by Rebecca Reid
She looked over her shoulder. ‘Shall we go back to the party?’
So they did. And when they reached the bottom of the stairs they turned in different directions. She watched as the boy walked through the party and stood on the edge of a conversation, listening to someone else speak. Then a pair of arms came from behind, twisting around her waist. ‘Hello, gorgeous.’
‘I’m sorry, do I know you?’
‘I certainly bloody hope so,’ Max replied. ‘Shall we go upstairs and fuck? I’m bored of everyone who isn’t you.’
‘Absolutely.’
8
Now
Verity could cook, Chloe had to give her that. She’d served them bruschetta, which Max had proudly announced was home-made. He said it like he was telling everyone that she’d won a Nobel Prize. But then, Chloe supposed, to Max, splitting the atom and making bread were probably equally miraculous. He’d never been able to cook. She had vague memories of him drinking pints of protein shake or loading up on plain chicken breasts when they were younger, determined to become bigger and bigger. He’d told her once that he took after his father, who had owned – perhaps still owned – a chain of Italian restaurants but didn’t really like food.
The bruschetta was crisp on the outside and soft in the middle, tangy with oil and sharp with garlic and rosemary. The tomatoes were bright and fat, clearly bought from some organic farmers’ market rather than the local supermarket. It even smelled vibrant, but it was impossible to eat. The boys laughed as they picked it up, spilling tomatoes on to the plate. Verity busied herself, flitting around, clearly not intending to let a morsel of bread pass her bee-stung lips. Chloe pushed bits of tomato around with her fork, not wanting to risk an oil spill down the front of her dress, unwilling to look messy as well as overdressed next to Verity. She broke off a piece of bread and carefully placed it in her mouth. She needed to eat something; her head was swimming. Two glasses of champagne already down, despite the fact she didn’t like it, and she was now part way through a glass of buttery white wine.
‘So, Rav, where are you from?’ Verity asked him, smiling over the candles. People did this to Rav a lot – assumed that because of his name and the colour of his skin he had a huge family straight out of central casting hidden in some terraced house in west London, full of laughter and women in saris making roti.
Chloe had often wished that were the case. She had indulged in fantasies of how that might be, of being welcomed into the middle of a loud, loving rabble. But not a chance.
Rav’s mother hadn’t been to Pakistan since the seventies. She and his father lived in a pristine apartment in Zurich, where she and Rav visited them twice a year, under extreme sufferance. Photos of Rav, their favourite son, lined the surfaces and the entire place smelled like Dettol.
On their first visit, nearly a decade ago now, Chloe had got her period on the sheets of the bed in the enormous white guest room. Horrified, she’d crept down the corridor to Rav’s room, woken him up and whimpered what had happened. He had kissed her forehead, sneaked the sheets into the laundry and sent Chloe back to bed. ‘I’ll fix it. Go back to sleep,’ he’d said.
‘I’ll fix it’ was Rav’s mantra. He took care of everything. Labours of love – Chloe knew that. He did it to make her life easier, happier, better. But just occasionally, when she realized that all the morning’s post had been opened, dealt with and all the bills paid before she’d even looked at it, she wondered if there was any harm, any danger, in letting Rav do all of it. How would she manage if a day came when she had to do it by herself?
To this day, Rav insisted that his mother had no idea what had happened, but the look in her eyes over breakfast the next morning had told Chloe that she did know.
‘Switzerland,’ Rav said now, pulling Chloe’s focus back to the table.
Chloe loved these exchanges. Or rather, she loved how Rav handled himself in them.
‘Oh.’ Verity looked confused. ‘But originally?’
‘I went to school in England, grew up in Switzerland, but my grandparents were from Pakistan. Where’s your family from? Verity is a French name, isn’t it?’
Chloe looked up from her plate. That wasn’t like him. Generally, Rav would say, ‘Ohh, you meant originally. My parents are originally from Zurich,’ and then laugh. He never usually felt the need to explain his skin colour. Back at university, he and Max were occasionally mistaken for brothers or cousins, and he loved the joke. At the time, Chloe had assumed it was because it amused him that people couldn’t tell the difference between Max, Italian and Greek, and him, Swiss-Pakistani. But she wondered now if his reaction might have been more about the delight of being conflated with the coolest person on campus.
