Matt couldn’t have survived that first year without Dan’s kindness. He appreciated exactly what an old friend was: someone whom you could trust and talk freely to without losing face.
Dan lightly held his arms. ‘Mattie, this is great news. I’m happy for you both.’ His arm moved round Matt and Katherine’s shoulders, drew them close to him and the group. ‘Come on, everyone. We back each other up, whatever happens, remember.’
Dan was the quietest, but when he spoke up, the group always listened. Dan reminded them of who they were, before life’s complications got in the way.
‘We’re going to toast Katherine and Matt.’ Dan was firm.
‘Matt and Katherine,’ Luke was there first.
‘Matt and Katherine,’ echoed Julian hastily.
Sara was the loudest. She tried to catch his eye, but he studiously ignored her. She sidled up to his right side. She linked arms with him, giving his forearm a light squeeze. An intimate gesture from her. ‘Sorry, Matt. You know I get out of control, but I don’t mean it. I love you,’ she whispered. ‘And if you’re happy, I’m happy.’
He nodded rapidly. He was desperate to move on to another subject.
Chapter 5
The restaurant was hidden under a thatched grass roof behind the sun loungers. It was nine thirty by the time the group noisily sat down to dinner. The candles flirted out of glass jars, casting some of them into shadow. The dining chairs were covered in pale orange cotton, a nod to their surroundings. The long rectangular table, hidden under a deep white tablecloth, was as shiny as any London restaurant. Her wobbly high-heeled sandals clacked like fallen skittles over the decking. Sara had helped her yank off her walking boots earlier – her feet were swollen. She slumped down more awkwardly than she intended. She wished she had brought some dressy evening clothes. She was wearing her sparkly purple top with jeans, the sort of boho chic, which worked when she was out with her two local friends, but her old girlfriends had become more stylish with age. And money, of course. Sara had offered to lend her a dress, but Lizzie couldn’t fit into anything of Sara’s, which was depressing, because she was hardly thin.
Connie’s impossible legs were emphasised by her white skinny jeans and aquamarine silk top, which slipped below one shoulder, leaving it bare. Katherine was in a leaf-green silk shift dress with a loose tie. She probably only ate because Matt loved cooking. Sara looked like Grace Kelly in that super-expensive white Joseph shift with a cream and orange wrap over it. Lizzie looked ruefully again at her heavy sequins, which emphasised her sagging breasts.
Sometimes she looked in the mirror in disbelief. How had it happened? She didn’t feel like a fat person. She had to take the Tube into work, she reasoned, and didn’t have time to exercise – work was too busy. Channel 4 had a bar on the ground floor, the bar snacks there were, admittedly, her weakness. And she didn’t want to rush home to be on her own.
Feeling uncomfortable, she diverted herself by mentally devouring the wine tasting menu.
GAE TASTING MENU
Starter
Goat’s cheese fritter with blueberry & apple salad.
Iona Sauvignon Blanc
Entrée
Treacle duck salad with fig tapenade and fresh fig
Sijinn Rose
Main
Grilled beef medallion with buchu potato crumpet, gemsbok lerito
courgette and red onion
Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon
Dessert
Baked chocolate mousse with raspberry paint, vanilla ice cream and macerated berries
Beaumont Goutte d’Or
It would be a sacrilege to continue the Dukan Diet here. Lizzie had stuck rigidly to it for over eight gruelling weeks – well, on and off, there was the inevitable cake every Friday. It was always someone’s birthday and Lizzie, who knew everyone in the whole building, was always included in celebrations. She had been at C4 since she graduated from university. She couldn’t quite believe it had been that long. She distinctly remembered every detail of how she got her job at C4 from the advert in the Guardian. She had the cutting framed in her bathroom.
Programme Coordinator, Channel 4 Drama
C4 Drama is passionate about talent.
Drama delivers high-profile, award-winning programmes.
We have creative freedom to commission projects that have integrity, originality and ambition.
Do you have passion and creativity?
Why don’t you join us? Apply now!
