The Things We Do to Our Friends(19)

For Ava, a spicy Bloody Mary filled to the brim with a grizzled chunk of salty chorizo and slithers of celery, then topped with a floating glug of thin red wine.

And finally, for Tabitha, a classic champagne cocktail. The brown sugar cube in the bottom of the glass seeped upward in a fizzy cloud when I handed it over to her, and the muddy effect made me think of a Victorian tonic brewed for the infirm.

They stood around the drawing room sipping them—although Tabitha barely touched hers—lauding my inventiveness. Still, there was a flatness to the evening that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I was sure there were shared looks that I wasn’t a part of.

Samuel didn’t even take a sip, and for some reason it seemed like a test that I’d tried so earnestly to pass but had ended up failing.

I came back into the room later when Imogen and Tabitha had gone, abandoning the evening to go try on dresses in Tabitha’s room.

Ava was still there, throwing back the dregs of her last Bloody Mary, lying out on the floor next to the window. It was something I’d often seen her do, something I imagined a child might do. She looked out so she could people-watch, staying low down so they couldn’t see her if they stared up and peered in.

“Hello, Clare,” she said when she saw me. So formal.

I lay down by her, both of us on our fronts with our hips and stomachs pressed against the floorboards. Our shoulders rubbed against each other as we stared out, watching heads bobbing along below.

“I’m not sure I quite did it right,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Mine’s amazing. Reminds me of parties in Malibu; we’d make these by the pool, although they were nowhere near as good as this. The ice would always melt, and there was never enough salt. Or enough vodka.”

“Gazpacho,” I commented.

“I guess. I know, it sounds disgusting now, doesn’t it?” she said. “Still, it was pretty great at the time.” She sucked at the straw noisily and put the empty glass to one side.

It was very, very unusual for Ava to talk about being in the U.S. She treated it as a place that didn’t quite belong to her but that she acknowledged occasionally. Her accent had a touch of those tiny crescendos that I recognized from American TV shows, when everything sounds like a question, and I’d heard her mutter something scathingly incomprehensible like “valley girl” about a fellow American student on her course.

“Horseradish or something in it?” she asked.

“Just mustard. I’m not sure Tabitha liked hers—or the whole idea, really,” I admitted.

“Ahhh, Tabitha.” She said it like she was recalling a particularly moreish meal. “The thing is, you didn’t make it about her. It was so…what’s the right word”—she clicked her fingers when she found it—“egalitarian. She doesn’t like that so much. Now, if you’d made one of those champagne towers for her, that would have been a different story. But what you’ll come to see is that she’s the star.”

“How do you always know what to do with her?”

“It’ll come. Remember, when I met Tabitha, I’d moved around so much. First from Russia to LA, then to England when I was thirteen for school; I was so scared. I didn’t know anyone, and I arrived at this school in the middle of nowhere. I felt like I’d been exiled. I didn’t look the same as everyone else; I’ve always dressed…in an unusual way. My parents despaired of me. They wanted me to look tidy and sensible, to wear plaid. They probably would have loved it if I’d have looked like you.”

I stayed quiet. I hadn’t been a particularly good child.

She continued. “Anyway, school was so cliquey, and I was totally alone. If anything, it was worse than in LA, which I didn’t think would be possible. They all had these plummy English accents, like Tabitha, I guess. My parents didn’t care if I was happy or not, to be honest.”

“What do your parents do?” I asked. It felt good to share like this, even if I wasn’t volunteering anything.

“They have various business interests.”

A clear shut-down on the topic.

“It’s a different life,” she continued. “I just had nothing in common with anyone. I’d never fitted in in the States and I didn’t fit in in England either. But then I met Tabitha and straightaway she took me under her wing and involved me in everything, just like that. She made me fit in. There was no need for anything else or anyone else. She swept me up as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Same with Imogen and Samuel. You know what it’s like,” she finished.

I did.

“She just wants to feel special. She is special,” she said.

We lay there for a minute or so, surveying the people who passed below us.

“Also, she might have been a bit annoyed about Samuel,” she added.

I hadn’t picked up on much closeness between Ava and Samuel. She was too impassive; he was too excitable. They were polite enough but wary of each other.

“What about him?” I asked.

“He doesn’t drink.”

“What?” I exclaimed, louder than I usually would with any of them. “I hadn’t noticed!”

“Hasn’t touched it for years.”

“So, what’s the story there?”

“When Tabitha and Samuel were growing up, he had some issues. It was all a long time ago. When he was younger, he would get so drunk, start these fights—he was actually in trouble with the police. Do you not see?”