‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘I don’t have anything else to do.’ And I realised that he wanted to be there, waiting around for her.
There was one other time that sticks in my mind. Julien and Miranda were properly together by then, the hot new couple. We went for a barbecue at Julien’s house on a boiling day after exams – we’d moved into private housing by then – the huge, ramshackle townhouse where he lived with eight other rugby lads, including Mark. I was the invisible plus one. Admittedly a couple of Julien’s friends had tried, half-heartedly, to flirt, but I’d been cold and stand-offish with them. I didn’t want to be known as Miranda’s worse-looking but easy friend.
Julien was at the grill, holding court, his shirt off to show the expanse of his muscled back, tapering into that surprisingly neat waist. Despite the fact that it was only the beginning of the summer, he had somehow managed to acquire an even, golden tan. I couldn’t help comparing myself: the angry flare of heat rash across my chest and upper arms, the rest of me pale as milk. Miranda was looking at him too, in a not dissimilar way to how she’d looked at her glossy new pony, Bert, at sixteen. Then she turned to me, and caught me looking.
So I glanced away, towards Mark. He was wearing try-hard Ray-Bans that didn’t particularly suit his broad face. If you glanced quickly at him he might have appeared to be daydreaming, staring into space. But as I continued to look I saw that his sunglasses weren’t as opaque as I had thought. And I could see that his eyes were fixed in one prolonged sidelong look at Miranda. He did not look away once. Every time I glanced that way he was looking at her. And when she pulled off her vest to expose her bikini top, I saw his look intensify, indefinably. I saw him shift in his seat.
Later I told Miranda what I had seen. ‘Seriously Manda,’ I told her, ‘it was weird. He wasn’t just looking, he was staring. He looked like he wanted to eat you alive.’
She laughed. ‘Oh Katie, you’re so paranoid. He’s harmless. You were like this about Julien, too.’
It was almost enough to make me doubt what I had seen. Even to ask myself: was I just jealous? I was fairly certain it wasn’t that. But I was humiliated, cross with her for not taking me seriously.
‘And you two!’ I’m jolted back to the present. Miranda’s looking at Julien and me – the two outside the bubble, the only ones not dancing with abandon around the room.
‘Julien,’ she says, ‘dance with Katie for God’s sake. She won’t do it on her own.’ There is the faintest edge of steel to her tone.
There is nothing I feel less like doing, but Julien gets up, takes my hands in his. I am suddenly reminded of watching them dancing at their wedding. Five, six years ago? Miranda made him take dancing lessons, beforehand, so they could foxtrot their way around in front of us. It was all quite typically Miranda, the wedding. She wanted to do something tiny, she claimed, different. She wanted to elope!
In the end it was at her parents’ manor house in Sussex. Two hundred guests. Those spindly gold chairs you only ever see at weddings, the round tables, the ‘starry night’ LED ceiling above the dance floor. And then, the cherry on the tiered, sugar-flowered cake: the couple’s dance.
Julien, who up until then looked very much the part of the dashing, handsome groom, had shrunk into himself. He had missed steps, tripped on Miranda’s train (almost as long as Kate Middleton’s), and generally looked as though he wished himself anywhere but there. He wears the same expression now.
MIRANDA
I watch Katie as she dances – or makes some half-hearted attempt to do so. She looks as if she’s actively trying not to have a good time. She’s been off since we got here, now I think about it. Fine, she’s always been a bit quiet, but never such a sullen, monosyllabic presence. I have the sudden uncanny feeling that I’m looking at a stranger.
I’ve always known exactly what’s going on in Katie’s life. She has always known exactly what I’ve chosen to share of mine. But lately, I don’t have a clue about her. She’s made all these excuses over the last couple of months not to see me. I’ve told myself they’re genuine: she is always so busy, busy, busy with her fucking work. Busy being a proper grown-up, unlike me. Or having to go down to Sussex to see her mum, who’s been ill (read: all that drinking has finally caught up with her). I’ve even offered to go with her to see Sally; I have known the woman for going on twenty years, for God’s sake. Even if she never liked me – she used to call me Miss Hoity Toity to my face, her breath wine-sour – it seemed like the right thing to do. But Katie shrugged off the suggestion so quickly it was as if the idea appalled her.
The thing is, I’ve needed her recently. I know I’ve always given the impression of being self-sufficient, of not wanting anyone to poke their nose in. But, lately, it’s all become a bit much. Katie’s the only one I can talk to about the problems we’ve been having. I can’t tell her everything about Julien’s issues, because it is so important that no one else finds out about that, but still.
I’ve told her about the fertility problems now. Or rather, I told her something. The truth is that we haven’t only just started trying. It’s been over a year now – a year and a half, in fact. Two years is enough for the NHS to offer you IVF, isn’t it?
I could also have told her about the lack of sex – which isn’t exactly conducive to getting pregnant. The sense of distance that seems to have been growing between Julien and I over the last year … maybe even longer.
If I’m completely honest with myself, I know the reason I haven’t shared is that I enjoy the idea of being the one with the perfect life; the friend who has it all. Always ready to step in and offer advice when needed, from her lofty position. It would take more than a few arguments, a few months of infrequent sex, for me to want to give that up.
Maybe this distance between Katie and me is inevitable, a part of growing up, becoming adults with our own lives. Responsibilities, family, coming in the way of friendship. It is only going to get worse, surely, not better. I suppose I can’t blame her. I know that friends grow apart, grow out of enjoying each other’s company. I look at Facebook sometimes, those decade-old photos from our time at Oxford, and there are photos of me with people – faces that recur in many of the snaps – who I hardly recognise … let alone remember names for. It’s slightly unnerving. I’ll scroll through the images: parties upon parties, in houses and bars and Junior Common Rooms, my arms draped around people who might as well be complete strangers. The photos from the first year are the most obscure. They say you spend your first year at university trying to shake off all the ‘friends’ you make in your first week, and that was true for me: I made the mistake of chatting with an overly-intense girl at interviews; of drunkenly talking to a guy at a freshers’ welcome do who then used to ‘bump into’ me in various spots around college so he could suggest we go for coffee.
After uni you spend the next few years winnowing those remaining friends down, realising that you don’t have the time and energy to trek across London or indeed the country to see people who have barely anything in common with you any more.
I never thought it would happen to Katie and me, though. We’ve known each other since we were children. It’s different. Those friends are always there, aren’t they? If you’ve already stuck together this long?
Still, if I didn’t know better, I would say it’s like Katie has outgrown me. And at the back of my mind is an insistent little voice. An unpleasant voice, the worst version of myself – saying: ‘I made you who you are, Katie. You would be nothing without me.’
Anyway. I’m not going to let her spoil my mood. I take a long gulp of my drink, and wait to feel the pill start its work.