A Hundred Pieces of Me (13 page)

‘Yes,’ said Amanda. ‘About six months too late.’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Nick drily. ‘I fell in love with the wine cellars. And the potential. It’s a project, isn’t it?’

‘It’s a dream house,’ said Gina. ‘It needs owners with a bigger vision than just changing the wallpaper, and you’ve certainly got that.’

She wondered if there was something between the cracks in Nick’s comment from the way Amanda stirred her coffee with a sort of grim determination, not meeting his gaze.

Without warning, Amanda looked up, fixing Gina with her piercing interview eyes. ‘Is there a reason it was so cheap?’ she asked. ‘The survey didn’t seem too bad, but if there’s some inside track on it with the council, then it’s better if you tell us now.’

Gina shook her head. ‘Nope. It just needs a lot of love. You can’t cut corners with planning applications, and you’re going to have people like Keith crawling all over the project, checking you’re using sympathetic materials. That adds up. People round here don’t have that sort of cash. Or time. It’s nothing more sinister than that.’

‘Shame. We were hoping for a ghost,’ said Nick. He slid into the chair opposite Gina’s. ‘Nothing major, maybe a friendly cat.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Amanda started, but it was Lorcan who spoke, taking everyone by surprise.

‘I wouldn’t rule it out.’ He’d been leaning against the Aga, doing some calculations and sipping his tea. ‘All old houses have a ghost or two, especially round here. Eh, Gina? Just depends how sensitive you are to them, I reckon. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a rustle of something upstairs.’

Amanda’s head spun round. Gina spotted the half double-take when she met Lorcan’s gaze, as if she’d only just noticed him. Despite his scruffy appearance, Lorcan was unusually lyrical for a builder: his best mate was a tour manager, and when he wasn’t building houses, Lorcan was off all over Europe building stages for heavy metal bands, and lurking around Irish blues festivals.

‘That’s usually mice, though,’ she said quickly, not wanting to put Amanda off. ‘We can sort that out.’

‘I hope not,’ said Nick. ‘What’s the point of an old house without a bit of a chequered past? Might as well be living in some soulless new-build penthouse.’

He was looking at Amanda as he said it, but she was making notes and pretending she hadn’t heard him. If Gina hadn’t spent the last six months walking on eggshells herself, she might have missed it, but it was there, the echo of a stale row.

She didn’t want to see it. That was the trouble with these projects; you often had to see the ragged plaster of the owners’ relationship, as well as their house. ‘So, would you like me to email you a rough schedule, with some projected costs?’ she asked instead. ‘If you’ve got meetings lined up with other project managers, that’s fine.’

‘There are no other meetings lined up,’ said Amanda. She clicked her pen closed and picked up her coffee. ‘I think you’re just the woman for the job.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Gina, and realised it wasn’t a very professional thing to say.

Nick smiled, and, after a tiny pause, so did Amanda. It was a friendly smile but it didn’t fool Gina into relaxing.

Chapter Six

ITEM
: lucky knickers from La Perla, black silk bikini briefs with tiny silver embroidered stars and black lace trim, size label cut out

Longhampton, 2005

Gina leans on the wall by the drinks table, nursing her glass of warm white wine, and wonders how much longer she has to stay at Naomi and Jason’s housewarming party before she can leave without seeming rude. For a pair of twenty-five year olds, they’re having a very grown-up party. The crisps are in a dip tray, and Naomi’s coasters are much in evidence. But then everyone in Longhampton seems more grown-up than the flatsharers Gina’s just left behind in Fulham.

If I stay here another hour, she thinks, I’ll be in serious danger of having a conversation about mortgage rates. There isn’t enough wine in the kitchen for that.

She’s about to put the glass down, prior to making leaving noises, when Naomi sidles up to her in a new red dress – short, to show off her legs. Naomi has amazing legs. They’re not long, but they’re shapely, and end in very high heels. Jason can’t stop staring at them.

‘Stay,’ Naomi hisses, out of the corner of her mouth, so the other three guests, sitting on the leather couch, like interviewees, don’t hear over the polite sounds of Zero 7. ‘Jason says the lads from football are on their way back from the pub.’

