A Certain Chemistry (34 page)

“It’ll
embarrass
him,” I said finally, in a conspiratorial hiss. “It’s bad manners.”

“How?”

“Look, he particularly didn’t want to tell you anything because you’re ‘the girlfriend.’ He didn’t want to say it because it’d seem insulting, but he doesn’t know you and he
does
know that it’s nearly always the girlfriend who leaks information. Kiss and tell. Revenge. Deliberately broadcasting things after a relationship ends.”

“I didn’t know our relationship
was
ending. Who else knows it is, then—besides you and Georgina Nye’s agent?”

“Oh, don’t be willfully obtuse. You know what I mean. As far as
he
knows we could be splitting up tonight—he’s got to assume the worst.”

Sara didn’t look entirely convinced. But neither did she look like this was very close to the biggest load of bollocks she’d ever heard and she was going to hit me in the face with her shoe for even attempting to get her to accept it. So, pretty much a staggeringly fabulous triumph on my part, I reckoned.

She didn’t reply. That was good. We needed to stick with that. I grabbed a glass of wine from the table and thrust it into her hands. Drink. Relax. Alcohol and silence was the way we should go here. She took a sip, while continuing to stare at me, but still didn’t say anything. Things improved even more when Hugh and Mary wandered over. While Sara was distracted and definitely not hurling herself completely into the conversation, the amiable chatter engaged her enough so that she didn’t simply stand there and brood. As the night went on, in fact, she drank several more glasses of wine and the four of us had what it wouldn’t be entirely unreasonable to call an acceptably good time.

We talked for calm ages about wonderfully unimportant things until Hugh glanced at his watch and said, “I’d better make one last tour of the room.” It was late and many of the guests had already gone (the place was sparsely populated enough now for it to be possible to look around and see everyone who was there; I noted that George had obviously left, though Paul was still there, talking to Amy).

“Yeah, we ought to get back home,” I said.

“We’ll take you,” Mary offered. “We’ve got a taxi ordered. We can drop you off.”

“It’s a bit out of your way,” said Sara.

Hugh waved the objection away with great nobility. “Tch. McAllister and Campbell are paying for the cab. We can go via Inverness if you want.”

Hugh went to say a final, warm, and genuine good-bye to anyone who might help book sales, and Mary went to keep a lookout for the taxi, which was due to arrive in about ten minutes. Sara and I slowly ambled over to the coat-check counter. I put my arm around her as we moved across the room. She looked up at me and seemed on the verge of saying something, but then bit her lip, stayed silent, and put her arm round me too. We recovered our coats, and I was pleased that, after we put them on, we returned easily to each other’s arms. Sara even laid her head sleepily on my shoulder as we walked away towards the exit. I was looking down at her, so a falsely friendly, overloud “Tom!” was the first I knew that by not watching where I was going I’d trodden in something unfortunate.

“Hello, Fiona.”

“Super evening, wasn’t it? I thought it went off awfully well.” She was her usual chill self, but seemed to be a bit tipsy underneath the ice.

“Yes.”

“And this must be the girlfriend?” To build on the casually insulting
the,
she pronounced
girlfriend
as though it were the most tentative of suggestions—a risky idea she was proposing almost from desperation at the lack of alternatives.

“This is Sara, yes. Sara, this is Fiona. Fiona is in McAllister and Campbell’s publicity department.”

Sara lifted her head from me and smiled. “Hi there. I’m very pleased to meet you.”

“Ahh—a Scotswoman, I hear!” exclaimed Fiona. “Tom clearly has a special fondness for the Scots.” She smiled like a snake—the kind you’d want to pick up by the tail, swing its head repeatedly against a tree, and then throw into a fire.

“I’m sorry?” Sara squinted.

“Oh, I just meant that he clearly likes you, and you’re a Scot.”

“Well,” I said, “we’ve got to be off, Fiona . . .”

“Shagged out, are you? Talking of which, did you see Georgina tonight?”

She was toying with me, like a cat—the kind you’d want to pick up by the tail, swing its head repeatedly against a tree, and then throw into a fire.

“Yes, Sara and I did speak to her, briefly.”

“Sara too?” she replied with great surprise. “How lovely. Are you a fan, Sara?”

