by Rebecca Reid
As she waited for Rav to pick up, the inconvenient realization that this would be the first time they’d spoken since sleeping together intruded on her thoughts. She batted it away.
‘Rav,’ she gabbled, ‘are you at rugby? I need Max to come home, right now. It’s Zadie, I don’t know if she’s okay and she doesn’t want me to call an ambulance.’
‘Fuck, okay. We’re on our way.’
Chloe held Zadie upright, trying not to gag at the smell of vomit as Zadie’s damp, sick-sodden hair trailed over her. She held a glass of water from Max’s side of the bed up to Zadie’s lips, trying to get her to drink, but it was too difficult to balance her body and the glass. Zadie slipped and the water tipped down her front, staining the pale pink nightdress a darker pink.
It was impossible to tell how long it took Rav and Max to arrive, but they came bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Max took Zadie in his arms, twisted her heavy sheet of dirty hair away from her face and put his face level with hers. ‘Baby, it’s me. Tell me everything you’ve eaten and drunk in the last six hours or I’m calling Astrid and Bob.’
Zadie shuddered into a waking state and Max gestured for Chloe and Rav to leave. They went single file down the stairs until they reached the kitchen, which was covered in used glasses and plates. Without saying anything, Rav ran a sink of hot, soapy water, found some washing-up gloves under the sink and began to clean the dishes. Chloe found a tea towel in a drawer, presumably laundered by their long-suffering cleaner, and started to dry.
For a while they worked in silence, but sometime around the twentieth glass, Rav broke the silence.
‘You didn’t text me.’
‘The first time we met you didn’t text me.’
‘We didn’t have sex the first time we met.’
‘True.’
‘Was I that bad of a shag?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t got anything to compare you to.’
Rav laughed. ‘True.’
‘Do you think she’s going to be okay?’
‘I don’t know.’
It seemed surprising that Rav hadn’t lied, hadn’t said that of course she was going to be completely, totally, utterly fine.
‘I wanted to call an ambulance, but she wouldn’t let me.’
‘From what Max says, I think it’s quite a complicated situation.’
‘Max talks to you about that stuff?’
Rav nodded, his eyes still on the washing-up bowl. ‘A bit. Only lately. He’s under lots of pressure with rugby and this Australia deal. I think he’s having a tough time.’
‘She is, too.’
Rav’s face suggested that he wasn’t convinced. Chloe opened her mouth to argue but was distracted by Max’s arrival in the kitchen. ‘She’s okay,’ he said. ‘Swears blind it was just drinking.’
‘On her own? On a Wednesday afternoon?’ said Rav. ‘Mate, I don’t think that sounds like good news.’
Max shrugged. ‘If I tell her parents, she’ll be straight back to rehab.’
Chloe’s lips were moving to ask, Back?, but something stopped her. Zadie hadn’t ever mentioned rehab. She’d said nothing about it in all of the hundreds of hours they had spent talking about their mothers and their families and the things they were going to do differently when they were adults. Why not? Why hadn’t she trusted Chloe enough to tell her about it?
‘I know you’re not staying over so much,’ said Max, ‘but is there any chance you’d consider staying here this evening? She’s asking for you.’
‘Of course.’
Chloe took Zadie a cup of Earl Grey, gently tapping on the bedroom door before entering. She was propped up on a sea of pillows, her hair clean and damp, tied in a neat knot at the back of her head. She wore one of Max’s long-sleeved T-shirts.
‘Hey,’ Chloe whispered, not sure why she was keeping her voice so low. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’m okay. You didn’t need to bring me tea.’
‘I’ll drink it myself, then.’
‘Don’t you dare.’
Chloe sat at the far end of the bed, leaning her weight on the baseboard and studying Zadie. Max had done an impressive job. Dirty sheets stripped, Zadie showered and changed, awake and fully responsive. It seemed as if he had probably done this before.
‘Are you okay?’ Chloe ventured after a little while. ‘What happened?’
