by Adele Parks
‘I’ve had a great day on the slopes with Jase,’ Rich’d replied, kissing Tash briefly on the forehead. He’d wanted to kiss her lips. He longed to. He knew he’d feel safe there. But would she taste Jayne’s kiss? Would she somehow know?
Of course not. He wasn’t being logical. Her skin was almost translucent. He kissed her cheekbones, her nose. She closed her eyes, and he kissed her eyelids. He broke away. ‘Then we went to a bar.’
‘Which one?’
‘The one next door.’
Tash fumed, ‘You could have come to find me.’
‘Sorry, babe,’ called Rich. He was in the bathroom, towel-drying his hair, which was damp with snow fall. ‘Mia said you were ill, needed a lie-down. I didn’t want to disturb you. I know you hate people fussing around you when you’re feeling rough.’
It was true that Tash didn’t require much in terms of bedside manner when she was ill. She’d much rather hide under the duvet until the lurgy had subsided, then re-emerge. But today she wasn’t really ill, or at least not with anything infectious. She could have done with some company. But, then, Rich wasn’t a mind reader.
‘Mia was with you? I thought you said you boarded with Jase.’
‘I did. We bumped into Mia at about six-thirty. She’d been out with Jayne. It was Jayne that told her you were ill.’
‘Right,’ said Tash because she didn’t know what else to say.
In fact it wasn’t right. Nothing seemed in the least bit right. She wasn’t happy that Rich had left her alone all day. She wasn’t ecstatic with the conversation she’d had with Jayne. It had stirred up an ugly cocktail of emotions – jealousy, fear and distrust, to name but a few. And while she knew she was being irrational, she was also unhappy that Jayne had spent the afternoon with Mia. It seemed like a betrayal. Of course, it wasn’t. She was being silly. Jayne had every right to spend time with whomever she liked. And she hadn’t ever said she didn’t like Mia. Not in so many words. There was no real reason Jayne ought to dislike Mia. After all, it wasn’t her boyfriend Mia was trying to seduce.
Aaghhh. It was all too much.
She didn’t like the idea of Rich, Mia and Jase sat around a bar, drinking and laughing without her. About her?
No, that was ridiculous.
Tash had wanted to tell Rich all of this. She’d wanted him to sit down with her and allow her to offload a number of preposterous ideas that Jayne had slipped into her mind. Ideas which Tash could not shove out again. She was sure he would stroke her back and play with her hair. Kiss her lips and tell her everything was OK. Instead Tash sighed, saying, ‘You’d better get changed quickly. We’re booked for an eight o’clock dinner.’
Only Mia was feeling sparky.
The fertility test had shown a bright-green light today. She was slap bang in the middle of the most fruitful part of her cycle. That information, combined with the discovery of the relationship between Rich and Jayne – and Scaley Jase’s predictable response to the news (random shagging) – meant that her plan was back on track. Yes, it would have been ideal if Scaley had turned to her for consolation last night, rather than that time-wasting tart, but it wasn’t a major disappointment. Jayne had been genuine competition, but she couldn’t believe that the touring slappers would be.
It was novel that when she arrived at dinner she found that she was the most high-spirited.
‘My God, why the long faces?’ she asked, as she slipped into the seat next to Jason. No one replied. ‘Glad to see you’re feeling better, Big Ted,’ she smiled. Ted nodded politely. ‘Are you feeling rested, Barbie Babe? Jayne said you had a headache. Shame you missed out. We went boarding. Great fun, wasn’t it, Jayne?’ Jayne smiled and nodded. Mia’s fun would have been increased tenfold if Jayne had taken the opportunity to discuss the ‘Rich foyer kiss’, but both girls had discreetly avoided the subject. ‘Great snow, hey, you guys?’ The question was thrown out to include Kate, Lloyd, Rich and Jason. More nods and more silence. ‘What is it? Have you all worked out that you’ve already broken your New Year’s resolutions and it’s still January?’ joked Mia.
‘I hate New Year,’ said Kate, not answering the question.
‘I thought you loved New Year, Ms Monopoly,’ said Mia in surprise. ‘You always throw the best parties.’
‘I love it,’ said Jayne with a fake smile.
