The Friends We Keep(25)

“What are we all going to do without each other?” said Evvie. “Seriously.”

“We have our lives to live,” said Topher. “Maybe we’ll be movie stars, or supermodels, philanthropists, newspaper editors, or PR gurus. Maybe we’ll find the loves of our lives. Maybe you two will get married, have kids, and maybe I’ll end up in the UK. Whatever we do and wherever our careers take us, the only thing I know for sure is that I love you two and we’re going to be best friends forever, no matter how far apart we are from each other. Deal?”

“Deal!” said Maggie, wiping drunken tears from her eyes. “I don’t want it to end. I wish it could be the three of us just like this, forever. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Evvie, you and I could open a restaurant. Cakes and Jamaican food!”

“I love it!” said Evvie. “One day, let’s make it happen!”

They cleared the table, all three of them weaving slightly, occasionally stopping to put an arm around a waist, or kiss a cheek. Evvie left to go to the bathroom, and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked beautiful, her cheekbones more pronounced than they had ever been, but then she looked down at her stomach, which was distended, and painful.

She had eaten so much. The pills had somehow fooled her brain into thinking that it wasn’t the pills but that Evvie had somehow changed, that her need for food had miraculously disappeared. Tonight she thought she could indulge like a normal person, but nothing about the way she ate was normal. When she took the pavlova into the kitchen, leaving Maggie and Topher sitting at the table, she quickly and quietly shoveled half of what was left into her mouth, not even tasting it. And she was already full, long before the pavlova had even been served.

She thought of that now, as she looked in the mirror, that old familiar shame washing over her. It wasn’t too late to get rid of it, she thought, looking at the toilet bowl. She’d made herself throw up before, when she had overeaten, and as long as it didn’t become a habit, it would be fine.

She knelt on the rug and pushed a finger down her throat, then two. It wasn’t nearly as easy as people made it sound, but eventually the pavlova came up, and the beef Wellington, and when she had done as much as she thought she would be able to do, she stood up and flushed, noting how her stomach was already flatter.

Much better, she thought.

But I’m not going to do it again.





twelve


- 1989 -



Evvie was in a furious mood. The modeling agency had messed up her travel dates, and she wasn’t leaving this Monday, but the next. The simple thing to do, as far as Evvie was concerned, was to change the flight and put her up in New York. She could see old friends, revisit some old haunts, and, if she was very lucky, stay at a swanky hotel.

But the agency disagreed. The flights were unchangeable, they said, before offering to put her up in a hotel. Evvie could have gone to London—her mother was in Jamaica to visit family, so it was just her grandmother—but Evvie couldn’t think of anything more depressing than staying alone in London with no one young around.

It was Maggie’s idea to get them to pay for her to stay at the Dinham Arms.

“It’s gorgeous!” she kept saying. “You can use the spa all week and get them to pay for it. Bliss!”

Evvie agreed. If she was forced to stay in the UK for an extra week, why not let it be in the West Country, in full-on luxury at their expense.

She didn’t tell her grandmother, who would have been devastated. Her grandmother would have wanted her safely at home in Stockwell, eating the kinds of food from her childhood that would ensure she arrived in New York several pounds heavier. Her grandmother would have taken one look at her, sucked her teeth, and declared her “crawny,” before cooking up a feast of goat curry, saltfish, and bakes, all the food Evvie had never been able to resist. Other people could indulge for a day or so, and gain a couple of pounds that they shed with no trouble. Not Evvie. Evvie could easily gain ten pounds in a week. She knew it because she’d done it before. Several times. Now that she was embarking on a modeling career, that was something she definitely couldn’t afford.

Far better for her to stay here, which now felt more like home than anywhere she had ever lived, even though the town had emptied out of students, she and Maggie feeling like the only ones left.

Maggie came with Evvie to the post office to ship her boxes to New York, and then, armed with one suitcase, she and Maggie took off for the Dinham Arms.

“I actually can’t believe they’re paying for you to stay here a week. All expenses! You are totally raiding the minibar,” said Maggie, helping to haul the suitcase up the steps. “I’m longing to see the room. Apparently they have four-poster beds that are to die for.”

“I wish you could stay too.” Evvie had been trying to persuade her for the past two hours, but Maggie was flying straight to the South of France where her parents had a home in Mougins, high in the hills above Cannes. As tempting as the Dinham Arms was, the West Country could never compete with the C?te d’Azur.

The girls had eaten in the restaurant of the Dinham Arms but had never been farther than the foyer. They followed the young woman from reception up the stairs, their feet sinking into soft carpet, down a long corridor with oriel windows overlooking English gardens with clipped boxwood hedges and Gertrude Jekyll–designed beds, stopping outside a heavy wooden door.