by Rebecca Reid
Georgia saw his hand twitch at his side – would he hit her? She screwed up her face.
‘Don’t flinch,’ he snapped. ‘I didn’t do anything – I would never do anything – I wouldn’t – I would never do that.’
Georgia dropped her gaze, staring at the floorboards. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I know you wouldn’t.’
It was true: he wouldn’t. He couldn’t risk the whispers. If anyone ever suspected that he’d hit her, it would end his career. She considered telling him that, but thought better of it. He had never laid a finger on her. He wasn’t like that. She was letting her suspicions about his father colour her thinking. That wasn’t fair. People didn’t have to become their parents. God knows she was aware of that.
‘Do you understand why I’m upset?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Georgia said, thinking of the ovulation sticks upstairs.
‘So why did you do it?’
There was no answer to that question. Not when she’d spent their entire relationship hiding it from him. It wasn’t possible to give him a single strand. If she plucked one out, the entire thing would unravel. She allowed herself a moment – one tiny one – to think what it would be like to tell him everything that had happened at school. They’d go for a long country walk and she’d tell him the story and he would hold her and tell her that it didn’t matter, that she deserved to be happy, that she was safe.
‘If anyone found out that someone had been doing drugs in this house, it could end my career.’ His voice punctured her thoughts, dragging her away from her honesty fantasy.
‘How could anyone find out?’ she heard herself retort.
‘One picture, one stupid comment, it happens all the time. You have no idea how many people I’ve seen lose their careers over this stuff, over stupid little mistakes.’
‘You used to do it all the time!’
‘Used to,’ he snapped. ‘We’re adults, Georgia. We’re having a fucking dinner party. You shouldn’t need to put that stuff up your nose at a dinner party. I expect that kind of behaviour from Lila, and Christ knows what Nancy gets up to, but not from you. You’re not like that.’
‘Maybe I am like that,’ she replied. She should stop. She should apologize and promise never to do it again. She should tell him that she hadn’t done it for ages, she didn’t need it. She was just tired and nervous and looking for something to take the edge off. And if she’d tried to stop Lila, she might have left, or caused a scene. But she couldn’t force her lips to make conciliatory words.
Georgia never fought with Charlie. Never. She let him have literally anything he wanted. Sex when she was tired and aching and they weren’t supposed to on the IVF cycle. Late nights. Parties. People over to dinner who patronized or ignored her. Making him happy was her life’s work. She was the scaffolding around his edifice. She was his mother and PA and courtesan. She looked up at him through her eyelashes and saw his hurt, confused face. Her entire existence had been about supporting him for as long as they had been together and now here she was, acting as if she didn’t care. He must be so confused. So worried. She reached her arm out and ran her fingers over his chest. It wasn’t huge and broad like Brett’s but it was nice. And it was hers.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘Really.’
‘It’s OK,’ he replied. Georgia’s chest untightened. He was going to forgive her. It was going to be OK.
‘I just don’t understand why you would do it. How do you ever expect to get pregnant if you go around doing stupid things like that?’
Georgia’s head snapped up. The kitchen door had clicked shut. Someone had been there. Nancy or Lila? Which would be worse?
‘Who was that?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘There was someone by the door – someone was listening to us.’
Charlie sighed. ‘Stop it.’
‘There was, Charlie, I saw them,’ she replied, her voice rising.
He shook his head, taking a step away from her. ‘I think it’s the drugs, the hormones,’ he clarified. ‘They make you paranoid.’
‘I’m not paranoid,’ she replied, louder and higher than she’d intended.
He looked worried again. ‘Look, even if there was someone, it doesn’t matter. It’s not a big deal.’
‘Of course it’s a big deal,’ she snapped. She had forgotten to modulate her tone. Charlie looked like she’d hit him.
‘Why do you care?’ he asked. ‘Why does it matter?’
Georgia sighed. There was no way to explain.
‘Even if someone was there, they might not have heard anything,’ Charlie ventured.
