by Clare Naylor
“Darling, I’m on my way,” Kate yelled down her phone once she was out of harm’s way and in the relative quiet of the park.
“You’re not cycling and talking are you, Kate?” Tanya asked disapprovingly.
“I can’t hear you, there’s wind in my earpiece,” Kate shouted, in order to avoid a telling-off. “I’ll be there in fifteen. I might need to borrow a T-shirt, though, I’m a bit sweaty.”
“Lovely,” Tanya said. “I’ll dig one out.” Kate hoped for a Chloe piece or maybe even Balenciaga.
“Gotta dash or I’ll get killed.” She put her phone in the back pocket of her skirt as a policeman looked fit to arrest her. She smiled at him and pedaled off madly.
Tanya was waiting by the large front window of her house with a nervous smile on her face. She rushed to the door when Kate sped up the drive on her bike and chained it to the drainpipe.
“I’ve got you a top out. It ought to fit.” Tanya ushered Kate in the front door and into her hallway, which was practically bursting with sunlight filtering through the stained-glass window above the door.
“Thanks. Are you driving?” Kate said as she pulled off her grubby T-shirt and screwed it into a ball.
“I thought we’d take a cab. I’ve got one coming in a minute or so.” Tanya was shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“Don’t be nervous, it’s just routine, right?” Kate asked as she pulled Tanya’s T-shirt—a very understatedly beautiful Dries Van Noten, she noted with delight—over her head. She could actually use a new bra, too, she thought as she caught sight of her rather dubious number in the mirror. It was the old rule of thumb that dictated that once you painted the baseboard, the rest of the room looked rather shabby. Kate simply had to look at an item of Tanya’s clothing to realize that she was a nonsensical sartorial mess. And despite her new subscription to Mirri’s way of doing things—the disheveled, careless messy way—she suspected that tatty, graying underwear did not fall into even Mirri’s category.
“Well, yes. But God, Kate, I’m petrified. What if something really terrible is wrong with me? What if they say there’s no hope of me ever conceiving?” Tanya closed her eyes miserably and Kate went to hug her. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. Robbie had a meeting at seven this morning. God knows how he got up.”
“Sweetheart, there’s always hope. They’re just doctors. And if they say that all’s fine, then great. It just may take a bit more time before you and Robbie have a child. And even if they say that there is something wrong. Well, what do they know? They make mistakes all the time.” Kate stroked her friend’s hair gently and then looked at her face.
“Do you promise?” Tanya, who was always so indomitable, so practical, was so desperate for reassurance that Kate was overcome with the urge to take away her pain.
“Darling, it’s never the end of the road with these things. We both know of a million people who’ve been told that they can never have babies and then by some miracle they do. It happens every day. I had a friend who went away on holiday right after the doctors told her that she was infertile—she and her husband got drunk, went skydiving, and had the wildest time and guess what? She got pregnant. Good God, look at Cherie Blair. She got pregnant at forty-five. Madonna did it at forty-two. You’ve got an absolute age to go yet even if there is something wrong. Science will catch up with you or something like that.”
“I hope so.” Tanya looked defeated for a moment and then jumped when the cab honked loudly in the street outside. “Better get going.”
“Tell you what, in no time you’re going to be cursing the afternoons you spent worrying about silly things like this,” Kate said brightly. “Because you won’t have a moment to spare between nappies and bottles and sore nipples.”
“God, I hope you’re right.” Tanya smiled weakly.
“Just don’t come complaining to me,” Kate said drily as she climbed into the cab beside her friend. “Because I’ll be off raging like a rock star with one of my many lovers. Or more likely on my yacht in Saint-Tropez with an indecently young boyfriend.”
“Really?” Tanya asked, still too tense to be completely with it.
“Hardly, considering that when I woke up this morning I discovered new lines down the side of my nose.” Kate groaned. “I’ve discovered this whole new place to have wrinkles. Nobody I’ve ever met has them there. But look, I do.”
“No you do not.” Tanya smiled as Kate forced her new wrinkles into her friend’s line of vision. Then she added, “Oh, God, you’re right. You do. How weird. I’ve never seen lines there before.”