Chloe watched a blush creep up Verity’s white neck. ‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘My mother is French.’
Rav smiled and started to ask her what part of France, whether she had grown up there, if she spoke French, if she was going to teach Max. A pleasant, fluent stream of questions that allowed Verity to talk about herself. She seemed to be unwinding under Rav’s attention. Had she been nervous about this evening? How many of Max’s friends had she been expected to cook for and entertain since they’d got engaged?
Max’s shoulder brushed hers. He smelled expensive and clean. His aftershave had changed, but the real smell of him was just the same. He tipped the rest of the bottle of white wine into her glass. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ he asked, quietly enough that only she could hear.
‘Sure,’ she said, dropping her gaze as if she had been caught looking at something she shouldn’t have been. ‘If you like that sort of thing.’
Max laughed. ‘Beautiful, clever, sweet. That sort of thing?’ Then, seeing her expression, he stopped. ‘She’s really great. You just need to get to know her a bit.’
‘How old is she?’ Chloe looked down into the bottom of her glass.
‘Twenty-three.’
Only a few years older than they had been last time they saw each other.
Chloe said nothing. Max would delight in her disapproval and ignore any advice. She would gain absolutely nothing by opening her mouth. Instead she pulled herself up, correcting her posture and painting a smile across her face.
‘She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,’ Max went on. ‘No drama, no tantrums, no getting drunk and turning into a nightmare.’
Was this deliberate? Her back teeth locked together, tensing her neck.
‘She’s just – I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to sound like a prick, but she’s a nice girl. No mess, no fuss. No skeletons in the closet. Just straightforward, down to earth.’
Chloe tried to catch Rav’s eye from across the room, to send him a Mayday signal, to drag the conversation back to all four of them, to break open this weirdly intimate trap Max had pulled her into.
‘I guess what I’m saying’ – Max smiled down at her, his dark curls shining – ‘is that she’s nothing like Zadie.’
Chloe opened her mouth to reply, but Max went on. ‘Look, I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, and after what happened we’re not supposed to say it, but she was awful. Remember how she used to get? My God, she was such a burden on you. She practically made you fail your first year.’
‘What?’ Rav asked, drawn away from his conversation with Verity.
‘Nothing,’ Chloe said hurriedly.
‘We were exchanging memories. Like the time that Chloe nearly got kicked out of uni in her first year.’
‘You what?’
She hadn’t ever told Rav about that. He would have blamed Zadie. Claimed she was a ‘bad influence’, that Chloe’s lack of dedication to her university work was somehow Zadie’s responsibility. Even now, she couldn’t bear the idea of him blaming Zadie. She wanted to remember Zadie as her beloved best friend, not as the tornado she could sometimes be.
‘He’s exaggerating. I got a formal warning for missing some work. Like a lot of people did in their first year. It wasn’t a big deal.�
�
Rav raised his eyebrows. ‘More than fifteen years together, and I’m still learning new things about you. I guess that’s something to be pleased about.’
‘I’m not sure learning new things about our other halves is always ideal,’ laughed Max. ‘Verity and I have a nice amnesty about anything I did before I was twenty-one.’
I bet you do, thought Chloe. She took another long drink from her glass. She looked around the table. Everyone was staring at her. Had she said that out loud?
‘Has everyone finished their starter?’ asked Verity as a hush settled across the table. There was a general murmur of agreement and she took the plates away to the kitchen. Chloe got up to help, starting to open cupboards, looking for a dishwasher.
‘Oh, you don’t need to do that,’ said Verity. ‘I’ve got someone coming in tomorrow. She’s wonderful, but she gets upset with me if I try and clear up. She has her own ways of doing things.’