Georgia nodded. ‘You’re right. Sorry.’ She stepped on to her tiptoes to kiss his lips. He didn’t turn away, but he hardly returned the kiss either. ‘I’ll make it up to you. I promise.’ Steadying herself she ran her hand over his crotch. ‘You remember what coke does to me?’
That part, at least, was true. When they were younger, when partying had been part of their lives, Charlie had loved it when she got high. He’d never tell her that she was boring, that he didn’t like the way she lay quietly and enjoyed gentle waves of pleasure when they had sex. But she knew. Maybe it was the lack of inhibitions or maybe it was the chemicals, but inevitably if she did drugs they’d end up having clumsy, urgent sex in a loo or against a wall.
Not any more, obviously. The idea of having sex right now with her dry throat and feeling of creeping horror that it might have been Nancy, that she might have heard, that she might know about the IVF, made her feel ashen inside. But Charlie was so simple and it was easy, blissfully easy to distract him and to defuse his anger.
Charlie smiled. He pushed a strand of hair away from her face and dropped a kiss on her forehead.
‘Sorry, baby,’ she simpered. The words burned her tongue. She didn’t usually mind this game – letting Charlie feel like the big man, letting him think she was sorry for whatever she might have done to irk him – but today, with everything so fragile and breakable and teetering on the edge of smashing, it was almost impossible to push the words through her lips.
‘But I love you anyway,’ he said.
‘I love you too.’
THEN
Lila
Miss Brandon, Lila decided, was even more irritating outside of school. She had announced that they would be sitting in their assigned groups on the bus in order to promote ‘team bonding’ from the outset. When she’d noticed Sophie and Lauren sharing a set of iPod headphones at the back of the bus, she had confiscated the iPod. Lauren had rolled her eyes and Lila had been able to feel Nancy’s excitement at the prospect of another ally until music burst out of the speakers of the coach. ‘Now we can all listen,’ said Miss Brandon, turning the volume up. Everyone, apart from Nancy, Lila and Georgia joined in, screaming Britney at the top of their lungs. How could anyone be that happy after seven hours on a bus and the prospect of sleeping outdoors in a rainstorm?
To make things even worse, Heidi had plonked herself next to Lila on the bus that morning, looking cheerful. Lila had spent most of the journey resting her forehead on the cool window, watching the roads sprint past her and wishing she were anywhere else in the world. Georgia and Nancy had ended up across the coach aisle from each other. She wondered what they were talking about, as Heidi sang the wrong words to the final chorus of ‘American Pie’. How was anyone supposed to survive this? It was literal, honest to God torture. She thought longingly of her phone, hidden in a pair of socks in her rucksack. Last time they’d stopped for a loo break she should have rung Clarissa and forced her to fake an emergency. She could be halfway to London by now, where her dad had just got Sky Plus.
‘Here we are,’ came Brandon’s husky voice. The bus pulled into a lay-by at the side of the road. Great. Absolutely fucking great. The sky was grey. The landscape was grey. Everyone’s skin looked grey under the bus’s fluorescent lighting. There was no point in any of this. It wasn’t even going to look good on her art school application. I
f anything, she was sure they’d take one look and ask what kind of tragic loser went walking in Scotland for a weekend and then acted like it was an achievement.
‘Come on!’ said Heidi, who was already standing up and pulling her enormous rucksack down from the overhead locker. ‘Hurry up!’
Miss Brandon had insisted that they wear their games kit, despite the fact that there was absolutely no reason for it. This entire thing would be about fifteen per cent less agonizing if she were at least able to do it in her own clothes. Standing in a line at the side of the road, Lila tried to quash the embarrassment of it all. To add insult to injury, Brandon had performed a spot check on their packing before they’d left. The sheer venom from Nancy’s eyes when Brandon had made her surrender a tube of Eight Hour Cream and a silk eye mask would have melted a lesser woman. At least they were well rehearsed in hiding real contraband. The booze, cigarettes and the coke that Nancy had scored from some guy in the village were all safely hidden and distributed between their bags. Thank God. There would be no getting through this hell without that.