“Thank you,” Kate said matter-of-factly. “Now I do have to fill you in on a couple of minor happenings in my life,” she went on coyly, trying her best to take her friend’s mind off the tube-in-the-belly-button ordeal that they were hurtling toward.
“I wondered why I hadn’t heard from you for a few days. I thought you were engrossed in the portrait,” Tanya said as she fastened her seat belt.
“Capri, darling,” Kate said excitedly. Tanya gave the requisite look of surprise, and Kate’s tale of making love in swimming pools was the perfect device to stop Tanya from noticing the angry lanes of stationary traffic making them late for her appointment. When they finally pulled up outside the hospital, it was too late to worry.
“Eleven pounds forty, please, love,” the cabbie said to Tanya, who looked up at the imposing red brick of the hospital with dread on her face.
“Thanks.” Tanya paid and the girls got out. “Promise it’ll be okay, Kate?” she said as she pressed Kate’s hand hard between her hot, pale fingers.
“How can it not be, sweetheart? You’re going to be the best mother in the world. I know it,” Kate promised.
When Kate arrived home, having left Tanya at the hospital when Robbie arrived to sit with her, she went inside to lie down and cool off. The air was thick and muggy and she felt as though she’d spent the entire day in traffic, inhaling blue hazy fumes, her skin getting stickier and grimier by the second. She had no plans for the evening except to take a cool shower and maybe do a bit of work on one of the portraits. Suddenly she had more work to do than she could handle, which was not something she was going to complain about in a hurry. As she glanced at the floor she noticed that there was an envelope lying there behind the door. She wasn’t sure she could muster the energy to pick it up, but eventually she unpeeled herself and practically crawled toward it. She saw immediately that it was Jake’s handwriting. With surprisingly little curiosity she tore it open and found a CD with a pale blue Post-it note attached. It read:
Have dinner with me tomorrow, angel?
Kate hadn’t fostered enough cynicism toward Jake yet to think how predictable it was for him to be making more moves on her than he’d done in as long as she could remember. In fact, more moves than he’d ever made on her. Instead she turned over the CD case, which he’d scratched three large XXXs on, extracted the CD, and slid it into her stereo. She climbed apathetically back onto the bed, thinking that it’d be one of Jake’s compilations that he made for his friends every so often. But instantly she recognized the voice that drifted out as Jake’s. He was singing softly and sweetly the words of a song she loved, “Magnolia” by J. J. Cale. She closed her eyes and listened as he filled the room with words of love.
Magnolia you sweet thing . . .
Got to get back to you, babe. . . .
Inexplicably a tear coursed its way heavily from the outside corner of her eye down into her hair. This song reminded her of how much she had yearned for Jake not so long ago. In fact, not so long ago it would have been simply too achingly painful for her to listen to. Now it was just incredibly sad. The man who had opened so many doors in her life—and slammed so many in her face—was gone for good. Because this time she’d shown him the way out. But now as she cried it was different from the other times. This time there was a faint pleasure in the feeling of loss. She’d loved Jake but now she was free. Though clearly he wasn’t aware of that fact.
She picked up her phone and sent him a heavyhearted text.
You know that I can’t. Kxx
Then she fell asleep on the bed, clutching her phone as Jake’s voice spun endlessly in her stereo.
“Darling, would you mind babysitting for me?” Kate was wrenched from sleep by Mirri, who was standing above her. She had learned that hammering on Kate’s door wasn’t polite, but she hadn’t quite grasped that standing over someone with your hands on your hips while she slept was equally alarming.
“Agh, Mirri.” Kate’s head almost collided with Mirri’s as she sat up. “What?”
“Will you babysit for me? I have to go out tonight,” she said as she sat down on the edge of the bed. Kate rubbed her eyes and leaned over to turn Jake off.
“Yeah. Okay,” she murmured sleepily. “What time is it? Have I been asleep for hours?”
