‘Oh my God, you’re like, totally Vivienne Sterling. I can’t actually believe it! My mum made me watch all your films when I was a kid and you were total life goals for me. I was going to go to acting school and learn Shakespeare and everything. Only I couldn’t, because I’m dyslexic, so I do modelling and stuff instead.’
Vivienne looked delighted and tried to reach out a hand to shake Ruby-Grace’s, but realised that, juggling her drink and her sleepwalking props, she couldn’t. Instead, she kissed her on both cheeks, and Ruby-Grace looked as starstruck as if she’d just been snogged by Madonna.
‘Do you remember that panto you did in Exeter?’ she asked, almost stumbling over her words. ‘You were the fairy godmother in Cinderella. OMG, that dress you wore! I made Mum sew sequins onto our old voile curtains so I could dance round the house in them pretending to be you. Are you retired now? It would be so awesome if you made another film.’
‘That’s so awfully kind. I remember that panto well. Paul, who was Buttons, was the most awful letch and was constantly pinching everyone’s bottoms – the girls and the boys. No one had heard of hashtag MeToo back then of course – we all just had to put up with it.’ Vivienne chattered on, draining her glass, and a waitress immediately appeared, topped it up, and asked if Vivienne could possibly sign her order pad. Ruby-Grace’s presence, like a bedside lamp to moths, brought a whole crowd of other guests over, and soon Vivienne was surrounded by an admiring throng, happily holding court and looking like she was having the time of her life.
Since she appeared to be being looked after – or looking after herself – quite well, I found myself free to circulate. I delivered Gemma over to talk to Glen, relieving Sam, who immediately made a beeline for the crowd around Vivienne and Ruby-Grace, and went to the kitchen to tell the caterers to bring out some food before everyone got too drunk. And then I grabbed a much-needed Vampire Vesper for myself and prepared to play hostess for the evening.
By about nine o’clock, the party was in full swing. Charlie was dancing with Isla; Glen had left to drive back to Brighton in his latest supercar; the performers had done their thing to rapturous applause – though I couldn’t help but notice how the guy who was playing Dracula made his entrance, clocked Vivienne and almost spat out his fake fangs in amazed surprise. Vivienne might have vanished into obscurity for years, but she still had far more fans than I’d realised.
I found myself beginning to relax and enjoy myself. The middle of the evening, after everyone had had a few drinks and the initial awkwardness was over, but before things got too messy towards chucking-out time, was the most enjoyable part. I was making my way over to the trays of canapés – bloody Mary syringes, miniature pizzas with ghost-shaped melted cheese, meatballs wrapped like mummies in strips of pastry, chocolate cupcakes with pumpkin frosting – when Gemma appeared by my side.
‘I’m really sorry to bother you, Sloane. I know you’re crazy-busy. But I’m a bit worried about Vivienne. She’s had loads and loads to drink and she—’
‘Damn it. Okay, honey, thanks. I’ll be right there.’
I turned and saw Vivienne standing by the door, swaying gently. Craig McLeod, the theatre director, was next to her, puffing furiously on an e-cigarette. As I approached, I could hear Vivienne talking. Well, not so much talking as declaiming, her voice carrying resonantly, even though her words were slurred.
‘“Here’s the smell of blood still. Wash your hands. All the perfumes of…” No, that’s not right, is it, darling? “Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale…” Now, what’s the next bit? I used to know it all backwards.’
‘Hey, Vivienne. Are you having a good time?’
‘Marvellous, darling. I can’t remember the last time I went to a party! I was just regaling Craig with my favourite soliloquy. “Come, come, give me your hand. What’s done is done and cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.”’
I caught Craig’s eye and he smiled sympathetically.
‘Would you like to go home, Vivienne?’ I asked. ‘To bed?’
‘Well, now you mention it,’ she looked at me, her violet eyes unfocused, mascara smeared down her face. ‘I am rather tired. I’m not used to late nights any more, you see.’
‘That’s okay. Let’s get you in a cab. Give me two seconds.’
