Page 43 of Pictures of Him

‘Jack? I told the babysitter we’d only be a few hours at the most.’

The room falls silent, as it so often does when Celia draws attention to herself. It is partly I think because she tends to misjudge the mood and tone of an evening. She’ll ask Rachel about Max when it’s clear to everyone but her it’s the last thing Rachel wants to think about. She’ll try to engage Harry in a conversation about politics when he just wants to get wasted. Also we know, better than Celia it seems, where her husband’s priorities lie. I couldn’t ask for a more loyal best friend, but as a husband? I’m guessing it’s tough. Yes, he’s still remarkable-looking, that blonde-haired, blue-eyed thing that seems to make most women swoon. Yes, he probably loves Celia in his own way, but what of the nights spent here, drinking too much vodka while Celia waits in her designer farmhouse for a husband who may not return before daybreak?

‘Why don’t you go on ahead,’ Jack says, adding ‘sweetheart’ as an afterthought. He looks over at the sofa. ‘I haven’t really had a chance to catch up with Catherine yet.’

Catherine, who must surely have heard this exchange, doesn’t turn her head or break her conversation with Ling.

Celia relents. Relief buzzes around the room.

‘So long as we’re home by eleven,’ she says.

The tequila is poured, eight shots lined up like medicine on a Chinese lacquered tray. The evening is gathering pace.

Four months before: Catherine

I am in a fish tank, that’s what it feels like, submerged beneath a constant flow of water, barely able to comprehend the one-way assault of Celia’s relentless talk. She has clung to me with a certain desperation, the outsider at the party, the girl no one wants to talk to, least of all her husband. If it wasn’t for my preoccupation with my past – and the way it has been hurled unceremoniously into the heart of my present – I would be feeling more sorry for her.

Jack stands beside you, talking while you mix our drinks, telling you about some film venture he’s involved with, every phrase he utters weighted with self-belief.

‘They loved the treatment, now it’s just a question of getting the funding. But I don’t see that being a problem with a project of this kind. Everyone’s going to want a slice of it.’

It occurs to me that perhaps you, with your limitless wealth, are his funding target. I wonder if you realise? And how much money you might have given him in the past.

When Jack moves over to the fireplace, you are left alone with Rachel, your heads bent towards each other, brown against blonde as you talk. I can imagine your handson her body, I can imagine her pretty lipsticked mouth brushing across your skin. She is beautiful, in that carefully put-together way, with a glossiness, a sheen I could not even aspire to. Everything about Rachel seems to shine: her hair, her skin, her jewellery, her top, a T-shirt made from bronze and khaki sequins, which would be drab on anyone else. She is at ease in this life. I watched as she greeted Mary with a hug, I saw her taking bowls out of a cupboard and filling them with olives from the fridge, pistachios from the larder, the house and its way of life as familiar as her own.

Alexa is the same. I see the way she crouches down beside your uncle’s vinyl collection, boxes and boxes of them, flipping through albums until she finds the perfect choice. Blur’s ‘Girls & Boys’, as it turns out, a direct bullet from our shared university past. How many times did we dance around the kitchen of your Clifton house, singing every word of every song on the album? There was a moment when Alexa was almost as close to me as Liv. She was infectiously upbeat, easy to love. And she was besotted with Jack. Their love story, like ours, was all-consuming. Glancing at her now, I catch the way she watches Jack at the fireplace and I see that she is still in love with him. Alexa and I, trapped in the vortex of our past.

Celia, when I can concentrate for long enough, is a revelation. Overenthusiastic and a little naïve, she seems like the exact inverse of Jack. It’s hard to imagine them together. I know she has money, barrels of it, because you told me so, and I can just imagine him scanning parties, headlamp tuned into rich heiresses, the clock ticking, his bank account draining.

‘We met at a party two years ago,’ she tells me. ‘I noticed Jack the minute he walked through the door. Everyone did. They always do. And when he made a beeline for me, I just couldn’t believe it. We talked to each other all night and got married four months later. It was a complete whirlwind, very romantic. My parents were worried we didn’t know each other well enough, but Jack soon won them over. He can be so incredibly charming. When he wants to be.’

There’s a tiny pause, a minimal falter; perhaps you wouldn’t notice it if you weren’t as attuned to Jack’s dark side as I am. Celia’s whirlwind ran out some time ago, I’m guessing. She leans forward, voice lowered. It’s as if she’s reading my mind.

‘If I’m honest, Jack doesn’t seem so interested in me and Freddie any more; all he really wants to do is spend his time with Lucian and Harry.’

‘Not much has changed then. At university they were inseparable. They didn’t need anyone else.’

‘He didn’t want a child, he did it for me. He’s very good with Freddie, when he wants to be, but he can switch it on and off.’

I think of Sam, a father at twenty-two, before he was ready, probably, but God how he rose to the challenge. The thing about Sam is that he prefers fatherhood to anything else, not in a saccharine way – he just gets children, he likes being with them, it’s his escape, his chosen indulgence.

‘Lots of men are like that,’ I say, to make Celia feel better, although I’m not sure it’s true. A generation ago, perhaps. The fathers I know are exactly the same as the mothers, rising in the middle of the night to administerCalpol, changing nappies as a matter of course. Why wouldn’t they be?

‘How long have you been married for?’ Celia’s question – unexpected, disarming – startles me.

‘Me? Oh. God. Thirteen years, fourteen in April.’

‘You must have been so young.’

‘Yes. We were both twenty one.’

‘And you’re not together now. Do you mind me asking about it?’

Do I? The thought of Sam and the children cloaks me in panic. I am so far away from them, or that’s how it feels as I sit in the heart of this glittering world, where cocktails are drunk and sequins worn almost as a prerequisite on an otherwise random Thursday night. Right now I crave my old life, my real life, quiet, measured, the opposite of this.

‘Sam and I are having a break from each other; we’re trying to work out what to do. I’m not sure how we’ll handle it.’

She leans forwards conspiratorially, voice lowered.

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