“What? All love that isn’t simple and straightforward has to end tragically?” She hears defensiveness in her voice.
“That’s not what I said.”
“Yes, it is. You said earlier that you thought she said no.”
He finishes his tea, crumples his cup, and throws it into the garbage bag. “We’ll be done in ten minutes. You’d better grab what you want. Show me what you haven’t had a chance to go through, and I’ll try to keep it to one side.”
As she gathers up her belongings, he says, “For what it’s worth, I do think she probably said no.” His expression is unfathomable. “But why does that have to be the worst outcome?”
Chapter 18
Ellie Haworth is living the dream. She often tells herself so when she wakes up, hungover from too much white wine, feeling the ache of melancholy, in her perfect little flat that nobody ever messes up in her absence. (She secretly wants a cat, but is afraid of becoming a cliché.) She holds down a job as a feature writer on a national newspaper, has obedient hair, a body that is basically plump and slender in the right places, and is pretty enough to attract attention that she still pretends offends her. She has a sharp tongue—too sharp, according to her mother—a ready wit, several credit cards, and a small car she can manage without male help. When she meets people she knew at school, she can detect envy when she describes her life: she has not yet reached an age where the lack of a husband or children could be regarded as failure. When she meets men, she can see them ticking off her attributes—great job, nice rack, sense of fun—as if she’s a prize to be won.
If, recently, she has become aware that the dream is a little fuzzy, that the edge she was once famed for at the office has deserted her since John came, that the relationship she had once found invigorating has begun to consume her in ways that are not exactly enviable, she chooses not to look too hard. After all, it’s easy when you’re surrounded by people like you, journalists and writers who drink hard, party hard, have sloppy, disastrous affairs and unhappy partners at home who, tired of their neglect, will eventually have affairs. She is one of them, one of their cohorts, living the life of the glossy magazine pages, a life she has pursued since she first knew she wanted to write. She is successful, single, selfish. Ellie Haworth is as happy as she can be. As anyone can be, considering.
And nobody gets everything, so Ellie tells herself, when occasionally she wakes up trying to remember whose dream she’s meant to be living.
“Happy birthday, you old tart!” Corinne and Nicky are waiting in the coffee shop, waving and patting a seat as she rushes in, bag flying. “Come on, come on! You’re sooo late. We’re meant to be at work by now.”
“Sorry. I got a bit held up coming out.”
They glance at each other, and she can tell they suspect she’s been with John. She decides not to tell them that she was actually waiting for the post. She’d wanted to see if he had sent her something. Now she feels foolish for making herself twenty minutes late for her friends.
“How does it feel to be ancient?” Nicky has cut her hair. It’s still blond, but now short and choppy. She looks cherubic. “I got you a skinny latte. I’m assuming you’re going to need to watch your weight from now on.”
“Thirty-two is hardly ancient. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.”
“I’m dreading it,” says Corinne. “Somehow thirty-one sounds like you might only just be past thirty, still almost technically in your twenties. Thirty-two sounds ominously close to thirty-five.”
“And thirty-five is obviously just a short step to forty.” Nicky checks her hair in the mirror behind the banquette.
“And a happy birthday to you, too,” Ellie says.
“Aw! We’ll still love you when you’re wrinkly and alone and in flesh-colored big knickers.” They place two bags on the table. “Here are your presents. And, no, you can’t exchange either of them.”
They have chosen perfectly, as only friends of many years’ standing can. Corinne has bought her cashmere socks in dove gray, so soft that it’s all Ellie can do not to put them on there and then. Nicky has given her a voucher for a prohibitively expensive beauty salon. “It’s for an antiaging facial,” she says wickedly. “It was that or Botox.”
“And we know how you feel about injections.”
She’s filled with love, with gratitude for her friends. There have been many evenings in which they’ve said they’re one another’s new family, airing their fear that the others will find mates first and leave them single and alone. Nicky has a new man who, unusually, seems promising. He’s solvent, kind, and has her on her toes just enough to keep her interested. Nicky has spent ten years running away from men who behave well toward her. Corinne has just ended a relationship of a year. He was nice, she says, but they had become like brother and sister, “and I’d expected marriage and a couple of kids before that happened.”
They don’t talk seriously of the dread that they may have missed the boat their aunts and mothers are so fond of mentioning. They don’t discuss the fact that most of their male friends are now in relationships with women a good five to ten years younger than themselves. They make jokes about growing old disgracefully. They line up g*y friends who promise to have children with them “in ten years’ time” if they’re both single, while neither party believes that could possibly end up happening.
“What did he get you?”
“Who?” Ellie says innocently.
“Mr. Paperback Writer. Or was what he gave you the reason you were late?”
“She already got her injection.” Corinne cackles.
“You’re both disgusting.” She sips her coffee, which is lukewarm. “I—I haven’t seen him yet.”
“But he is taking you out?” Nicky says.
“I think so,” she replies. She’s suddenly furious with them for looking at her like that, for seeing through it already. She’s furious with herself for not having thought up an excuse for him. She’s furious with him for needing one.
“Have you heard from him at all, El?”
“No. But it is only eight thirty—Oh, Christ, I’m meant to be at a Features meeting at ten, and I haven’t got a single good idea.”
“Well, sod him.” Nicky leans over and hugs her. “We’ll buy you a little birthday cake, won’t we, Corinne? Stay there and I’ll get one of those muffins with icing. We’ll have an early birthday tea.”