Page 38 of The Fall-Out

‘It’s just an Airbnb.’ Zara touched a fob to a panel next to the door and I heard a muted beep before she pushed it open. It was two days later, and I’d arrived at the address she had given me a few minutes early, and almost given up and gone away again when there’d been no answer to my ring.

It felt almost like a reprieve – like having an appointment for a smear test cancelled at the last minute. I could just go home, tell Patch Zara wasn’t there, was being flaky as she often was and offer to arrange a courier to pick up the camera. I could avoid having to see her on her own turf, alone and undefended.

But just before I turned to leave, I’d seen her hurrying up to the building, gushing apologies.

A steep flight of stairs led upwards beyond a rank of letterboxes. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be here – I’m contracted to do a series of stories on the London fashion scene but if things get busy back in Paris or New York they might whisk me out again. It’s kind of like a working holiday, I guess.’

‘That sounds fun.’ She’d already reached the first bend in the stairs, climbing easily, her wide-leg trousers swishing above her high-heeled boots.

No one in London wears heels any more, I thought unkindly. Maybe you should put that in the first of your dispatches from the Big Smoke.

‘I’ve got used to embracing uncertainty over the years. Paris has been home mostly, of course, but I’ve been all over. Luckily Bisou loves travelling. Are you all right back there, Naomi?’

‘I’m fine,’ I panted. We were two floors up now and she showed no sign of slowing, but I slogged grimly on after her.

‘I could have found somewhere with a lift, but that would have cost more, and I reckon this is doing wonders for my cardiovascular fitness. You know I’ve always detested the gym.’

This was true – I remembered from back in the day how Zara seemed to never do any exercise, yet drank and often ate enormously when we were out, while remaining as thin as a shop-window mannequin. Rowan and I had once speculated that she probably lived on lettuce leaves and cigarettes the rest of the time.

‘And here we are.’ Zara finally stopped on the fifth floor – or it might have been the sixth – in front of a shiny black-painted door. She fitted a key into the lock and turned it. ‘Home sweet home – for now.’

Stepping into the apartment, I felt a pang of envy. My own house was – well, it was home. But it was nothing much to look at. Patch and I had bought it before I stopped working, when I’d still been earning enough for us to get the mortgage. We’d chosen it because it was big enough for a family and close enough to his mother, and figured on fixing it up later on.

But later on hadn’t happened yet, and our kitchen was still shabby and inconvenient, our stair carpet a threadbare trip hazard, our windows rattly and draughty. The twins had added their interior design touches too – piles of plastic toys in the living room, high chairs we’d found second hand on Facebook, and liberal felt-tip pen artworks on the fridge and of course the walls.

This was like something out of a magazine. The floor was shiny parquet, a lush green palm grew in a brass pot, a marble sculpture of a woman’s torso stood on a mid-century modern sideboard, and one wall was painted deep magenta. Even the cat looked like it had come from some swanky designer cat department store – a slinky dark brown-spotted Bengal with wide amber eyes and an implausibly long tail.

Zara scooped it up and kissed its pointy nose. ‘Have you missed me, darling? Say hello to Auntie Naomi.’

I felt a jolt like I was waking from a dream. From the moment I saw her a few minutes before, I’d let myself be swept into my old patterns of thinking and being around Zara: envy, guilt and an over-riding sense of inadequacy. That wasn’t good enough. What had happened in the past was just that – the past. Patch and I had been together for more than ten years. We were married, we were parents.

If Zara hadn’t moved on from that, it was long past time she did. And I needed her to know that I’d moved on – that she no longer had the power to manipulate me.

So I made clicking noises at the cat, cooed, ‘Hello, you,’ like meeting it was the best thing that had happened to me all day, and reached out a hand to stroke it.

The cat regarded me with disdain, then wriggled out of Zara’s arms, stalked over to a gold leather-covered chaise longue and began sharpening its claws energetically.

‘I really shouldn’t let her.’ Zara shrugged. ‘But what can you do? If they allow cats in the apartment they have to expect some damage. I guess I’ll kiss goodbye to my deposit. Coffee?’

‘Coffee would be great.’ I’d drink it with her like the old acquaintance I was, I resolved, then pick up Patch’s camera and get the hell out. And that would be that – no need to see her or speak to her ever again.

‘Give me a second.’ She gestured to a chrome-framed yellow sofa and disappeared into what I presumed was the kitchen.

I perched uncomfortably on the edge of the seat, turning towards the window, which overlooked a garden square surrounded by black-painted railings. The trees were leafless now, their branches skeletal against the leaden sky, and where there would be flowerbeds in summer were now only rectangles of bare, wet soil.

The cat approached me, sniffed my trainers, then backed away as abruptly as if I’d kicked it – which I hadn’t, of course – and, in a sudden burst of athletic indoor parkour, jumped from the floor to the coffee table to a low bookshelf and up on to the mantelpiece. Then it sat down, washing its face in between regarding me distrustfully.

Don’t worry, I thought. I feel just the same about this.

Zara returned with a cafetière and two white china mugs on a tray. ‘I hope you don’t take milk, because I’m afraid I never have any in. It only goes sour and I have to throw it away.’

‘Black will be fine.’

Somehow, it was impossible to picture Zara doing something as ordinary as going into a supermarket and buying a pint of milk. I bet if I’d asked for a piece of toast, she wouldn’t have had any bread in, either – I could imagine her fridge, empty apart from a bottle of champagne and a bottle of vodka, the way Kate had told us Andy’s was when he was in the throes of drug addiction, only classier.

She poured the coffee, handed me a cup and sat next to me on the sofa, perched as I was on its edge, because it was one of those pieces of furniture that if you ever managed to get comfortable on it, you’d never get up again. Except Zara probably would, having abs of steel from all the exercise she didn’t do.

‘We were in touch quite regularly before he died, you know,’ Zara said.

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