At first I wasn’t sure what the noise was. I thought she was choking. Then I realized she was coughing. She was coughing up all her misery and humiliation. She chewed on it for a bit, while I watched her in the mirror, then I held out my hand and she spat.
It was only a metaphor. I knew that. But I swear I felt my hand drop from the weight of it and I felt a sick shudder at the thought of it: all that cruelty, all those twisted games out of her and into me.
She shook her head and sat up. ‘See?’ she said. ‘It works. It’s freaky but it works. I feel like a … helium balloon.’ And right enough she sprang up from that cold bathroom floor as if she was on a string.
‘Let’s fix your face,’ I said. ‘What are you wearing? Does it need to go on now or—’
‘Zips up all the way,’ she told me. ‘It’ll be fine.’ She sat on the edge of the bath and blew her nose with toilet paper, while I soaked a flannel with cold water to press into her eye sockets.
‘The trick, when you’ve been crying,’ I said, ‘is to embrace it. Put a ton of kohl pencil on and some purple contour, and if your lips are swollen, draw them even bigger with a liner and put on double gloss. Do you mind if I pull some strands out of your do and muss it up a bit?’
‘Can I see?’ she said. I handed her the shaving mirror. ‘Wow. I look like a very bad girl. Sasha’s going to hate it.’
I laughed. ‘Yes, you’ll have to wash it off before you put—’ I bit my lip.
‘Before I put what?’
‘Your wardrobe door was ajar when I came in to make up your room earlier,’ I said. ‘I saw your Little Clara.’
‘My what?’
‘From The Nutcracker? Your nightie?’
‘Donna,’ she said, ‘what are you talking about?’ We both looked over towards the bedroom. She started walking first. ‘Something in the wardrobe? Because it was when Sasha went to get dressed that he suddenly blew up and went completely … Oh, my God! Whose is that?’ She lifted it out on its hanger and held it up, staring.
‘It’s not yours, then? Not your anniversary present from Sasha.’
‘Or his from me. Who the hell put it here?’
‘Sasha?’ I said. ‘To wind you up?’
She shook her head. ‘What’s the wind-up if I don’t understand what it means?’
‘So it’s one of the others,’ I said. ‘It’s a dig at the age difference.’
‘But what about what he said,’ she asked. ‘“What have you heard? Who have you been speaking to?” Who’s that?’
I didn’t get what she meant by the last bit. I hadn’t heard anything. But a low answer came from outside in the hall. ‘It’s Rosalie. Are you okay?’
‘Come in,’ Kim called, as she stuffed the nightie back in the wardrobe.
Rosalie was dressed in a silver sheath of a dress, with a high halter at the front and, we saw as she turned to close the door behind her, slashed to the bum behind.
‘I like the look,’ she said, turning back with a wave supposed to take in Kim’s face and hair as well as her pink undies and high heels. ‘Bit chilly, though.’
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ said Kim. ‘It might take three of us to get me into my frock. It zips from the hem on a twist.’
‘Present from Sasha?’ Rosalie said. ‘Bit of BDSM?’
Kim flashed a questioning look at me. I shrugged.
‘Since you kind of sort of nearly brought it up,’ Kim said, ‘weird though that is, have you any idea why someone might have put this in my wardrobe, Rosalie?’
Kim pulled the nightie out and held it up against her. I kept my eyes on Rosalie’s face and, although she got a hold of her expression pretty quickly, I didn’t miss the flare in her eyes, the quick swallow, or the way she paled behind her party make-up, giving her a yellow tinge and leaving her blusher like two clown patches on her cheeks.
‘No,’ she said. She tried to say more. I could see her casting around for something – anything – to serve up.
‘When you and Peach were mucking about with the idea of swapping rooms,’ I said, ‘yesterday, before everyone got here? You didn’t get as far as moving any clo—’
‘Oh!’ said Rosalie. ‘Yes, of course. That’s it. It’s Peach’s. I’ll tell her you’ve found it.’
And, hobbling a little on her stilettos, she hurried out again.
‘No way,’ Kim said. ‘This would drown Peach. It would drag on the floor. Quick, help me get this stupid dress on. I want to get out there and find out what’s going on.’