Cursing the Morticia Addams dress’s lack of pockets, I hurried back into the throng and retrieved my bag from the cloakroom. Probably, Vivienne would be perfectly okay getting home in an Uber on her own and putting herself to bed. But, possibly, she wouldn’t. I was going to have to see that she got back safely.
I fought my way through the throng of people and eventually found Rosie and told her where I was going, but before I could get back to Vivienne, I was interrupted by Ruby-Grace.
‘Sloane? Is she okay?’
‘Vivienne? She’s fine. Just a bit… You know. She doesn’t get out much.’
‘Would you like me to give you a hand? I’m… I mean, my dad likes a drink. I’m used to it. I can help.’
I looked at her scanty outfit and her absurd shoes. She wasn’t exactly dressed for giving a pissed person a fireman’s lift. But then I noticed the impressive muscles in her gym-honed arms and – more importantly – the kindness in her eyes, which no amount of winged eyeliner could have concealed.
‘Thanks, honey. That would be great. If you’re sure you don’t mind leaving the party?’
Ruby-Grace shrugged. ‘I’m not much of a party person, if I’m honest. I get shy in big groups. And anyway, I can always come back if I want.’
‘Come on then.’ We rushed back to Vivienne, who’d sat down on a chair someone – presumably Craig – had brought for her, her white negligee pooling on the sidewalk around her ankles, and summoned a cab on my phone. It was surge pricing, of course, as it always is in emergency situations in my experience, and there was a seven-minute wait. I just hoped that Vivienne would manage not to pass out or be sick while we waited, but Craig, Ruby-Grace and I kept valiantly chatting to her, even though her replies didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
‘Here we are,’ I said, when at last Bogdan in his red Mitsubishi pulled up a few yards down the road. ‘Home time.’ Ruby-Grace took Vivienne’s arm and helped her to her feet. She was pretty wobbly, and veered from one side of the sidewalk to the other, but Ruby-Grace, impressively steady on her platforms, kept her in a straight line. I opened the door and we helped her in.
‘Thank you, Craig – you’re a total legend. Let’s speak on Monday.’
‘It’s not me who’s the legend – it’s this lady. I can’t believe you kept it so quiet that she’s a client of yours. I’ll be in touch.’
I hurried round to the other side of the car and got in, my mind whirling. In spite of having gone madly over the top on the booze, it had totally been Vivienne’s night. It wasn’t only Craig, who might – please God, he might – just offer her work. I remembered all the twenty-something YouTubers clustering around her, hanging onto her every word while she regaled them with anecdotes about her acting career; the actor playing Dracula freezing in his tracks when he saw her, like someone had driven a stake through him right there; how she’d sparkled and laughed and lit up the room.
I wondered what had brought on this transformation from the broken, lonely woman in her squalid house to this charismatic party animal. It hadn’t been down to me, that was for sure. It was Vivienne herself: her magnetism, the legacy of the work she’d produced before heartbreak had turned her into a shadow of the woman she’d once been – and, of course, whatever the hell had spurred her to transform the way she lived after Max’s death.
I glanced sideways at her and saw that she’d fallen asleep, her head drooping forwards, her hands clasped in her lap. The fire had gone out of her and she looked much older, but even sleep couldn’t hide the perfect line of her jaw, the jut of her cheekbones beneath her slightly skewed false eyelashes.
The cab inched through endless, traffic-clogged streets. Rain had begun to
fall, the windscreen wipers swishing it rhythmically away, the lights of the shops we passed reflecting in a million drops on the side windows.
Ruby-Grace and I chatted inconsequentially about the party and the outfits people were wearing, the entertainment and the food. But both of us, sitting on either side of Vivienne, held her hands. The sight of Ruby-Grace’s fingers, with their long coffin-shaped nails, wrapped tenderly over Vivienne’s, filled me with deep sadness. I wished I’d been able to hold Mom’s hands for longer, that last night – and, more importantly, I wished I’d been able to hold them more often, long before.
At last, the cab turned into Vivienne’s road and pulled up outside her house. To my surprise, I could see light gleaming from behind the downstairs shutters (shutters? I was fairly sure those hadn’t been there the last time I visited), and through a gap in the curtains in the upstairs bedroom.
