Too Close For Comfort (28 page)

‘I don’t think they’ve put it all behind them. Anyway . . .’

‘Don’t you?’ said April, eyes bright.

‘No,’ I said firmly, thinking yet again of the sadness that was etched so deeply into Lysette’s face. ‘Anyway – nice to see you, April.’

‘Yeah, you too, darling,’ tinkled April, opening her bedroom door. Was she going in or coming out – it didn’t quite make sense. ‘I’ll miss our evening
tipple.’

‘Me too,’ I lied, over my shoulder, taking the wooden stairs two at a time.

*

Lysette’s battered car was parked outside the pub, its wheels up on the kerb at a jaunty angle. It was the kind of thing you’d have got a ticket for in five minutes
flat in London, but didn’t matter a jot in Little Copping. I climbed in, still a little awkward with her. Lysette leaned over the gear stick, hugged me for almost too long.

‘Hello, mate,’ she said, her words muffled by my hair.

‘Hi,’ I said, drawing away. She clearly hadn’t joined me in applying her make-up obsessively early: her skin looked grey and drawn, those dark circles I’d observed
earlier even more obvious close up. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she said, her smile unconvincing.

‘I don’t, no. Tell me.’

‘Full of the joys of spring,’ she said, turning the key in the ignition. ‘How was Ian?’

How was Ian? We’d talked in more detail about how to talk to his young pupils about death – how to neither avoid the subject nor traumatise them more. He’d seemed to find it
useful, had asked for it, but I’d come away somehow feeling like the session was more for me than for him. Like he was paying lip service to the process. I’d gently probed his feelings
around the footage, but he’d slammed the door on it, his jaw tight and clenched. I couldn’t share much of it with Lysette, but she read between the lines.

‘He’s not going to be feeling good about any of it,’ she said, her eyes trained on the winding lane.

‘What, all that business with Kimberley and Peter?’ I said hesitantly. ‘The quiz night?’

‘Sarah was on top form that night,’ she said, a note of defiance in her voice, and I wondered what she meant. The only thing I’d heard from Kimberley was about her shameless
use of an iPhone.

‘How so?’ I asked, even though it felt risky. We had such a brief sliver of time alone: I needed to bridge the gap.

‘She never took any shit,’ said Lysette. ‘She didn’t let her friends take it either.’

‘What, so she defended Kimberley?’

‘No,’ said Lysette, as the grand iron gates of Kimberley’s palatial house loomed up in front of us. ‘She defended Peter.’

Her words felt almost electric. Defended him against what, against Kimberley? Or was it Ian, shifty and uncomfortable Ian, who was the villain of the piece here? We’d arrived a minute too
soon. No, it was only too soon for me – I sensed that for Lysette it was perfect timing. She hit the buzzer and the gates drew apart – glacially slowly, as if they wanted to make it
clear who was boss. She parked the car on the sweeping drive, turned to me.

‘Forget it. What about you? We can’t keep talking about me the whole time.’

She sounded so like her old self in that moment, I could almost believe that the last few weeks were a dream, a ridiculous plot contrivance on a daytime soap.

‘I’m OK. I’m – I’m better now,’ I said, our eyes meeting in a silent apology.

I wanted to go further – seal the still fragile truce by having the conversation that simmered and bubbled beneath the surface – but it wasn’t the time. Not here, a discarded
rice cake in the footwell, Kimberley’s rambling home casting its long shadow.

‘Is Paddy Cakes going to make it up the motorway tonight?’ she asked, opening her door. I nearly asked her to shut it: instead I reluctantly swung mine open.

‘No, he’s stuck in the office.’

She must’ve heard the insecurity in my voice. She smiled at me across the bird-poo-splattered roof of the car, incongruously parked next to Kimberley’s gleaming 4×4.

‘And you’re not . . . you’re not late any more?’

‘Nope,’ I said, turning towards the house.

Lysette threaded her arm through mine in solidarity. ‘I know I must seem the old woman who lived in a shoe with all those kids, but I do get it. Saffron took her time to arrive.
It’ll happen when you’re not expecting it.’

‘What, like when there’s been no actual sex of any kind?’

We giggled.

‘The nuns really did a number on you,’ hissed Lysette, as the heavy front door swung open.

It was Lori who was behind it, Kimberley bobbing up behind her, her blonde hair looped up in large rollers, a satin robe pulled around her. She was all slippery gloss and it was only
teatime.

‘Perfect timing!’ she shrieked. ‘Lori, off you go.’

