by Rebecca Reid
From the table came a roar of laughter. Lila was probably keeping them entertained with her ditzy blonde routine, asking if Dutch people were ‘from Dutch’ and earnestly explaining that she thought Wales was an island. Georgia never understood how Lila could enjoy embarrassing herself for laugh. It wasn’t funny, it was excrutiating. But, Georgia consoled herself, if she was making a fool of herself then she was happy and distracted, and until she and Nancy had a chance to talk some sense into her, that mattered.
‘You OK?’ Charlie asked quietly, reaching into the fridge for another beer. Why was he drinking beer? Why didn’t he want the wine she’d chosen?
Georgia nodded. ‘Yep. Do I not look OK?’
‘You do, you do. It’s just, I know you were upset about the test earlier.’
‘I’m fine.’ Georgia’s lips closed tightly.
‘Maybe you’re taking on too much?’
Georgia half laughed. ‘That’s not usually your attitude.’
‘What?’
‘Well, you don’t usually seem to think I’m doing enough,’ she said tersely.
‘That’s not true.’
Georgia said nothing, raising her eyebrows and taking a cloth from the sink to wipe the surfaces down.
‘That’s not true,’ he repeated. ‘How many times have I said you can stop working if you want to? This matters to me too, you know.’
Georgia ran the cloth under the tap, twisting it to wring the water out, pulling it more forcefully than she needed to. ‘No, I can’t.’
‘Why the hell not?’ he held his hands out, gesturing around the huge room as if their high-ceilinged kitchen was proof that they were invincible. Georgia took his hands in hers, cloaking her desire to make him stop with affection. She couldn’t bear for anyone to think that they were fighting.
‘You know why not,’ she murmured.
‘So you’re going to keep doing this forever? What about when we have a baby?’
‘If.’
‘What?’
‘If we have a baby. Not when.’
Charlie rolled his eyes. ‘If then. Will you keep doing this if we have a baby?’
Georgia dropped the cloth on to the side, sighing. ‘I don’t know, darling. I haven’t got that far yet.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. This was not the time to talk about it. ‘Let’s not talk about it now, OK? Love you.’ She pressed her body into his, running her hands down his back. It was softer than it used to be when he was still rowing three times a week. His stomach curved into hers. After a big meal, he’d drum on it, saying, ‘I’m getting fat.’ Georgia would watch him and think about how wonderful it would be not to care.
‘Bit of an off-colour joke from Cammy,’ he said, sotto voce. ‘After what happened with that teacher at your school.’
‘I know,’ Georgia said grimly. ‘But that’s Lila for you. She never knows where the line is.’
At that, Georgia drew herself away from her husband and turned her body towards the sink, lifting a glass to the tap. Angling it, she turned the tap on full force so that water sprayed off the glass, soaking her jumpsuit, which after eating her starter had become even tighter.
‘Fuck!’ she shouted, dropping the glass into the sink, carefully enough that it didn’t shatter. ‘Fucking fuck!’
The others looked up. Charlie was at her side in a second. ‘Are you all right, darling?’
‘Yes, yes fine,’ she laughed. ‘I can’t believe I did that.’
‘It’s not like you to be so clumsy,’ said Charlie.
‘I know,’ she shook her head in mock dismay. ‘I’ll have to go change. Can you keep an eye on the timer? If it beeps, just turn the oven off, don’t do anything else.’
As she ran her fingers along the banister she could hardly believe her luck. She’d managed it. It would only be a moment’s delay and the gloriously flattering J. Crew dress she’d been planning to wear before Lila had intervened would be shown off instead of left hanging sadly in her dark wardrobe.
Almost before she’d finished the thought she heard steps behind her and light breaths which quickly erupted into giggles.
‘I’m just going upstairs to change,’ she said, whipping around. ‘You two stay and keep the boys company.’
Lila was half sitting, half lying on the stairs behind her, a wasted grin on her face. Nancy was standing, her face impassive, like she knew that this whole glass act had been an excuse, like she could see straight through Georgia, like she was wondering how, if things really were as bad as Georgia had said in her email, she could care what she was wearing.