Jayne knew that she had to rouse herself. This was a crucial time. She knew that her self-appointed role in life was to be extremely enthusiastic about everything from cute puppies, to dangerous black runs, to New Year’s Eve. Men such as Rich didn’t want moaning Minnies. In truth, Jayne wasn’t fond of New Year’s Eve celebrations. She had spent too many on the edges of Kate and Ted’s parties, hoping that Rich would acknowledge her. He never had, and sometimes he’d even arrived at those parties with another woman. Some gawky, hopeless girl or other. On those occasions, Jayne always went home early and slept through the midnight hour. However, this was not the moment to share.
‘It’s all so pressurized. New Year’s Eve is the time when everyone asks, “What have you achieved this year? Have you scaled a mountain? Popped out a baby? Run the New York Marathon?” I hate it,’ said Kate. The group stared at her.
‘That can’t be a problem for you,’ said Jason. ‘You achieve so much every year. You do regularly pop out babies, or renovate new overseas homes, or buy new yachts. You always have good news. If accounting for your past year is a challenge, it’s one that you more than rise to.’
Kate felt ashamed. She shouldn’t have said anything. She should have just continued to pretend to love New Year. Just because these were her dearest friends, it didn’t give her licence to be so honest, not if her honest opinion had a dampening effect on the evening. What was she thinking of?
‘I so missed your champagne bash this year. It has become the most important feature on my calendar.’
‘I’m sorry,’ apologized Kate, blushing at the compliment that her parties were a success and the guilt of not throwing one this year, when it was expected of her. ‘It will be back next year, bigger and better. We didn’t bother this year because Ted was working on something massive in the office and we simply didn’t have time for all the prep. Isn’t that right, darling?’
Ted nodded, and turned pink to match his wife.
‘What were you working on, Big Ted?’ asked Mia, as she hungrily bit into a bread roll. She liked to show an interest in her friends’ careers, particularly cerebral, thriving careers. She hadn’t ever had the urge to find out exactly how Tash dressed windows.
‘A merger,’ replied Ted.
‘Oh, which one? Will I have read about it in the qualities?’
Ted buried his nose in the wine menu. ‘No, it’s all very hush-hush.’
‘That’s right, Mia. Ted wouldn’t even tell me the details,’ smiled Kate.
She adored the fact that her husband worked on top-secret projects. It made him appear very 007, even though he worked in the City and not for Her Majesty’s Service. In truth, Kate hadn’t questioned Ted too closely on the exact nature of the work that would mean they couldn’t throw their regular New Year’s Eve party. She’d meant to show the proper interest, but Christmas was such a busy time. The children all needed costumes for their various pantomimes, and there were endless parties to drop them off at and collect them from. Not to mention the extra cooking and the shopping. She hadn’t even said anything when in December it turned out that Ted managed to keep regular office hours and didn’t have to work into the early hours of the morning as he’d feared. She was just grateful to have him around.
Kate had been delighted to have a legitimate excuse to avoid throwing the 150-guest bash. She wouldn’t say so. It seemed rude when the gang were among the 150 guests she had to provide canapés and champagne for, but the parties were exhausting. There had been a time when she really enjoyed their New Year’s Eve parties; back in the mid 1990s when the guest list was limited to a more modest forty or so friends. In those days she had manag
ed to talk to everyone, ask if they’d had an enjoyable Christmas. Last year, she hadn’t even recognized some of the guests.
‘You should have hired Sophie’s company,’ said Mia. ‘I’ve heard that her parties are a huge success. She did the Ephron–Eagleton wedding and the Beaumont–Parsons wedding, and I understand one of the Guinness cousins is thinking of using her for a wedding anniversary in the spring.’
Mia had never acknowledged Sophie’s career in the six years she had spent time with Sophie, but now Sophie was so eminently successful she wanted to make it clear that they were chums, still in touch, still on first-name terms. No matter if they weren’t. No matter if it was the last name on earth Lloyd wanted to hear at dinner.
‘I’m with Kate on this. For the past ten years, I’ve pretty much had the same resolution, which is to cut down drink,’ said Lloyd. ‘Sticking to my resolution makes January, an already dreary month, absolutely hellish.’
