Page 24 of The Fall-Out

Naomi:

She fucking ambushed me

I typed into the Girlfriends’ Club WhatsApp later, aware that I was maybe being just a tiny bit of a drama llama but not caring.

At the time I’d been first blindsided, then genuinely furious. My mother-in-law, as guiltily as a woman surprised with her lover when her husband arrives home, had immediately insisted on offering me tea and switching the game from cribbage to gin rummy, and I found myself unable to refuse. So I endured a tortuous hour playing cards – which I sucked at; I’d started losing to the children at snap about a year before – drinking the kind of herbal tea that tasted of grass clippings, and listening to Bridget and Zara chatting about Paris.

‘Such a beautiful city,’ Bridget rhapsodised. ‘And always so clean! When I compare the London Underground to the Metro – ugh.’

‘My apartment’s right in the centre of the dixième,’ Zara said, ‘so I mostly walk everywhere. But yes, arriving here has been quite a shock to the system, haha! I’m only out for a few weeks and then I’ll be heading back home. It truly does feel like home now.’

I gritted my teeth and checked my cards – a useless collection of unconnected, off-suit low numbers, apart from the jack of hearts. Why are you staying, Naomi? I asked myself. You’re a grown-up – just make your excuses and go!

But somehow, I couldn’t. It felt almost like leaving them to it would have been somehow perilous – as if allowing Zara unfettered access to my mother-in-law, her tea, the biscuits I’d brought and a pack of playing cards would be the beginning of a dangerously slippery slope that could lead anywhere.

‘You should come and visit, Nome,’ Zara said, casually laying down the king, queen and ace of spades. ‘It’s been years.’

‘Patch has always loved travelling,’ Bridget said, as if I kept him chained to the kitchen table or something.

At last, I was rescued by the British Gas man turning up to read Bridget’s meter, and I was able to say goodbye. Zara did, too, kissing Bridget as if she was her long-lost aunt and promising to visit soon.

Then, as soon as the front door had closed behind us and I was preparing to say the briefest possible goodbye to her, Zara said, ever so casually, ‘Oh, Nome, about my pashmina.’

Startled, I replied, ‘Yes – what about it?’

‘You do still have it, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’ What did she think I’d done, flogged it on Vinted in the four days since Andy’s funeral?

‘Do you mind awfully if I pop back to yours and pick it up? It’s just, I’m so used to having a black pash in my bag. In case of emergencies, you know, like the one on Friday. And I’m getting all twitchy without it. It’s like my Linus blanket.’ She gave a tinkly, self-deprecating little laugh.

Put on the spot, I couldn’t think of a decent excuse. It was too early for needing to collect the children from nursery to be plausible. I clearly wasn’t going out to lunch or to the gym.

So I said, ‘Okay. I mean, of course you can. Shall we get the bus?’

‘Haha, no need for that. Come on, let’s Uber it.’

‘You – okay, let me get my phone and I’ll order one.’

Except I didn’t have my phone. So I heard my voice giving her my home address, and watched helplessly as she entered it into hers.

I half-expected the cab journey to pass in awkward silence, but I’d reckoned without Zara’s Teflon self-confidence – or was it just the hide of a rhino?

As soon as the car door thumped shut and we settled into the pine-scented interior, she began giving me what I later described to the Girlfriends’ Club as an interrogation the Stasi would have been proud of.

‘So – E17. Where’s that postcode exactly?’ she asked, frowning earnestly down at her phone. ‘My London geography’s gone to shit since I’ve lived abroad. Is it Hackney?’

‘Haha, no. We couldn’t have afforded Hackney if we wanted to. It’s further north than that and a lot less fashionable.’

‘And you’ve lived there how long?’

‘Four and a bit years.’ I hesitated, torn between wanting to give away as little information about my life as I could and needing to emphasise its stability, its permanence. ‘We moved in just before the twins were born.’

‘Twins! Oh my God, I did not know that. How adorable. Identical? You know I have an identical twin sister, Zoe? What are yours called?’

‘They’re a boy and a girl. Toby and Meredith.’ It felt odd telling her our children’s names – frightening, almost. Like I was handing her some sort of power over them. And as for her twin sister, who she’d never mentioned before – I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask her about that.

But what else could I say? I’m not telling you what they’re called and you can’t make me – way to make myself look like I was the weird one here, not her.

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