The truth was that on any night with Nancy, Georgia would care what she was wearing. Because of the way Nancy had looked her up and down. Because she had watched Nancy’s eyes linger on her waist and her neck and her arms. That was the thing about Nancy. She could make you feel like you were worthless, even when she had flown halfway around the world to help you. But it all happened under a cover, under a blanket of ‘telling it how it is’ and ‘calling a spade a spade’. If you challenged her on it you found every point you wanted to make slipping away like water through your fingers. Suddenly it all seemed petty and intangible. So Georgia didn’t say anything.
‘Can we come with you?’ simpered Lila. ‘Please, Mummy?’
Lila’s habit of calling her mummy never used to rankle.
‘I’m only going to be two minutes,’ Georgia protested.
‘Mummy’s cross,’ said Nancy.
‘I’m not cross,’ Georgia snapped.
Nancy and Lila laughed. ‘Not cross at all,’ Nancy snapped back.
‘Totally CALM,’ Lila hissed.
‘Loving life,’ added Nancy, stamping her foot. Georgia forced herself to laugh.
‘Fine, you can come upstairs and watch me take one outfit off and put another one on, since you’re so obsessed with me.’
They trailed up the stairs to the top of the house. Georgia closed the bedroom door behind her and went straight through to the wardrobe, determined to change so quickly they wouldn’t get bored, ignore the closed door, invade the bedroom and see the bruises on her stomach. If only Lila were a bit drunker, if only Nancy could get a snippet of what Lila was like. It was fine, Georgia told herself. They had only just finished their starter. Lila was drinking. It would happen, and then Nancy would do what she was here to do. Fix Lila.
Georgia twisted her arm, trying to get purchase on the slippery zip at the side of the jumpsuit which ran from her hip to under her arm. Her fingers couldn’t seem to keep hold of the little metal tab. It was starting to feel even tighter and her armpits were pricking with sweat. Finally, Georgia dragged the zip down and desperately pulled the fabric away from her body. Awash with relief she dropped it into the laundry basket. Then, thinking better of it, she threw it into the bin. It had left a red ring around her waist, and the seams had imprinted painfully under her arms. It didn’t fit her properly. And if things went the way she was praying they would, it would be far too small before long.
Slipping the dress off the hanger was delicious. The silk was cool against her flushed skin, and soft on the places where the jumpsuit had constricted around her. It was a blissful relief. Georgia had intended to keep the shoes on, the ones Lila had demanded she wore. But the comfortable nude heels, the ones which made her legs look miles long, were calling to her. It was no big deal. Lila wouldn’t care.
‘See? Thirty seconds of changing and I’m done—’ Georgia stopped as she pulled the bedroom door open. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’
Nancy was leaning against the banister, half of her torso perilously suspended over the air. She was laughing. Lila was cross-legged on the floor, convulsing with giggles.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Georgia.
‘Nothing,’ smirked Nancy. ‘It was stupid.’
‘Tell me,’ said Georgia.
Lila giggled again. ‘It’s too hard to explain. You look nice.’
‘Thanks,’ said Georgia. ‘Were you talking about me
?’
‘No,’ said Nancy. How could she lean against the banister like that? Georgia stepped forward and looked over. The staircase cut through the centre of the house, through all four floors. The marble floor of the hall reared up at her as she looked at it. The wine she’d drunk swirled in her stomach and her fingers twisted into each other.
‘Can you come away from there, Nance?’ asked Georgia.
‘Why?’ she said, still smiling. Her hair was so dark and so shiny under the hall light. How did she get it like that?
‘I don’t like it,’ Georgia muttered.
‘What?’ she laughed. ‘Is it even worse if I do this?’ she swung herself even further over, her hands on the polished wooden banister.
‘No, don’t,’ Georgia replied. ‘Please.’
‘Ohhh, you don’t like heights, do you?’ Lila laughed. ‘Remember Florence?’
