She’s about to put the glass down, prior to making leaving noises, when Naomi sidles up to her in a new red dress – short, to show off her legs. Naomi has amazing legs. They’re not long, but they’re shapely, and end in very high heels. Jason can’t stop staring at them.
‘Stay,’ Naomi hisses, out of the corner of her mouth, so the other three guests, sitting on the leather couch, like interviewees, don’t hear over the polite sounds of Zero 7. ‘Jason says the lads from football are on their way back from the pub.’
‘I’m not into footballers,’ says Gina, her smile fixed. ‘And I’ve spent the last twenty minutes advising Jason’s co-worker about planning permission for her loft extension. It’s like being at work, but without the crazy fun times.’
‘Let me get you a fresh glass,’ says Naomi, loudly, and steers her into the kitchen. ‘Stay another half-hour.’
‘But I don’t know anyone!’
‘That’s the whole point!’ She over-enunciates the words to make up for the stage whisper. ‘You’ve been in London for four years! This is how you meet people. And by people, I obviously mean men.’
‘But I don’t want . . .’
Naomi grips Gina’s arms, her eyes fierce with the matchmaking intentions of the recently coupled-up. ‘You’re beautiful, you’re funny, you’re wearing a dress that we won’t even see in the shops here for another eighteen months. You need to get out there and start dating.’ A microscopic pause. ‘Again.’
Gina narrows her eyes because in the kitchen everyone can hear you scream at your best friend. She knows Naomi isn’t referring to her last relationship – a three-months-and-a-minibreak fiasco with Dr Adam Doherty, Unilever washing-powder researcher. Naomi means after Kit. It’s been four years. They don’t talk about Kit any more, but Naomi at least acknowledges his existence, unlike her mother, who refuses to refer to him at all. Janet’s good at pretending things never happened.
Out of long habit, Kit’s face slips into Gina’s head, like a slide in a projector; she leaves it there a second, then consciously slips it out. She goes through phases of dating – she’s not short of offers – but when you’ve been with someone who felt they’d been put on earth for the sole purpose of finding you, it’s depressing to have to build up a relationship, dinner by dinner, dutifully researching each other, offering up likes and dislikes, like chess moves until one reveals something bad enough to checkmate.
‘Not knowing people is good,’ Naomi whispers. ‘Believe me. You’re a novelty. And you cannot leave me here with the IT department from Jason’s office. I’m your best friend!’
‘Ten minutes,’ Gina mutters back, and at that moment there’s a clatter at the door, and Jason roars, ‘Lads!’ as Naomi’s face glows with relief under her highlighter and she takes the sizzling honey-roasted cocktail sausages out of the oven.
Immediately the party’s atmosphere sparks into life, going from an awkward gathering of five strangers eating olives to something much more fun. Naomi’s pretending to be cross with ‘the boys’ for being late, but Gina can tell that she’s revelling in the puppyish teasing directed towards her and Jason. There are jokes about rolling pins and leashes, but it’s OK because Jason is clearly happy to be under any or all parts of Naomi from the thumb onwards.
As Naomi hands out beer and sausages, the boys (men, Gina corrects herself) scan the room, and one or two glance her way. Gina doesn’t know how to arrange her face, because she suspects Naomi is forcing them to look her way by saying things like, ‘Oh, have you met my best mate who’s moved back from London?’ London, in Longhampton, is synonymous with snobbery, yet moving back means you’ve failed in some way. Lose-lose.
Gina wanted to love London, but alone without Naomi, or Kit, she couldn’t find anywhere to fit in. And deep down, she didn’t want to fit in: nothing felt right. So she’s come home, in the hope that her life might start here instead. She smiles at Jason’s mates. But the way they smile briefly, then turn back to their own group makes Gina’s insides feel like they’re peeling off.
She body-swerves another approach from Extension Woman, and goes back into Naomi’s kitchen to pretend to look for a water glass, then considers going upstairs to the loo, but a couple she doesn’t know are conducting an intense, nose-to-nose conversation on the stairs, gazing into each other’s mouths while pretending to talk about The West Wing.
