The Friends We Keep(21)

“You’re right. But I still want my work to be fun. And the roommates. Naomi said she’s going to move to London, so she might move in with me. Apparently she knows a boy who will be there too.”

“Is he gay?” asked Topher. “Are we really that easily replaced?”

Evvie looked at Topher. “I thought you were asexual.”

“Ah, yes. I was. I think I just hadn’t found myself yet.”

“And now you know you’re gay?” Maggie narrowed her eyes. “What’s been going on that we don’t know about?”

“You know that very handsome second year who played the Page in Antigone?”

“You did not!” Evvie clapped. “Daniel? The picture of innocence?”

“Oh, he’s not innocent, let me tell you. He seduced me.”

“And?”

Topher shrugged. “I may not be driven by my sexual desires, but it turns out I’m not asexual after all.”

“I thought you didn’t like to be touched,” said Evvie, confused.

“That’s what I always thought too. I think it’s that I don’t like to be touched unless it’s on my terms. I have to be in control, otherwise it just . . .” He shuddered. “Anyway. It was definitely on my terms and”—he grinned—“it was really rather lovely.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” pouted Maggie.

Topher shrugged. “You were in the midst of your Evil Ben recuperation. It was all you were talking about. Speaking of whom, I saw him today.”

Maggie sat up. “Evil Ben?”

“Oh no,” said Evvie. “Don’t tell me we’re going to start this up again.”

It felt like ages since Evil Ben finished his postgrad studies and left the university, and Maggie hadn’t spoken about him for the longest time. Every now and then she brought him up, saying he would always be the one who got away, but they had no idea where he was, and no way of getting in touch (thank goodness, Evvie always thought). Maggie definitely deserved better than him, at least as far as Evvie was concerned.

“Where did you see him?” Evvie could see that the very mention of his name had brought a flush to Maggie’s cheeks.

Topher frowned as he looked at Maggie. “I wouldn’t have brought it up if I thought it would still have this effect on you. I saw him park an old green Triumph Spitfire by the King’s Head, and then he and someone else went in.”

“A Triumph Spitfire?” asked Evvie.

“Cool old sports car. I went over to see what it was once they’d gone.”

“Who was he with?” asked Maggie. “A man or a woman?”

“Man.”

“Oh, please can we go.” Maggie looked from Topher to Evvie. “This can be my graduation gift from you.”

“What graduation gift?”

“The one I forgot to tell you about. Please? I just want to see him again, if nothing else just to have closure.”

“You had closure,” said Evvie. “Remember? He didn’t remember anything about the passionate garden snog you had, or he did remember, and he pretended not to. Either way, that seems to be pretty closed to me.”

“Do you have any idea how British you sound when you say the word ‘snog’?” Maggie started laughing. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” She stood up and grinned at them, knowing they would come, because that was what friendship was about. “I’m just going to put some makeup on. Be ready in five.”

Maggie had pulled on her baggy jeans, and slipped her feet into boots. She was tall already, at five feet nine inches, and normally would have worn her beloved heels, but Evil Ben was only a shade taller than her, and she didn’t want to intimidate him.

Evvie, on the other hand, loved her platform heels, teamed with her baggy jeans and a man’s shirt, half tucked in. She had topped this off with a fedora, jauntily perched, which on anyone else might have looked bizarre, but on Evvie looked impossibly cool, particularly since she had shed all the weight she had gained and was now positively skinny.

An old high school friend sent her the pills from New York, and they worked so well, she had been recruited by a modeling agency the last time she was on the King’s Road in London and had done some work already. After graduation she would be going home to New York, but this time to model, living in a shared apartment downtown.

Modeling was never what she saw herself doing, and she felt simultaneously incredulous, and embarrassed, knowing that people would presume she wasn’t clever enough to do anything else. If she felt she was going to be judged, rather than tell people she would be modeling, she said she would be working in the fashion industry, praying they wouldn’t ask anything else. But modeling was a means to an end. Evvie knew that if she was one of the lucky ones, she had the capability to make more money than at any other job. And money would give her the freedom to do what she wanted. She wanted to start charities helping women and children who didn’t have access to education. She wanted to make it easier for women like her grandmother and mother, raised in Kingston, only getting out by sheer luck and happenstance.

Her future depended on modeling, and modeling depended on staying unnaturally thin. When Maggie expressed worry about her jutting collarbones, Evvie would nod and say she definitely wasn’t going to lose any more weight. At night, she would lie in bed feeling the bones on her chest, and smiling to herself.