Page 26 of Pictures of Him

‘Have you spoken to Sam?’ she asks.

‘Not since this morning. In fact he’s asked me not to call. For a few days at least, he thinks we need a complete break to work out what we’re going to do.’

‘True enough.’

‘They’re in Cornwall anyway. The kids are happy.’

‘Well, that’s a good thing. Doesn’t mean they don’t miss you.’

I watch the interplay between these two old friends who talk in subtext, and it reminds me of Rachel and Alexa. Perhaps all girlfriends are this way; perhaps Jack, Harry and I are too, beneath the posturing and sarcasm and the refusal to take anything seriously; perhaps this is the real backbone of friendship, the two-tier conversations, say one thing, mean another, a private language strictly for the initiated.

Liv says, ‘I don’t see what harm it would do going to Lucian’s for a while. You’d be on your own, wouldn’t you? Or would all your friends be there?’

I catch the look that passes between them. So it’s the thought of my friends that bothers her.

‘Jack and Harry do live close by. The girls are in London; they come down at weekends. But you wouldn’t need to see anyone while we’re there, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

‘Yes, it’s worrying me,’ she says, and then tries to qualify. ‘I don’t really know what’s happening with me and Sam. It would be awkward to try and explain.’

‘Look, the last thing I’m going to do is force you to come away with me. But at least let me tell you what it would be like. We’d have the whole place to ourselves, just Mary there during the day and a few gardeners whom I literally never see. We could do whatever we wanted. We could swim, we could go down to the lake, like we did before. Do you remember?’

‘I remember it was wonderful,’ she says. ‘One of the happiest weekends of my life.’

‘Do it, Catherine!’ says Liv, and she reaches forwards and takes both her hands. ‘Chances like this hardly ever come along. No one needs to know that you’re there.’

Catherine says, ‘What about the children? What will I tell them? I can’t lie.’

‘You won’t need to tell them anything. They won’t ask where you are, why would they?’

‘It’s much worse than anything Sam has done,’ Catherine says, and Liv just nods.

‘I know.’

Catherine turns to me. ‘Can you really promise me thatwe’re not going to run into your friends? I couldn’t face that right now.’

‘It’s a deal. No friends. Just the two of us, I promise.’

‘All right,’ she says, ‘I’ll come. Just for a bit.’ She puts one hand to her chest and I imagine her heart there beneath it, pulsing, pulsing.

Fifteen years earlier

You were good at surprises. Surprises were your thing. First those notes appearing out of nowhere on my desk, then that lunch by the beach, in our private ski chalet for two. We’d only been together a few weeks when you woke me early, as dawn was gathering in the long, thin Victorian windows of your bedroom. You kissed my face repeatedly, swivelling over to the other side of the bed when I shifted away from you.

‘Surprise.’

I opened my eyes to you grinning, one of your rare full smiles.

‘We’re going on a trip,’ you said.

The city was scarcely awake as we drove through it, not a student in sight, just early-morning commuters, a paper boy getting blown about on his bicycle, a milk float up ahead. The kind of hour you’d only expect to see if you stayed up all night.

‘We’re going to your uncle’s house, aren’t we?’ I said as the city faded into the thick farmland of north Somerset, all those high hedgerows and bleak winter fields.

You just shook your head. ‘Nope.’

It can’t have been long before we saw the first sign for Bristol Airport, and I turned to you, my face a question mark. Seriously?

‘I thought we’d go to my favourite restaurant for lunch. Which happens to be in Paris.’

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