I touched Vivienne’s hands and said, ‘We’re home. Come on, let’s get you to bed.’
But she didn’t stir.
‘Give me just a second,’ I said to the driver, getting out and hurrying round to the other side of the car.
I opened the door and tried again. ‘Vivienne, we’re home. Wake up.’
Ruby-Grace said, ‘Come on, love. Up you get. Time for beddy-byes.’
I grasped her shoulder and shook her gently. ‘Vivienne! Please wake up.’
At last, she opened her eyes. ‘Hello, darlings. Where are we?’
‘We’ve brought you home, chick,’ Ruby-Grace said. ‘You’re in a taxi and now you need to get out.’
Between the two of us, we managed to get her out and on her feet, along with her Lady Macbeth props and my own handbag. But there was no sign of Vivienne’s house keys.
‘Oh God, no,’ I said to Ruby-Grace. ‘We’re locked out.’ We stood in the darkness, Vivienne’s head drooping onto my shoulder, and as I was wondering what the heck to do next, the door swung open and a woman stepped out.
‘Thank God, you’re back safely. Oh, Sloane, it’s you. Well done for getting Viv back in one piece. Come on then. She’ll freeze to death out here.’
I couldn’t have been more surprised if a Bride of Dracula had suddenly popped her head out of Vivienne’s house. It was Bianca.
Twenty-Eight
‘You know me, Sloane,’ Bianca said. ‘I do love to meddle.’
She shifted on her high stool, crossed one slender knee over the other, picked up a piece of vegan sushi with her chopsticks, dunked it in soy sauce and ate it. She was looking as smooth and polished as ever, in taupe leather trousers and a cream cashmere jumper, her sleek red bob as glossy as the copper tabletops in the newly opened Asian fusion restaurant where she’d suggested we meet.
I suspected, though, that her casual WhatsApp message
Hey, sorry I had to dash straight home on Friday before we could chat! Hope Viv got off to bed okay. Shall we do lunch? And by the way, who was that extraordinarily dressed girl with you?
had as many ulterior motives behind it as there were tapioca pearls in the bubble tea I was already regretting ordering.
Bianca, I reflected, liked to be on the offensive, and since Ruby-Grace and I had turned up unexpectedly at Vivienne’s house and found her there, she must have been feeling anything but in control of the situation.
But before I could quiz her about her relationship with Ripple Effect’s first ever client, I had an uncomfortable speech of my own to make.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘I owe you a massive apology. I was completely wrong about you and Myles, and I behaved horribly to you. I was so… I guess my head was so messed up with suspicion and doubt and all the rest. I got the situation completely wrong and I took it out on you – but that’s really no excuse. I should have known that you would never do that to a friend.’
‘Well, no, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t go around shagging someone else’s husband, even if they weren’t my friend. But I’m not exactly blameless in this situation, Sloane.’
She took another bit of sushi, and I gingerly picked up a tofu skin dumpling and bit off half of it. It was considerably better than the description suggested, so I ate the other half and tried some yam tempura.
‘Because you knew about Myles and Charlotte, and you didn’t tell me?’
Bianca froze, a crispy soy protein nugget halfway between the conveyor belt and her mouth. Then gravity won and the nugget dropped into her lap, leaving a smear of sriracha mayo on her jumper.
‘Shit!’ She rubbed it frantically with a napkin. ‘That’ll stain, and the jumper’s new – I just bought it off Luxeforless. It wasn’t even on sale.’
‘Don’t scrub it, just dab gently. Dab, dab, dab. Otherwise you’ll drive the grease in deeper and damage the wool. Then when you get home, put baking soda on it and soak it in shampoo. It’ll come out just fine, I promise.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. One of our clients, @CleanQueenJean, did a vlog about caring for cashmere the other day. You should follow her on Insta – she’s ace.’
Bianca carefully arranged her napkin to cover the vivid orange smear. Then she looked up at me, half-smiling. To my surprise, there were tears in her eyes.
‘It’s only a jumper, right? But that’s me. Never knowingly under-reacted.’
‘God, woman! It’s one hundred per cent cashmere. You’d be weird if you didn’t freak out.’