In desperation Gina goes back into the sitting room where the lads have pushed back the new couch and are now doing knees-up dancing to some Madness song, led by a red-faced Jason. Madness, for crying out loud, she thinks. Naomi hates Madness. She’s always said they sound like a midlife crisis playing a saxophone. Jason and his mates are ten years too young for this.
Across the room Naomi grimaces, but it’s all part of being in a serious relationship, as she frequently tells Gina in their long emails. Jason let her choose the wallpaper; she let him use the spare room as a home gym. God knows what she gets in return for letting him play Madness at their housewarming. Gina grimaces back but then one of the dancers stops and catches her rolling her eyes at him.
She looks away, mortified, because it would be the fittest one who caught her making that face, the good-looking one who’s probably the captain. She doesn’t know his name but it’ll be something wholesome like Ben or Mark: Jason went to the other school in the area, Hartley High School, so all his mates feel like people Naomi and Gina know, even though they don’t. This one would have been the lad Stephanie Bayliff or Claire Watson would have gone out with: he’s got the Matt Damon cheekbones, teddy-bear-brown hair, the athletic frame of the sports all-rounder.
And the great legs. Gina can’t help noticing. Great legs, gorgeous bum in jeans that actually fit, just-big-enough biceps under a shirt unbuttoned at the neck to reveal tanned skin.
She kicks herself for describing him in the same terms she’d have used at school. That’s what coming home does to you.
He’s not Gina’s type at all – no glasses, no floppy indie-kid hair, not even a suit like Dr Adam Doherty – but something about his extreme handsomeness sets off a slow burn inside her. Gina’s tried to persuade herself that she doesn’t mind being single but according to the magazines, she should be having the time of her life, at twenty-five. And she isn’t. This is the time of someone else’s life – a nun, maybe. Or someone’s mother. It’s as if her worst fear came true: all the fun was concentrated in that blissful time with Kit.
And now he’s coming over.
‘Did I do something funny?’ he asks, not angry but anxious.
His accent is local, with the lazy rural vowels that Gina’s lost after years away. It’s a gentle sound with softened rs. His eyes are fixed on hers, the pupils dilated, as if he finds her attractive, and she can’t help noticing how long his eyelashes are.
She tries to summon up some repartee. It’s not impossible, she tells herself. As Naomi says, he just sees the wrap dress, showcasing her best assets, and her hair in loose brown curls round her face, the dark red lipstick giving her rosebud lips, the expensive sheen on her high cheekbones. He doesn’t know she’s stayed in every night for the past seven months, watching soaps and learning how to tong with a hair straightener from back issues of Cosmo.
His expression takes on a hint of panic as realisation strikes. ‘Are my flies undone?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Your flies are fine.’ She pauses, then asks deadpan. ‘Was that an attempt to get me to look at your flies?’
‘No! God, no . . . not at all, sorry, I didn’t mean . . .’
‘I know,’ says Gina. ‘You’re fine.’
He grins. ‘Do you want to dance, then?’
‘No,’ says Gina, more definitely. ‘And, anyway, you can’t dance to Madness. You can only march on the spot. It’s basically aerobics for men.’
He looks relieved. ‘I hate Madness. Can I get you a drink?’
Gina holds out her empty glass. She was braced for some deathless banter about her not dancing or him needing a teache
r – but there wasn’t any. Just an easy offer of a drink, the first step in the non-complicated chat-up routine. This is a lot easier than London.
Naomi’s making faces at her from across the room, raising her eyebrows in that well-done gesture. Gina gives her a discreet two fingers from behind her hand – an old joke – but rearranges herself quickly when the man comes back with a fresh glass of wine.
‘I’m Stuart,’ he says, offering a hand. ‘Mate of Jason’s. We were at school together.’
‘Gina. Naomi’s best friend. Also at school together.’ They juggle wine glasses and shake hands and Stuart grins at the cheesiness of it. He has a winning smile: his teeth are strong and white, his cheek dimpled. She feels another tug of desire. The music’s changed: Naomi’s obviously commandeered the CD player and she’s not known for her subtlety. Gina wonders if she should offer to dance; she’s quite good, with a natural sway in her hips. She wonders how Stuart’s hands would feel on her waist if she made him salsa.