We stuffed her into it and I hiked the zip round and round like a helter-skelter, then Peach came in, in a sequinned dress and low-heeled shoes that were already making her feet swell.
‘Rosalie says some of my stuff ended up in here,’ she said. She sounded just right: breezy and a little bit harassed. ‘You look lovely, Kim, by the way.’
‘Here you go,’ said Kim. She slipped the hanger out of the ruffled neckline and held out the bundle of white cotton to Peach.
I didn’t imagine it. Peach hesitated before she reached out. She literally had to force herself to touch the thing.
‘Ta,’ she said. ‘See you down there.’ And she scuttled off.
‘What the…?’ Kim said.
‘On it,’ I answered, and sped away, running on pure nosiness. The corridor was empty, but a voice came from the tartan room.
‘Shit!’ It was Ramsay, at a guess. ‘You swear this wasn’t you?’
‘On my dog’s life.’ That was Buck.
‘Shit.’ Ramsay again.
‘And it wasn’t me,’ said Rosalie. ‘Or Paul. I guarantee that.’
‘What are we going to do with it?’ That was Peach. ‘I can’t sleep with it in the room.’
‘Oh, come on,’ said Buck. ‘It’s sick, I’ll grant you, but it’s not going to rise up in the night and float across—’
‘Shut up!’
‘It’s not going to reach out with its empty cuffs and take hold of your neck in cold wet invisible fingers and—’
I opened the door. ‘I’ll take it off your hands, if you like,’ I said.
The four of them froze. Rosalie was the first to come back to life. ‘It’s all right, Donna,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it to Sasha and try to convince him we’ve had enough pranks. Buck, you’re a bastard. Peach, ignore him. See you all downstairs for drinkies soon. Kim has pulled it together and looks like a million dollars, so don’t do anything to spoil it all again. Okay?’
The men followed her out, still with their bow-ties undone, grabbing their dinner jackets as they went, jamming in the door to get away from me.
‘Can I help you with anything?’ I said to Peach when they had gone. It had worked on Kim. And Peach, although she wasn’t crying or sitting in her underwear on a cold bathroom floor, actually looked a bit worse. She looked tired and ill. I had put her at forty yesterday when she rolled up but I’d believe she was fifty now, with that grey cast to her face and the way her shoulders slumped.
‘I can’t face them,’ she said. ‘Tonight’s going to get ugly – can’t you feel it coming? – and I’m not sure I can take it.’
‘Give some of it to me,’ I said. ‘You know, like Kim mentioned yesterday? I could hold on to the worst of it and then you’d be able to cope.’
She was shaking her head and her face was even greyer, her lips almost blue. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t mess with that. It’s evil, Donna. It’s dark stuff. Don’t even joke about it.’
‘Evil?’ I said. ‘Dark? You’re a doctor!’
‘And I prescribe myself a large glass of vodka and grapefruit juice to take the edge off,’ she said. ‘Can you sneak me one up the back stairs? Don’t say you’re too busy.’
‘Coming up,’ I told her.
The drinks tray was in the drawing room but no one else was there yet and I managed to flit in, fill a tumbler and flit out again without anyone seeing me. I stopped to rearrange the heap of presents that was gathering on the low table and clicked a snap with my
phone. It was second nature: getting The Breakers ready for the website going live had left me with a compulsion to turn every collection of objects into a close-up. I still made it back to Peach in good time.
‘Angel,’ she said.
‘I’ve got to go now, though,’ I told her. ‘Dinner and all that.’
* * *
There’s a moment in the middle of getting any decent meal to the table, a state of total focus, where everything else falls away.
‘Basting is folklore,’ I told myself, listening to the sizzle from the oven. I always talk myself through busy bits and crises. ‘Life’s too short to curl butter,’ I said. I shoved the little butter dishes back in the cupboard and cut straight slabs of it. I’d put it in salty ice and glare if they questioned me.
I could hear the clack, clack of someone in heels coming down the stairs, stepping on the painted edges instead of the carpet strip where their stilettos might jab through the weave. Time to take the champagne in, and the caviar-stuffed quail’s eggs and fried oysters. ‘God bless the hamper!’ I said. Whatever planet I’d been going to make miniature cheese choux buns on, my rocket ship had fallen far short in the end.
