When You Are Mine(42)

Brianna works in social media. She has an older boyfriend, a high-flyer at a merchant bank or an investment bank. (I don’t know the difference.) Carmen is the most self-assured. She’s already married to Paolo, and is pregnant with her first and manages a bookshop in Barnes. My oldest friend, Sara, teaches at a language school in Hammersmith and has been boy-crazy since puberty. Margot is creative director at an advertising agency in Soho Square, and she and Phoebe have been dating since college. That’s what we’ve become: sensible twenty-somethings with sensible boyfriends (or girlfriends) (or husbands) and sensible jobs, but we occasionally go a little nuts.

Since school or university, we have shared houses and holidays and internet memes. We have backpacked through Europe and protested for climate action, and set each other up on dates when required.

I’ve known Sara since primary school and we went through St Ursula’s together, doing most of the same subjects. As soon as I mention Tempe, her eyes begin dancing.

‘Are you talking about Maggie Brown?’

‘Her family moved to Belfast.’

‘She left in her final year.’

‘Yes.’

Sara laughs wickedly. ‘You don’t remember the stories! How she was caught making out with Caitlin Penney in the changing rooms.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ I say, although it lacks conviction.

‘It’s true,’ she says earnestly. ‘And afterwards we had that lecture, remember? A nun came to the school and gave a talk, warning girls about having “special friends”.’ Sara creates quotation marks with her fingers.

The memory does resurface, but straight away gets lost in a flurry of other rumours that used to swirl around St Ursula’s like scraps of paper on a gusty day. Girls who fell pregnant or had abortions, or swallowed pills and had their stomachs pumped; or the senior who reportedly slept with Mr Piccolo, our married science teacher.

I can see Sara loitering around Tempe, desperate to ask her about Caitlin Penney, but I’ve made her promise to stay away from the subject and give her a chance to make new friends.

We’re using the blender to mix fruit daiquiris, mango or strawberry, which are dangerously alcoholic and addictive. I try not to drink too much and to make sure everybody is having a nice time.

The pizzas arrive. Carmen and Tempe are in the kitchen cutting fruit for another batch of cocktails when I overhear them talking. Margot asks her how the two of us met and Tempe doesn’t mention our time at school; or that I rescued her from Darren Goodall. I can understand why she wants to keep certain things secret, particularly being the mistress of a married man.

Instead, she recounts a story of how her bag was snatched by a guy on a scooter; and how she was dragged along the road, grazing her face. I was the first police officer who arrived at the scene and I drove her to the hospital. It’s a version of the story that Tempe told me about meeting Darren Goodall but with a different victim and outcome. It sounds plausible and Carmen makes all the right noises, expressing shock and sympathy.

Later, Tempe tells Georgia that she’s Henry’s second cousin on his mother’s side and that she and Henry knew each other as kids and used to share baths together. It’s another good story, which gets a laugh, but I can’t understand why she has to lie to people. It’s like a game.

Alone with Tempe in the kitchen, I finally get a chance to ask her, but she laughs it off, saying it makes life more interesting.

‘Haven’t you ever wanted to pretend? I used to do it all the time in Belfast. I’d go out with friends and we’d invent cover stories. We’d be flight attendants, or professional mud-wrestlers, or hand models.’

‘But these are my friends.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ll stop.’

For the rest of the evening, I watch her closely, and notice how she manages to look like she’s drinking and getting tipsy like everybody else, but she hardly sips a cocktail. She listens and nods, soaking up information without offering an opinion.

We’re outside in the garden, talking about wedding dresses and what my bridesmaids will wear. Sara, Brianna and Phoebe are going to be my bridesmaids. Carmen will be too pregnant by then and Georgia thinks marriage is a ‘social and legal construct that devalues women and makes them property and objects’. She still expects an invitation, of course.

‘You promised not to dress me in taffeta,’ says Sara. ‘Or in orange, or yellow.’

‘If I look like a meringue, I’ll never speak to you again,’ echoes Brianna.

They grow louder and cruder. The night wears on. Moths begin fluttering around the garden lights. At ten o’clock, I shepherd them inside, worried about complaints from the neighbours. Georgia begins rolling a joint, which I choose to ignore.

I can hear Sara talking about her trip to Paris over Easter.

‘I can see you nodding,’ says Georgia. ‘Do you like Paris?’

‘Very much so,’ answers Tempe. ‘I lived there for two years.’

‘Where?’

‘On the West Bank.’

‘You mean the Left Bank?’ says Sara.

‘Or maybe the right bank,’ giggles Brianna.

They are making fun of her.

‘You must speak French,’ says Georgia.

‘Only a little.’

‘Je ne pense pas que tu parles fran?ais du tout.’