Of course she applied. She was an English graduate with a good 2:1. She was passionate and creative. It was her dream job. She imagined herself commissioning drama programmes from a steel-clad office, all of her own. What fun. She clicked with the Deputy Head of Drama, Simon, who interviewed her. He was gay. Gay men always loved Lizzie. She couldn’t quite believe it when she got the job. She was the first of the group to start a proper career.
She obviously intended her programme coordinator role to be a stepping stone to commissioning editor. She worked hard. It was always busy. The job was all-consuming. And Lizzie loved the social life. Channel 4 was like being back at university – lots of friends, lots of fun and parties. Of course, she didn’t think that she would be there forever, because in the back of her mind, she was going to get married soon. When a commissioning editor’s job came up, Lizzie thought of going for it, but she didn’t want to work even harder. She enjoyed having time to talk to her friends in the building. She didn’t want to miss out on her social life. She didn’t apply. Nor did she fill out the application for the next few positions that came up.
Time passed. Her thirty-fifth birthday was miserable. She broke her thumb in the loft door of her rented flat and rushed to casualty, forgetting the Prosecco she had loaded into the freezer, which had exploded by the time she returned. All in all, it made her realise that her life wasn’t as good as she thought. She was thirty-five, single without children and in a dead-end job. She applied for the next commissioning editor position in drama. She was turned down for a younger, more ambitious, external candidate. It was such a shock. All this time, Lizzie assumed her promotion was there if she wanted it. She was stuck.
Lizzie focused on the menu again. Rather frustratingly, none of the group had noticed she had lost almost half a stone. Well, she might have already put it back on. She hadn’t weighed herself since she got out here – there were no scales in their bathroom. She shouldn’t have eaten those sandwiches in the Jo’Burg hangar this morning, not to mention the date balls on the bar.
‘How are you, lovely Lizzie?’ Jules nudged playfully at her elbow.
If it had been anyone else round the table asking the same question, undoubtedly Lizzie would have spilled out the truth. She didn’t have a man, or own her own flat and her career was going nowhere. Instead, she daydreamed about how attractive Jules was. He was charming, flirty and fun. An important man in politics: chief secretary to the Treasury. She could see herself as a wife of an MP living in a nice house in the country.
Lizzie squeezed up against him, imagining they were flirting on a first date. ‘I feel great. How is life at number ten, Jules?’
‘Lizzie, you know I don’t work at number ten. I’m not the PM.’
‘Though you might be one day, Jules. Play your cards right. Knowing you, as I do, you can do anything.’ She risked touching his arm. ‘I’ve always believed in you.’
She was spinning, diving, rocking. A full-body roller coaster. She wasn’t sure if her shoulders were actually rolling forward. She usually shared one bottle of house white with her local friends Sasha and Julie on a Thursday night at the pub at the end of Sasha’s road.
‘Thank you, Lizzie. I do appreciate that.’
His soft brown eyes were focused on her.
She couldn’t help thinking that she should have been Jules’s wife instead of Connie. He was attracted to her first. He had come to Bristol to take her out, taking the train after work on Friday. They had got on really well: laughing non-stop, easy and pl
ayful. On the doorstep of Harley Place at two in the morning, Lizzie was sure that he was going to make a move. Lizzie couldn’t find her keys anywhere. She rang the bell. Connie had answered it in that flimsy white nightie she always wore.
Lizzie flicked her hair out of her eyes. ‘Well, you know Jules, it’s all your fault. You let me get away.’
She had said that to him back then. The way he narrowed his eyes at her meant that he believed it too. He was lost in thought. He looked slightly anxious. He must be thinking of their moment together. He sighed.
It could have worked out so differently!
The goat’s cheese fritter was posh – a tiny colourful work of art on a vast white plate that seemed designed to make Lizzie feel hungrier. When the treacle duck salad arrived, it consisted of two weeny slices of duck with a dessertspoon of fig tapenade. She scooped some on to her finger and licked it.
