Page 12 of The Fall-Out

‘Off the scale,’ she said. ‘You’ll stun everyone at Patch’s party in that. My single male friends will challenge each other to a duel over you.’

‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t you trying anything on?’

‘Oh, I picked up a few things.’ She showed me a bulging carrier bag. ‘Now we can go and have lunch.’

We went to a Polish café Zara knew and had pierogi, giant blinis piled with smoked salmon, fat slabs of poppyseed cheesecake and several shots of vodka each, because Zara said she wanted to try all the flavours. After about the second round, I found myself confiding in her about the dire state of my love life.

‘I mean, I’d love to settle down and have kids some time,’ I said. ‘But it feels so kind of final. I knew Stu wasn’t right for me, but how do you know who is?’

‘Isn’t that the million-dollar question?’ Zara knocked back a shot of bison grass vodka. ‘Shall we try the sour cherry next? The thing is, you’re supposed to know – like bam, fireworks etcetera, but I don’t think people really do. I certainly don’t.’

‘Do you mean Patch…’ I began. I thought of the photos I’d seen on Zara’s Facebook feed of the two of them together – gorgeous, smiling, apparently in love.

‘Patch is a lovable hunk of meat.’ She smiled wickedly. ‘And he’s so delicious to look at it’s easy to forget his other shortcomings.’

I couldn’t resist asking what those were, but she answered only obliquely.

‘Ah, I suppose no one’s perfect. But fortunately I travel so much and he’s always working away, so we have lots of time apart. Absence makes the heart grow fonder – and the fond heart wander.’

I laughed, even though I wasn’t sure what she’d said was even funny.

‘You know,’ she went on, leaning confidingly across the table to me, ‘no matter what happens with him and me, I’ll be grateful to him always, because without him I wouldn’t have met you. And Abs and Ro and Kate, of course.’

‘I feel the same about Stu. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?’

‘I guess it’s fate. I’ve never really had friends before – not close ones, anyway. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it, because I hardly tell anyone, but I grew up in care. I’m an orphan – or I was, I’m not sure how old you have to be before you stop being one. But my parents died when I was six, in a plane crash. There was no one else to take me in, so the children’s home it was.’

‘That’s awful, I’m so sorry.’ I looked at her, shocked and disbelieving. I’d always assumed that Zara, with her poise and confidence, had come from the most privileged of backgrounds.

‘It was grim at the time.’ She frowned, then broke into her usual bright smile. ‘But it made me who I am. It taught me resilience – but it also taught me to put up walls. And you’re teaching me to break them down again.’

I reached across the table and squeezed her cool, slim hand. ‘I’m glad. I’m glad we could do that for you.’

Then our conversation moved on and it was late afternoon when we eventually left, saying we’d see each other at Zara’s for Patch’s surprise party. I found myself looking forward to it, eager to understand more about the workings of this relationship that seemed so perfect on the surface but appeared to be anything but.

Then, at five o’clock in the morning on the day of the party, I pinged awake the way you do when you’ve forgotten something you ought to have remembered.

I hadn’t bought a present for Patch. It was his birthday and I’d be arriving empty-handed, apart from a bottle of fizz I’d planned to buy at an off-licence on the way, which would pretty much empty my bank account until pay day the following week.

In the end, in desperation, I decided to make a mix CD from the year from he was born. It felt personal – too personal, maybe, more than something like a bottle of aftershave would have been – but I was skint and I couldn’t think of anything better. His Facebook profile told me it was 1985, and when I started googling I was pleased to find loads of familiar tunes from that year, songs my mother had played to me in the car while she drove me to swimming and ballet when I was a child, which I still had on my iPod because – in spite of their gloomy content – they made me happy. Soon, I had a properly gothic compilation going: The Smiths, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Jesus and Mary Chain and loads more.

When I’d finished that, I spent two hours getting ready and got the Tube to Zara’s flat. The door to the balcony was open to the late summer evening, fairy lights were strung everywhere and with Zara’s fashionable friends standing around sipping champagne, I felt like I’d stepped into the pages of Tatler magazine. When Zara saw me, she rushed over and folded me into a CK One-scented embrace, taking my bottle of supermarket fizz like it was vintage Veuve Clicquot and handing me a glass of something that I thought might actually be the real thing.

‘You look so stunning, Naomi. Love you in that dress – we did good work.’

‘You look incredible too.’ It was true – but then Zara always looked incredible.

‘You’re the first of the Girlfriends’ Club to get here,’ she said. ‘Let me introduce you to some fun people.’

She did – whisking me round the room inserting me into groups of her old uni friends, Patch’s old uni friends, women who worked with her in fashion. Soon after, Rowan, Paul, Abbie, Matt, Kate and Andy arrived, and to my relief I found myself enclosed in a chattering, laughing, champagne-drinking group of my own.

‘So where is the birthday boy, anyway?’ Abbie asked.

‘Probably decided to dodge the whole thing and go to the pub,’ Andy replied. ‘Surprise parties are the ultimate double-edged sword.’

‘Why do you think that?’ I asked.

‘They’re all about the surpriser, not the surprisee.’ Over time, I’d learned to expect these off-the-cuff, yet seemingly deeply considered observations from Andy. ‘Has anyone asked Patrick if he likes surprises? Clearly not, because that would have spoiled the surprise.’

---