The Things We Do to Our Friends(24)

“He was standing with his back to the door, and he was kissing this woman, with his hands all over her. Grabbing her. Although she wasn’t a woman, she was a fucking girl, only a few years older than me, in this incredibly trashy suit thing, and she saw me, and she just giggled.” Tabitha’s face was red and scrunched up now. “Anyway, Pa turns round, and you can tell he’s been thrown; he’s shaken, but he recovers. He comes to the door and just pushes it gently to a close, right in my face.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I took my case, and I went to my room to unpack,” she said simply.

“But what happened after that?”

“Oh, after that, they were done. He left. He took nearly everything—the house, all the money was so tied up and hidden. It led to Ma having a breakdown. The whole thing was wretched, really. She never recovered. She gets these terrible pains in her feet and legs. She got to keep France, but it was bittersweet. He essentially exiled her there, because the house would never sell, so she’d never be able to afford to come back to London. Ma had no idea. She hadn’t suspected a thing, so she wasn’t prepared. She hadn’t worked in years, and she was utterly unemployable.”

“Did you tell your mother?” I asked. Facing the mirror, I felt confident enough to ask her this.

“No. I didn’t need to. Once I’d seen them, it was all over. It was like he couldn’t carry on once I knew.”

“Do you wish you hadn’t walked in?”

She looked at me—or maybe herself—kindly. Her face was next to mine in the mirror, and our reflections stared back at us.

“I hate the way it unfolded, because it meant Ma was always on the back foot. But you have to understand that him cheating, that part was inevitable. He’s had a string of girlfriends over the last few years, all very temporary and nubile. But if she’d had a better understanding of what was going on, she wouldn’t have been left with so little after so long. If I regret anything, it’s that we didn’t get the exit we deserved.”

I mulled this over. I thought of the beautiful flat. Tabitha didn’t seem to be doing too badly when it came to “an exit” in my opinion.

“So, what happened after that?” I asked.

“Nothing at all.” Just like that, the singsong voice was gone. “I went back to school; they got divorced; I came here. He bought the flat because it’s a good investment, so it made sense at the time.”

“Are you still in touch?” I asked.

“We’ve not always got on well. I can’t be around his new girlfriends, they’re too young. Anyway, you didn’t ask for a happy story, did you?” She gave my shoulder a halfhearted squeeze and rose. “He’ll want to dry your hair now.”

And he did want to dry it. He stepped back, and we assessed the results, with Tabitha next to me.

We were two golden twins.

In my head, the conversation was almost there, gently presenting itself, where I’d said what I wanted or who I wanted to look like, and he’d done it for me. But that wasn’t what happened. Rand and I hadn’t said one word, so presumably Tabitha had planned it all.

There had always been a resemblance with Tabitha, but now we were more alike than ever. I was primped and shiny, tamed like a pet.

She picked up a strand of my hair like it belonged to her. “What do you think?”

I was exhausted, but she seemed so happy, and she’d done something I wouldn’t have been able to afford to do. I should have been thankful, and I tried to remind myself of that, but my head was pounding. Pulling away from her, I got up, shaking off the grogginess. There was no plan, I just wanted to get out of the weird basement room on my own, and then her arm was on mine, steering me to the door alongside her. She must have paid but I didn’t see her do it.

“Let’s go back to mine for a while. You don’t seem yourself,” she said.

So we went back in a cab, waves of nausea moving through my body.

“I’m not feeling good,” I said as we walked up the stairs to her flat.

The flat was quiet, and I wondered where Ava and Imogen were.

“I think you should go for a lie-down,” she suggested.

I moved to go to one of the bedrooms, drawn like a magnet to those three closed doors, but she directed me into the drawing room. She pointed to the sofa. I hoped she wouldn’t shut the door—the thought of being locked in a room caused my stomach to flip—and she didn’t, she left it ajar and sauntered away into the kitchen.

I lay down, and when I pressed my nose against the cushions, I could smell dust and bleach and burnt sugar blended with her sharp citric scent.





18


When I woke up, I had no idea what the time was. The room was pitch-black and the air was flowing and cold, as if there was a draft somewhere. Silent in a way that felt heavy and made me sure there wasn’t anyone else around. I called out their names and no one answered. The scissors from the hairdresser were lying next to me on the floor. Perhaps Tabitha had slipped them down the side of her dress, doing it on a whim to enjoy cold steel against her thigh.

Someone had put a blanket over me; I pushed it off and got up unsteadily. Still full of sleep, I walked out into the corridor and to the front door. Stood in the wide hallway where the post was always piled up by the door, bills alongside cards and brochures and bank statements—our precious kindling, Tabitha called it, and she had been known to use anything in sight to light a fire.