Bianca plied her napkin again, but this time it was her eyes she used it on, far more careful about not smudging her mascara than she’d been about her jumper.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Yeah. I’m so sorry. I did know. About Myles, I mean. I’ve known for almost a year. And I didn’t say anything to you, and I feel rotten about it.’
‘You tried. Kind of.’
‘I didn’t try hard enough. I knew what the right thing was to do, but I didn’t do it. I was too scared.’
‘Scared? Of what?’
Bianca took a deep breath. I could see her bracing herself to say something that wasn’t easy. ‘I haven’t got many friends.’
I ate another dumpling. If I swerved the yam tempura and the bubble tea going forward, I’d be totally winning at lunch.
‘But you do, right? Don’t you? Other moms at Charis’s school and people you meet through work and…’
I tailed off. I realised how very scant my knowledge of Bianca’s life really was.
‘Yeah. But they’re not actual friends. They’re just people I see most days. When my brother was getting married I got close to his fiancée for a bit, but then the thing with Myles and Charlotte happened – Charlotte’s a friend of hers – and it all went so badly wrong. I made a bit of a scene at their wedding and now Henry’s not talking to me.’
To be honest, I could kind of see Bianca’s brother’s point, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t need to say anything though, because she was in full flood.
‘I just didn’t want to hurt you, Sloane. I didn’t want to rock the boat. I knew it was over between them by Christmas, anyway, so I just thought if I kind of warned you that he might be… might not be as faithful as you’d want him to be, you might find out for yourself. And then you’d be able to make a decision based on the truth, not on whatever bullshit story he came up with.’
‘I see. Well, that’s what’s happened. I’ve moved out. We’re selling the house. My solicitor and his solicitor are writing loads of letters to each other and it’s costing a fortune and I’m renting a house in Walworth for the time being, and to be perfectly honest I have no idea what the hell I’m going to do with my life.’
Her face fell. ‘Oh God, Sloane. I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. It’s actually kind of liberating. For the first time in ages, I feel like myself again. Like I’ve got choices. I can turn my life into anything I want. I can be who I want. You know, for so long I was so engrossed in being Myles’s wife, I kind of lost sight of that.’
Bianca nodded. ‘Yep. I get that. I’ve been there too.’
‘You mean Mich
ael…?’
‘Not Michael. I know people look at him and wonder what I’m doing with him. Don’t think I don’t know that. But he’s a good man, Sloane. He’s the best. He supports me one hundred per cent in everything I do, he does his share of housework even though he works full-time and I don’t, and he’s a fantastic dad to Charis. Which is why we were so desperate to have another baby.’
‘Oh. I don’t know why, but I thought you’d decided one was enough.’
‘Yeah, I know you thought that. Everyone thinks that. But we didn’t. We tried for years and years, since Charis was, like, a year old. I was desperate to give her a brother or a sister. Maybe we spoil her – I don’t care. I just want her to know how special she is, how loved. And I knew I’d love another child just as much.’
‘But you couldn’t…?’
‘We couldn’t. We tried everything. Literally everything. Giving up booze, going vegan, acupuncture, Michael sitting in cold baths every day to boost his bloody sperm count – everything. I’ve had seven rounds of IVF. You get a free go on the NHS but after that you have to pay. We’ve spent tens of thousands. They call it secondary infertility. They can’t find anything wrong with either of us – I just can’t get pregnant. And if I do I can’t stay pregnant. I’ve had four miscarriages. The last one was at sixteen weeks when I thought everything was going to be okay. It’s been awful and shitty and it’s almost broken us. Not just financially – our marriage, too.’
Almost against my will, I heard my voice trotting out the horrible cliché that infertile couples hate to hear. ‘It might still just happen naturally, you know.’
To her credit, Bianca didn’t tell me to shut the fuck up. ‘It won’t. We stopped trying six months ago. I couldn’t do it any more – not to Michael or to myself. We’ve just had to accept that Charis is our precious only child, and there won’t be another.’
I said, ‘I’m so sorry. It must have been awful.’
No, We Can't Be Friends: A totally perfect romantic comedy Page 26