by Rebecca Reid
‘You don’t have any money,’ laughed Roo.
‘Not a topic for the table,’ Charlie muttered. ‘Politics, money and religion and all that.’
‘Oh come on, Charlie,’ Nancy chided. ‘We’re amongst friends. And I’m only saying how amazing your wife is.’
‘Nancy—’ Georgia started, not knowing what she was going to say next.
‘That’s beautiful,’ said Brett. ‘I wish I could help my parents out more. I try to send them something when I can.’ He leaned across and put his hand over Georgia’s. ‘Really. That’s amazing.’ He stared across the table, gripping her hand. Georgia was torn between abject mortification and another, more confusing feeling. A nice one. It was like she could feel his kindness seeping through into her skin.
‘And Lila is a stay-at-home mother,’ announced Charlie, shattering the quiet between them. ‘Aren’t you, Lila?’
Brett lifted his hands away in a light movement, leaving the warmth of his long fingers on her skin. She looked up. At the other side of the table, Charlie’s neck was red.
‘How many kids do you have?’ asked Brett.
‘One,’ said Roo, just as the word ‘two’ came from Lila’s lips.
Brett looked confused. He said nothing.
Georgia’s fingers slipped on her wine glass. Lila was pissed, yes, but not pissed enough to forget how many children she had.
Lila’s face was set on Roo’s. Georgia inched forward in her seat, trying to see Roo’s face, to see what expression he was making.
‘Don’t do this now, Lila,’ he said. His voice was quiet but inflexible.
‘Fuck you,’ came Lila’s reply.
Roo stood up. ‘I’m sorry, guys, my wife’s had a bit too much to drink. We’re going to step outside for a moment.’
He moved around the table and wrapped his hand around Lila’s forearm. God, she was thin. His thumb and index finger were circled around her entire bicep, easily.
‘I don’t need to go outside.’
‘Come on,’ Roo smiled, a smile which wasn’t convincing anyone.
‘I am not a child, Roo.’
‘Could have fooled me, the way you’re acting. Get up. Let’s go outside, you need to sober up. Sorry, everyone,’ he added, rolling his eyes.
‘I’m only trying to be honest,’ she slurred. ‘Why won’t you let me be honest?’
The silence around the table was painful. Georgia wished the music was back on, even at the volume Lila had had it.
Roo had got her to her feet and was leading her towards the French windows. The group averted their eyes, determinedly pretending that nothing was happening as Roo yanked the door open and stepped outside, like Lila was a naughty puppy who had pissed on the carpet. Looking up, unable to stop her curiosity, Georgia stared after them. The lights in the kitchen were too bright to be able to see out properly into the twilight. Georgia could make out Lila’s tiny figure slumped on the garden bench, and Roo’s bulk standing nearby, smoking.
‘Is she OK?’ asked Brett. ‘He seemed kind of rough with her.’
No one said anything.
‘Do either of you know what that’s about?’ asked Charlie, ignoring Brett.
Georgia parted her lips to say that she had no idea, but as she did so, Nancy spoke.
‘She had a miscarriage a few weeks ago.’
‘What?’ Georgia heard herself ask. ‘How do you know that?’
Nancy had been in Boston. Nancy and Lila didn’t even speak that much, a couple of times a month at the most. Georgia spoke to Lila every single day and she hadn’t said anything, nothing at all. Most days, anyway. Things had been patchy lately, but usually they were inseparable. Closer than Lila and Nancy. Far closer.
Nancy folded her napkin and placed it neatly on the table, next to her plate. ‘I don’t think it’s fair to discuss it without her here, but clearly she’s upset. I thought you knew.’
Should she say she had known? Could she pull it back from her expression of surprise – pretend that she was only blindsided by Nancy knowing? Probably not. Nancy would see straight through it. She’d probably interrogated Lila on the phone after she had got Georgia’s email, that would be how she’d found out.
‘When did she tell you?’ She felt the words fall from her mouth, slippery.
‘On Skype. Can you pass the water?’
Charlie passed the jug while Georgia sat, staring. ‘When did you Skype?’