‘I’m not into footballers,’ says Gina, her smile fixed. ‘And I’ve spent the last twenty minutes advising Jason’s co-worker about planning permission for her loft extension. It’s like being at work, but without the crazy fun times.’

‘Let me get you a fresh glass,’ says Naomi, loudly, and steers her into the kitchen. ‘Stay another half-hour.’

‘But I don’t know anyone!’

‘That’s the whole point!’ She over-enunciates the words to make up for the stage whisper. ‘You’ve been in London for four years! This is how you meet people. And by people, I obviously mean men.’

‘But I don’t want . . .’

Naomi grips Gina’s arms, her eyes fierce with the matchmaking intentions of the recently coupled-up. ‘You’re beautiful, you’re funny, you’re wearing a dress that we won’t even see in the shops here for another eighteen months. You need to get out there and start dating.’ A microscopic pause. ‘Again.’

Gina narrows her eyes because in the kitchen everyone can hear you scream at your best friend. She knows Naomi isn’t referring to her last relationship – a three-months-and-a-minibreak fiasco with Dr Adam Doherty, Unilever washing-powder researcher. Naomi means after Kit. It’s been four years. They don’t talk about Kit any more, but Naomi at least acknowledges his existence, unlike her mother, who refuses to refer to him at all. Janet’s good at pretending things never happened.

Out of long habit, Kit’s face slips into Gina’s head, like a slide in a projector; she leaves it there a second, then consciously slips it out. She goes through phases of dating – she’s not short of offers – but when you’ve been with someone who felt they’d been put on earth for the sole purpose of finding you, it’s depressing to have to build up a relationship, dinner by dinner, dutifully researching each other, offering up likes and dislikes, like chess moves until one reveals something bad enough to checkmate.

‘Not knowing people is
good
,’ Naomi whispers. ‘Believe me. You’re a novelty. And you cannot leave me here with the IT department from Jason’s office. I’m your
best friend
!’

‘Ten minutes,’ Gina mutters back, and at that moment there’s a clatter at the door, and Jason roars, ‘Lads!’ as Naomi’s face glows with relief under her highlighter and she takes the sizzling honey-roasted cocktail sausages out of the oven.

Immediately the party’s atmosphere sparks into life, going from an awkward gathering of five strangers eating olives to something much more fun. Naomi’s pretending to be cross with ‘the boys’ for being late, but Gina can tell that she’s revelling in the puppyish teasing directed towards her and Jason. There are jokes about rolling pins and leashes, but it’s OK because Jason is clearly happy to be under any or all parts of Naomi from the thumb onwards.

As Naomi hands out beer and sausages, the boys (
men
, Gina corrects herself) scan the room, and one or two glance her way. Gina doesn’t know how to arrange her face, because she suspects Naomi is forcing them to look her way by saying things like, ‘Oh, have you met my best mate who’s moved back from London?’ London,  in Longhampton, is synonymous with snobbery, yet moving back means you’ve failed in some way. Lose-lose.

Gina wanted to love London, but alone without Naomi, or Kit, she couldn’t find anywhere to fit in. And deep down, she didn’t want to fit in: nothing felt right. So she’s come home, in the hope that her life might start here instead. She smiles at Jason’s mates. But the way they smile briefly, then turn back to their own group makes Gina’s insides feel like they’re peeling off.

She body-swerves another approach from Extension Woman, and goes back into Naomi’s kitchen to pretend to look for a water glass, then considers going upstairs to the loo, but a couple she doesn’t know are conducting an intense, nose-to-nose conversation on the stairs, gazing into each other’s mouths while pretending to talk about
The West Wing
.

In desperation Gina goes back into the sitting room where the lads have pushed back the new couch and are now doing knees-up dancing to some Madness song, led by a red-faced Jason.
Madness
, for crying out loud, she thinks. Naomi hates Madness. She’s always said they sound like a midlife crisis playing a saxophone. Jason and his mates are ten years too young for this.