Lori scuttled off, giving me a quick, tight smile of recognition, and Kimberley shooed us towards the kitchen like we were badly trained puppies. There we found Lori already twisting the cork
out of a bottle of champagne, three flutes lined up on the granite counter. I shot a glancing look at Lysette: the corner of her bottom lip was trapped between her teeth, a nervous tic I remembered
from exam time at school. I’d been dreading tonight, but now I suspected she’d been dreading it even more. Was that short line of glasses just serving to remind her that Sarah
wasn’t here to knock hers back?

‘Cheers!’ said Kimberley, once we were each holding one, her excitement palpable. She must have seen our faces. ‘To Sarah,’ she added, suitably sombre. ‘I still
can’t believe she’s not here. It’s so wrong that she’s not.’

Lysette’s face crumpled, her glass making slow progress towards Kimberley’s. Kimberley put hers down and crushed her into a hug.

‘We’ll have to enjoy ourselves doubly hard to make up for the fact she’s not here,’ she said, speaking the words directly into her ear. It felt too intimate somehow, like
I was a peeping Tom.

‘We will,’ agreed Lysette, the small phrase thick with sadness. I stood there, observing the two of them, muddled together in a mass of complicated emotion. Kimberley’s eyes
briefly met mine over Lysette’s shoulder, two cold rock-pools.

‘Right,’ said Kimberley, pulling away and clapping her hands. She took a deep glug of champagne, and shook her head like it was a hit of tequila. ‘Operation Glamazon.
We’ve got ninety minutes before Nigel pulls up in the car. The clock is ticking!’

She filled each of our glasses to the brim, signalled for us to follow her. I looked back as we left the kitchen. Lori had stopped to watch us leave, the kitchen cloth she’d been scrubbing
with no longer tracing soapy circles on the counter. I wanted to stop, talk to her, but I knew it would be seen as a small, dangerous mutiny.

‘Lori, bring the bottle!’ shouted Kimberley, as we ascended the curved staircase.

‘I could nip back down,’ I said, but she waved the idea away with an airy hand.

‘We need the ice bucket.’

I looked at Lysette, hoping for a tiny moment of scorn, but she seemed utterly accepting of Kimberley’s caprice. We followed her down the plush hallway, me cringing as we passed the scene
of the crime – the upstairs bathroom – and eventually arrived in Kimberley’s bedroom. It was predictably huge, the large bay window giving a panoramic view of the beautiful
landscape, an elegant rococo bed the centrepiece, a few silk pillows strewn across it.

‘What a gorgeous view,’ I said, as Kimberley flung open a pair of doors to reveal a dressing room.

‘The pièce de résistance,’ she declared. ‘I made Nigel build me this. Feel free to rootle around in there.’

Lysette perched on the bed, her champagne glass already half empty. How had she managed to drink and walk with such frightening efficiency? I waited for her to say something, but she seemed to
have retreated inwards again.

‘Honestly, Kimberley, just chuck me any old thing. Something you don’t care about too much. Have you got something in mind, Lys?’

‘There’s that red one I borrowed before,’ said Lysette, as Lori appeared nervously in the doorway, ice bucket dripping onto the thick cream carpet.

‘Just top us up and put it in the sink,’ said Kimberley. Neither of us had made much of a dent in our glasses, but Lysette wiggled her half-empty one in Lori’s direction.
‘Let’s mix it up. Try a few things on you.’ She swung round to look at me, her eyes critically scanning my body. I backed towards the bed, sat down. ‘I’ve got a
few
things that might work on you,’ she said, and I tried not to think about the recent spate of calorific pub lunches and lack of yoga.

‘Honestly, anything,’ I protested, but she was already trawling the rails with ruthless efficiency, throwing out a mountain of dresses as she went.

‘You OK?’ I mouthed at Lysette.

‘I’m fine,’ said Lysette, perfectly audibly. ‘I’m not fine. Fine, not fine,’ she sing-songed. I could already feel my shoulders tightening and I tried to talk
myself down: there was no need to start bracing against her two glasses of champagne. It’s funny how those early survival mechanisms kick in, even thirty years later. I no longer craved Curly
Wurlys, but I still hated that insidious way that booze could body snatch the people I loved, making them there and not there, all at once.

Kimberley emerged, laden down with options.

‘This pile is for you,’ she said, handing me a bundle of fabric, ‘and these are for you,’ she said, handing Lysette a larger heap. She looked at us expectantly.

‘Can I just . . .’ I said, gesturing to the en suite.

‘We won’t stare at you, will we, Lysette?’ said Kimberley. I’d stripped to my underwear in too many teenage bedrooms and Topshop changing rooms to give a hoot about
Lysette seeing my cellulite, but there was no way I was exposing it to Kimberley. I kept my face still. ‘Of course. Go for it,’ she said, waving an imperious hand.

