Asparagus, simple, she only had to steam it. With hollandaise, already made. Spring lamb noisettes stuffed with pine nuts and goat’s cheese and encrusted with herbs, done by the butcher. New potatoes, crushed with butter, garlic and olive oil. A salad from the garden. Dark chocolate tart, bought, strawberries if she could find any, vanilla ice cream, also bought. Plenty of wine. Stilton and grapes. More wine, smoking, it would all be fine. Olives and nibbles beforehand. Paul on aperitifs. The bus moved off in front of her and she put the car into gear. Outfit. Casual. Doesn’t matter. Something comfortable. Black dress and gold boots. It was going to be fine. Mending bridges was a good idea. They were all grownups.
Katia thought of Sarah, her friend who’d betrayed them, as she checked the mirror and indicated left. Scrawny and funny, lips that laughed red, so rude you could sear a steak on them, none of them had laughed like that since. But it had been over a year ago. Her husband’s best friend’s wife had fallen in love with someone else, so what? These things happened. She accelerated up the hill and settled again, her hands relaxed on the steering wheel, the hedgerows thick with cow parsley. Affairs were always dirty. At least Sarah hadn’t burdened her with it. At least she’d kept the secret to herself. It had been a massive shock to everyone when it all came out. It had broken up more than a marriage.
The sun was dead ahead, Katia squinted and flipped down the visor. Pulling her work from the gallery was the most heroic thing she’d ever done. She was still waiting for her husband’s best friend to thank her but all he’d done since Sarah left him was cry. He’d stopped crying now so it was time. She hadn’t planned it but she’d always felt a bit terrible for Sarah, despite the almighty fuck-up. It’s one thing to run off with someone, and quite another to lose all your friends in the process. She was probably incredibly lonely.
Katia parked outside her house, the set and lean of many windows, a Georgian grey stone, wisteria and tile, she lifted Percy from the back seat. He was asleep, she could see him through the top grill, zonked by anaesthetic. Silly cat. He’d needed stitches. Again. Heritage green front door pushed open with her shoulder, straight up the stairs, Percy in his box in her arms, a banister rail that was scuffed, photographs of beauty in black and white, in sunshine and in snow. Along the hallway, the soft pad of carpet, the scent of clean towels as she slid open the airing cupboard door. She’d already put a bowl of water down, and some food. The vet had said he’d wake up in an hour or so. She propped open the plastic hatch and turned off the cupboard light. He’d be safe in there. He could sleep for as long as he liked. She looked at her watch as she went downstairs. Just gone six. Two hours.
In the dining room, she opened the sash windows to air it. A table that would seat twelve, shining and empty but not for long, from the sideboard she got out the placemats. The kitchen was cosier, but there wasn’t room. Maybe she’d been mad to make a party of it. Maybe she should have asked Sarah and Conner to macaroni cheese in their slippers and have done with it. Too late now. The other couples were local friends, safe bets, people she owed; her long list of return favours, we must have you round, cleared with one jolly evening bathed in late summer red. Two birds with one stone, and it wasn’t like she wanted to rekindle anything. She only wanted show Sarah she wasn’t like the others. She could put the past behind her. Everyone makes mistakes.
Once the placemats and napkins were out she had to use the silver; it would look odd not to. Maybe she should use the normal plates or not wear any make up, or kick off her gold boots after the lamb, or wear her silver glitter pumps, anything to tone it down a bit. She fetched a jug from the antique kitchen dresser, filled it with water, placed it in the centre of the table and went out into the garden for sprigs of orange blossom.
Paul was in the dining room when she returned. “Is the Queen coming?”
She put the sprigs in the jug and shut the windows again. “It would be better if you helped.”
What the hell. She’d use the crystal glasses. It would be over by tomorrow, she’d have done her bit and they could all get on with their lives. She didn’t like gang mentality. It had never sat right with her. Paul called it loyalty. He followed her to the kitchen.
She knelt at the dresser cupboards. “Did you get the wood?”
He picked dirt from under his nails. “We won’t need a fire.”
She couldn’t decide between the large white oval and the blue porcelain. “But it’ll be nice to have it laid.”
“Are we going to move through?” he dried his hands on his jeans.
She picked the blue porcelain. “And the vermouth. Did you get that?”
He put his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. “How’s Percy?”
“Flat out. Silly boy. That was his eighth.” Asparagus in a pile on the table, she began snapping ends.
“Ninth,” Paul corrected. “The roof, that car, the barbed wire,” he ticked them off on his fingers, “the other car, that dog,”
“He’s got a dog.”
“Who?”
“The guy.”
Paul stood by the open kitchen window and rolled a cigarette. “I can’t believe you’re making me meet him.”
“It’s a Mastiff. She told me she fell in love with the dog first.”
“When did she tell you that?”
“She emailed.”
“I thought that was to do with work,” he dug around in his pocket for a lighter.
“It was. I couldn’t exactly say, please arrange for the plinth to be delivered on Friday, regards, Katia.”
“You could.”
“Well, I didn’t. She might not have done it for a start.”
“She had to do it. It was her fault it wasn’t delivered in the first place.”
