Rachel nods. “I think so, but I’m not sure the work’s really started yet. It seems that freshmen’s week has extended into a month, because all he’s done so far is go out to events and parties.” She stops and holds her hands up. “Sorry, gavs.”
Noah smiles. “But he’s settled into his digs? He gets on with his flatmates?”
“Well, I’m not sure he’s been sober enough to work out if he likes them or not,” says Rachel, laughing. “Every time I speak to him, he’s either on his way out or in bed with a hangover.”
“Those were the days,” Noah says, ruefully. “It feels like only yesterday.”
“That freshmen’s week was brutal though,” says Rachel. “I don’t know if my liver could take that again.”
Noah laughs heartily. “What are you talking about? You were the biggest Larry Lightweight out of all of us.”
“Er, excuse me,” says Rachel, pretending to be affronted. “I think you’ll find I kept up with the best of you.”
Noah looks at her with raised eyebrows over his double espresso. “What proves that theory wrong is that you remember that we first met at the freshmen’s ball.”
“Yes, we walked back to our halls together,” says Rachel.
“Yet I don’t remember meeting you until at least a month later,” says Noah. “So, I think that clearly demonstrates how sober you were, and how pissed I was.”
“I can remember many a night where you got me out of a fix because I was too drunk to look after myself.” Rachel says it as if it’s a badge of honor to prove how cool she really was, but she can tell by the mischievous look on Noah’s face that he’s about to kibosh her claim.
“That’s because that’s what you get like after two beers,” he teases. “Don’t fool yourself into thinking that I wasn’t off my head when I was holding your hair back while you vomited. I’d had ten pints by then and was still able to hold it together.”
“Children, children,” says Paige in her best schoolmarm voice. “That’s quite enough bickering.”
Noah pokes his tongue out and Rachel throws a packet of sugar at him.
“So, what’s the plan if they don’t make it back in time for the flight?” asks Noah.
“Can we all go home?” asks Paige hopefully. “I’ve got a ton of work I could be getting on with.”
“Don’t be so bloody ungrateful,” scolds Noah, laughing.
Rachel tracks Jack on her phone. They’ve been gone over half an hour, but don’t appear to have left the airport.
“I’ll give him a call,” she says. “See where they’re at.”
“Got it!” shrieks a vision in pink from across the concourse.
“Blimey,” says Paige as Ali, dressed head to toe in a magenta jumpsuit, toddles toward them in towering heels, holding her passport aloft. “Woo-hoo! We’re back up and running.”
Several people in the busy coffee shop turn their heads in her direction. Such is the Ali effect. But Jack, Rachel can’t help but notice, is trailing several steps behind, with a face like thunder, pretending not to know her.
“Where was it?” asks Rachel.
“It had somehow dropped into the footwell in the car,” says Ali breathlessly. “It must have fallen when I was checking I had everything. Ironic really.” She turns to Paige and Noah. “Sorry, I’m such a klutz. Hiiiiii.”
She makes a show of greeting them like long-lost friends, with exaggerated cuddles and air kisses, before loudly proclaiming how exciting this all is as she jumps up and down and claps her hands together.
Rachel has to stifle a giggle at Paige’s bewildered expression: everything about it screams, “Get me out of here.”
She can’t help but feel guilty; if it weren’t for her encouragement, Paige wouldn’t be here, and knowing the part she’s played to cajole her best friend into doing something she’d rather not do, momentarily sits heavy on her chest.
When Will had come over to see them a few months ago to ask Jack to be his best man, they’d both been surprised to hear that Noah and Paige had made the proposed guest list. Not that they weren’t good friends of his—Will and Noah often got together for a game of golf, much to Jack’s chagrin, as no matter how hard he tried, hitting a little white ball with a long stick just wasn’t his forte.
“I thought you said you wanted to keep it intimate,” Jack had said.
“Yes, there’s only forty guests,” said Will.
“But Paige and Noah are more our friends,” said Jack. “I don’t think they’d be offended if you didn’t invite them. Plus, you’re asking them to take four days out and travel to another country. I know Noah’s taken on more work at the university and didn’t you say Paige had a big case coming up?” He’d looked to Rachel for back-up.
She’d been about to nod in agreement, but then she’d been struck by how a weekend of imposed purgatory could be turned around if Paige was there too. Instead of spending four days making small talk with strangers, they could eat, drink, dance and pretend they weren’t responsible mothers for once. Suddenly, and selfishly, Rachel could see its potential.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she’d said. “Noah and Paige really like Will and Ali, so I’m sure they’d be flattered to be asked.”
Jack had looked at her with raised eyebrows, silently questioning whether they were talking about the same Paige, who was always so quick to denounce Ali’s shortcomings.
“Why did you have to push for Noah and Paige to come?” Jack had said later, after Will had left.
“Because it might be an opportunity to spend some time with them,” said Rachel. “We haven’t been away together for a while, and faced with the prospect of spending four days with your family, they might be just the distraction we need.” She laughed to soften the sideswipe. “We could all get a villa together and make a holiday out of it.”
Jack groaned. “Why can’t he get married here, where we’d all only have to endure each other for the afternoon before going home?”
“Don’t be such a miserable old sod,” she’d said, going up to him and wrapping her arms around his neck. “Noah and Paige are our friends.”
“I’m not talking about them,” he said. “I’m talking about my bloody family. Boxing Day takes enough grit and mettle to survive—why would Will want to impose this on us?”
“Because. He’s. Not. Been. Here. For. Most. Christmases,” said Rachel, punctuating each word with a kiss on Jack’s lips. “So, maybe this is his way of making up for it; a chance to get the family to spend some quality time together.”
“But four days in Portugal,” he moaned, sounding like a spoiled child.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Rachel laughed. “Listen to yourself. Your family will be there. I’ll be there—if Noah and Paige come, we’ll have a good laugh.”
He’d looked at her petulantly.
“You never know,” Rachel had said. “You might actually enjoy yourself.”
Now, as she looks at his obvious frustration and the strained greeting he gives Paige and Noah, she feels she’s manipulated them all into doing something they don’t want to do.
“Okay, we’d better get checked in,” Jack says briskly, grabbing hold of two suitcases and wheeling them away.
Rachel abandons her half-drunk coffee as she follows him—and a sense of foreboding—across the concourse.
2
Despite Rachel trying her best to deter Ali from drinking on the plane, by the time they arrive in Lisbon two and a half hours later, she’s four gin and tonics down and has trouble negotiating the steps onto the tarmac.
“I’d have to drink three times as much to behave like she does,” Paige says to Rachel as they follow a swerving Ali onto the waiting bus.
“That’s because you’re hard core,” says Rachel, smiling.
“No, it’s because she’s putting it on.”