The excitement on Heidi’s face was disgusting. ‘Look at it, Cammy!’ she said, spinning around. ‘It’s like being in a film!’
It was not like being in a film. It was like being in a field. A field full of cow shit.
‘Right, guys,’ came Miss Brandon’s voice. ‘Can you all gather round for a moment?’
The girls, almost fifty of them, shuffled into a semi-circle around the three teachers.
‘You know the plan,’ said Miss Brandon, flashing her bright white teeth. ‘But just in case anyone was texting their boyfriend rather than listening to me – I’m looking at you, Katie,’ she was doing an enormous smile and everyone was giggling.
Why was Miss Brandon like this? Why did she so badly want to be everyone’s friend? And why was anyone buying it? Couldn’t they tell that behind all the jokes about boyfriends and decent clothes she was a massive bitch?
Miss Brandon went on, her bouncy red ponytail swinging. ‘We’ve got the green team, the red team and the blue team, and each of those teams is divided into three groups: A, B and C. Green team, I’ll be following your route.’ She held up a map. ‘Blue side, you’ll be followed by Miss Bush.’ She gestured at dumpy Miss Bush, who clearly signed up to assist because she had no other weekend plans. ‘And Mrs West will follow the red team. We’ll give you your space, but we’ll be nearby if anything goes wrong.
‘You’ve each got a slightly different route on the map, but you’ll all end up at the mountain.’ Miss Brandon pointed across the expanse of land at an ugly chunk of brown, poking out of the ground.
‘The idea is that you climb to the first base – it’s really clear when you get there – plant a flag and come back down. Then make your way back to your team campsite. Obviously, I don’t need to tell you not to go any higher than first base, because you haven’t got climbing equipment and none of you are stupid. Whichever side gets all of their groups back to their campsite first is the winner. Everyone got it?’
There was a murmur of assent. Lila looked up. The sky was a weird yellow colour, like a bruise. ‘Oh,’ Miss Brandon called out, ‘phone signal can be a bit patchy out here, so the nearest payphone is also marked on your maps.’
The expanse of land lay rudely open in front of them. Lila realized for the first time how it was possible for a person to be afraid of open spaces. It was too big. There was too much sky and too much horizon. Something about the whole landscape was weirdly foreboding. She wanted to go home.
‘You’ll need these,’ said Miss Brandon as she handed Nancy’s group their maps. Lila wondered whether Brandon had put Nancy with her group out of spite. She was at least a head taller than every other girl she’d been teamed with – Laura Sullivan, Katie Leyland and Sophie Speck. Usually the longness and slimness made her look like a model, but next to those girls she looked freakish. Like Gulliver. On the upside, Laura, Katie and Sophie were as beige as a person could be. Talking them into the plan would be easy.
Georgia’s job would be a piece of piss too. She had two of the Chinese girls, Mengwen and Ju, who had joined for sixth form, and the Spanish girl Carmen. They were probably minor royalty or something back home, but here the foreign students sat right at the bottom of the social hierarchy. It would be easy for Georgia to ditch them when the time came.
If anyone was going to cock this up, it was going to be her. Lila’s group was a complete blister of an arrangement. She had Heidi, of course, since the school seemed to have appointed her Heidi’s keeper. And Heidi’s wet little friends Jenny and Maddie. Maddie wore retainers which made her breath smell like dead people. Her neck was spotty and her hair lank. One year they’d found out that Maddie’s dad was about seventy and her mum, who wasn’t even forty yet, had once presented the weather on the regional news. What must it be like to be less sexy than your mum? If Maddie ever got a boyfriend she’d never be able to take him home to meet her parents. Even Lila had struggled. When she brought boys home – less to meet her father, more to have somewhere to have sex – they always salivated over Clarissa. ‘Your mum is so fit. That means you’re going to be fit when you’re old too.’ She couldn’t find the energy to tell them the truth. But at least she could compete.
‘Cammy? Are you coming?’ Heidi was looking back at her, calling out, ‘It’s time to go! Hurry up – we want to be first to the meeting point.’ The three of them began to sing one of the songs from the bus, at the top of their lungs.