Lloyd reached for the bottle of wine and refilled his glass. No one had seen any evidence of abstemious behaviour. But, then, Lloyd had broken resolutions in common with the majority of the rest of the Western population.
‘Guys, guys, it is not that bad. New Year’s Eve is a great time to reminisce and also to look forward,’ said Mia forcefully. No response. She decided to ditch the small talk and change tack to a more tried and tested route. ‘My God, this is a wedding, not a wake. Get the champagne in, Big Ted, that’s what we need.’
‘No, no, I’ll get it,’ said Lloyd, jumping to his feet.
‘Sit down, man,’ instructed Mia. ‘The waiter actually gets it. All you have to do is give a room number.’
Lloyd dropped back into his chair feeling slightly foolish, but he felt better when he caught Ted’s eye and saw that Ted was smiling at him. His gesture was appreciated.
‘Do you know what these dinners put me in mind of?’ asked Mia. Again no one responded, but she ploughed on regardless and answered her own question. ‘Formal dinners in Hall back in our uni days. God, they were fun, weren’t they?’ Tash rolled her eyes to the ceiling. ‘We all had to get dressed up. The food wasn’t up to the des Dromonts standards, of course, but we were impressed at the time. It used to be such good sport watching the kids from the comprehensives worry about which fork to choose.’ Mia grinned so that no one took her bitchy comment seriously. Her ploy worked for everyone except Tash, the only one who had attended a comprehensive. Despite always knowing the ‘outside-to-in’ rule, she took the comment to heart. ‘It’s just the same, only with better hairstyles. Guess what I brought with me?’ continued Mia.
No one guessed.
Mia bent down and pulled from her Louis Vuitton handbag a fat, leather photo album.
‘My album of all our best photos from uni.’
This wasn’t a spontaneous move on Mia’s part. Indeed, there was no such thing. Before the trip she had thought that it was a good idea to bring the photos of the old days when she and Jason were an item. It wouldn’t harm to nudge his memory towards those heady, lusty days of their youth. Days when she wore grunge and he wore his jeans turned up at the ankle so that everyone could see his Doc Marten’s.
She had sorted through dozens of packets of photos, carefully selecting the ones where she looked lovely. She’d brought photos of smiley, successful days; ones that showed the gang picnicking in the park, hosting big dinner parties with poor food and screw-top wine. The photos showed them emerging victorious from the playing fields or looking ludicrous as they dressed up for rag week. The photos showed the gang in clusters, in pairs and in their entirety. They were rarely alone. They stood, happy and confident, arms draped around one another’s shoulders or lying on sofas or floors, relaxed and replete after eating and drinking too much, limbs and lives not so much tangled as comfortably intertwined. In Stalin-esque style Mia left behind the ones where either she or Scaley Jase had their arms around any other undergraduate.
Suddenly the miserable crowd was roused. No one could resist a peek at their younger selves, and both Tash and Jayne were keen to see photos of Rich.
‘Tash, I bet you didn’t know that Rich had a liking for women’s clothes,’ laughed Lloyd, as he pointed to a photo of himself and Rich dressed as characters from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
‘I did, actually. I’ve told you, we don’t have any secrets.’ She laughed at the boyish version of her fiancé dressed in drag.
‘Oh, my God, what were we thinking of?’ giggled Kate, as she stared at a photo of her and Mia with hairstyles that must have required at least a tin of hairspray each to maintain.
‘We thought we were the height of style and sophistication, didn’t we?’ chuckled Mia. ‘I think you are on one or two of these, Jayne,’ she added. ‘Yes, that’s you, in the background, isn’t it?’
Mia pointed to a picture of the gang posing at their first-year summer ball. They were holding glasses of Pimm’s and wide grins, and were all dressed up waiting for the revelry to commence. The boys didn’t look too cringe-worthy, as black tie doesn’t date, but the girls looked outrageous in their pearls, big hair and silky dresses with enormous wide skirts, the type of dress that is now the staple of every charity-shop window, but can’t be found anywhere else. In the background of the shot Jayne loitered.