How could someone so young be so completely at ease in a home like this? Chloe still got up an hour early on the day their cleaner came and wiped down all the surfaces, hid her vibrator under a nest of tights in her underwear drawer and gave the bathroom a quick bleach. She had to be at school by eight, so it usually meant getting up before six. Rav couldn’t understand why she did it. To him, having a cleaner meant that a person who didn’t really exist would arrive at their house while they weren’t there and they would return to a neat and tidy living space. To Chloe, the cleaner was completely and utterly real, having a painfully unvarnished view into their life, seeing what they ate and how much they drank, whether Rav had slept on the sofa after a row or if she had bothered cooking something elaborate. She still pretended to her mother that she didn’t have a cleaner. The prospect of explaining why – that they were both so busy – was too much. She couldn’t face the inevitable ‘But, darling, you’ve got lots of time, you’re only a teacher.’
‘So, how long have you lived together?’ Chloe asked as Verity took vegetables from the fridge and set about making a salad.
Verity shook her head. ‘We don’t.’ The little gold diamond hoops which punctured her ear lobes caught the light as they moved. She had only one hole in each ear. Zadie had had loads. Her first had been done at Selfridges in London, something which Chloe had been blown away by. The rest of them had been done by friends at school, copying The Parent Trap, people on beaches in Bali or hostels in Berlin. Zadie had done Chloe’s second set, drunk at Archer Crescent one night. She’d flicked a lighter over a needle while Chloe lay on the bed hoping she was drunk enough not to feel it and pretending she wasn’t worried about her mother’s reaction. She hadn’t wanted the piercing, really. Just something permanent on her body which came from Zadie.
‘My family are very traditional. I have a little place in Notting Hill. Of course, I stay here often, but I won’t live here until we’re married.’
‘My mum was horrified when I moved in with Rav. Said something about men not buying the cow if you give out the milk for free.’
Verity laughed. It was the first time Chloe had seen her do so in an unguarded fashion. She looked even younger. ‘I think my grandmother had a similar expression. Though, clearly, it’s not true. How long have you been married?’
‘Six years. We’d been together for nearly a decade before that, though. When I told my mother he’d proposed she said “Finally” so much she forgot to say “Congratulations”.’
Verity laughed again, then turned to look through the kitchen, down to the dining room. It was open plan, but Max and Rav were far enough away that, with the music on, they couldn’t quite make out what they were talking about.
‘They look very intense,’ said Verity. ‘I hope they’re not talking about business.’
‘They will be. Rav thinks Max is some kind of genius.’
‘You don’t?’
Chloe looked apologetic. Verity was not Zadie. She wouldn’t laugh at Max in the same way. In the way he needed to be laughed at. ‘I’m sure he’s very good at what he does.’
‘He is.’ Verity’s prim manner had returned. ‘Shall we go through?’
Rav wasn’t drunk, not properly. But he wore the expression he always got after a few glasses of wine, when he was in a really good mood and wanted to throw love out on to the people around him. If Chloe was the only one around when it happened, he would shower her with praise, telling her that she was making a difference to young people’s lives with her job, that she was more beautiful in her mid-thirties than she had been in her twenties, that she was funny and clever and would inevitably write an award-winning play one day. But tonight his megawatt love was aimed at Max.
‘So, go on,’ he said. ‘Tell us everything that’s happened since we last saw each other. I want to hear the Max Trentino success story.’
‘Oh, it’s not such a success. Plenty of cock-ups along the way.’
‘Go on, tell us. How’d you go from a rugby bum to’ – Rav spread his hands out, gesturing around the room – ‘all this?’
Max adopted a falsely modest expression, clearly looking forward to dominating the conversation. ‘So, I went off to play rugby in Oz – you knew that. Was there for a while. Dad’s dad was from Melbourne so I was able to play properly. Looked like it might go all the way, but then I bust my shoulder.’
‘You two don’t know any of this?’ Verity looked confused. ‘You’ve been friends for so long.’
There was a brief, tense silence. How was it possible that Max hadn’t explained anything before they got here? Perhaps he had assumed that Verity would be so uninterested she wouldn’t ask.
Chloe waited to see who would break the silence, determined that she wasn’t going to be the one to make things less awkward. She hadn’t wanted to come here in the first place, so she was damned if she was going to do anything to make Max’s life easier. Eventually, he said, ‘We lost touch when I went to Oz and we only reconnected recently. You have to remember, my love, we’re ancient. There wasn’t any Instagram when we were at university.’