‘It was stupid. I forgot that some of the pills they like me to take don’t mix so well with drinking. I was bored, I had a few drinks, got all woozy, went to bed, got sick.’
‘You gave me a scare.’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’m wretched like that.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Will you stay tonight? Max has to go to a rugby social. He can’t miss it or he’ll lose out on some captain thing. I don’t want to be on my own.’
‘Of course.’
‘And maybe for a few days?’
Chloe did some quick mental arithmetic, sketching out her essay deadlines on an imaginary calendar. ‘Of course I will,’ she said. ‘But we have to do some work as well has having fun, okay?’
That evening, Chloe found some pasta in the cupboard and a block of cheese in the fridge. She set about making them macaroni cheese. Apart from the ridiculous house and everything that had happened earlier that day, with the telly on in the background and the steam on the windows, it almost felt to Chloe as if she were living with normal housemates.
‘I think you’re the first person ever to use our oven,’ said Max as he picked a generous pinch of cheese from her chopping board. ‘I’m heading out now. Are you sure you’re okay to stay with her?’
‘I wish I could say that surprised me. We’ll be fine – go, have fun.’
‘Thanks for earlier, by the way.’
‘It’s okay.’ She paused, unsure how to ask more questions without seeming as if she was asking more questions. ‘It seemed like you’d done that before.’
Max rolled his eyes. ‘Many, many times.’
‘She does that a lot?’
‘Yep.’
Chloe stirred the sauce, grateful for something to do with her hands. ‘I hope you didn’t mind that I called Rav. I couldn’t think of any other way to get hold of you.’
‘Not at all. He drove me here in about fifteen seconds. Probably got a ticket coming his way, poor bastard.’
‘You like him?’
‘Rav?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s a sound bloke. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. We had a bit of a thing. But Zadie seemed to think he wasn’t a good guy. She didn’t think we should see each other.’
Max caught her elbow. ‘Well, if my opinion matters, you could do a lot worse than him. Don’t listen to Zadie too much. The thing you need to remember about her is that she really doesn’t like sharing her toys.’
Zadie
‘Is it bad,’ asked Max as he threw his clothes into the laundry basket and celebrated making the shot, ‘that I really enjoyed this evening?’
Every muscle in Zadie’s body felt tight. She ran her fingernails along her forearm, telling herself to be careful, to be gentle, not to scratch because, once she started scratching, it was hard to stop. ‘You did?’
‘I really did. The whole telly and food and not doing anything thing. It’s nice to do that when you’re not nursing a screaming hangover.’
Zadie curled underneath Max’s arm and rested her head on his chest. ‘I know what you mean. Kind of boring, but in a nice way.’
‘A really nice way. I think Chloe liked it, too. I worry about her sometimes.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know, that we might be corrupting her. She was such a cute little thing when you first started hanging out, and now she’s got that look that all your schoolfriends had, like she’s probably packing a gram and would know where to buy a gun.’
Zadie laughed. ‘She’s still cute. She likes the parties, too.’
‘We all like the parties. But there’s a
difference between throwing a party every now and again and drinking three bottles of champagne and smoking ten thousand fags on a school night. We need to slow down.’
‘Totally.’ Zadie raised the glass of water from her bedside table. ‘Here’s to a new era of clean living.’
Max always fell asleep perfectly, within moments of his head hitting the pillow. Maybe it was all the running around he did during the day. But Zadie waited anyway, watching his chest falling in the half-light, waiting until he was completely, totally still. Then she put her feet on the cold floor and moved downstairs silently, without putting on any of the lights.
She sat on the floor of the kitchen, her back against the island, so that even if Max came down he wouldn’t see her with the bottle of wine gripped between her hands. She poured a glass carefully, almost to the top, telling herself that it was normal to struggle to sleep without a drink. Lots of people drank a glass of wine every evening. Two glasses. Three. Her parents drank most nights, and they were grown-ups. And it was wine. Not vodka or gin or something hard like that. She stared at the bottle for a little while, watching the beads of condensation slip down the glass.
