Page 3 of Happily Never After
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I chide her gently. ‘Us girls have got to stick together at times like this. For all we know, it might be you he suddenly decided he couldn’t stand any more and I was just collateral damage.’
I try to focus back on my work, but Meg has evidently decided that the fact I’ve spoken to her means something good is going to happen. She stands and shakes herself before resting her head on my thigh and staring at me, wagging her tail hopefully.
‘You’ve already had a walk today,’ I remind her. ‘Plus, the weather outside is filthy.’
The wagging only intensifies. I try hard to ignore her, but she ups the ante by nudging my elbow with her nose.
‘Fine,’ I say exasperatedly. ‘It’s not as if I’m achieving anything useful. Do you want me to see if Auntie Liv is around?’
The mention of one of Meg’s favourite human beings increases the tail wagging to such a frenzied level that her whole bottom is now swinging from side to side with the force of it. It’s impossible not to smile at such simple joy as I dial Olivia’s number.
‘Hi, Laura,’ she says breathlessly when the call connects. ‘What’s up?’
‘I feel like I should be asking you the same question!’ I reply. ‘You sound like you’re in the middle of running a marathon.’
‘I think that would be easier than the truth. Do you remember that yoga channel on YouTube I mentioned last week?’
‘Umm, no.’
‘I definitely told you about it. Anyway, I decided to give it a go. I thought yoga was supposed to be gentle, but I swear this woman is trying to kill me. Anyway, are you all right? How’s the book?’
‘The book’s fine but Meg’s hassling to see you. I’ll tell her you’re busy, don’t worry.’
Liv’s laughter is rich and full. ‘Translation,’ she replies. ‘You’re distracted and struggling to concentrate, so you’re using my favourite dog as an excuse to scrounge a cup of tea and a madeleineoff me.’
‘OK, OK. You’ve got me.’
‘Have you seen the weather though? You’ll get soaked.’
‘I’ll come round to the back door so we don’t drip all over your hallway.’
‘Good plan. The garden gate is open so just let yourselves in. I’ll have a towel ready for Meg and I’m putting the kettle on now.’
‘I’ll see you in ten minutes.’
Liv was one of the first people I met when Angus and I moved from his home city of Glasgow to Margate four years ago. She’s one of those people that, on paper, are easy to hate. Born to idiotically wealthy parents, she coasted through various exclusive private schools, barely scraping passes at GCSE before getting herself expelled just before her A levels for ‘bringing the establishment into disrepute’. The way Liv tells it, she was caught in a compromising position with a boy, but her father told a different story after a few glasses of wine one evening. According to him, the incident with the boy was definitely instrumental, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was when she was found wandering through the town, drunk as alord, one Saturday afternoon. Any attempts to cajole her back to her room where she could sober up out of sight were met with bellowed, albeit beautifully enunciated, streams of such obscenity that the school allegedly felt the need to publish an apology in the local paper.
Whichever it was, she never sat her exams, deciding instead to gain ‘life experience’ through travel, to her parents’ horror. At thirty-two, she may only be three years older than me, but she’s certainly crammed an awful lot more experience into her life than most people our age could manage. In the time I’ve known her, she’s told me various stories of terrible jobs she did to keep herself afloat during that time, including one in a Thai brothel where she assures me – not entirely convincingly – that she wasn’t servicing clients, just making sure the rooms were kept well equipped with condoms, lube and the other accoutrements of the sex trade. The one that captured her imagination, though, was a job in a pâtisserie on the outskirts of Paris. She discovered a talent and passion for pastry that she retains to this day, and her long-suffering parents were so relieved when she came home and told them what she wanted to do that they had no hesitation about handing over her substantial trust fund so she could set up the coffee shop and pâtisserie that she still runs. Which is how I met her; I applied for a job when we first moved south and spent a happy year working there before my writing career finally took off.
‘Fucking hell, look at the state of you,’ she drawls affectionately as Meg and I let ourselves in through the back door and I start to remove my dripping raincoat. ‘Did the rain do all of that or did you take a wrong turn through the car wash on your way over? Oh, Meg, no!’
It’s too late. Meg may be delighted to see her, but getting the excess water out of her coat onto the floor, up the walls andinto the fabric of Liv’s clothes is obviously a higher priority than greeting one of her favourite people.
‘Come here, you idiotic animal, and let me dry you properly,’ Liv says as she wraps an excitedly wriggling Meg in a towel. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made of Auntie Liv’s special yoga leggings. I only bought them this morning.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say as she releases my dog, who promptly rushes over to the corner of the kitchen where she knows Liv keeps the treats. ‘I should have wiped her down outside.’
‘Don’t worry about it. To be honest, I’m really not sure Spandex is a good look on me.’ She rises to her feet and gives me a twirl. ‘What do you think?’
‘They certainly hug your figure.’
‘Very diplomatic. They don’t leave anything to the imagination, do they? You could probably count my pubes through them if you looked carefully enough. Trevor would have loved them, dirty bastard.’
‘And how is Trevor?’
‘No idea. We parted ways a couple of days ago, around five minutes after he mistakenly decided that having access to my knickers gave him the right to mansplain my business to me.’
‘Oops.’