Nancy twisted in her seat. She looked annoyed. ‘A week ago. Maybe ten days. I’m not sure. What does it matter?’
‘We never Skype.’
‘Well, when I get back we can start Skyping, if you like. Or I could go upstairs and Skype you from there, if you’re that bothered about it?’ Nancy smirked.
‘That’s not the point.’
Georgia knew she was being petulant. She was making a fool of herself in front of everyone. In front of Brett.
Would they talk about her later? She could see them lying in the smooth white bed in the guest room, rumpled from sex. ‘What was with your friend?’ Brett would say. And Nancy would talk about her. She’d keep her voice low, as if there was any risk of it carrying up two floors, and she would say that Georgia was jealous or paranoid or something equally damning. And then they’d laugh, and then they’d probably go and shower together, or slip into the bathrobes that hung on the back of the door and curl up to watch a film on the massive television concealed in the wardrobe, because their life hadn’t been spoiled by all the smudgy messiness that came with being here and dealing with everything.
It was so easy for Nancy. She got to be a good friend simply by picking up the phone or shipping care packages. Lila would go into raptures about the parcels of Kate Spade and Laura Mercier which arrived every month or so. She was just as soppy about post now as she had been at school. Stupid, when she could order anything she wanted and have it delivered.
All the times that Georgia had held Lila’s hair back while she was sick from boozing, or rubbed her feet when she was swollen with pregnancy, apparently meant nothing. Nor did helping to paint the nursery while Roo was away ‘on business’.
All those times she had pretended that she couldn’t smell the perfume on Roo’s shirt or acted as if she thought the hairs in their bed could definitely be Lila’s.
All useless.
It was clearly Nancy who she turned to for the important things. Nancy who had the inside track, leaving her to look stupid in front of everyone, like she was everyone’s least favourite friend.
Nancy stood up, placing her napkin on the chair. ‘I think we should get Lila to come back in and finish her food. She’s barely eaten anything.’
Georgia pressed her fingernails into her palm, willing herself not to scream. It was her house. Her food. Her dinner party. Nancy was a guest here. She should act like a guest. Not that she ever had.
She’d offered Nancy and Brett a bed for the weekend, thinking the offer would be declined. Nancy had never, ever stayed with her. She couldn’t bear to be on the back foot. Not knowing where the glasses were or what time breakfast would be served was like a kind of torture to her. As soon as she turned sixteen, after a succession of parties where they had frozen all night on the floor of a marquee, or in the back of someone else’s car, Nancy made an announcement. She would no longer be sleeping anywhere that wasn’t her own bed, either at school or at home. She would call a taxi to any field, warehouse or suburban home where they had found themselves partying, charging hundreds of pounds of taxi fares to her parents’ account. They’d never even ask why. There was a sense of serenity, the way that she would climb into the heated people carrier and let it sail her back to the safety of her own bed. There was nothing too distant or scary or big that she wouldn’t be able to dial a number and rescue herself from. So the acceptance of the offer to stay the night had come as a surprise. An unwelcome one. Georgia could already feel the fluster rising as she imagined making Brett breakfast tomorrow morning. If she wore make-up, Nancy would comm
ent on how much of an effort she’d made. If she didn’t, she’d ask if she was tired. Tiny needle-pointed comments which on their own sounded ridiculous. But those things could add up.
Georgia took a breath, composing herself. It would be over soon. In thirty-six hours Nancy and Brett would be going and everything would be normal again. A few more hours of playing nice. That was it.
‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘But I think we should give them a few minutes to sort things out.’
‘I’ll go and see if they’re ready to come in.’
‘We should probably—’ she started, but Nancy was already opening the glass door.
‘They won’t want to come in,’ she said, to no one in particular, crossing the kitchen to the huge oven.
To her surprise, Charlie followed her to the other side of the kitchen.
‘Why did we do this?’ she asked him, sotto voce. ‘Nance is watching my every move, Lila is dribbling over Brett. Roo looks like murder. It’s a car crash.’ She buried her head in Charlie’s shoulder and waited for him to comfort her, to praise her hostessing skills and say that it would be fine. But nothing came. He said nothing. On the subject of her friends, he had become cruelly reticent over time. ‘You do realize,’ he had said to her once, years ago, ‘that you are actually supposed to like your friends?’