Jules was back with her. ‘Where are your manners, Lizzie Gibson?’ He laughed heartily.
‘I can’t help it. I’m starving and it is delicious,’ she smiled. ‘But tiny!’
‘Shall we ask for two portions next time? You and I love proper food, proper portions.’
They were partners in crime. Both fun-loving and spirited. She thought ruefully that she used to be as skinny as Connie. If only she was, she would be living this lifestyle.
The wine was also gorgeous, clearly expensive. ‘Don’t you love this wine, Jules?’ Lizzie could imagine that it was just the two of them here. She could hold his attention, hold on to him.
Jules leaned closer. ‘You know, this is real discovery for me. I’m a French wine snob, but I am really savouring this Iona Sauvignon Blanc. It’s complex for a Sauvignon.’ He produced his phone. ‘Lizzie, excuse me, I’m going to see what they say about it.’
He had such a spontaneous curiosity.
‘Look at that. Iona,’ he showed her an aerial shot of vivid green vineyards in front of blue lake, close to the sea. He was absorbed by the tasting notes. ‘I could certainly taste the ripe gooseberry and kiwifruit. I missed the lime marmalade, though. Did you?’
‘Yes. I missed it all, I’m afraid, Jules.’ She leaned back, happy in her drunkenness, watching him reading through all the notes on their website.
Suddenly he put down his phone, got to his feet, moved to the end of the table and tapped his glass with his fork to get the group’s attention. He was great with a large audience.
‘Never fear: what goes on safari, stays on safari.’
They were loud, raucous. The group together again. She was proud that they were her friends.
Alan slipped into Jules’s empty seat. He smiled and squeezed her hand, before whispering. ‘You are dressed to party.’
She grinned at him appreciatively as Jules continued, ‘A few slurry words from me. Then I promise to shut up.’
‘Unless we heckle from across the House,’ Matt roared.
Laughter. Chairs rubbed back. Katherine smiled and moved round the table to sit on Matt’s lap.
Lizzie always sensed she was one of those women who used to weep into her Chardonnay or, knowing cool Katherine, Grey Goose vodka. Until she met Matt. She relied heavily on him. You could see it in the way she leaned into him.
‘No, you are far too easy an opposition,’ Jules whipped in.
‘You wait, Julian Emmerson.’
‘Matt’s interruptions aside, I wanted to say a few words about you lot, Connie’s oldest friends – so put your Zimmer frames aside for a moment.’
There was a slight hush. Lizzie knew Jules was bound to say something playful.
‘We’ve lost one, but we are about to gain one.’
Lizzie’s eyes were on Katherine as Jules was going to say the unsayable and get away with it.
‘Luke has parted with the delicious Emma – no accounting for taste – pared down his life and his waist size.’
Luke gave his self-conscious smile. Lizzie had always found it hard to understand his attractiveness. He was too handsome to be sexy. And he could never stand up and give this speech. He wasn’t a man like Julian.
‘So to Luke’s compactness.’
‘Hear hear,’ Matt shouted. ‘Luke, give us a few tips please.’
‘Please, Luke,’ Jules leaned down mock-solicitously. ‘We beg you, don’t wither away.’
Lizzie laughed loudly; Sara clapped. Luke glanced at Connie.
‘To our eight-week-away new addition: Matt and Katherine’s baby girl. Congratulations. I’ve never seen a mother to be with such a gorgeous bod. Surrogacy is the way forward.’
Only Jules would get away with saying that to Katherine.
‘Our dearest Dan keeps his considerable lights under an elegant box hedge.’
Lizzie smiled at Alan. He didn’t smile back, nor did he look at Dan.
‘Might I add, he is always the first person of your gang to shine light on everyone else’s achievements.’
Lizzie was deflated, unappreciated. Dan was always seen as the most loyal person in the group, which wasn’t fair. She was the one who remembered everyone’s birthdays, she always called as she walked to work from St James’s Park Tube station.
As the others laughed, Lizzie frowned. Their lives had moved on without her.
Alan leaned into her. ‘Are you all right?’