“I saw you come back about an hour ago,” Mirri said. “It’ll just be for a couple of hours in the house while I’m out. I’m not planning to stay long.”
“Where are you going?” Kate rubbed her eyes and wriggled herself up into sitting position. “Anywhere exciting?”
“I have to tell Jonah that he must not leave his wife,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Wow. He’s going to leave her?” Kate was impressed. Much as she didn’t agree with the breaking up of families and such, it was a real coup for a sixty-year-old woman with a bad temper to lure a man away from his wife. Without even trying or wanting to.
“I’m not going to let him. Honestly, I don’t know what he thinks we’ll do together for the rest of the week, let alone our lives. But he’s very sweet and I don’t want to hurt him so I have to try to be, how do you say it? Diplomatique.”
“Poor Jonah.” Kate smiled. “It’s quite miserable, really, isn’t it, breaking hearts?”
“It is not so much fun as everyone thinks.” Mirri was dressed in a pair of navy sailor’s pants and a tight T-shirt with her hair tied back in a simple ponytail; she looked more elegant than Kate had ever seen her. Kate guessed it was because she had serious business to attend to. “So whose heart have you been breaking, my dear?” she asked.
“Only The Slug’s. I’m not sure it counts since he’s already shattered mine into a million pieces several times over.”
“How quickly hearts heal.” Mirri smiled knowingly. “Especially when you only thought you loved the person.”
“I did love him,” Kate said. Though she wasn’t so sure anymore that the whole thing hadn’t been some absurd and warped game, rather than love. Love was supposed to be so much more. And it was also supposed to be loving, actually, now she came to think of it. “But I saw him in the street today and I really think I’m over him. I told him so but of course he’s decided that he can’t live without me.” This wasn’t strictly true but it was the least Kate deserved after all the rejection. “He wants me to go to dinner tomorrow but I couldn’t even if I was tempted to, because I’m seeing Louis.”
“Louis?” Mirri’s eyes lit up.
“I’ve told you before. I’ve known Louis forever and we’re friends.”
“It’s good to begin as friends.”
“Mirri, even if I did have a crush on him—which I don’t, though he makes me laugh sometimes—we’re not very relaxed around one another.”
“It’s the sexual tension. How can you be relaxed when all you want to do is fuck?” Mirri said excitedly.
Kate made a point of ignoring her. “Even if I did have a crush on him, he always goes out with these gorgeous, high-achieving women. I’m just like a sister to him.” Kate improvised furiously.
“You’re gorgeous, too,” Mirri said impatiently, “or do you need to have another man suck the bee sting out of your leg to remind you?”
“I’m not Louis material. And Felix didn’t suck me, he swiped me with a credit card,” Kate said flatly. “Now, please be careful with Jonah, won’t you? I like him.”
“He’s cheating on his wife,” Mirri reminded Kate sanctimoniously.
“I know—how about you get rid of Jake for me and I’ll let Jonah down gently? That’d be much more appropriate.”
“But not nearly so much fun,” Mirri said as she hopped down from the bed in her bare feet. “Come to the house soon. I’ve left you a bottle of champagne out and some oven chips. Bébé will be thrilled to have the company.”
“Me, too.” Kate huffed. “For all the helicopters and star-crossed exes I’m still the only girl in London alone on a Thursday night.”
A few minutes after Mirri had gone, Kate bundled together her pencils in case the mood took her later, which it never did—the TV was always much more interesting. Hell, the wallpaper was always much more interesting than doing work. Her cell rang and Robbie’s number came up.
“Just wanted to let you know that all’s well,” he said.
“Really?” Kate asked. Her stomach had dive-bombed when she saw the number. Because even though she’d made a point of being positive for Tanya, she was terrified that she might not be okay. And she couldn’t imagine the impact that would have on her best friend’s life.
“Well, they couldn’t find anything wrong. Which is great, but it doesn’t really solve our problem. Basically they told us to go away and think about fertility treatment,” Robbie said. It was strange discussing something so intimate with Robbie, but Kate supposed that this kind of situation forced people to open up in ways they would never have before. Kate also hoped that it’d just make them stronger as a couple—forging an even greater bond in adversity.