It had been a stupid thing to say. Georgia had swapped her focus to the bottom of her gin and tonic and stopped talking. Clearly her stories about her friends were making him think she was a bitch. The truth was, she knew that other people claimed to like their friends. But they, Georgia and Lila and Nancy, were different. Perhaps it was all the years of school or the secret that bonded them together, or maybe it was just something in their souls. In Lila’s wedding vows she had used an Emily Brontë quote: ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’ Georgia had stood by the altar with a frozen smile, thinking that Roo’s soul couldn’t have been made of anything more different from Lila’s. His was made from the flannel of his school trousers, his family’s tartan, soaked in whisky and self-love. It was a selfish, indulgent fabric. The same stuff that all the boys they knew were made of.
Lila’s soul was different. She might look like every other Arabella or India they had been at school with, but inside she was different. Roo would have been so much happier with any of the other well-mannered blondes he’d dated before her. But then, how was he supposed to know that he wasn’t committing to someone sweet and unquestioning who would have walked two steps behind him for the rest of forever and never embarrass him at work events? Lila used to be as good at putting on a show as she and Nancy were.
Georgia scanned the plates which Charlie had placed on one of the counters, working out how much of their food each person had left. The boys had mostly finished. Nancy and Lila’s plates were almost untouched.
Georgia pulled away from Charlie’s hug. ‘People will think there’s something to be upset about,’ she said, excusing herself.
‘I’ve never met anyone who’s so bothered about what other people think of them,’ said Charlie. His tone was light but the words were still unquestionably nasty. Georgia looked across the room, to see Nancy closing the French windows behind her.
‘They’ll only be a minute,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘Lila’s a bit emotional, which is understandable given everything that she’s been through.’
‘Yes, you have,’ said Georgia to Charlie, under her breath. ‘I’m just popping to the loo before we sit back down.’
Georgia never used the downstairs toilet. Loo. Charlie always winced when she forgot and called it the toilet. The bathroom on the first floor was far nicer. She locked the door behind her, turning the pretty brass key in the lock, and sat down on the loo, taking a deep breath. Everything was fine. Well, it wasn’t, but everything was going to be. She inspected the white paper after she wiped herself, not because she was expecting to see anything but because it had become habit. She had to know where she was in her cycle at all times, writing down the dates, practically the times of every single bleed. She couldn’t think about that tonight. Her head was far too full of Lila and Nancy and trying to decode the secret meaning behind every single thing either of them said. Did normal people live like this? Did they spend their lives trying to work out where the hidden insult was in every sentence their friends spoke? Probably not. But then, they weren’t like ordinary friends.
Washing her hands, Georgia realized how pink her face was. It was the wine, and the hormones. Hot flushes were just one of the myriad joyful side effects she had to suffer through if she wanted to get pregnant. For the millionth time it struck her how wretchedly unfair it was that some people could do this on their own, without drugs and side effects and suffering. Without help. The heat swelled up inside her, it felt like it was stretching her skin. Desperately she grappled for the catch on the window, pushing it up and drinking in the cold air.
‘… inside in a minute?’ Georgia caught the tail end of a sentence. It was Nancy’s voice.
‘Fine,’ Roo called back. ‘Give us a couple of minutes – Lila was feeling a bit too hot.’
The door slammed. Georgia winced, wishing Nancy would be gentler with the door – the handles were antique.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re playing at?’ said Roo. Now that Nancy had gone, his tone had changed from cheerful to absolute ice. Leaning forward, Georgia looked over the windowsill. Lila had her arms crossed over her chest. She was shivering and looking past Roo, into the distance. A cigarette was lit in one hand, but she seemed to have forgotten that it was there, leaving it burning. To her horror, Georgia watched Roo grab Lila’s tiny arm in his fist and shake her. ‘Lila? Answer me,’ he said, his face centimetres from hers.
