The lights changed. Charly marched across the road, impossibly fast. Kate ran behind her. ‘Hey, slow down. When? Didn’t you know he and Claire –’
Of course she knew he and Claire were an item, it was the worst-kept secret in the office, two best friends at work, also having an affair. It wouldn’t have mattered either, except it was blindingly obvious Claire was mad about Phil and Kate could see he wasn’t that into her. He was a bit of a player; nice enough, but he was twenty-seven, he didn’t want to settle down yet.
But Charly didn’t answer, and they arrived at the pub. The welcoming smoky fug of the Atlas drew them in and, after they had settled down with their drinks (double gin and tonic for Charly, white wine spritzer for Kate), Kate said, tentatively,
‘Look, Charly, sorry. I didn’t know. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing’s going on,’ Charly said, and there was a tone to her voice Kate hadn’t heard before, dark, and bitter. She smiled; small, sad smile. ‘Just me. Fucking things up as usual, OK?’
‘So you –?’ Kate made a gesture with her beer mat, waving it around, hoping it would convey the phrase You’ve been shagging Phil?
Charly tutted, impatiently. ‘Yes.’
‘How many times?’
‘Jeez, Kate, do you want a tally?’
‘Oh.’ Kate nodded. ‘So more than once then.’
‘Yep,’ said Charly, and she gave a ragged sigh. ‘It started a few weeks ago, well, it started at the Christmas party. I went back to his, and we saw each other over Christmas, you know I’ll do anything to get out of Leigh.’ Kate nodded. ‘So I’d come down to London and stay the night with him, we’d wander round town, no-one around, all that shit. It was – lovely.’ Her voice cracked.
‘Oh my god.’ Charly never talked like this. Like a person with emotions. Kate watched her friend, she patted her arm. ‘You’ve fallen for him, haven’t you?’
‘No,’ said Charly furiously. ‘He’s a dick, OK? We were supposed to be meeting up last week and he called and said Claire was getting suspicious! He said it had been fun but we should call it a day, he couldn’t have two secret office affairs going on! What a –’
Her hand clenched into a fist and her lovely face crumpled. ‘Oh, Charly,’ said Kate, unhappily. She didn’t know what to say. She liked Phil, but she couldn’t understand why he was so secretive about his relationship with Claire, either. Was it that big a deal? Was it naïve of her not to understand why he was so weird about it? She put her arm around Charly’s bony shoulders, clad in slithery oyster silk. Charly sniffed loudly and caught Kate’s hand.
‘That’s why I don’t want to go to The Crown tonight. OK?’
‘Yes, that’s OK,’ said Kate, kissing her hair. ‘It’s always OK. Now, we need to plan our next move. Tell him he can’t get away with it.’
Charly looked at her in surprise. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes,’ said Kate, feeling incredibly protective of Charly, who was so screwed up in her own, weird way. ‘It’s Claire I worry about now, don’t you? He’s just going to mess her around like he has you.’ She got out her new mobile phone, her pride and joy.
‘What are you doing?’ said Charly.
‘I,’ said Kate proudly, ‘am now going to send my first text message.’ She keyed laboriously, for a minute. ‘God, this is annoying, scrolling through. There!’ she said, eventually. Charly peered over her shoulder.
I know what you did to Charlx. If you mess Claire arovnd we will tell her. Have a god eveming. K x
‘Hm,’ said Charly. ‘The typing’s a bit crap.’
‘So?’ said Kate, pressing ‘Send’.
‘Well, Kate Miller,’ said Charly, admiringly. She cleared her throat, and sat up straight. ‘You are turning into a bad girl, you know that?’
‘Hardly,’ said Kate.
‘Slept with your hottie flatmate yet?’
Everyone always thought she was having a torrid affair with Sean. ‘No!’ Kate said, and she blushed. ‘It’s not – there’s nothing going on. Shut up!’
‘Yeah right,’ said Charly, draining the last of her drink.
‘In your head there is. I don’t blame you, he’s gorgeous. Dull as fuck though.’
‘No he’s not,’ said Kate defensively, though Sean had in fact, this morning in the kitchen, droned on for five minutes about the new Microsoft enabling functions, while Kate held her hungover head in her hands and prayed for death. ‘He’s just passionate about his job, that’s all.’
‘Bor-ing.’
Kate thought back to the weekend before, how Sean had showed her how to use his new laptop, set her up with her own hotmail account and everything. They had sat side by side at the computer for hours, she listening, he explaining, their legs touching, neither of them acknowledging it. ‘No,’ she said, quietly. ‘Not all the time.’
‘He’s so not the one for you,’ said Charly. ‘Don’t shag the flatmate just because he’s there and you’re busy playing husband and wife. Textbook. I mean it.’
Kate was silent, uneasy all of a sudden. She looked at her watch. ‘Let’s get another drink, and then I’d better be off,’ she said, after a pause.
Charly sprang up, suddenly alive again. ‘These are on me, doll,’ she said. ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’ She sashayed to the bar, and every man in the vicinity glanced in her direction.
It was after eight when Kate got back, and she was two-white-wine-spritzers-drunk, which is to say not sober but not disastrous. Sean was watching TV as she barrelled into the sitting room.
‘I’m late!’ she cried loudly, hoping that by making a drama of it she’d get the guilt over quickly. Sean hated being late, it was the one area of flatmate life where they diverged wildly. If Kate said Sunday lunch at one p. m., she expected people to pitch up by two and to serve food by three. Sean meant lunch on the table at one p.m.
Sean didn’t look up from the TV. For some inexplicable reason (Kate said it was because she was being all grown-up), Zoe had decreed that tonight was to be evening dress, and Sean was immaculately dressed in black tie. He was that kind of boy, the sort who always had nicely shined shoes and owned his own dinner jacket.
‘Are you furious?’ Kate said, unwrapping her scarf and throwing her coat on the ground. ‘Sean, it’ll take me two minutes to change, I’m sorry –’
He looked up and she saw his face.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said.
His big blue eyes were curiously expressionless; but Kate knew him by now, knew him well enough to know something was up. ‘Jenna’s engaged,’ he said.
‘Oh.’ Kate sat down next to him, and took the remote out of his great big hand. She turned the TV off. ‘Oh, Sean, that’s – that’s crap.’
Jenna had been Sean’s girlfriend all through high school in Texas, and most of university, till they’d broken up before he came back to England for his third and final year. She was, as far as Kate knew, the only woman he’d ever loved, and the circumstances of their breakup were mysterious. Sean had been really unhappy. Kate had only met her once, in their second year, when she’d come to visit. She reminded her of a girl from a Seventies perfume ad: long,