Bookends (4 page)

So, as I was saying, the weight loss. I couldn’t eat. Quite literally. Could. Not. Eat. For weeks.

‘You know you’re becoming a lollipop,’ Si would say. ‘You have this huge hair and a little sticky body.
Please
eat this,’ he’d beg, proffering home-made coconut pie with chocolate sauce, or treacle tart, or salmon fishcakes. ‘We’re
worried
about you.’

Josh and Lucy would invite me over for dinner and exchange concerned glances when they thought I wasn’t looking, too busy sighing and poking at pastry with my fork.

Finally Si dragged me up to Bond Street. ‘We might as well take advantage of the fact that you now have hipbones,’ he sighed, pulling me into Ralph Lauren.

‘But I’ll never wear this,’ I kept hissing at him, although I had to admit, if I were into clothes and had unlimited finances, I probably would have bought them.

Eventually we settled on Fenwick, much to Si’s horror, and I bought a couple of size 10 trousers and a tight sweater, just to keep him happy, although I was slightly smug about not having to buy a size 14 for the first time in years.

‘You’re a woman,’ Si said in disgust, shaking his head in amazement. ‘You
must
understand the concept of retail therapy.’

I wore the trousers for a while, until I started becoming happy again, and soon I was back to my normal size and the trousers were given to my secretary. And since then I haven’t really been involved with anyone.

There have been a few, but they’ve always been too short. Or too tall. Too handsome. Not handsome enough. Too young. Too old. Too rich. Too poor. Quite frankly these days I prefer a good book.

‘What about Brad?’ Si asked me one day.

‘Brad who?’ We were sitting at a café in West Hampstead, with Josh and Lucy, and a pile of the Sunday papers. It’s become a bit of a tradition with us now. One o’clock at Dominique’s, every Sunday, for coffee, croissants, scrambled eggs and papers.

We were all engrossed. I was stuck into the
Sunday Times
News Review, Josh had the Business section, and Lucy was reading Style. Si had the magazine.

‘Brad who? Brad who?’ he said indignantly. ‘There
is
only one Brad,’ he finally exclaimed, adding, ‘Brad Pitt. That’s who.’ Si held up a picture of said man caught in a paparazzi snap coming out of a restaurant.

‘What about him?’ Lucy asked.

‘What about him for Cath?’

‘Yes,’ I said slowly, as if talking to a child. ‘Because Brad Pitt would dump Jennifer Aniston for a short, plain, mousy…’

‘You’re almost blonde,’ Si interrupted. ‘And he loves blondes! Remember Gwynnie.’

Josh put down his paper and looked at Si, shaking his head. ‘Si, what on earth are we talking about? What is this conversation? Have you gone mad?’

‘No. I just meant that Cath finds fault with every man who even goes near her, and he’s completely perfect, but she’d probably find something wrong with him too. Wouldn’t you?’ He looked at me.

‘’Course,’ I said, examining the picture before exclaiming very seriously, ‘His hair’s too greasy.’

Josh and Lucy gave up introducing me to their friends a long time ago, but men never seemed to be much of a priority after Martin.

Not that I relished spending the rest of my life by myself, but I wasn’t, not with Si, not with Josh and Lucy.

Damn. Si will be here in fifteen minutes and the place looks like a tip. As you would expect, Si’s flat, despite being in the less than salubrious area of Kilburn, is immaculate. Not particularly smart, I grant you, but only because Si’s work is so irregular he can’t afford to re-create the room sets he drools over in
Wallpaper
magazine.

Mine, on the other hand, is a mess. The flat itself is in a mansion block, and therefore lovely and large, but interiors have never been quite my thing, and the fact that most of the furniture was passed on by elderly relatives or well-meaning friends has never particularly bothered me.

It bothers Si, though. Every time he comes over he sits on the sofa, growing more and more fidgety, before getting up and
re-arranging
. He pulls books off the bookshelf and arranges them in neat little piles on the coffee table, together with whatever bowls he can find.

He plumps up cushions and rummages around in my wardrobe for old scarves, which he drapes over furniture. Si’s a big believer in draping, although he claims he hates it and is resorting to desperate measures to hide the ‘hideous pieces of crap’. He collects mugs that are gathering mould, and, shooting me filthy looks, takes them into the kitchen, stands them in the sink and covers them in hot, soapy water.

He has been known to get the vacuum out of the cupboard and do the entire flat, but, as he says, hoovering has never been his favourite job. Give him a pair of rubber gloves and a can of Pledge, however, and he is as happy as anything.

I run around the living room, gathering papers, videos, books, and stack them in a precarious pile next to the sofa, well out of Si’s view. The mugs are literally thrown into the sink, and then I remember the bed and rush in to shake out the duvet.

