‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
‘It’s fine. Like I said, we really . . . didn’t get on.’ Zoe tried to clarify it for her. Don’t stress! You’re off the hook.
She remembered her friend Cara, the day after Zach’s funeral, saying, ‘At least you weren’t close.’ Cara was really close to her sister.
‘What was your brother’s name?’ asked Frances, as if this were somehow important.
‘Zach,’ said Zoe, and the name sounded odd and painful in her mouth. She heard a roaring sound in her ears and felt for a moment as if she might faint. ‘Zoe and Zach. We were twins. Very cutesy names.’
‘I think they’re lovely names,’ said Frances. ‘But if you’re twins that means it’s your birthday in a few days too.’
Zoe took a sprig of lavender out of a vase and began to shred it. ‘Technically. But I don’t celebrate on that day anymore. I kind of changed my birthday.’
She’d officially moved her birthday to the eighteenth of March. It was a nicer date. A cooler, less tempestuous time of year. The eighteenth of March was Grandma Maria’s birthday, and Grandma Maria used to say it had never once rained on her birthday and maybe that was true; everyone said they should check the weather records in case it was some sort of phenomenon only Grandma Maria had noticed, but nobody ever got around to it.
Grandma Maria had always said she’d live to one hundred, like her own mother, but she died one month after Zach of a broken heart. Even the doctor said it was a broken heart.
‘Zach died the day before our eighteenth birthday,’ said Zoe. ‘We were meant to be having a “Z” party. I was going as Zoe. Which seemed really funny at the time.’
‘Oh, Zoe.’ Frances leaned forward. Zoe could tell she wanted to touch her but was stopping herself.
‘So that’s why I changed it,’ said Zoe. ‘It’s, like, not fair to Mum and Dad to have to celebrate my birthday the day after when they’re still totally wrecked from the anniversary. January is really hard for my parents.’
‘Of course it would be,’ said Frances. Her eyes were bright with sympathy. ‘Hard for all of you, I imagine. So you thought it would be good to . . . get away?’
‘We just wanted somewhere quiet, and a health resort seemed like a good idea because we’re all really unhealthy.’
‘Are you? You don’t look at all unhealthy to me.’
‘Well, for a start, I have way too much sugar in my diet,’ said Zoe.
‘Sugar is the new villain,’ said Frances. ‘It used to be fat. Then it was carbs. It’s hard to keep up.’
‘No, but sugar is seriously bad,’ said Zoe. It wasn’t hard to keep up at all! Everyone knew sugar was terrible for you. ‘They’ve done all this research. I need to withdraw from my sugar addiction.’
‘Mmm,’ said Frances.
‘I eat too much chocolate and I’m addicted to Diet Coke, that’s why my skin is so bad.’ Zoe put a fingertip to a blind pimple near her lip. She couldn’t stop touching it.
‘Your skin is gorgeous!’ Frances gesticulated wildly, probably because she was trying not to look at Zoe’s pimple.
Zoe sighed. People should be honest.
‘My parents are exercise fanatics, but my dad has a junk-food addiction and Mum basically has an eating disorder.’ She reflected. Her mother would not like any aspect of this conversation. ‘Please don’t tell her I said that. She doesn’t really have an eating disorder. She’s just kind of weird about food.’
Even before Zach died Zoe’s mother had been like that. She couldn’t bear to see lavish displays of food, which was a problem, seeing as she’d married a man with a big extended Italian family. Heather suffered from heartburn and stomach cramps and other ‘digestive issues’ she referred to only obliquely. She never saw food as just food. She always had some fierce emotional response to it. She was starving or bloated or craving something specific and unattainable.
‘Anyway, what about you?’ she asked Frances. She wanted to shift the focus; she’d revealed far too much about herself and her family to this stranger. ‘Why did you decide to do this?’
‘Oh, you know: I’m run-down, I’ve done something to my back, I have a cold I can’t seem to shake, I suppose I could do with losing a few kilos . . . just the normal middle-aged stuff.’
‘How old are your kids?’ asked Zoe.
Frances smiled. ‘No kids.’
‘Oh.’ Zoe was taken aback, worried that she might have made some kind of sexist faux pas. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’ Frances said. ‘It was my choice not to have children. I just never saw myself as a mother. Ever. Even when I was a kid.’
But you’re so motherly, thought Zoe.
‘No husband either,’ said Frances. ‘Just two ex-husbands. No boyfriend. I’m very single.’
It was cute the way she said boyfriend.
‘I’m very single too,’ said Zoe, and Frances smiled, as if Zoe had said something cute.
‘I thought I was in love with someone recently but he wasn’t who he said he was,’ said Frances. ‘It turned out to be an internet “romance scam”.’ She made quote marks with her fingers.
Oh my God, thought Zoe. How stupid would you have to be?
‘What do you do for a living?’ She changed the subject because she was literally going bright red with embarrassment for the woman.
‘I write romance novels,’ said Frances. ‘Or I did. I might be in need of a career change.’
‘Romance novels,’ repeated Zoe. It was getting worse. She tried to keep her face neutral. Please, God, don’t let it be erotica.
‘Are you a reader?’ asked Frances.
‘Sometimes,’ said Zoe. Never, ever romance. ‘What made you become a romance writer?’
‘Well, when I was about fifteen I read Jane Eyre and it was a strange, sad time in my life – my dad had just died, and I was hormonal and grieving and just very impressionable. And when I got to that famous line – you know the one: Reader, I married him – it just had this profound effect on me. I’d sit in the bath and murmur to myself, “Reader, I married him”, and then I’d just sob. It had remarkable staying power. Reader, I married – ooohhh!’ She demonstrated herself sobbing dramatically like a teenage girl, hand to her forehead.
Zoe laughed.
Frances said, ‘You’ve read Jane Eyre, right?’
‘I think I saw the movie once,’ said Zoe.
‘Ah well,’ said Frances sympathetically. ‘Anyway, I know that Reader, I married him line has become virtually a cliché now it’s referenced so often: Reader, I divorced him. Reader, I murdered him. But for me, at that time of my life, it was . . . well, profound. I remember being amazed that four words could affect me in that way. So I guess I just developed an interest in the power of words. The first romance story I ever wrote was heavily influenced by Charlotte Bront?, except without the madwoman in the attic. My leading man was a heady mix of Mr Rochester and Rob Lowe.’
‘Rob Lowe!’ said Zoe.
‘I had his poster on my wall,’ said Frances. ‘I can still taste his lips. Very smooth and papery. Matt gloss.’
Zoe giggled. ‘I felt the same way about Justin Bieber.’
‘There might even be one of my books here,’ said Frances. ‘There often is in places like this.’ She scanned the shelves of paperbacks then smiled, a hint of pride. ‘Bingo.’
She stood up, clutching her back, went to one of the shelves and squatted down to pull out a battered-looking chunky paperback. ‘There you go.’ She handed it to Zoe and sat back down on the couch with a grunt.
‘Awesome,’ said Zoe. The book looked terrible.
It was called Nathaniel’s Kiss and the picture on the front showed a girl with long, curly, fair hair staring wistfully out to sea. At least it didn’t look erotic.
‘Anyway, my last book got rejected,’ said Frances. ‘So I might be looking for a new career soon.’