“I think she’s a good actress, aye.”

I thought I could feel Sara’s body tightening. Perhaps it was simply that my arm was subconsciously tightening
around her
and giving the impression that she was tensing up.

“Yes, wonderful, isn’t she? Tom’s a big fan too, aren’t you, Tom?”

“Not especially.”

I tried to begin moving off, without it looking like I was trying to get away, but Fiona outmaneuvered me. She moved to block my path, while giving the impression that she wasn’t doing anything but randomly changing where she was standing.

“Oh, Tom, don’t pretend you’re not star-struck. I know you’ve loved every minute of it—and you’ve certainly put an awful lot of yourself into her . . .” She took a sip from her wine. “. . . book.”

“I work hard on all the books I do.” I was edging sideways, crablike, pulling Sara along with me. A column blocked Fiona’s way as—trying to maintain her position in front of us—she moved sideways too. As her shoulder pressed against the column, I made to begin a quick spurt of speed towards the exit. But Fiona was quicker off the mark—she nipped around the column and popped out on the other side, right in front of us again.

“Well, your effort certainly wasn’t wasted on Georgina, was it? From what I’ve picked up, you’ve made her utterly delighted that she got her hands on you.”

“Fiona?” said Sara.

“Yes, darling? Sorry to be such a bore with the shop talk. You must be fed up with it—I bet that Tom just
loves
to keep both you and Georgina filled in.”

“Fiona,” she repeated, “you appear to be hinting—clumsily, I have to say—that Tom is fucking Georgina Nye.”

Fiona’s face lurched from smug into alarmed with an ugly crashing of gears. (My face, as far as I could tell, fell off entirely.) “No, I—” she began, but Sara wasn’t finished.

“But, you see, we’ve got a taxi waiting, so can we please forget the childish innuendo now? I’m sorry if it spoils your surprise, but I’m already perfectly well aware that Tom is fucking Georgina Nye—that’s very old news. So, if there’s nothing else . . . ?”

“I . . .”

“Good. We’ll be off, then.” Sara guided us both away towards the exit (I was too stupefied to do anything but dumbly follow her lead), while Fiona remained immobilized by flat-footed confusion.

“Sara?” Fiona called, suddenly regaining her ability to function and starting after us. “I’m . . . You must have entirely misunderstood me . . . There’s . . .” She caught up and put her hand on Sara’s shoulder, bringing us to a halt and pulling Sara around. “I . . .” she began, and then stopped as Sara glared directly into her face. Sara’s eyes then looked across coldly at Fiona’s hand on her shoulder. Fiona’s eyes followed them. I saw Fiona’s hand grip tighter, making it clear she wasn’t going to let go until she’d been allowed to say her piece. Sara’s eyes moved back to stare right at Fiona again; Fiona’s eyes swung to meet them. They looked at each other in silence for a second. Then Sara head-butted Fiona right on the nose.

Right
on it.
Nnch!
Like that—
Nnch!
It was a terrible sound, the kind of noise you’d imagine a boundary-making hit would produce if you were playing cricket with a hamster.

Fiona went rigid and glassy-eyed. Too stunned—psychologically, or physically, or both—to do anything. I rather hoped she might topple over satisfyingly, like a tree falling. (It was probably too much to hope for in a hotel function room, but I further cherished the image that, as she lay there insensible, she’d then be trampled by horses.) I never got to see what happened, though, because Sara pulled me away while Fiona was still dancing the Lot’s Wife.

We hurried along, Sara dictating the pace, and were very quickly outside.

“Hey!” Mary looked out of the window of a taxi right in front of the hotel. “Get in. Hugh should be here soon.”

“Thanks,” said Sara, brightly, and we clambered inside. She sat on the pull-down seat, opposite Mary. I flopped onto the long rear one next to the window and looked at her, but she didn’t look back. Instead she chatted cheerfully to Mary about how they’d be glad to get out of their shoes and so on. Hugh arrived and we drove home. Sara and Mary continued to chat, and Hugh talked to me about something or other, but it didn’t make it into my brain.