Years ago they’d gone on a History of Art trip to Florence. Their tour guide had taken them to the Duomo, a huge domed cathedral. The dome had a balcony around its interior rim. It was supposed to be some kind of treat to walk around the circumference of it, looking at the paintings on the ceiling, marvelling at how tiny the people on the ground were. Georgia’s mother – who’d worked hours of overtime to pay for the trip – had gone on and on about the view, so when her stomach had twisted and every fibre of her being had told her not to step out on to the ledge, she’d done it anyway.
She had had a panic attack halfway around, collapsing to the floor with her back rooted to the wall and completely unable to move. It had taken two teachers half an hour to move her.
‘Does it make you feel a bit funny?’ Nancy asked. ‘What about if I do this?’
Nancy looped one leg over the banister, then the other and stood, her arms holding on to it behind her, her bare heels on the ledge. ‘I’m flying, Jack,’ she giggled.
Georgia was going to be sick. She glanced down again, catching sight of the floor once more. The back of her neck was tight and cold and hot at the same time. ‘Please, Nance,’ she said quietly.
‘Fucking hell, Nance,’ said Lila, her eyes wide.
‘OK, OK. You’re such babies.’ Nancy took one hand off the banister and spun herself around, but her fingers missed the banister and scrabbled at it, the polish too shiny. Her giggles became a sharp gasp as she reached out urgently. Georgia and Lila surged forward, grabbing at Nancy’s arm. Georgia’s mind filled with the image of Nancy’s muscular body, contorted into an odd shape on the marble, a pool of maroon from her perfect skull. What would it sound like, her body hitting the ground?
‘I’m fine,’ Nancy snapped, dragging herself back over the rail and landing neatly on the floor. ‘God, look at your faces!’ she laughed.
Lila laughed, too. ‘To be fair, it would have put a massive downer on the evening if you’d spilled your brains all over Georgia’s nice clean floor.’
Nancy laughed, getting to her feet. ‘It’ll take a lot more than that to get rid of me.’
She looked Georgia up and down. ‘Nice dress. I think I saw it the other day in J. Crew – on sale, right?’
THEN
Georgia
‘I don’t understand how it happened,’ said Nancy, as she drew a cigarette out of the packet. Her voice was even and low. To a passer-by it might have seemed pleasant. Georgia searched for something to say, but came up empty-handed.
It had been twenty-four hours since they’d arrived at school, and Nancy clearly wasn’t prepared to forgive the room allocations snub. More worryingly, she hadn’t even mentioned the encounter with Heidi and the new teacher – the first telling off Nancy had had in years. It was a perfect storm of a black mood and it was Georgia and Lila who were going to have to weather it. It always was.
That morning Georgia had mentioned that she’d like to get the cartilage at the top of her ear pierced, like Miss Brandon had, and Nancy had practically thrown her cup of coffee across the table. ‘She was actually pretty cool about you swearing,’ Georgia had ventured. ‘Some teachers would have given you a purple slip for that.’ And now she was being punished, Nancy hadn’t spoken to her in hours.
‘It’s not like we did this, Nance,’ said Lila, whose patience was clearly also wearing thin. ‘We got there, took our bags up to the room, and it had other people’s names on the door. There wasn’t a lot we could do. OK?’
It wasn’t OK. This was what Nancy did. Most people either got angry, blew up and then calmed down, or they seethed below the surface. Nancy somehow did both. She’d be furious for the next couple of days – unless they got their own way, which Georgia thought seemed increasingly unlikely – and then she’d decide whose fault it was. That’s who would be pushed out. Georgia had been on the wrong end of it before. Whichever of the two of them Nancy liked best at any given time was the princess to her queen. The deputy. Safe. Whoever she liked less would have to stand a few steps away, not quite close enough to be part of it. When they’d studied the Tudors last year, Georgia had let herself think how well Nancy would have done at court. Though she couldn’t help but notice that it was the ones who reached too high who ended up with their heads cut off.
Georgia watched as Nancy leaned back on the wall, taking a long drag on her Marlboro Light. ‘Why didn’t you stop Heidi from unpacking?’ she snarled at Lila. The question was so unfair that Lila couldn’t find the words to answer it.