Across the room Naomi grimaces, but it’s all part of being in a serious relationship, as she frequently tells Gina in their long emails. Jason let her choose the wallpaper; she let him use the spare room as a home gym. God knows what she gets in return for letting him play Madness at their housewarming. Gina grimaces back but then one of the dancers stops and catches her rolling her eyes at him.

She looks away, mortified, because it would be the fittest one who caught her making that face, the good-looking one who’s probably the captain. She doesn’t know his name but it’ll be something wholesome like Ben or Mark: Jason went to the other school in the area, Hartley High School, so all his mates feel like people Naomi and Gina know, even though they don’t. This one would have been the lad Stephanie Bayliff or Claire Watson would have gone out with: he’s got the Matt Damon cheekbones, teddy-bear-brown hair, the athletic frame of the sports all-rounder.

And the great legs. Gina can’t help noticing. Great legs, gorgeous bum in jeans that actually fit, just-big-enough biceps under a shirt unbuttoned at the neck to reveal tanned skin.

She kicks herself for describing him in the same terms she’d have used at school. That’s what coming home does to you.

He’s not Gina’s type at all – no glasses, no floppy indie-kid hair, not even a suit like Dr Adam Doherty – but something about his extreme handsomeness sets off a slow burn inside her. Gina’s tried to persuade herself that she doesn’t mind being single but according to the magazines, she should be having the time of her life, at twenty-five. And she isn’t. This is the time of someone else’s life – a nun, maybe. Or someone’s mother. It’s as if her worst fear came true: all the fun
was
concentrated in that blissful time with Kit.

And now he’s coming over.

‘Did I do something funny?’ he asks, not angry but anxious.

His accent is local, with the lazy rural vowels that Gina’s lost after years away. It’s a gentle sound with softened
r
s. His eyes are fixed on hers, the pupils dilated, as if he finds her attractive, and she can’t help noticing how long his eyelashes are.

She tries to summon up some repartee. It’s not impossible, she tells herself. As Naomi says, he just sees the wrap dress, showcasing her best assets, and her hair in loose brown curls round her face, the dark red lipstick giving her rosebud lips, the expensive sheen on her high cheekbones. He doesn’t know she’s stayed in every night for the past seven months, watching soaps and learning how to tong with a hair straightener from back issues of
Cosmo
.

His expression takes on a hint of panic as realisation strikes. ‘Are my flies undone?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘Your flies are fine.’ She pauses, then asks deadpan. ‘Was that an attempt to get me to look at your flies?’

‘No! God, no . . . not at all, sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’

‘I know,’ says Gina. ‘You’re fine.’

He grins. ‘Do you want to dance, then?’

‘No,’ says Gina, more definitely. ‘And, anyway, you can’t dance to Madness. You can only march on the spot. It’s basically aerobics for men.’

He looks relieved. ‘I hate Madness. Can I get you a drink?’

Gina holds out her empty glass. She was braced for some deathless banter about her not dancing or him needing a teacher – but there wasn’t any. Just an easy offer of a drink, the first step in the non-complicated chat-up routine. This is a lot easier than London.

Naomi’s making faces at her from across the room, raising her eyebrows in that well-done gesture. Gina gives her a discreet two fingers from behind her hand – an old joke – but rearranges herself quickly when the man comes back with a fresh glass of wine.

‘I’m Stuart,’ he says, offering a hand. ‘Mate of Jason’s. We were at school together.’

‘Gina. Naomi’s best friend. Also at school together.’ They juggle wine glasses and shake hands and Stuart grins at the cheesiness of it. He has a winning smile: his teeth are strong and white, his cheek dimpled. She feels another tug of desire. The music’s changed: Naomi’s obviously commandeered the CD player and she’s not known for her subtlety. Gina wonders if she
should
offer to dance; she’s quite good, with a natural sway in her hips. She wonders how Stuart’s hands would feel on her waist if she made him salsa.

‘Don’t make me dance,’ says Stuart before she can speak. ‘It’s not pretty.’ He lifts his eyebrows. ‘Sit down?’