Other people could do this. Other people didn’t have a thread from their chest connecting them to the nearest alcoholic drink, yanking and pulling until the urge was satiated. She stared at the glass a little longer, thinking about Max sleeping upstairs, so proud of her for taking a night off. If he came down and saw her now, he would be so horrified. Disgusted. He still saw her as the teenage girl he had fallen in love with at school, the one all his friends had been jealous he was dating. But they both knew that living together, spending every second of every day together, had stripped away the air of mystery that had always hung between them. Without the enemy of their parents or their schools, without her secretive weekend trips to stay with him while pretending that she was with her girlfriends, it was different. The sort of different that some people probably liked. Quieter. Gentler. More normal. But it made Zadie feel as if the air was constricting around her. As if she couldn’t really move.
Would Max be happier with someone else? Zadie had asked herself that question a lot recently. Whenever she went for a long, rainy walk or took a scalding-hot bath, she tried on the idea in her mind. Chloe and Max, as a couple. His parents would like Chloe. She would be impressed by them. And she would be able to sit next to him on the sofa and watch a film and enjoy being close to him without the constant screaming, pounding need for a drink, without feeling that the house was empty and flat and pointless without people inside it.
But Max didn’t belong to Chloe. He belonged to her.
She stood up. The glass was still on the floor. Still untouched. She picked it up gingerly, as if it were hot, and tipped it into the sink. Then, elated with her own triumph, she ran the tap, washing away every last drop so that there was nothing left in the sink.
She had done it.
She got into bed with Max and wrapped herself around his limbs. He emitted an astonishing amount of body heat. She breathed in his smell and, for the first time in as long as she could remember, fell into a warm, heavy, sober slumber.
22
Now
A few days later, Chloe woke up with a sense of purpose and realized that today was going to be the day.
She had been telling herself that she hadn’t acted yet because she was thinking about what to do next. Because she was planning. But she knew it wasn’t true. The truth was, she liked turning the plan over in her head. She liked the feeling that it was going to happen soon, but not quite yet. When she lay awake at night she had taken to planning it, trying on different scenarios, working out different outcomes. Again, she told herself she was just being careful. Thorough. Thoughtful. But it wasn’t just that. She was allowing herself dozens of different types of revenge.
But Rav would be home in a couple of days. So it had to be soon. Or rather, it had to be now.
She pressed Max’s name on her phone display. He didn’t pick up. So she pressed it again. Once again, nothing. How predictable that his claims of wanting her back in his life only lasted until he got her knickers off. She googled his company and found his office number.
‘Max Trentino’s office,’ said an efficient voice at the end of the line.
‘Could I speak with Max, please?’
‘May I ask who is calling?’
‘It’s Verity, his fiancée.’
‘Of course. Thank you for holding.’
The line went muffled for a moment and then Max’s voice sounded, distant, as if he were on speaker phone. ‘Hello, trouble. Sorry I was so late last night. Did you miss me?’
‘It’s Chloe.’
The silence told Chloe everything she needed to know.
‘Hi, hi. Sorry I didn’t pick up before. I’m about to go into this huge meeting and I really can’t afford to fuck it up. Everything all right?’
‘Meet me for lunch.’
Max sighed. ‘Oh, Coco, I’m so sorry. Look, I should have been far clearer the other night. I should have made you realize that it was only going to be a one-off thing. You love Rav, I love Verity – it was just two old friends having a bit of fun. Putting out an old flame. Finishing what we almost started. You get that, right?’
‘I think you should meet me for lunch.’
Max went quiet for a moment. ‘I’ve got a very busy day.’
‘You’re really, really, going to regret it if you don’t.’
‘Fine.’ The warmth was gone from Max’s voice, stripped back to the tone she’d heard him use with bar staff back in the day. ‘I’ve got half an hour.’