‘Only
real
sluts don’t make their bed,’ Si said one day, after which point I have tried to remember to make it. At least when he’s coming over.

At seven thirty on the dot the doorbell rings. I haven’t had time for a bath, and I run to the door tugging a cream cardigan over my head because I can’t be bothered to undo the buttons.

‘Are my eyes deceiving me? Could that be… cream?’ says Si. ‘That’s adventurous. What happened to basic black? I don’t think I’ve seen you in a colour for years.’

‘It’s not a colour,’ I say grumpily. ‘It’s
cream
. Anyway, would you like to come in for two seconds to see how tidy I am?’

Si pops his head round the living room door and marches straight over to the side of the sofa. The bit that’s supposed to be hidden from view. One tap of his toe and the pile is once again all over the floor.

‘Cath, my love, did you think my instincts would have failed me? Did you think, perhaps, that they had gone absent without leave? Or perhaps you think I’m rather stupid…’

‘All right, all right. Sorry. But you have to admit it looks okay.’

‘No,’ Si says slowly. ‘Although relatively speaking I suppose I’ll have to concede it does.’ He checks his watch. ‘Josh said quarter to. Shall we wander over?’

I nod and grab my coat, turning to see Si watching me.

‘Sweets,’ he says. ‘You really should make more of an effort. Put on just a tiny bit of make-up on this gorgeous spring evening. What if Mr Perfect turns up?’

‘I don’t need Mr Perfect,’ I say, closing the door behind us and tucking my arm cosily into Si’s. ‘I already have you.’

Chapter four

Josh comes to the door with a tea-towel in one hand and Max in the other, looking, it has to be said, extremely cute in his little striped pyjamas. That is if you didn’t know better.

Even Josh looks rather cute, come to that, with his dirty blond hair mussed up, his shirt sleeves rolled up to show off rather strong and sexy tanned forearms (well, they would be if they didn’t belong to Josh).

It’s funny how I’ve never thought of Josh in that way. Maybe it’s just that he’s too much of an older brother to me now, or maybe it’s because I don’t believe he’s got any sex appeal, but I have never, could never, think of Josh as anything other than a friend.

And yet, looking at him now, purely objectively, he’s a good-looking man. He is the sort of man who grows into his looks, who is just now, at thirty-two, starting to look seriously handsome in a boy-next-door kind of way. The deep laughter lines and creases at the corners of his eyes always seemed slightly incongruous in his twenties, but now they suit him, make him look worldly, as if he’s been around the block a few times, which God knows he needed, because Josh was, still is, the straightest of all of us.

I remember Si and I going through our spliff phase just after university. Si would roll these tiny, tight little joints, and I would try to imitate them, ending up with Super Plus Tampons. We’d sit there, Si and I, rolling around on the floor and screaming with laughter, while Josh puffed away awkwardly, looking slightly perturbed that it wasn’t having the same effect.

‘No, no, Josh!’ Si would say, when the pair of us had recovered enough to actually breathe. ‘You have to inhale,’ and that would set us off again.

His only vice, if you can even dare to call it that, has been drink. First it was pints of Snakebite at university with the rugby team, then pints of lager with the City boys, and now it’s good bottles of claret with dinner.

‘Look!’ Josh says to Max, after rolling his eyes at me briefly. ‘Aunty Cath and Uncle Si! Do you want to give Aunty Cath a cuddle?’ he says brightly, swiftly passing Max to me.

‘No!’ wails Max, turning back to Josh with a look of sheer panic on his face. ‘I want Daddy!’

‘Come to Uncle Si,’ says Si soothingly, as he effortlessly lifts Max up and starts making him laugh immediately by pulling funny faces. ‘Shall we go upstairs and find Tinky Winky?’

Max nods his head vigorously, as Si disappears up the stairs, concentrating hard on Max, who is now chatting away merrily. Josh sighs and closes the door, wiping his forehead with the tea-towel, leaving a big splodge of what could be cream, or could be something that’s not worth thinking about, on the left side of his face.

‘Face,’ I say, gesturing to the cream, as Josh realizes and wipes it away.

‘And it’s lovely to see you too,’ he says, leaning down and giving me a hug. ‘Lucy’s in the kitchen and I’m supposed to be helping her, but Max has been a bugger today.’

‘Kids, eh?’ I sigh. ‘Who’d have ’em?’

‘Tell me about it,’ Josh says, but, tired as he looks tonight, I know that he adores Max, that although he might pretend to be unhappy about having to take Max out of Lucy’s hair, he secretly loves it. Josh loves the fact that he can be a little boy again, can play Cowboys and Indians, teach Max the basic rules about being a man.