This had become their smoking spot last year. It was a gardener’s shed, abandoned and half collapsed, at the bottom of a long hill, which sloped down from the school playing fields, right at the edge of the estate. Nancy and Lila loved it, they seemed to think it was ample protection from getting caught. Georgia disagreed. She leaned around the shelter and scoured the field for any signs of life, trying to force herself to stop worrying. It wasn’t worth asking Nancy if they could walk the extra five minutes to the woods, where they would be totally out of sight. It would provoke a rant about how spineless and bourgeois (a word she’d heard at one of her parents’ dinner parties and used a lot) Georgia was for caring about getting caught, or getting in trouble. It was easy for Nancy, she had parents who said stuff like ‘children should be encouraged to swear if they feel it’s the appropriate word for the situation at hand’. Georgia’s parents would kill her if she got so much as a warning from one of her teachers. They lived in fear that she would lose her scholarship.
‘I don’t know why we’re stressing about this,’ Lila said. ‘All we have to do is call our parents, then they’ll call the school and the rooms will get changed around. Everyone knows we’re the only three-group. I doubt Heidi and Jenny even want that room.’
Georgia bit her lip. Lila and Nancy’s parents would call in, of course they would. But it was different for her. She couldn’t imagine what her mother would say if Georgia asked her to make that phone call. She would be horrified. Mortified. She would say no.
Reynolds House was built over five floors. The top floor was for the sixth form, and was divided up into singles, doubles and a triple room. Most people wanted a single, for obvious reasons. Some girls, the ones who were close friends, or the pairs of girls who were sleeping together, liked the doubles. And then there was the triple, which ran almost the entire length of the house, with a huge window and its own bathroom. Back in their second year, when battle lines had been drawn and alliances decided, they had made an agreement. Whatever happened, for sixth form, they would have that room. They’d been pestering Cookie, their matron, the woman who had brought them up from the age of eleven, about it ever since. And while she had never said the exact words, it had been strongly implied the room was theirs.
‘We shouldn’t need to call our parents,’ replied Nancy, her eyes narrowed. ‘We’re practically adults now. We had an agreement with them. They should respect that.’
‘Exactly,’ replied Georgia, too quickly. ‘We’re almost eighteen. We can’t run to our parents for every tiny thing.’
‘But Cookie isn’t here,’ Lila said.
&nb
sp; ‘Why not?’
‘She’s ill,’ said Lila, who was now sitting cross-legged on the ground and making a daisy chain.
‘She broke her hip,’ said Georgia. ‘She’s out for at least six weeks, but they don’t know if she’ll be able to come back at all.’
Nancy ground her finished cigarette into the grass. ‘For fuck’s sake. Cookie should have sorted the room allocations out before she went off. It would have taken ten minutes.’
Georgia caught Lila’s eye and raised an eyebrow.
‘Nancy, she broke her hip, it’s not like she planned it,’ Georgia said quietly. Nancy had taken this too far. They all loved Cookie. She had read to them when they were homesick in their first year, and chaperoned them to their first socials. She teased them about their little habits and indulged them with later bedtimes when they would get together to watch a particular TV programme. Everyone knew she was the nicest housemistress in the school. They’d lucked out.
‘Yeah, stop being a dick, Nance,’ said Lila, lightly. Lila always seemed to know how to handle Nancy, how to smack her down a bit without turning it into full-on warfare. There was something about her manner, her tiny blondeness maybe, or her soft voice, which people just seemed to like automatically. Why did people always treat you based on how you looked, Georgia wondered. Everyone thought Nancy was so sorted and capable and together, because she was tall and dark-haired and smartly dressed. Everyone was always so nice to Lila because she was all delicate and breakable. And her? No one seemed to notice her. Maybe that meant she looked unremarkable.
‘I’m not being a dick, I’m saying I wanted that dorm.’
‘We all wanted that dorm,’ Georgia joined in, hearing the past tense in Nancy’s words and hoping this was nearly over.