Seven Days of Us(65)

Pho, Phoebles, I’m sorry but I don’t think I can do this anymore. I need some space to think, on my own. I guess this won’t come as a shock to you, but its all moving to fast for me. I hope you understand. Please don’t contact me, I need time to work stuff out.

G

PS: Don’t worry about the ring.

She looked around, to see if George would jump out of a cupboard shouting “Fooled you!” but the silence in the room was too real. She felt like she’d been winded. What did he mean, it wouldn’t come as a shock? She picked up the bungalow’s phone and called the main house. Emma answered, and her voice unlocked Phoebe’s sobs.

“Darling? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Come here,” she croaked.

A minute later she heard boots and voices outside the door. She’d thought her mother would come alone, but everyone, even Jesse, was there. They all looked very concerned. Through her tears she found this mildly gratifying.

“Look,” she said, thrusting the note at them. She threw herself facedown on the sofa to carry on crying. She didn’t even care that Jesse could see.

A hand began rubbing her back, and she saw through the chink between her face and the cushion that it was Olivia. The others were standing around the Ping-Pong table, reading the note.

“What a . . . pig,” said her mother. “What on earth does he mean, ‘moving too fast’? He just asked you to marry him!”

“What about quarantine? He shouldn’t be—” began Olivia.

“Do his parents know about this?” interrupted her father.

“Just found it,” said Phoebe, into the cushion. It smelled of George—of his scalp and his neck, and she began crying so hard she felt like she was choking. I want to choke, she thought. That would serve him right, if I choked to death, crying because of what he’s done. Her thoughts seemed to be on fast-forward, each fresh humiliation crowding out the one before. The plans for engagement drinks. The save-the-date e-mail she’d sent a hundred people. The dreadful, shaming sympathy. Single. Back at square one. She started to cry again with new, hysterical force.

“Phoebe—breathe,” Olivia was saying. “Where could he have gone? Can you think? We ought to get him back—he can’t just go.”

“I’m half inclined to call up his odious parents and tell them what a little—” Andrew paused. “What a little twerp their son is. A note! And a badly written one at that!”

“Maybe I put too much pressure on him,” said Phoebe. She had no idea where he might have gone—home probably. That was the least of her problems. She’d quite like the whole Marsham-Smith family to get Haag. She still had her eyes shut, so that she could just feel the damp cotton against her face, and smell George and hear her family.

“Hey, this isn’t your fault!” said an American voice. Jesse. She peered round.

“I mean, you shouldn’t blame yourself. This is about George,” he said.

“What?” It was the first time she’d spoken to him directly, beyond “Hello.”

“I mean, this is his action—he needs to own this.”

“I’m sorry?” said Phoebe, looking up properly. She knew she was being rude, and she knew she looked rough—and she didn’t care. On second thought, it really pissed her off that Jesse had come down.

“I just meant, this is a hundred percent his issue.”

“What issue?”

“Well, seems like he has some work to do on himself.”

They were all staring at Jesse now. He looked uncomfortable at being the center of attention. So he should.

“Work? Is this some L.A. therapy bullshit? You only met him yesterday!” It was satisfying to snap at someone.

“Phoebe . . .” said her mother.

“I’m sorry, I just meant—” began Jesse.

“Now, I think perhaps it’s best if Phoebe and I have a chat on our own,” interrupted Emma. “We’ll be up later. You three can sort your own lunch out, can’t you? There’s plenty of ham and cheese in the larder. Jesse, you could reheat some of the risotto we had last night.”

Her mother only told people to feed themselves if there was a crisis. She registered that Emma had been specially cooking the aubergine thing, and that she must be abandoning it to stay here. As the others left, and she sat sobbing into Emma’s shoulder, she realized that it wasn’t just George she was crying for. It was the thought of coping with stuff like this, with everything grown up, without her mother.





Jesse


THE KITCHEN, WEYFIELD HALL, 1:00 P.M.

? ? ?

Andrew and Olivia were sitting on one side of the table, and Jesse on the other, like they were interviewing him. The aborted vegan curry sat on the worktop. Andrew was picking at a single slice of ham, with a blob of gold leaf mustard that looked like paint. Olivia was eating more white toast with her gross-smelling Marmite—same as she had yesterday. Didn’t British doctors know about processed food? Jesse chewed through a mound of claggy risotto, as instructed. He had no clue how to reheat it on the range they called the AGA, and nobody offered to show him. It didn’t matter—the moment in the bungalow had blunted his appetite anyway. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut? Nobody had mentioned the way Phoebe had spoken to him just now. Perhaps that was how they dealt with shit here.