‘And he better not throw any more out onto the lawn or he’ll get my boot up him,’ I was saying, as I backed out of the kitchen door with the ice bucket. Kim heard most of it, since she was passing, but she only laughed and asked me if I needed a hand.
‘Nope. I’m all over it like a rash.’ The low clicking from the billiards room told me where the men had gone when they rushed away from me and I expected the drawing room to be empty, so I didn’t bother to watch what I said as I walked in. ‘Forget about everything and have a wonderful evening. Let me pamper you. You deserve it.’
‘Spare me!’ said Sasha. He was sitting in the corner of the long couch, one leg slung over the other in a study of nonchalance, but his jaw was too tense for it to be true. ‘“You deserve it.” “Let’s have some pampering.” The banality of you all makes me sick.’
Rosalie came in in time to hear the end of this. ‘Sasha, if you’ve written an anniversary love poem for Kim at least wait till we’re all gathered before you recite it.’
It wasn’t until she snorted that I noticed Jennifer, sitting in the little sofa behind the door.
‘You’re back!’ I said.
‘Another outpouring of erudition,’ said Sasha.
‘You’re … the … waitress, aren’t you?’ Jennifer said.
Kim and Rosalie both laughed at that, although I managed to keep my professional front intact.
‘Oh, Jelly, it was a very long night and it’s been a very long day,’ Kim said. ‘Donna’s more or less one of us now.’
‘How could that go wrong?’ said Sasha under his breath, and I watched their faces darken as though a cloud had swept across the room.
‘Nothing’s going to go wrong, Sasha,’ Kim said. ‘But I can’t let you make up poems for me without returning the favour. Ten years … what rhymes with years?’
‘Tears, fears, queers, smears,’ said Rosalie. ‘It’s writing itself.’
Peach was coming along the corridor as I ducked out and headed back to the kitchen.
‘Thanks for the stiffener,’ she said. ‘Sorry about my little mini-meltdown.’
‘Don’t mention it. Hey! Jennifer’s back.’
Peach took a deep breath and nodded. ‘Lovely. No more upsets.’
I tried to find words to agree with her. She tried not to notice me failing. In the end, I just smiled and bobbed through the kitchen door for the hors d’oeuvres tray.
‘“Roses are red,”’ came Peach’s voice through the intercom. ‘“Violets are blue.”’ She was up to speed with the game already.
‘“Sugar is sweet,”’ Rosalie added. ‘And so is the fact that there’s no pre-nup.’
‘Jelly Belly!’ Buck’s voice was so loud he made the monitor buzz. ‘You came back to us. How’s your tum-tum?’
‘My tum-tum’s fine but I’m regretting my return already,’ said Jennifer. ‘Could you please stop using that ridiculous, insulting name?’
‘Jellifer?’ said Buck. ‘How is that insulting? Hm? Jelly and custard? Jelly on a plate? Jelly Baby?’
‘Shut up, Buck,’ said Peach.
‘It’s not as if you’re fat,’ Buck said. ‘I’m fat. You’re as svelte as you were when you were a nubile little jelly still in her packet. Before we poured on all the hot water and put you in the fridge to set to a wobble.’
‘Shut up, Buck,’ said Peach. ‘I’m glad you’re back, Je–ennifer. We’re four and four again.’
‘Jesus,’ came Sasha’s voice. ‘Four and four again? Peach, are you absolutely hammered already?’
There was a long silence in the drawing room. Jennifer broke it. ‘I got a little perspective and advice. From my goddesses.’
‘You prayed for guidance about coming back?’ said Kim. Peach snorted.
‘It’s a support group,’ Jennifer said. ‘Six goddesses. Women I know.’
‘How…’ said Rosalie. Peach snorted again. ‘… stirring.’
‘We look after one another.’
‘And that makes you divine, does it?’ Sasha said.
‘I’m the goddess of the chalk,’ said Jennifer. ‘Teacher, you know. And there’s a goddess of the gold. She’s a banker, down in London. And a goddess of the grain. She works in a distillery near Inverness. And the one I was speaking to today, the goddess of the deep.’
‘Plumber?’ said Buck.
‘“The deep” could be MI5,’ said Rosalie. ‘I’d be goddess of the briefs!’