Lila sloped off after them. The only thing making any of this bearable was the plan. It had to work. She wasn’t going to be able to survive forty-eight hours of this without killing someone.
NOW
Lila
‘Shall we all come back to the table?’ boomed Charlie. ‘Pudding looks delicious.’
It might have looked delicious when Georgia had put the finishing touches to it, but now, with everyone running in and out of the kitchen, it had started to melt. Lila had styled a cookery shoot once, when she had still thought that her career was going to happen. She’d watched as they did weird stuff to the food. Covered everything in olive oil to make it shiny. Used scoops of mashed potato to look like vanilla ice cream because it didn’t melt. If Georgia could have got away with it, Lila smiled to herself, she’d probably have done the same thing.
‘What are you smirking about?’ Roo shouted at her from across the kitchen. He had been talking to Georgia and looking down her top. That was what he did at dinner parties. One woman, a friend of his from university, had even rung her up to tell her that he wouldn’t be invited to things any more because he kept putting his hand on the hostess’s arse as she took something out of the oven. Lila had laughed in her face. People were so judgemental these days.
‘None of your business,’ she shouted back to her husband. ‘Anywayyyy – Charlie wants you to come and sit down, so you should all come and sit down.’
‘Quite right,’ agreed Charlie.
‘Only if you’re hungry!’ added Georgia in that tinkly voice she did when she wanted people to think that she didn’t care about something that she cared about a lot.
Lila slumped into Nancy’s seat. ‘I want to sit next to Brett,’ she said. ‘I want to hear all about America.’
He laughed. ‘We’re going to need a long time if I’m going to tell you everything about it!’
‘I have ages,’ she cooed.
‘Lila, this is for you.’ Lila looked up. Standing above her was Georgia, holding a wide coffee cup with a twisty blue pattern and a gold rim. She placed it down on the table in front of her. Lila picked it up. She knew she should show willing. Last time Roo took her home early he’d screamed at her the entire time she was in the taxi and then, when they finally got home, things got even worse.
She took the cup and tipped a huge gulp into her mouth, where it burnt the soft flesh of her tongue. Unable to stop herself, she spat it back into her cup. Some of the coffee missed the cup, dribbling over the white tabl
ecloth.
‘Sorry,’ she whimpered. ‘It’s too hot.’
‘What the fuck, Lila?’ said Roo.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, looking down at the tablecloth. ‘It was too hot.’
Roo shook his head. ‘Georgia,’ he called across the room. ‘I’m sorry. Send me the bill for the tablecloth.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Georgia, smiling her pretend smile. ‘Poor Lila. Are you OK, babe?’
Georgia fussed with a napkin, brought her a fresh cup and a glass of ice water, and then, finally, sat down. Lila held the coffee cup between her hands, forcing herself to take tiny sips of it even though the heat of it scalded her mouth every time.
They were talking about politics again. Nancy was half shouting at Roo, saying things like ‘with the best will in the world’ and ‘with all due respect’ while he talked over her. Lila caught Roo’s eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mouthed. He gave her a sort of smile. No teeth, just his mouth pulled sideways. He was still cross, then. He would still be cross when they got home, and for the rest of the week, and next time they were invited to something – if they were invited, which seemed to happen less and less – he would say that she shouldn’t come, that he should go on his own because remember how she had behaved at Georgia’s? Then it would be another night all on her own at home, staring at her toddler and willing herself to love him.
The new baby was supposed to be a fresh start. It had been different with her. Inigo had made her horribly, horribly sick for almost the entire nine months. But with her baby girl she had felt fine. She hadn’t wanted to drink or smoke from the day she’d found out, she’d sort of glowed from the inside, it was like having the best-ever secret. Everything about her was exactly as it should be. It had been Bonfire Night and they’d wrapped up in lots of layers and gone to see the fireworks at the Hurlingham Club, the one place Roo had kept his membership, even with all the nasty bills that kept arriving. They’d laughed and posed for pictures and drunk mulled wine, and when they’d got home he’d been nice to her, and they’d made a baby.