“I don’t think it’s right to be so cold. Either have no contact at all or be nice about it.”
“The first one,” he exhaled a long line of smoke.
“She was my friend.” Katia put the porcelain blue oval down harder than she meant. She hoped she hadn’t cracked it.
“All right, all right, she was your friend and now you want to show her that you’re better than the rest of us. I get it. But I still can’t believe you’re making me the guy, that’s all. You could have gone to hers.”
“I’m not making you meet him. I’m doing the civil thing and inviting them both round for dinner. Will’s got all of us. Who’s she got? You only have to be in the same room as him for a few hours, shake his hand, get him a drink. Big deal.”
“I’m not shaking his hand.”
“Fine. Keep your hands behind your back. Serve him a martini with your teeth.”
“I’m not serving him anything. Or her.”
“Oh, grow up, Paul.” She shook the asparagus under a running tap. “They weren’t right together, you said so all along. I don’t know why you’re being so childish. You’ve got your best friend back, and Sarah’s happy.”
“Because she broke my best friend’s heart, and she did it horribly.”
“You can’t do it nicely.”
“She could have told him as soon as it happened.”
“Maybe she didn’t know as soon as it happened. It might have been a mistake.”
“I didn’t know mistakes were permissible. I wish someone had told me.” He mashed the end of his roll up on the windowsill.
“Breaking his heart doesn’t make her a bad person.”
“No,” Paul was on his way out the door. “Lying about wanting kids makes her a bad person.”
It was true. Sarah had kept on saying, Maybe next year, I want to get the gallery established, there’s plenty of time. Poor Will.
*
The lamb was in its dish, silver foil over it even though Percy was in no state to jump up anywhere. Asparagus ready to be steamed, hollandaise out of the fridge to bring it to room temperature, potatoes rinsed, garlic smashed, salad washed, stilton unwrapped and on the board, pudding out on the side under a plate. “Strawberries,” she said out loud even though Paul had gone upstairs. She picked up the colander and went into the garden, the sky scudded with wisps of cloud, a cuckoo called in the wood. Spiders web clung to her cheek as she cut strawberries in the fruit cage. It hadn’t been all Sarah’s fault. It was stupid to look at it like that. Nothing was that black and white, Except Percy; she heard Paul’s voice in her head. He always said that. He knew it made her soften.
He was lying on their bed when she got upstairs. She said, “You’re going to have a shower, right?”
“I thought I’d intimidate him with my manly scent.”
“Lovely for Pru and Gareth.”
“You haven’t asked them have you?”
“You’ve seen the table. Pru and Gareth, Nell and Jay, Wendell and Frank, Chrissy and Tabs, Sarah and Conner. I thought Gareth might get on with Sarah, they’re both in the art world and Jay’s techi so he and Conner can get on.”
“That’s his name, is it?”
“Please take your shoes off.”
“It seems like a bloody stupid effort to me.”
“You don’t wash the sheets.”
“I meant tonight,” his shoes dropped one after the other to the wide, reclaimed oak floorboards.
“It’ll be fun.”
“No it won’t.”
“When was the last time we had a dinner?”
“I’ve wiped it from my memory.”
“Before Will and Sarah even arrived.”
“Probably for Will and Sarah’s arrival.”
“Oh yes.” She’d held a welcoming dinner for them. The whole gang had come, but it was Katia who Sarah had gravitated towards. They’d bonded over sculpture and being child-free.
Under gushing water, she closed her eyes. Stone dust fell away from her. Hours in her studio, ears muffled from the saw of the grinder, face covered with a mask, arms aching, the frustration of feeling. She knew it was in there somewhere, buried in that rock was the truth but it had been like this for months, the searching and never finding, one hammer blow too hard and kicking the broken effort away, a new piece of rock to be found, start again. In the past she’d have talked to Sarah. She’d passed the gallery the other day, had been unable to not look in, unsure if Sarah would be there, unsure if she wanted her to be, relieved that she wasn’t. She’d pretended to be a buyer, had let her fingers fall upon another artist’s sculptures in the yard. She’d taken a card.
Dressed and barefoot, make up done, she went to check on Percy. He blinked in the light and stood on wobbly legs, his tail dropped like anchor as he stepped out of the box and lost balance. She held his food towards him. “Poor Perce. Will you ever learn?”
He circled on the sheepskin rug, his green eyes blurry. She scratched his head, leaned carefully to kiss him. Nine lives, of course. There’d been the time she’d been working late, a series of swirls emerging from white marble that had captivated her attention long after she was meant to meet the others at the pub. Sarah had come to get her and they’d opened a bottle of Jim Beam and spent the night sitting on the floor of her studio getting drunk on possibilities. Paul had been furious. He hadn’t exactly blamed her, but when he’d found them past three in the morning dancing to Basement Jaxx, he’d put a wrapped up Percy in her arms as if her absence had caused him to leap from a hedge onto the bonnet of a moving car.
She switched off the light. Lamb on at eight and potatoes at eight-thirty. Asparagus as they were moving through. Salad, pudding, candles.
To be continued…..