‘Goddess of the flesh!’ said Peach. ‘Can anyone join, Je–en?’
‘Could Kim join?’ said Sasha. ‘Goddess of the pricy tat?’
‘It’s not a joke,’ said Jennifer. ‘Sedna’s a marine biologist. She works on dead kelp.’
They all tried hard not to laugh and they almost made it. But then I heard a noise like a steam whistle and knew that someone had caught someone else’s eye.
‘It’s all single women without children anyway,’ Jennifer said.
‘Of course it is,’ said Sasha. ‘Where are the glasses for that plonk?’
I started into action along in the kitchen, gathering eight flutes in one hand – it was a skill; I could go to ten if I had to – and a tray in the other.
‘Give me that,’ Buck said, when I entered the drawing room, ‘and you take over from Paul before he has someone’s eye out.’
Paul was unwinding the wire on the bottle of champagne. In my experience, men hate being outed as crap at opening wine – champagne included – almost as much as they hate not being able to carve a joint of meat or reverse-park a car, but Paul shrugged and handed the bottle to me. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘Racing track ejaculation every time. I’ll be Santa instead, shall I?’
He lifted one of the parcels from the pile on the footstool and read the gift tag. I watched him while I wrapped the cork and eased it out. He’d been rummaging already. My lovely photo-shoot arrangement of presents was ruined from someone planking the biggest one on top of a load of smaller ones.
‘With love from Auntie Verve and Cousin Jennifer,’ Paul said, holding out a parcel the shape of a shallow hat box. Kim looked to Sasha to see who’d open it, but Sasha only rolled his eyes.
‘Thank you for coming back, Jennifer,’ Kim said. ‘And thanks for bringing this.’ She slid one of her long fingers under the flap at one end, broke the tape and opened the paper. ‘Very swish,’ she said, uncovering a pressed-paper drum and easing the lid off it. ‘Oh, lovely! Look, Sasha! What a lovely idea. It’s tin plates.’
‘They’re picnic plates from Chatsworth,’ Jennifer said. ‘Replicas of the Sèvres and Limoges originals. Painted on tin.’
‘Genius!’ said Rosalie. ‘Oh, I do like those. We must get some.’
Jennifer preened a little
‘And we’re such tin-plate people!’ said Sasha. ‘Not a Saturday goes by without us sitting on a
tartan blanket with a packet of sandwiches and a flask.’
Peach’s sigh was gusty enough to make the petals on the nearest flower arrangement shiver.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Jennifer, understandably I suppose, but so prissy even I wanted to smack her.
‘And is going in with your mum on a joint present more of the good advice from the spinsters?’ Sasha said. ‘You’re forty-three years old, Jennifer. Isn’t it time to grow up? Or at least cough up?’
‘My mother isn’t well enough to shop so I added her name to my present,’ said Jennifer.
‘Oh, that’s right. I forgot,’ said Sasha. ‘You’ve got power of attorney, haven’t you? That must be a nice little cushion.’
‘Time for another pressie,’ said Kim, talking over him. ‘Thank you, Jennifer. These are lovely.’
‘Anna and Oliver,’ said Paul, holding another parcel out to Kim.
‘Oh, God,’ said Rosalie. ‘Let’s see what the parents have come up with this time. It was matching remote-holders for our armchairs for Paul and me last Christmas.’
‘Do you mind if I open it, Sasha?’ Kim said. ‘Your parents after all.’
Sasha stared coldly at her.
‘He can open the next one,’ Peach said.
I poured the wine – so cold it didn’t foam at all – and passed the flutes around, setting Kim’s down at her elbow while she tackled the parcel.
‘Wow,’ she said, when she had the box open. ‘A bird feeder. It’s official, then. We’re old.’
‘You’re not old,’ said Buck. ‘But Sasha’s bloody ancient.’
‘Will this heavy parcel be okay on your old knees?’ said Paul, taking the big one and handing it over.
‘I like encouraging wildlife into the garden,’ Peach said. ‘But it’s not a thrilling gift.’
‘No sign of the black rabbits tonight,’ said Rosalie, looking out of the window, ‘speaking of wildlife.’ Sasha was picking irritably at the paper. ‘Rip it, darling, or we’ll be here for ever.’
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