Josh and Lucy live in a terraced Victorian house in a narrow street. It looks like nothing from the outside, but is, basically, a Tardis house, i.e., it looks tiny, but once you’re in, it’s enormous.

It is always messy, always noisy, and most of the activity is focused around the large kitchen at the rear, which wasn’t a large kitchen when they moved in two years ago, but, thanks to a smart conservatory extension, is now large enough for a huge dining table that usually has at least three people sitting round it, drinking coffee.

Tonight there is a man I don’t recognize sitting there, strange only because I know most of Josh and Lucy’s friends, and because I thought it was just going to be the four of us tonight.

Lucy has her back to us, chatting away, finishing an anecdote about work; she trained as an illustrator but seems to have done less and less since having Max. When she does have free time, she seems to spend it doing other things – displacement activity, Si always says. Her latest venture is a course in counselling, and I can hear, from the conversation, that the other person sitting at the table is from the course as well.

Lucy stops mid-sentence as she hears my footsteps. Her face lights up as she puts down the lethal-looking knife, and she gives me a huge hug, careful to keep her hands, currently covered with avocado, off my clothes.

Lucy is one of those people whose face always shines, despite not wearing any make-up. She is always radiant, sickeningly healthy-looking, always smiling, and is the best possible person to talk to if you ever have problems.

I love the fact that this is who Josh chose to marry. For a while Si and I were slightly terrified he was going to pop the question to one of an endless stream of identikit girls with streaky blonde hair, braying laughs and a lack of brain cells, but then he went and surprised us by falling madly in love with Lucy. Lucy, with her ruddy cheeks and raucous laugh, with her rounded figure in faded dungarees, with her winks as she ruffled Josh’s hair and told him, repeatedly, that she was built for comfort and not for speed. Lucy, whose maternal instincts were such they were almost oozing out of every pore, who gave birth to Max five months after their wedding.

I love hearing the story of how they met. It gives me hope. Josh hadn’t been working in the City long, when he met Lucy. He was, at the time, desperate to impress, and would spend his nights socializing with City boys who were very definitely not my type.

Josh tried to bring Si and I along a couple of times. I think he thought that if there were enough people going down to the pub, Si and I would just blend in. But of course we didn’t. I had nothing in common with the gaggle of silly little girls that hung on to their every word, and Si had even less with the boozy, macho traders who’d relax in their spare time by having drinking competitions and seeing who could ‘pull the best bird’.

A group of them decided to go off to France on a skiing trip one Christmas. They booked a chalet, and Josh came over one night and sat on my sofa, sighing over and over as he debated whether to bring his latest conquest.

‘I do really like Venetia,’ he sighed. ‘I just know she’s not The One, and I don’t know what to do. She’s already expecting to come, talking about going out to buy a new set of salopettes, but I’m worried she’ll spoil the fun.’

It turned out he meant that Venetia would curl up on his lap every evening, gazing up at him with big blue eyes, taking him by the hand and leading him to bed at nine o’clock, thus preventing him from debauched nights with the boys. Venetia, he said, was gorgeous. She was the perfect trophy girlfriend, and all his mates were green with envy.

And everything would be fine, apart from the fact that Venetia’s biggest problem was that she was far more mature than her twenty-three years. While Josh wanted to go out, have fun, play the field, and spend perhaps a few weeks with someone both adoring and adorable, Venetia wanted to get married.

And whom did she want to marry? A man exactly like Josh, and this was the problem.

In the end Josh had to take her. He was about to tell her he was going on his own, when she produced the aforementioned salopettes, together with a furry hat, gloves and moon boots, all of which had been bought that afternoon, paid for by Daddy’s credit card. Daddy was delighted a chap as ‘suitable’ as Josh was showing the signs of making an honest woman of her.

A ‘chalet girl’, naturally, looked after the chalet they’d booked. Someone who had done a cordon bleu cookery course, who was adept at making the guests feel happy, and who would generally run around making beds and clearing up for a weekly pittance and the opportunity to grab a few hours’ afternoon skiing on the pistes.

Josh and Venetia were the last to walk into the chalet, mostly due to Josh struggling with both his and Venetia’s luggage, Venetia having packed for every eventuality, including, bizarrely, a bikini.

‘Let me help you.’ The chalet girl came bustling over and lifted up Venetia’s suitcase with ease, striding in front of them, turning her head back and throwing a beaming smile over her shoulder as she walked. ‘I’m Lucy.’

‘God,’ giggled Venetia in a stage whisper, as they followed her in. ‘She’s got bigger muscles than you.’

‘Shut up,’ hissed Josh, who was worried that the chalet girl would hear, and who didn’t want to upset her this early on in the trip. Plus, she seemed pleasant, she had a lovely smile, and he wished Venetia wasn’t quite so tactless.