“Well, tell her I’m so pleased that nothing’s wrong,” Kate said with relief. “And fertility treatment is so common these days that I don’t think there’s anything to worry about apart from a few injections in the bum,” she added in what she hoped was a casual and reassuring voice.
“You’re right,” said Robbie, clutching at the idea that it couldn’t be so bad if so many people endured it. “Everyone’s at it, aren’t they?”
“Sure are,” Kate said.
When Kate arrived at Leonard’s later, Mirri was adding hoop earrings to her sailor’s outfit.
“I may not want him to leave his wife,” she said, checking herself in the mirror, “but I still want him to want to be in love with me.”
“You’re a terrible woman, Mirabelle Moncur. You can’t just make it easy on the poor chap, can you?” Leonard said as he finished his supper for one.
“Men hate things to be easy.” She added lipstick. “Kate, my dear, Bébé has had his supper and he’s in his bed in the television room. You just need to nuzzle him occasionally. The champagne is in the fridge.” She kissed first Kate and then Leonard on the top of their heads as though they were a pair of children being left by their mother for the evening. Then she disappeared, leaving only Shalimar where she once was.
“Are you staying in tonight?” Kate asked Leonard in surprise. She’d assumed that she’d been called in to babysit because he was out.
“I had a drinks party but I decided that my bookkeeping couldn’t wait another day, so I’m going to lock myself away in my office. Though I will have a glass of something with you first.” He twinkled. “It’d be churlish not to.”
“Oh good.” Kate raided the fridge for the champagne and pulled two glasses from the cupboard. “Now, what’s on telly? I’m dying for a good soap opera.” She shamelessly left her pencils and sketch pad behind on the kitchen table and made her way into the television room with Leonard in tow.
“Forget soap operas,” he said as he sank down into his armchair, “I have home movies.”
“Ah,” said Kate as she spied the neat mountain of DVDs he’d shown her earlier on the table. “Which is the silliest?”
“Well, we have Verbier in 1967. That will be very silly. We have Onassis’s yacht in 1973. Which will be deranged.”
“My taxi is late.” They both turned around to see Mirri standing in the doorway with a face as black as thunder. “So I stand around by the gate like an i
diot while the photographers go crazy and try to make me smile or hit them and still he doesn’t come. So I have come back in and told Jonah that if he wants to take me to dinner he must come and collect me. These men today really have no manners. I should never have had to go to the restaurant alone in the first place.” She came and sat on the edge of Kate’s sofa.
“Well, the paparazzi are going to love Jonah Sinclair turning up to take you to dinner, aren’t they?” Kate said, and tucked her legs in so that Mirri could sit down.
“He wants his wife to find out. Well, now she will,” she said sourly. “So what are you watching?”
“We were just wondering whether we should feast our eyes on Ari’s yacht, or Christmas the year you divorced Christian.”
“You were not going to be such sad people to sit at home and watch such things?” Mirri couldn’t help but smile, despite her vile temper.
“There’s always Verbier 1967. Or Jimmy Hendrix in the Isle of Wight.” Leonard read the labels. It sounded to Kate like a very glamorous history book.
“Let’s look at Christmas.” Mirri managed a wry smile and settled herself into the sofa. “I think I was happy then.”
“You certainly were,” Leonard said as he slid in the tape. The first shot was of Mirri in a Santa Claus hat and bikini. “Good Lord, you look like Playmate of the Year.”
“I think I was.” Mirri winked. And within seconds she and Leonard were on the floor laughing at themselves, Leonard with his fabulous porn-star mustache and a shirt open to his waist and Mirri on the lap of a man who looked like every matinee idol who’d ever smoldered rolled into one perfect homme.
“Oh my God, you were both so beautiful,” Kate said as she scooped Bébé up off the floor into her lap and tickled his tummy. Because they were. They were dancing by the swimming pool, they were smoking Gauloises in the sun, they were kissing and diving into water, and in every scene they looked like ancient gods and goddesses of youth and beauty.