Eventually, we reached our house and got out. We waved good-bye to Hugh and Mary as they pulled away in the taxi, Sara fiddling with her key in the lock at the same time. The door opened after some coaxing—Sara half falling into the hall when it finally gave in. I followed her inside, and she flicked on the light, kicked off her shoes, began to remove her coat, and, most noticeably, turned to me and said, “You fucking cunt.”

My first instinct was to say “What?” in an innocently bemused fashion. I mean, literally, it was my instinct. I didn’t for a moment consider it to be an option worth trying (I’d been searching for “options worth trying” for the whole taxi journey and hadn’t come up with a single one), but it very nearly popped out, instinctively. I managed to capture it in time, though, and instead said nothing at all.

“Well?” said Sara. She looked very angry. I’d hardly ever seen her angry—not
really
angry. It was scary. All I could think was, “Christ—she’s going to head-butt me.” She let me dither for a moment before repeating, even more insistently,
“Well?”

I sighed wearily. “Fiona’s a bitch,” I said. “She’s always hated me.”

“You’re saying it’s not true, then? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Good God,
of course
it’s not true. I don’t know why you told her you knew about it.”

“I told her because I didn’t want that snotty English tart thinking she was better than me. That she could play with this juicy secret right there—while the poor, poor wee girlfriend didn’t really understand what was going on right in front of her face.”

“But it’s not true.”

“Of course it’s fucking true. You think I haven’t seen that something was going on? All the secretiveness and the weirdness and the ridiculous stories and the secrecy—”

“You already said secre—”

“I know what I’ve fucking said! With everything that’s been happening, I knew that something was up. Until I got her alone at the party and realized her eyes were on someone else, I’d thought you were sleeping with Amy—”

“Amy!” I laughed out loud at this.

If I’m ever in this situation again, I will never, ever,
ever
laugh out loud at any point. It really is one of those lessons you only need to learn once.

“You
cunt
!” Sara came at me in a flurry of blows. She was completely overwhelming—none of the impacts was very heavy, but she seemed suddenly to be attacking me with five times the number of arms I had available to defend myself. “You complete fucking
bastard
!”

“Jesus!” I said, covering my head. “Calm down!”

She did stop hitting me and back off a little, but I didn’t delude myself that it had anything to do with my negotiating skills.

I held my hands out in front of me, imploringly (and, if we’re being strictly accurate, also half in readiness in case she went for me again). “I’m sorry. It’s just so unbelievable that you could think I was seeing Amy.”

Sara laughed now, but it was dry and humorless. “More bloody believable than the thought of you and Georgina Nye!”

That stung a little. Fair enough, Georgina Nye—famous, beautiful actress adored by half of Great Britain—was a hell of a catch, but to suggest that it was
unbelievable
that she’d sleep with me? That she was completely out of my league? I mean, come on—you expect a little more backing than that
from your girlfriend,
for God’s sake. That was hardly a confidence booster, was it? Your own girlfriend finding it incredible that you could pull Georgina Nye? I could have said, stroppily, that her astonishment just reflected badly on herself at the end of the day. If I was such a no-hoper at the top level, then what did that say about her? Eh?

I judged that this probably wasn’t the time to mention this, however.

“But I’m not sleeping with Georgina Nye,” I insisted, “so that’s irrelevant.”

“Don’t, Tom.” There were tears in her eyes now, but I think they were still as much from anger as anything. Or, rather, her shifting expressions seemed to suggest that they were produced by a massive blend of emotions, none of which she could hold in. She was leaking sadness and fury and incomprehension and hurt and a thousand other things all at the same time. There wasn’t a single name for what was in her eyes . . . but it was exactly the kind of psychological state you could imagine being used later, as a defense at a murder trial. “Don’t you
dare
do that to me. That would be truly sickening. After all that’s happened . . . your moods, your stupid cover stories . . . all those little slips you’ve made—like when I simply said
you
had a crush on that fucking woman, and you replied that there was ‘nothing
between
you’ . . .”

“I just—”

“The way you were looking at her tonight. Her agent not knowing about the contract meeting,
your
agent being so vague that I knew she was covering up
something,
that Fiona tart . . . and, above all, the look on your face
right now
. Don’t you
dare
show so little respect for me as to think I’m gullible enough to believe you’re not sleeping with her. Is that how much respect you have for me?
Is it?
”

“I . . .” My throat was swollen; I could barely speak.