‘I can’t believe you two are mums.’ Her smile is just as it always was, curved, a little wry, concealing secrets. She pulls out the chair that was always hers when we sat and smoked and drank into the small hours, and sits down, putting a Sobranie cigarette, black with a gold tip, between her lips. ‘How did they let reprobates like you reproduce?’
‘I know, right?’ Fatima pulls out her own chair and sits opposite, her back to the stove. ‘That’s pretty much what I said to Ali when they gave me Nadia to take home from the hospital. What the hell do I do now?’
Kate picks up a plate and holds it out to Thea, one eyebrow raised.
‘Yes? No? Have you eaten? There’s plenty of couscous left.’
Thea shakes her head, and lights her cigarette before she answers, blowing out a stream of smoke.
‘I’m fine. I just want a drink. And to find out why the hell we’re all here.’
‘We have wine … and wine …’ Kate says. She looks through the lopsided dresser. ‘And … wine. That’s it.’
‘Christ, you’ve gone soft on me. No spirits? Go on then, I guess I’ll have wine.’
Kate pours into one of the cracked green-blue glasses on the side, a huge glass, a third of a bottle at least, and hands it to Thea, who holds it up, watching the candle in the centre of the table through the ruby depths.
‘To us,’ she says at last. ‘May we never grow old.’
But I don’t want to drink to that now. I do want to grow old. I want to grow old, see Freya grow up, feel the wrinkles on my face.
I am saved from commenting when Thea pauses, her glass halfway to her lips, and points with one finger at Fatima’s glass of lemonade.
‘Hang on, hang on, what’s this shit? Lemonade? You can’t drink a toast with lemonade. You’re not knocked up again, are you?’
Fatima shakes her head with a smile, and then points to the scarf lying loose around her shoulders.
‘Times have changed, Thea. This isn’t just a fashion accessory.’
‘Oh, darling, come on, wearing a hijab doesn’t mean you have to be a nun! We get Muslims in the casino all the time, one of them told me for a fact that if you drink gin and tonic it doesn’t count as alcohol, it’s classified as medicine because of the quinine.’
‘A, that advice is what’s technically termed in theological circles as “bullshit”,’ Fatima says. She’s still smiling, but there’s a little hint of steel under her light voice. ‘And B, you have to wonder about the dissociative powers of anyone wearing a hijab in a casino, considering the Koranic teachings on gambling.’
There is silence in the room. I exchange a glance with Kate, and draw a breath to speak, but I can’t think what to say, other than to tell Thea to shut the fuck up.
‘You weren’t always such a prude,’ Thea says at last, sipping her wine, and beside me I feel Kate stiffen with anxiety, but Thea is smiling, the corner of her mouth just quirked with that wry little tilt. ‘In fact, I might be wrong, but I distinctly remember a certain game of strip poker …? Or am I thinking of a different Ms Qureshy?’
‘You weren’t always such a dick,’ Fatima replies, but there’s no rancour in her voice, and she is smiling too. She reaches across the table and punches Thea lightly on the arm, and Thea laughs, and her real, true smile – the one which is wide and generous and full of self-mockery – flashes out in spite of herself.
‘Liar,’ she says, still grinning, and the tension leaches out of the air, like static electricity discharging into the ground with a harmless crackle.
I don’t know what time it is when I get up from the table to go to the bathroom. It must be long past midnight. I look in at Freya on my way back, and she is sleeping peacefully, her arms and legs sprawled in complete relaxation.
As I make my way down the curving stairs to where my old friends sit, I am overwhelmed by a sharp pang of déjà vu. Fatima, Thea, Kate, they are seated in their old accustomed places, and for a moment, their heads bent around the flickering light of the candle, they could be fifteen again. I have the strangest impression of a gramophone record that has skipped, retracing over the echoes of our former selves, and I feel the ghosts of the past crowd in, Ambrose … Luc … My heart clutches in my chest, an almost physical pain, and for a moment – a brief, stabbing moment – a picture flashes before my eyes, a scene I have tried so hard to forget.
I shut my eyes, put my hands to my face, trying to scrub the image away – and when I open them again it’s just Thea, Fatima and Kate there. But the memory remains – a body, stretched out on the rug, four shocked white faces, stained with tears …
There is a chilly touch on my hand, and I swing round, my heart thumping as I survey the stairs, winding up into darkness.
I’m not sure who I was expecting – there is no one here but us, after all – but whoever it was, they are not there – just the shadows of the room, and the faces of our former selves looking out from the walls.
Then I hear Kate’s low laugh, and I realise. It’s not a ghost, but a shadow – Kate’s dog, Shadow, his cold nose against my hand, looking plaintive and confused.
‘He thinks it’s bedtime,’ Kate says. ‘He’s hoping someone will take him out for a last walk.’
‘A walk?’ Thea says. She takes out another Sobranie, and puts the gold tip between her lips. ‘Screw that. I say a swim.’
‘I didn’t bring my costume,’ I say automatically, before I work out what her raised eyebrow and wickedly provocative expression means, and I start to laugh, half reluctantly. ‘No way, and anyway, Freya’s asleep upstairs. I can’t leave her.’
‘So don’t swim far!’ Thea says. ‘Kate. Towels!’
Kate stands up, takes a gulp from the glass of wine on the table in front of us, and goes to a cupboard near the stove. Inside there are threadbare towels, faded to shades of pastel grey. She throws one at Thea, one at me. Fatima holds up her hands.
‘Thanks, but –’
‘Come on …’ Thea drawls. ‘We’re all women, right?’
‘That’s what they all say, until some drunk comes along on the way back from the pub. I’ll sit it out, cheers.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Thea says. ‘Come on, Isa, Kate, don’t let me down, you losers.’
She stands too, and begins to unbutton her shirt. Underneath I can see already that she is not wearing a bra.