Page 82 of The Fall-Out

‘Did she not trust us enough to tell us the truth about herself?’ Rowan fretted. ‘Whatever the truth is?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ll ever find out the truth.’

We all looked at one another around the table, baffled. The Zara I thought I knew had come from a background of under-privilege and poverty, making her own way in the world, scraping by to pursue the career she loved. The Zara Patch knew had attempted suicide. The Zara Abbie knew had been an entirely different person, cushioned by wealth and luxury.

How many Zaras were there?

‘Okay.’ Kate picked up the wine bottle and refilled all our glasses. ‘If any of you bitches has also been living a double life, why don’t you spill right now? Amnesty time.’

There was a moment of silence, and then we all burst out laughing.

‘That’s it,’ Abbie said. ‘No secrets between us, right? Not any more.’

‘Not ever,’ Rowan promised.

‘No secrets,’ Kate echoed.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said.

We all raised our glasses and tapped them together in the centre of the table, as if we were signing a pact in blood, not just toasting with red wine.

Feeling the closeness and love of my friends wrapping around me like a blanket, I felt a new confidence: we could move forward now, a group of four, without Zara. I could be secure in my relationship with Patch, because surely now there could be no question of my having betrayed Zara – not after how she had betrayed us all.

And there was no need for me to break my promise to her and tell them the secret she’d shared with me about her infidelity – even though I was sure that, unlike her other false confidences, this one had been true.

THIRTY

In the end, it was almost a week before Rowan and I were able to get away. I had to square my last-minute trip with Patch – no easy task, because it meant him spending an entire weekend looking after the children – and Rowan had to arrange the Friday and Monday off work.

But eventually, on a Friday evening, she and I stepped off the Eurostar at Gare du Nord. Of course, I couldn’t help being reminded of our previous trip to visit Zara, but this was different in so many ways. There was no Kate, Abbie or Matt. There’d be no Patch meeting us there. There was no giddy, festive atmosphere or cans of gin and tonic on the train. I had no excited butterflies in my stomach, only a hollow apprehensiveness at the knowledge that I was going to see Zara, fear at how she might react to seeing me, and a complete blank when it came to what I was going to say to her.

It didn’t help that Rowan’s attempts to contact Zara on social media, email and phone had all been unsuccessful, and thinking of the possibility that I might never get the chance to make things right made my confidence in my plan evaporate and be replaced with cold dread.

At least the frosty atmosphere there’d been between Rowan and me seemed to have thawed now that we were united in a common goal.

‘Chin up, Nome,’ Rowan said. ‘We’ve got this. Let’s find our hotel, check in, get something to eat and make a plan.’

Her brisk efficiency reassured me, and we did as she suggested. The hotel Rowan had booked was tucked away on a cobblestone street in the Marais and was basic but pleasant, with a twin room – we weren’t here to live it up, as Rowan had pointed out. But once we’d dropped off our bags and headed out into the street, I felt the magic of the city captivating me as it had the first time. It was early summer now. The trees lining the boulevards were in full leaf, shading the pavements as if we were walking beneath giant green parasols. The evening was warm and there was a gentle breeze disarranging the chic bobs of the women who crowded the pavement with their well-cut, neutral-coloured clothes, their high heels and their expensive handbags. We walked past magnificent stone mansions where it was impossible not to imagine living as a seventeenth-century aristocrat, through an elegant garden square with a vast fountain at its centre and down to the river, sparkling in the setting sun.

Everyone seemed to be smiling; it felt like a city where you could fall in love. I remembered the last time we had come here, and the desperate yearning I’d felt for Patch, the agony of love I’d believed would never be reciprocated. I imagined coming here with him again, leaving the children with my parents, strolling hand-in-hand with him through the streets, eating croissants at a pavement café, returning home in the evening tipsy from rosé and having sex with the curtains blowing into the room from our balcony, like a second honeymoon.

Actually, I realised, coming here with Rowan was something not unlike a honeymoon, and almost more important. It felt like a chance to heal the fractures in our friendship, to begin to make things right between us and somehow recover from the damage that had been done by Zara’s return, and my actions in the past.

When we’d met at St Pancras station, our conversation had been – not cold, but kind of formal, limited to our travel arrangements and the plans we’d made for our children to be looked after while we were away. But now, glancing sideways at Rowan, I could see a lightness in her step, a smile on her face when the breeze blew back her hair.

‘It’s got you, hasn’t it?’ Rowan asked, and I realised she was looking sideways at me too.

‘What has?’

‘Paris, dimwit.’

I laughed. ‘Yup, you’ve got me bang to rights. And don’t pretend it’s not got to you, too.’

‘Course it has. Paris and – being here with you, Nome. It’s nice.’

I grinned, my heart lifting. ‘Yeah, it’s all right, isn’t it?’

‘So, food. This place looks decent, if you’re happy with cassoulet or something? When there’s just a short menu like this it generally means they do it perfectly.’

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