Everything,’ I replied, feet still frozen on the wooden slats of my veranda.

‘How are the photos?’ he asked.

‘How is the interview?’ I deflected.

‘Shit.’ He shrugged and picked up a pipe from the ashtray on his table. An actual, honest-to-God pipe. ‘Artie is an uninteresting, self-important tosspot.’

‘Photos are shit too,’ I admitted, the ragey wind starting to leave my sails. ‘They don’t look right. It’s just not what it’s supposed to be.’

‘The whole thing was bollocksed from the start.’ Nick struck a match and I watched as the orange flare lit up his features for a moment before fizzling down to a soft, golden glow. ‘Don’t feel bad about it. There’ll be other jobs.’

I laughed softly and felt my fingers unfurl. Easy for him to say.

‘I just wanted one thing to go right,’ I said, facing away, looking at the ocean. ‘All I wanted was to come here, do this and know I’d done it well. I wanted to know that despite everything else that’s been so utterly shit lately, I could do this.’