‘That’s all I need. Meet me at Alessandro’s at one.’
One of Rav’s rugby friends had made a joke once that a team mate’s girlfriend was the ‘type of girl you only took to Alessandro’s’, and when Chloe had asked Rav about it later he’d explained that it was a famous restaurant in the City where you took women who you weren’t serious about, or didn’t want to be seen with. It was adjacent to several rather seedy hotels, therefore perfect for a rapid lunch and fuck if you were the sort of man who really did love his wife and didn’t want to get caught and lose the country house and the kids but couldn’t resist sticking it to a twenty-two-year-old secretary. Chloe ordered a bottle of fizzy water.
Max arrived five minutes late, looking harassed.
‘I’ll have an espresso,’ he said to the waiter, without looking at him.
Chloe could see why this place was popular. The booths were padded and high-backed, gloriously private.
‘What’s wrong?’
Chloe took a deep breath. Where was she supposed to start with this?
‘I want you to admit what you did to Zadie on the night of your twenty-first birthday. And I want you to tell me why.’
Max started to get up. ‘I am not sitting here to listen to this nonsense again.’
‘Don’t you want to hear what I’m proposing?’
‘Proposing? What the fuck are you talking about?’ He sat back down, looking increasingly angry. His coffee arrived and he snatched it off the saucer without thanking the girl who brought it.
‘Admit that you did it. Tell me. Tell her parents. Tell anyone who asks you. Otherwise, I am going to make you sorry.’
Chloe had worried that she would feel foolish doing this, that she lacked the composure it would require. But she was wrong. She had everything she needed right here. Watching Max’s face twist between worry and disbelief was gratifying beyond imagining.
‘How are you planning to do that?’ he asked. He sounded as if he was wrestling to keep his tone light.
‘You’re going to tell Zadie’s family what you did, and apologize, and take all the consequences. Otherwise, I’m going to tell Verity that we slept together.’
Max smiled, and Chloe tried to hold her nerve. Why didn’t he seem worried? When she had played this over and over in her head, he had been falling over himself to do as she asked. Instead, he was smirking. Refill
ing his water glass as if this really were a casual lunch between friends. ‘She won’t believe you. You don’t think anyone else has tried this on me before?’
A deep breath. Of course he wasn’t worried. He didn’t realize she had proof. She took out her phone, forcing herself to seem like she was confident, like her heart wasn’t thumping almost audibly.
‘I’m sure she would believe me. Especially given that I have evidence.’ She showed him the pictures, flicking through a little slideshow on her phone. She paused, trying to read his expression. ‘And then there’s the text you sent me that night.’
Max raised an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t text you.’
She showed him the text. ‘You did. Or rather, I did, from your phone. While you were sleeping. But there’s really no way to prove that, is there?’
Chloe held up her phone, close enough to Max’s face that he could read what she had written. But still, he didn’t look scared. He met her stare with a cool, detached, almost amused expression. ‘Okay,’ he said.
Chloe waited for him to say more, but nothing came. ‘Okay?’
‘Tell her.’
She choked on her water. The indignity of it burned. ‘You don’t care if your fiancée leaves you?’
Another infuriating, gut-twisting smirk from Max. ‘She won’t leave. She’s French. She doesn’t care about little side flings. Besides, we’re not even married yet.’
Anger had made Chloe’s blood so thick she could feel it moving around her body. His smile, his face, his whole demeanour. All she wanted was to take the fork on the table and sink it straight into the back of the hand he was so casually resting there. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. He was supposed to panic. He was supposed to see his engagement breaking up, Verity leaving him and his life crashing down, and fall to pieces. But, of course, he wasn’t. How could she have been so stupid? That might be what a normal person would do, but Max wasn’t normal. Max never lost anything. Max always had exactly what he wanted, whenever he wanted it. He had an unshakeable sense that things would work out his way, because they always did. She wanted to hurt him. She wanted to see him bleed.