Lizzie nodded.
‘A white hydrangea tells me that you have won an award for your latest garden outside Florence.’
They started to cheer. Dan blushed. He had that kind of modesty that somehow attracted more attention, Lizzie thought. She veered between feeling upset he hadn’t told her about the award, and resenting the fact he had won it.
‘And Sara Wilson QC. Counsel in the trial of the decade: the Jade Sutton case. Joanne Sutton acquitted.’
It was unfair. Their lives were fast-forwarding. Lizzie turned to look down the table at Sara.
‘This afternoon, I’ve been reading the pages of coverage of her spectacular success. A profile of our own very dear QC in The Times legal section. Brilliant barrister brings clarity to a highly charged, high-profile, complicated case. The Jade Sutton case will never be forgotten.’
They clapped, laughed. Connie went over to Sara and gave her a big hug, but Sara extricated herself clumsily. Her white silhouette swayed past the pool, heading for the bar. Only Sara would get away with walking off. The others didn’t seem to notice.
‘It’s been an exciting year for all of you.’
Did he have to rub it in?
‘Constance’s madcap idea to drag you halfway round the world, I am the first to admit, now feels like the right plan, at the right time.’ He held out his hand to Connie. She moved to his side. He held her close. ‘A celebration at a certain point in all our lives.’
Lizzie was jealous.
‘We are on the cusp of great things I feel.’
What about me? Lizzie wanted to scream.
‘To Constance, for making this happen. And for being my beautiful, bright, best friend and partner in all things. I couldn’t live without you. I love you.’
‘Yeah, Connie,’ Matt howled before clapping his hands. ‘We love you.’
‘We do,’ added Dan warmly. ‘We really do, Connie.’
‘And,’ Jules added. ‘To greatness.’
Alan put his arm around her shoulders. He was the only one who noticed her. Connie and Luke were first up dancing to the music, louder in the bar. They were wiggling away, as they always did in Harley Place, only without touching. Matt was galloping round with Katherine. She looked as crazy a dancer as he was.
Jules leaned over her shoulder. ‘Lizzie, cheer up. What’s wrong? Come on, you know I can’t dance with you – I have two left feet. I’m going to introduce you to this sumptuous Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon instead.’ He lifted up an amazing smart black bottle with a phoenix as the only decoration on the label.
Lizzie was reminded, yet again, how sexy she found him.
‘Imagine: you are on a date with a sophisticated, in
telligent man with a bone-dry sense of humour but a rich hinterland underneath. How can you resist? Thelema Cabernet Sauvignon, 2009, Lizzie darling?’
Lizzie smiled.
Chapter 6
Luke coughed a breath out. His chest hurt. He felt nauseous. His legs ached. His feet waded through the sand track as if it were deep, fresh snow. It was surprisingly cold out on the reserve. He was running in shorts: he should have worn his tracksuit bottoms. Some of the rangers ran this two-and-a-half-kilometre circuit out of the lodge, through their ‘village’ of bungalow homes and back, Gus had told him. Luke loved the connotations. Africans were top athletes, the result of generations of bare-footing it through the bush. He imagined doing the run without trainers. But he was worried about snakes.
Luke and Sara were the last to go to bed, around three in the morning. He couldn’t leave earlier. He had savoured his first full night with his friends, laughing and joking with Sara, a woman who was simply a close friend. Who didn’t demand of him something he couldn’t begin to understand, let alone give.
Still he set his alarm for five. They were riding out at six and he had to get in a run before it got too hot. When he ran, he focused intensely on his technique. His hands lightly curled, imagining he were holding a pair of baby sparrows with broken wings; his forearms at ninety degrees to his body; the soles of his feet ping ponging to his buttocks; his hips staying in line with his body, not over-striding as he had a tendency to do.
He was too cold and hungover to do more than distract himself from his growing discomfort by leafing through the debris of last night. He spluttered and slowed to a gentle jog as he replayed Sara’s rant.
The Art of Unpacking Your Life Page 5