She was holding a glass of lemonade in one hand, despite both arms being folded across her chunky waist. She had her head tilted to one side, not in a flirtatious manner, as she might today, but because she was painfully shy. She was dressed like the older girls in a wide taffeta gown, only hers was stretched at the seams where she had squeezed herself into a size fourteen, refusing to entertain the idea of wearing a sixteen. You couldn’t see the stressed seams on the photo, but Jayne knew they were there. For her they were always there. That had been the day she caught Rich’s eye, or at least caught him at that stage where he was drunk enough to be irresponsible but not quite so drunk as to pass out. It had been enough for the gauche but ambitious teenager.
‘Is it, really? I can’t remember you ever looking like that,’ mused Kate, as she leant closer to the album to get a better look at the dumpy Jayne. She couldn’t believe that there was a time when she was better looking and slimmer than her now very gorgeous sister-in-law.
‘I’d never have recognized you,’ confirmed Tash. ‘How old were you then?’
‘Sixteen.’ Jayne snatched the album away from Tash’s gaze and quickly turned the page. ‘Here are the boys playing rugger,’ she said, trying to divert attention away from her less attractive, pubescent self. Jayne scowled at Mia. She didn’t like seeing old pictures of herself and she definitely didn’t want Rich seeing them.
‘Sixteen. Ah, just a baby,’ laughed Jason, then he remembered his conversation with Rich on the slopes that morning. He mouthed ‘Sorry’ at the scowling Rich, and tried to put his comment into context by adding, ‘While we were poncing around in our black tie get-ups, you were probably still playing hopscotch, Tash.’
Tash howled, pretending to be outraged, ‘I’m not that much younger. I’d have been thirteen. Believe me, hopscotch was well and truly behind me. But I admit I was probably still practising on the recorder.’
‘That’s a gorgeous one of you, Mia,’ said Kate, as she reached the final page.
It was a stunning shot. Mia had purposefully left the best until last. Jase picked up the album in order to take a closer look. She watched as he swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling as she knew it did when he was agitated.
‘Yup, no denying it, you were fucking hot totty,’ he grinned, then added, ‘in your day.’
Mia was elated. Scaley couldn’t take his eyes off the shot, except to stare her down as he added the less sensitive part of his comment. She knew he was joking, that was his style. He never paid her a straight compliment. He always wrapped his praise in a punishing punch. She did the same to him. It was all a bit playground.
She watched as he pored over the photo of her studying in the library. He was transfixed, as she’
d hoped he would be. She wondered if he was transported. Did he remember that he was the one who took that photo? Did he remember creeping up on her and tapping her on the shoulder? She’d looked up and blinked as he took the snap. The sunlight flooded through the window, enveloping her in a warm halo of light. She was writing a dissertation which was to form part of her final grade and had totally given up even half-hearted attempts at personal grooming. Her hair was pulled up in an untidy ponytail, her fingernails were badly bitten and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. She was wearing one of Scaley’s rugby shirts. But she was young and happy. She looked more beautiful than most brides do on their wedding day.
She wondered if he remembered that he’d insisted she leave her books, that he’d taken her back to his digs and that they’d made love all afternoon. That the lovemaking had been so stupendous, so energetic, so relaxed, then hard and fast, and then slow, that she had literally cried with delight and fear at such intimacy. A state she had never reached again. She hoped he remembered all that.
Although she didn’t necessarily want him to remember that was the last time they’d made love.
The starters arrived and stole away everyone’s attention from the photos. Mia’s ploy had worked on many levels. Everyone seemed a little more chatty and relaxed as they started to dissect the delicious food and guess the ingredients and preparation techniques.
Ted allowed the prattle to go on without him. He picked up the fat leather album. It was Prada; it must have cost Mia a fortune. He never used to notice what things cost. He never cared. He would always have been able to tell you the share index of any of the FTSE 100 on any day of the week, but he had no idea how much a loaf of bread cost or what the current retail recommended price was on a CD.
Ted reverently turned the pages of the album, deferentially drinking in the images, luxuriating in the memories. He paused at one of him with Rich, Lloyd and Jason. He had his arms flung around the shoulders of Lloyd and Rich; Jason was jumping up and down behind the three of them. Jason had probably set the timer on the camera, then dashed into view. Ted couldn’t exactly remember. Not that the memory of the four of them wasn’t important or special. It was just that they had a number of these carefree, careless moments. There were countless photos of the foursome grinning inanely at life and the lens.