Verity pursed her lips. What had she been told? Had Max led her to believe that they were all still best friends?
‘Anyway,’ Max went on, topping up everyone’s glass, Verity’s especially full, ‘one of the blokes I played with was in construction, and he brought me in for a bit of work. I got on with his old man, who ran the company, and we did rather well together. But my folks are getting on a bit and living over there seemed a bit much, so I told him that I wanted to move home and he asked me to set up the UK branch of the business.’
‘Bloody great for you,’ said Rav. ‘And how did you two meet?’
‘I’m an assistant to an interior designer. Max was speaking to my boss about working on one of his projects and I came to take notes in the meeting. He dropped his phone number into my lap when she wasn’t looking.’
‘Very smooth,’ said Rav.
‘Or sexual harassment, depending on how you look at it.’ Chloe heard herself say the words, and then tried to feel remorseful when Verity looked horrified.
‘I didn’t feel harassed at all. He picked me up from my flat in his beautiful car, and then on the way to dinner it ground to a halt. He pulled over and started fixing the engine right then and there, oil on his shirt and everything. I fell for him hook, line and sinker. He was just so together, so grown-up. All the boys I knew were such children compared to Max.’ Verity was the most animated Chloe had seen her all evening, lit up from the inside. Her stomach twisted in sympathy. The poor girl, so excited to tie her life to someone like Max.
‘The food is delicious,’ Chloe said, in lieu of something more meaningful. She wasn’t lying; it really was. There were roast aubergines with miso, butterflied leg of lamb and a huge, fresh salad.
‘It really is. We’ll have to get the recipe from you,’ said Rav.
Chloe snorted. ‘Oh, you’re going to cook this?’
‘No,’ said Rav. ‘I mean, I could try.’
‘That would be a fir
st.’
Rav looked hurt. Chloe shifted in her seat and tried to get a grip on herself. She could sense that being around Max was putting her in a terrible mood, bringing back all the anger all over again.
‘Sorry.’ Chloe smiled at Verity. ‘Bit of a running joke between Rav and me. He’s a really terrible cook.’
It was true. Rav was one of the worst cooks Chloe had ever encountered. His family had a maid when he was a child and he was at boarding school throughout his teens, so at no point had he learned to do anything other than wrap a chicken breast covered in packet spice mix in tin foil and bake it in the oven. He called it chicken à la Rav. Once, when they’d gone to Zurich to stay with his family, Chloe had made a joke about Rav’s cooking, or rather the lack of it. ‘I suppose we didn’t equip Ravinder with cooking skills. An oversight,’ his mother had said. Chloe had burned with shame for hours.
‘Excuse me,’ said Max, getting up from the table and laying his napkin over the dining chair. ‘The glasses are getting worryingly empty.’ Chloe watched him as he went to the far side of the kitchen.
‘I’ll go and get some more water,’ she said, picking up the jug.
‘I can do that,’ offered Verity.
‘No, no. You’ve been running around all evening. I’ll do it.’ This was Chloe’s chance to speak to Max alone and to find out how the hell he got that ring.
9
Then
A week after Max and Zadie’s party, Chloe was sitting at her desk in her room, rereading the same passage of Love’s Labour’s Lost for the third time. Zadie hadn’t been back since the day her parents had visited. All that remained of her was a trail of detritus from the bottom of her handbag – tobacco strands, glitter and dust – still strewn over the otherwise empty bedside table. Chloe couldn’t quite bring herself to clean it up. She stretched in her seat, wondering what time it was. It had to be at least ten. Maybe eleven. The spiteful clock on her bedside table claimed that it wasn’t even quite nine. Still at least another hour until she could reasonably go to bed, and nothing to distract her but her own cramped blue handwriting in the margins of her least favourite Shakespeare play. She could go downstairs to the bar; she knew that. Staying here was cutting off her nose to spite her face, as her mother would have so enjoyed saying. But after what had happened at Max and Zadie’s house she had entered a sort of self-imposed isolation. She’d turned her phone off, not checked her college email address and pretended not to be in when Lissy and the other girls from her corridor banged on the door and tried to tempt her to pizza and rom-coms in the common room.