‘Don’t make me dance,’ says Stuart before she can speak. ‘It’s not pretty.’ He lifts his eyebrows. ‘Sit down?’
Why not? she thinks, and Stuart leads her to the sofa to chat, while his mates carry on pogoing inappropriately to Jennifer Lopez.
Why not? she thinks, half an hour later, as Naomi demonstrates the dimmer switch Jason fitted by turning the lights down low, and changes the CD to Katie Melua, throwing a moody blanket of slow music over the remaining guests. Stuart has to lean in to catch what Gina’s saying over the music, and he smells of Hugo Boss, the scent that wafted from the boys’ changing rooms at school. It tickles Gina, and she smiles. She can feel the firm muscle of his thigh through his jeans as he leans closer to her on the sofa, and she can’t quite believe that she is being chatted up in this confident yet polite way. The outcome is not in question, and Gina finds that quite relaxing.
Chatted up. They’re not at school any more. She’s renting a place on her own. So is Stuart, probably. She shivers with desire, partly at the surprising realisation that she’s now a proper adult, then laughs. She’d always assumed it’d be harder than this.
‘Why are you laughing?’ asks Stuart, anxiously.
‘Because you’re too handsome.’ She’s in that happy, cosy stage of drunkenness, the confiding stage where everything feels right. ‘It’s putting me off my conversation.’
He gazes at her. Gina thinks he’s drunker than her: he looks serious. ‘But you’re beautiful.’ He leans closer. ‘You’ve got skin like . . . like a peach.’
He reaches out and touches her cheek, not in a lechy way but as if he’s curious to see what it feels like. Gina tingles all over as his finger traces her cheekbone, her nose, her lips. It’s been ages since anyone touched her.
I probably shouldn’t be drinking, she thinks. Mum would go mad. How am I getting home? No, don’t worry. Safe here, with Naomi.
Her dry lips part as Stuart’s finger traces down her neck, along the scoop of her clavicle, joined by another over the freckles in the hollow of her throat. The music is throbbing in Gina’s head now, in time with the blood rushing around her body, waking up parts of her that haven’t tingled in ages. She’d completely forgotten what it feels like to have someone’s fingers reading her body. All Stuart’s done is touch her, and she feels like water inside.
‘You’re like a peach,’ says Stuart, wonderingly. ‘Soft, like a peach.’
Gina stops herself telling him it’s Palmers Cocoa Butter, and congratulates herself on her new adult mystique.
They gaze at each other for a moment in the sleepy chaos of the party, and then, without either of them seemingly initiating it, they’re kissing with the one-night-only, hormone-driven single-mindedness of a pair of teenagers. Stuart feels and tastes and smells exactly as she’d thought he would, and she’s letting go for the first time in years, falling into something that’s completely obvious and straightforward.
Why not? thinks Gina, as Stuart whispers in her ear about getting a cab back to his. Why not?
Gina had vowed, before her first meeting with Rory Stirling of Flint & Cook solicitors, that she wouldn’t be the clichéd vengeful wife when it came to her divorce. She wanted to be calm and mature, given that she had been considering separation before Stuart had made the decision for her, but even with a lawyer as reassuringly competent as Rory, thanks to Stuart’s stupid demands, it was proving harder than she’d hoped to cling onto calmness, let alone maturity.
Friday was her third meeting, and Gina had really hoped that this would be the day she would walk out with a firm date in her diary at which this foggy stage of her life would be over, and the new one would officially begin. Dates helped. She had already set herself the task of emptying the boxes in the flat by her birthday, 2nd May. One box a day, including the ones in storage, would be enough to get there, plus a few weeks to sell some things, at which point she could buy herself a fabulous birthday present, something so wonderful it would go straight onto the list of her hundred special things.
That morning, sorting out had put Gina in a very good mood. She’d given two bags of unused knitting wool, plus assorted needles and pattern books, to David, the tax accountant upstairs, whose wife made tiny hats for the hospital’s premature-baby unit. Not only did the babies get hats, but now Gina never had to get round to learning to knit. She’d donated her unused Sodastream to the office kitchen, much to the delight of the web designers, and she’d left another bag of designer jeans she’d never diet back into at the dog rescue shop. Knowing things were going to better homes gave her a warm glow. But that warm glow vanished the moment she sat down in Rory’s comfortable client chair, and heard what he had to update her on.