For the week the group stayed at the chalet, the City boys treated Lucy like a serf. They would, by turns, ignore her, insult her and, when very drunk, manhandle her, guffawing about what they could do with a bottom that size. Lucy, to her credit, merely smiled and brushed their hands away, calmly placing steaming casseroles on the table and clearing the plates away as if she hadn’t heard.

On the fourth day Josh fell and twisted his ankle. Not severely, but severely enough to miss a day’s skiing. Venetia insisted on staying with him, but Josh wouldn’t hear of it, and reluctantly she left with the others, ski pass swinging jauntily from her ice-blue jacket.

Josh settled himself in a large armchair with a good book, as Lucy built the fire and brought him endless mugs of hot chocolate. Within an hour the book was resting on his lap, and he was watching Lucy whirl in and out of rooms, a small smile playing on his lips.

And astonishingly, as he watched her ample behind disappear into a bedroom, he found himself wondering what someone like Lucy would be like in bed. And he closed his eyes and set off on what he claims was a really rather raunchy fantasy involving Lucy checking his pulse, then peeling off all her clothes and leaping on him. He opened his eyes with a shock to find Lucy standing over him, smiling.

When he tells this story now, they both roar with laughter. Lucy laughs about the guilty look in Josh’s eyes, the fact that she knew he’d been thinking something dirty, not to mention the sizeable erection that she did her best to ignore. And Josh tells of his heart pounding while for a split second he thought his fantasies were about to come true, and then the combination of relief and disappointment as Lucy said, ‘Penny for them.’ His nervous laughter as he moved the book on his lap to hide the physical evidence of thoughts that were, as far as he was concerned, worth significantly more than a penny, and the realization that not only was this woman incredibly sexy, but that there was (and he only understood this as he looked at her) something very different about her, quite unlike anyone he’d ever met.

For one blissful half-hour in the afternoon Lucy came and sat with him, and they chatted. He found her funny, down-to-earth and refreshingly honest. She had an easy manner and an open smile, and, as she regaled him with horror stories from her cookery course, he found himself more and more attracted to her.

After a while Lucy bustled off to get ready for her daily treat of a couple of hours on the slopes, but not without asking Josh if he wanted her to stay and keep him company.

‘Absolutely not,’ said Josh. ‘This is your free time, go and you can report back on the weather.’

‘Are you sure?’ Lucy hovered in the living room for a bit, and it was only years later that she admitted she was desperate for Josh to ask her to stay with him, that his appearance at the beginning of the week was like a shining light in a sea of dross, and that she had prayed for something like this to happen.

And Josh, being Josh, was waiting for Lucy to tell him that she simply refused to go out and leave him like that. So, because of their lack of communication, neither of them got what they wanted, and Josh was left on his own as Lucy reluctantly made him one final cup of tea before leaving to ski.

Venetia clambered noisily over the sofa when the others piled back in, showering Josh with kisses, her long blonde hair tickling his nostrils and making him sneeze, and it was all he could do not to push her away.

‘Has old thunderthighs been looking after you?’ she said, nuzzling his ear, as Josh did, finally, push her away, his throat constricted with anger.

‘Don’t call her that,’ he said sharply, wishing fervently that the girl on his lap were Lucy.

But Lucy and Josh didn’t get a chance to spend any more time together after that. Josh’s ankle was fine by the next morning, and Venetia, sensing that Josh had distanced himself since the accident, now clung to him like a limpet, trailing after him in an extremely good impersonation of his shadow. Josh cleared the plates and took them into the kitchen, where Lucy was removing a pecan pie from the oven, and, just as Lucy’s eyes lit up at the sight of Josh, Venetia tottered in on her spiked heels to see what Josh was up to.

Josh tried sloping off early, claiming the ankle was playing up, but this time Venetia refused to be left behind, and the two of them sat miserably, side by side, in the cable car going down, both of them depressed, both for entirely different reasons.

Finally, on the last day, everyone decided to go for one last ski. As they reached the cable car, Josh, furtively placing his ski pass in the pocket of his jacket, told the others that he had forgotten it and had to go back, and that they shouldn’t wait, he would meet them on the slopes.

This time, when Venetia started to come with Josh, he told her she was being ridiculous, and it was bad enough that he should have to cut short his skiing time, but that there was no way she should as well. She couldn’t say anything, she just miserably turned back to the rest of the crowd.

Josh went running into the chalet, nervous, exhilarated, unsure of what to say but determined to say
something
. He found Lucy in one of the bedrooms, cheeks flushed with the exertion of cleaning, shaking out one of the blankets, hair escaping from the elastic band holding it in a loose ponytail and falling in tendrils around her shining face.