How to Kill Your Family(56)

I got there at 10 p.m., having had a drink around the corner at a local bar when I judged that I’d arrived too early. Caro’s parties usually didn’t get going until at least 9.30 and I wasn’t going to waste time with her guffawing friends when everyone was still sober. Their flat was on the fourth floor of a mansion block with views over the park. The building was beautiful, with marble steps and an original lift with brass gates. I never saw anyone else in the lobby or hallways. Rich people owned these flats. Rich people who have several homes around the world which they call ‘bases’. None of them homes which have overflowing junk drawers or old bicycles clogging up hallways.

The party was loosening up when I walked in the door. A smallish group of Jimmy’s mates congregated in the kitchen – a few school friends that I liked well enough, and some dull blokes from university that he refused to shrug off completely. But mainly, the flat was full of Caro’s friends. Girls who were nervous level thin, dressed in muted silk dresses. They all had posh-girl hair – you know the kind – thick, shiny, long, looks careless but the highlights alone cost ￡500 and are anything but. The men were all in identikit chinos and blue shirts. Occasionally there was a loafer on display, but mainly it was trainers in an attempt to look more relaxed than they really were. Pretty much everyone was white. The music was turned up loud but nobody was dancing.

I nodded at a few faces I recognised but kept moving towards the drinks table, grabbed a glass of wine and headed out onto the balcony. I’ve never been someone who enjoys parties. The amount of small talk involved depletes my energy and makes my whole body tense up. Not because I’m shy, but because it’s so boring it makes me want to die. Life is so short, and we spend so much of it talking to terrible people about the minutiae of their nothing lives. I cannot do it with any enthusiasm. It’s no better in prison, you know. You might think that there would be less bullshit filler chat. You’re in jail, you don’t need to talk about the weather, or your commute or your kid’s art project. But prison makes people even smaller than usual, desperate to cling on to reassuring normality. That means there’s a lot of chat about breakfast options or discussion about what’s on TV that night. And unlike in normal life, I cannot escape it.

*

I light a cigarette on the balcony, slotting myself in between two groups of people I don’t know, and turn away so that it’s clear that I’m not trying to join in the conversation. I smoke my cigarette (I aim for one a week, like Gwyneth Paltrow does – and that is the limit of our shared experience) and listen to the conversation going on around me. Someone called Archie is going skiing at Easter with his new girlfriend and someone called Laura is pretending to find it sweet but her increasingly shrill cooing suggests that she hopes said girlfriend falls off the mountain. Someone on my right is telling a story about how he once met our dreadful Prime Minister at a bar off the Kings Road, and thought he was ‘genuinely a very funny bloke’. The conversations all come to a stop when Caro emerges onto the balcony. Her tiny body is sheathed in an emerald green slip dress, which requires no bra (posh girls don’t need bras), her hair is loose, and she’s barefoot. That suggests a sort of next-level nonchalance, doesn’t it? As though you’re usually holidaying in villas where maids sweep the floors constantly and someone comes to give you regular pedicures. Everyone cheers when she steps into the group, quick to proffer fags and wine. She spots me, and draws me towards her with a slim wrist.

‘Hello, darling, so good of you to come. I see you’ve got a drink. Jimmy is inside panicking about glasses but I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to see you – go and find him. I know he’ll be so relieved that everything is … OK.’ She looks at me with a tiny raise of an eyebrow, just the hint of a smile. He told her. Of course.

I go inside, not wishing to talk to Jim but desperate to get away from Archie and Laura and some guy called Phillip who’s now loudly suggesting that someone bust out the Charlie. It’s not 1989, Phil, you fucking embarrassment.

I find Jimmy on the sofa with a nice girl called Iris who he works with. I am given a bear hug, the kind that only a big man can give, and I know that he’s determined to forget our conversation and he’s very physically trying to tell me to do the same. So I do. Tonight he pats me on the back and grins with relief that everything is well between us. The flat fills up, booze is consumed until the only bottles left are the kind of chardonnays you find in Tesco so I switch to vodka. By 1 a.m., I can tell most of the people still here are high. I’ve never taken drugs – a classic need to stay in control – and I’m never offered them. But I can see the signs, the glassy pupils, the inner gum chewing, the fucking inane conversation (though frankly, that could just be the company). Caro is swaying in the middle of the room, rubbing her own arm. Jim walks over to her and takes her hand. She pulls away abruptly, says something and turns away. He tries again and she shoves him. Not hard, but sloppily, visibly.

‘Let’s all wake up a bit, you guys are getting sleepy,’ she says, and heads to the kitchen. I look across at Jimmy and make a face – trying to convey that I’m here and also less obviously that his fiancée is a nightmare – but he looks at me with something veering on contempt and sits down. Caro emerges from the kitchen with a silver tray teeming with shot glasses and people assemble around her.

‘To my betrothed,’ she says, before downing her glass and slinging an arm around a brunette next to her. She doesn’t offer Jimmy one. I can feel the rage build up again, at her for being a bitch, at Jimmy for letting her behave like this. Someone has brought a cake, covered in chocolate ganache and bearing the letters C and J in pink icing. It has been forgotten by the baker in the frantic desire to get drunk. I grab a knife and start carving it up into rough slices. Putting one on a napkin, I hold it aloft.