When she ran her eye down the list of items Stuart now apparently wanted in addition to the financial settlement, a sound that Gina didn’t recognise had slid out of her. It sounded a lot like a clichéd wife. ‘What?’ she whined. ‘He could have taken this when he moved out. I don’t know where half of it is. I’ve given a lot of stuff away already too!’
‘I know. It’s tedious but, believe me, it’s better that he gets it sorted out now than spends the next five years ringing you about his power drill.’ Rory was only a few years older than Gina but he had the solicitor’s gift of making everything sound reasonable, even when it wasn’t. ‘Try not to take it personally.’
‘How can I not take it personally? It feels like he’s reducing our life together to a series of . . . cash payments.’ Gina flipped through the pages. It was ridiculous, starting out hurtful (he wanted more of the house profit on account of the ‘months he spent supporting Mrs Horsfield while she was unable to make a financial contribution to the domestic finances’) and ending up petty (the list of items he had now decided he wanted from the house). ‘He didn’t take a single photograph of us together, but he wants four glass bowls that we got on holiday in Venice eight years ago?’
‘He’s probably just seen Murano glass on the Antiques Roadshow,’ said Rory calmly. ‘Some people become very logical in the face of big emotional situations. We see it all the time. “What I’m owed”. It’s a coping mechanism, makes them feel in control of something. I’m sorry. As I said, don’t take it personally. Easier said than done, I know.’
Gina bit her lip. This was one of the surprisingly painful side effects of divorce. A whole new Stuart coming out, one that she didn’t even know: a Stuart who’d stoop to cheap shots about her illness and hide behind his solicitor. He’d never been like that while they were married. Or had he? Had she just tried not to notice? It was bad enough knowing he’d been running some kind of financial clock on the time she was off work.
Rory saw her expression. ‘Don’t dwell on it,’ he said. ‘Give him what he wants, if you can, and move on. It doesn’t bring out anyone’s best side, arguing over who bought what. If it makes you feel better, it’s probably his solicitor driving all this, not him.’
The list blurred in front of Gina’s eyes. She remembered buying the dishes Stuart wan
ted. He hadn’t understood why she loved them so much; the artistry had meant nothing to him, and it was hard to imagine why he wanted them now. Unless he wanted to remember how romantic Venice had been, in the giddy early days of their relationship. The memory of that weekend snagged in her throat. It had started so romantically – champagne in the airport, the hotel that felt like a honeymoon suite, the exhilaration of visiting a city she’d always dreamed about going to with a lover. Where had that gone?
‘We were happy sometimes,’ she insisted pathetically. ‘It wasn’t always like this. Honestly. We did have some happy times.’
‘I know,’ said Rory. ‘If you hadn’t, this wouldn’t be so painful now.’ He pushed a box of tissues over the desk to her and she took one gratefully.
Flint & Cook’s offices were very near the high street, and Naomi had promised to meet Gina in the café for a cake and debrief. As she wove through the bundled-up office workers shivering at the bus stop, Gina could see her sitting at the prized window table; Naomi was a splash of colour amid the OAPs, in a bright green coat, with a black sequined beret over her chestnut hair.
‘Woah, you look livid, sit down,’ she instructed, when Gina shouldered her way inside. ‘Don’t speak. Not till you’ve eaten some of this carrot cake.’ She gestured to the waitress for two coffees, and sat back,
Gina slid into the chair and took three deep breaths, then exhaled, trying to imagine the tension leaving with the spent breath. It was a calming technique she’d been encouraged to practise by her counsellor: ‘Imagine your stress as a colour. What colour is it?’ Today’s stress was bitter, and an unpleasant orange, the same colour as Stuart’s cycling gear. Gina exhaled, and imagined the air around her nostrils singeing with fiery plumes of her bad mood, like a cartoon dragon.
She was angry because, after an hour of picking over the financial bones of her marriage, she felt like a stranger to herself. The unhappiness had passed, and now it was the waste of time, more than the money, that burned at her conscience. All that, to end up as this bitter stranger.