‘Unless you want it?’ I asked Lysette.

‘No, I’m fine,’ she giggled. ‘Trust me, Kimberley’s seen way worse!’

It was silent as I padded my way across the carpet to the bathroom, but it was the noisy kind of silence. I could feel my skin prickling.

It was predictably tasteful in there: retro without being twee. There were two top of the range electric toothbrushes side by side above the enamel sink, with its burnished copper taps. The bath
stood on chubby metal feet, expensive unguents perched on the wooden shelf above it. I studiously ignored the medicine cabinet, which looked like it had been salvaged from a wartime chemist. I
shook out the first dress, a petrol-blue sheath in a satiny fabric, slashed across the shoulder from left to right. I looked at the label: it wasn’t one of those designers that felt like a
naughty but occasionally justifiable splurge, it was one of those names which I’d only ever seen between the pages of
Vogue
. I unzipped it, and gingerly stepped in.
Well, at least I tried to step in, but it showed absolutely no desire to slither its way over my hips.

‘How’s it going in there?’ trilled Kimberley.

‘Give us a twirl,’ called Lysette. Was I imagining that slight slurring?

‘Um, no – this one’s not right,’ I protested, just as the door swung open, revealing my body bent double, my knickers proudly displayed in the wide frame of the zip,
which was still in no danger of closing.

‘Oh,’ said Kimberley, cocking her blonde head. ‘I thought that might work, it’s one of my favourites, but I see what you mean.’

I let the dress drop around my ankles, then yanked it up around myself like an inadequate sheet in an attempt to cover my half-naked body. Lysette was clutching her glass, a short-sleeved red
dress in a flattering jersey fabric already in place.

‘First time unlucky,’ she said. ‘What do you think of this one?’ she added, striking a pose.

‘You look . . .’ The truth was, whilst the dress suited her, lovely didn’t feel like the right word. It was more than churlishness: her face looked hollowed out, permanently in
shadow, and the haunted quality in her eyes robbed her of even more. ‘It’s lovely.’

Hurt flitted across her face, that tiny distinction not lost on her. She knew me too well to think that it was mere semantics. Why hadn’t I trotted out the well-worn line that her question
demanded? It wasn’t bitchiness, it came from a better place than that, but the effect was just as devastating.

‘What are you going to go for next?’ asked Kimberley, busying herself with the rest of the pile, which I’d left draped over the lip of the bath. I sat down on the faux antique
wooden loo seat, trying to rationalise away my sense of humiliation.

‘Maybe that black one?’ I said.

‘Oh, the black one!’ said Kimberley. ‘I wore that to a drinks reception Sam Cam organised at Downing Street for this wonderful addictions charity. You must try it on.’
She perched on the rim of the bath expectantly, but I didn’t move a muscle. ‘Oh, sorry!’ she said.

Lysette waved a dismissive hand in my direction as they stood up to leave.

‘You’re skinny as ever,’ she said, ‘you’re still all sushi and yoga. You wait – if you do manage to get yourself pregnant you’ll know about a real
paunch in no time.’

A slow smile spread across Kimberley’s face.

‘Are you trying to get pregnant, Mia? That’s wonderful.’

My heart was beating too fast now, blood thumping in my ears. I wanted to believe it was just tipsiness, but I couldn’t help thinking that Lysette was sharing my most vulnerable place to
punish me. I grabbed a pristine cream towel from the rail, wrapped it around me, then busied myself with the black dress.

‘I mean yes, me and Patrick do want to have a family. We’ll be getting married next summer, so . . .’

I pulled the dress up lengthways by its shoulders, pretended to admire it, hoping they’d take the hint. My heart was still pumping like a piston.

‘Oh, so you have set a date?’

‘I keep saying to her, it doesn’t always happen in five minutes flat,’ said Lysette. ‘But when you’ve had straight As your whole life . . .’

I refused to look at either of them.

‘It’s such a mystery, isn’t it?’ said Kimberley in a honeyed tone. ‘That’s why I didn’t want to leave it too long.’

I didn’t bother to engage with the blatant contradiction between the two ideas, nor tell her that most women trying to get pregnant in the autumn of their baby-making years had simply
failed to meet a suitable man till September, rather than fallen prey to some kind of fertility amnesia. Instead I turned my back on them, told them tersely I should get on with finding an outfit,
and then cried silently for a good five minutes, scrubbing at my face with the Farthings’ mercifully multi-ply toilet paper and cursing my decision to apply two thick coats of mascara before
I came out in a pointless effort to assert some control.