Georgia pulled the window shut, slowly and silently. She felt sick. She knew she had seen something that she wasn’t supposed to see, something that wasn’t for her. What happened between Lila and Roo was none of her business. It wasn’t hers to fix.
Looking in the mirror, Georgia was relieved to see that the pinkness was gone from her face. She plucked a Chanel lipstick from the drawer of spare make-up, dusted powder over the bridge of her nose and smiled at her reflection in the window. There, she thought. Much better.
THEN
Nancy
‘Did you call your parents?’ Nancy asked, as Georgia closed the door behind her. Nancy and Lila were sitting on Nancy’s bed, and Nancy was painting her toenails a bright coral colour. This room, the one they had been condemned to, was a floor below the triple dorm, and faced the wrong way, with a view of the school instead of across the fields. But at least Nancy was with Georgia. She could hardly imagine the stress, the humiliation of having to sleep and undress and live in front of a near stranger.
Lila’s fate – sleeping in the triple dorm, the room that they’d been dreaming of, that they’d planned decorations for – was much worse. Sharing it with Heidi Bart and Jenny McGuckin was the ultimate insult. ‘Couldn’t I have at least been stuck with someone normal?’ Lila whined every evening when it was time to go back to her room. The girls had tried to comfort her, seeing the redness in her cheeks and her hands balled into fists. They had told her that the room allocation had been a misunderstanding, that Jenny and Heidi would swap for the double room and that everything would go back to normal. Just as it should.
But Georgia had insisted on trying to make the double room look nice, tearing pages from Vogue and sticking them to the wall, blu-tacking fairy lights to the noticeboard and putting her blue-checked blankets on both beds. Nancy had tried to be nice about it all, but hadn’t been able to manage it. She had told Georgia that her efforts were pointless and unfair to Lila. Anyway, once their parents called Miss Brandon they’d be moving dorm in a matter of hours, and then they’d have to pack up and unpack all over again.
Nancy looked up from her toenails and screwed the brush back into the bottle. Georgia’s face was flushed and swollen.
‘What’s wrong?’
<
br /> ‘We’re stuck here every weekend up until half-term.’
‘She’s barred us?’ Nancy’s voice dripped with disdain. ‘No one gets barred in the sixth form.’
Georgia nodded.
Lila got up from the bed, her face ashen. ‘You’re joking?’
Georgia shook her head. ‘She rang our parents and told them, and we’re barred, we can’t go out at all, and’ – Georgia’s voice started to wobble – ‘it’s Jamie’s last weekend, next weekend.’
Pity stirred in Nancy’s chest. Siblings seemed like a strange thing to have, and an even stranger thing to be bothered about, but Georgia had always been soppy about her older brothers. She couldn’t even have the news on in the common room in case she heard about some accident at sea and convinced herself that Jamie had been involved.
Lila was tangling her arms around Georgia and stroking her hair. Should Nancy join them? Something about their intimacy was off-putting.
‘You’re not seriously saying that they’re going to make you stay in next weekend and miss Jamie?’
Georgia nodded.
‘He’s going to be away for months. He’s on a fucking submarine. That’s ridiculous. Have your parents explained?’
‘They asked if I could make up the weekend after half-term, and go home next weekend, so that I could see him and say goodbye and everything, and she said no. Mummy’s furious. They said’ – she broke off to sniff – ‘that I’ve ruined his last weekend at home.’
‘That cunt.’ Lila knew how much it would have taken to get Georgia’s parents to ask the school to make an exception. Her family worshipped Fairbridge Hall, they acted like it was fucking Hogwarts.
‘Tell your mum to ring Mrs Easton,’ said Lila, ‘she’ll overrule the new bitch.’
Georgia shook her head. ‘My mum was so nervous even to talk to Miss Brandon. There’s no way she’d ask Mrs Easton.’
Nancy got to her feet. It was too much. Georgia’s mother shouldn’t have been told no, even if she didn’t exactly pay the fees. That wasn’t how things worked. There was a hierarchy and parents, even scholarship students’ parents, came above teachers. Miss Brandon needed to learn how things were done here.
