‘Proper champagne, Perrier Jouët!’ She grins, and tilts her head at her fiancé and his moneyed pals. ‘You hanging back? Can’t blame you. Arlo is actually discussing blockchain with some of his bankers. What the hell is blockchain? Does anyone know?’
We are already a few yards from the main social group by the bar. Physically sidelined: symbolically lesser. I look down at the inviting glass tulip of golden-bubbling alcohol. Should I feel guilt for guzzling Arlo’s champagne when I dislike him so much? Nope. I tilt the flute and gulp the fizz so quickly it makes me sneeze bubbles. The glass is trembling in my slightly trembling hand. I am revealing my hideous anxieties.
Tabitha frowns, looking at my glass, which I quickly set down on the bartop.
‘Heya. Are you all right? Everything OK at Delancey?’
This is the time to mention it. She has cued me up. This is my chance to offload, share, ask for help, mention the Assistants, the possible malfunction. In them. Or in me. The taunts. The music. The clownish horror show. And yet I cannot. Because the conversation would rapidly come back to the deeper reason: the death of Jamie Trewin. And we have vowed never to discuss this between us; vowed on our lives, vowed on the lives of both our families. And we have kept that vow: it’s not something I can easily break. I want to. But I can’t. For a start, Tabitha might throw me out, and then I’d have to go and live on the A40 and breathe pure carbon monoxide.
Also, the Assistants have been quiet the last day or two. Nothing has happened since I rang my mum. This does not help me, as it leaves me open to the possibility that I am becoming schizophrenic like my father.
But that is so chilling I do not think about it.
Ever.
Do. Not. Think. About. It. It. It. It. It. It is listening to me. Talking to me. The TV is talking to me. Like it apparently talked to my dad. A voice from the dark. I was too young to understand, at the time, but I’ve learned since that this was the first symptom of the disease that killed him a few years later.
The TV started talking to Dad the way the machine, Electra, has started talking to me. Which suggests I am my dad? I will end my days gassed in a car?
‘Jo? You OK?’
I come to, with a jolt. I must have been silent for a minute, lost in myself. My dad did that too. Before he got scary. Before his tickling got aggressive and I ran to Mummy. Before his madness cost me friends. Dave, Jenny, others, many, all driven away. At least it made me self-reliant.
Looking at my flatmate, I force a smile.
‘I’m good, Tabs. Working. Bit bored. You know you’ve come back to the coldest winter since mid-period Charles Dickens.’
She shudders.
‘I noticed. There were penguins in the Arrivals Lounge.’
‘So how was it?! How was the documentary, the jungle, the trip? What’s the Amazon like? I’ve always wanted to go. God, you’re so lucky!’
She chuckles.
‘Insects.’
‘Sorry?’
‘That’s what the Amazon is like, babe. Insects. You don’t see any wildlife because the jungle is too thick, a wall of endless green. But my bloody God you see insects – mosquitoes like buzzards, killer centipedes, spiders that exude poison.’
‘OK …’
‘Fire ants literally attacked my rucksack. Seriously. They tried to eat it. It’s got little white marks all over it, from the formic acid where they bit. And then at night that’s all you hear.’
‘What?’
‘Insects! Shrieking. They actually shriek.’ She knocks back her own glass of bubbles. ‘Also giant rats. Lois hated the whole thing. Said we had to do Greenland next. Anywhere with zero insect life.’
Lois is her presenter. The star of the nature documentary series that Tabitha co-produces.
‘The only interesting bit was when a tapir fell in the swimming pool.’
I gaze her way. Wide-eyed. Tabitha always has adventures and tales. We used to eagerly share these adventures: backpacking together through Bolivia and Colombia, fending off overly persistent tantra masseurs in India, then life caught up with us and we had to get sensible. I stopped travelling; she still travels for her work, and comes home with stories. And I need good stories tonight, to take my mind off my flat, to take my mind off my mind.
‘You had a swimming pool? I thought you were like, lost in the wilderness, surrounded by piranha – wasn’t that the idea?’
Tabitha nods, chuckling.
‘Yeah. But towards the end we got so bored of the tents and the mozzy bites we went to some hotel near Iquitos which had a pool. But the pool was right on the edge of the jungle and a tapir wandered out of the forest and tried to have a drink and then fell in the pool. And then the tapir panicked and did a humongous poo in the pool and no one knew how to get the poo out. Have you ever had a swim in a pool full of tapir poo? It’s not ideal.’
I am laughing, loudly. Maybe too loudly: showing my inner angst. But it’s great to have Tabitha back. A genuine friend. My old friend. How I have lacked this.
For a while we politely rejoin Arlo, but the bankers are talking about cryptocurrencies, and Tabitha and I exchange knowing glances – and then she kisses Arlo decorously on the cheek and says,
‘Nipping out for another vape, sweetheart. Don’t put too much money into Aetherieum, it will crash.’
He half acknowledges her; while she murmurs to me,
‘Wanna come with? They’ve got patio heaters.’
Openly relieved, I follow her outside into the pub garden. It is bitterly cold but yes there are red-glowing patio heaters. Staring at them, I say,
‘Greatest invention since—’
Tabitha interrupts:
‘Facebook?’
She is grinning, playfully. Making a point.
‘Don’t. Please. Please don’t.’ I sigh, feeling helpless. ‘Oh God, Tabby, I do try and get along with him, but … he’s from such a different world. I mean, you’re posh enough but he’s basically like the Queen. He probably looks down on the Queen, coz she uses Tupperware.’
‘Yesss,’ she drawls, in her amused voice. ‘Plus he thinks you scuppered his inevitable ascent to becoming Emperor of the Internet,’
I raise a cold hand in protest,
‘I didn’t!’
Tab smiles her perfect, regular, white-toothed smile. I have quite nice teeth but they are a bit crooked. Thornton Heath teeth.
‘I know, darleenk, I know. But you remember how he is. And now he’s got that bonkers start-up ready to kick off, he’s convinced it will be the next unicorn. Make him a billion. Like he needs more money. Anyway he’s particularly touchy. Don’t pay any attention to him.’
I want to ask her: what do you see in him? But I can’t. She genuinely loves him. She’s told me. I know they have good sex. I know they go to fashionable sex parties. Killing Kittens, Kinky Salon. Maybe that’s all it is: sex. Also, Tabitha can be, for all her confidence, oddly insecure, at times. She has panic attacks. Her dad left home when she was ten or so, upped and walked out the door with a new mistress half his age. Therefore Arlo’s wealth thus gives her an extra level of security. Plus the sex.
Tabitha is smoking an actual cigarette; not a vape.
I stare at her.
‘Uh, thought you’d given up?! You practically put on a West End musical about it: Tabitha Gives Up!’
She