‘Ah,’ she sits back. ‘I thought there was something,’ and she shrugs. ‘I thought, when you phoned, that perhaps I had been going mad, that perhaps you hadn’t been avoiding me all these weeks.
‘I wasn’t going mad was I?’
I shake my head. ‘No, but that’s not what I want to talk to you about, that was Si and I thinking that you and Josh were having an affair, because I saw you in Barnes one night, in a restaurant, and I was so furious with you, but now, obviously, we know that’s not true, and anyway, that’s irrelevant, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Hang on, hang on. You saw us in that restaurant?’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t matter now,’ and I’m about to continue but I see that I have truly thrown Portia, and I stop, astonished, and curious to hear what she is about to say.
‘Oh, Cath, I didn’t know. No wonder you and Si had been so awful to me. I can’t blame you. But you know we didn’t have an affair, Josh and I, although not for want of trying, on my part, anyway.’
I stop, astonished at Portia giving away so much information. ‘What do you mean?’
She sighs. ‘I mean that for years I had always thought that Josh was the one to get away. You know how they say there’s always one? A lost love? I convinced myself it was Josh, and that if Josh and I were together, then I would live happily ever after.’
Aha. Her happy ending. Despite myself I’m amazed that Si was right, that there was an ulterior motive behind it all.
‘I managed to persuade him to come to that restaurant that night, and I only managed it because he was tired, and lonely, and things, as you probably know, weren’t going that well with Lucy, and I thought it would be the perfect window of opportunity.
‘He needed someone to talk to, and I made sure he knew I’d be listening, and then I planned on bringing him back to my place and seducing him.’
Jesus. What a bitch.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she says. ‘And I agree. It was disgusting behaviour, but I hardly knew Lucy then, and I’d spent ten years thinking about Josh. Ten years thinking that he was the only man who could ever make me happy, and here he was, telling me he was unhappy. God, Cath. I’m only human.’
I don’t say anything, just wait for her to continue.
‘And you know, he was so grateful for my being there. He was so sweet to me, so tender towards me, I really thought it was going to happen.’
‘So what happened?’ I prompt as she lapses into silence, evidently thinking back to that night.
‘It didn’t take long to see that Josh saw me as an old friend who was concerned, who would be there to listen, and that was it. He sat there and talked about his marriage all night. He talked about Lucy, about how much he loved her, how special their relationship was, and how he couldn’t understand why they seemed to be drifting apart since Bookends.’
‘So you didn’t try to seduce him?’
‘Even at the beginning of the evening I still thought I would. I thought it would be the perfect time, but the more he talked the more I realized that he really loved Lucy, and that I’d be wrecking a marriage that had been perfectly happy apart from this one glitch that would soon sort itself out.’
‘But Josh was always in love with you. You know that.’
‘Of course I knew that, which is why I was so convinced I could get him. And you know what, Cath? Maybe I could have done. But I knew it wouldn’t have been fair, and I also knew that he and Lucy were meant to be together. Not him and me. I’d been building this fantasy for ten years, and I understood that night that reality would never match the fantasy.’
I sit there in silence for a while, stunned. Stunned at her honesty, and the courage it must have taken to walk away. And stunned at my behaviour, mine and Si’s, for jumping to conclusions and behaving so appallingly towards her.
‘But you know,’ she says, after a while, ‘life works in very mysterious ways.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I needed to be here now, to meet up with all of you again. Just because Josh wasn’t The One, doesn’t mean that things won’t work out, just not in the way that I’d actually planned… well…’ She is about to say something more but evidently changes her mind, and picks up her drink with a smile and a small shrug.
We sit and talk softly, and another hour goes by, and there is such an air of intimacy, of trust, that when Portia asks about Si, asks how he is, where he is, I almost find myself telling her. But I don’t. Not quite.
We carry on talking, and the conversation moves on to sex, and we start laughing as we remember exploits of old, and then sex becomes safe sex, which becomes AIDS, because that was always Portia’s greatest fear.
And I tell her I have a friend who has just been diagnosed HIV positive. I don’t mention names. I don’t say it is a particularly close friend. I just say a friend. And Portia becomes very quiet. Too quiet. And I suspect she knows, but she won’t say anything.
‘How is your friend taking it?’ she says quietly.
‘Nobody knows yet, except me. And you now, obviously. How is he taking it? Not great. At times I think he’s fine, he’s accepted it, realized that it doesn’t mean, as you said, death. And then he phones me in the middle of the night, drunk, frightened, furious, and I know that he feels it’s the end of the world.’
‘Has he started counselling?’
‘Not really. He’s been to the HIV clinic, and he’s got all the leaflets, but he hasn’t joined a group, although God knows he needs to.’
Portia appears to be deep in thought, and eventually she asks, ‘Cath, do you think he’d talk to a friend of mine?’
‘What for?’
‘I have this friend, Eva. She’s a bit older than us, mid-thirties, but she’s been diagnosed as HIV positive for thirteen years, picked up during her early twenties in New York when she got into a drug scene, and she’s the most amazing woman I know.’
I sit forward in my chair, interested.
‘I think that your friend should meet her, because she’s incredibly inspirational. She turned her life around when she was diagnosed, and she has this extraordinary outlook on having HIV.’
‘How did she turn her life around?’
Portia smiles. ‘It’s a long story, but I think she’s someone he should definitely meet. We should put them in touch with one another, and she could tell him her story herself. I don’t know your friend, obviously, but Eva is a great healer, and it might help to see things from another perspective, turn him around, if you like.’
‘Portia, I don’t know what to say. That would be wonderful.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she says, giving me a sad smile. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
And it’s only the next day that I realize I didn’t even mention Josh and Ingrid, the very reason for meeting her in the first place. Somehow our rediscovered friendship got in the way of the accusations, and I never got around to it. Si said that he would ask, but then said that if Portia was that friendly with Ingrid, which apparently she is, she would hardly tell us the truth, given how close we are to Lucy. So we’re still in the dark, but quite frankly there are far more important things to deal with right now.
And I’m not sure what I expected from Portia, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t expect this from her. Not in a million years did I ever think she would be the one to dive in and rescue Si, but by introducing him to Eva, by offering us help and then immediately coming up with a day and time, this is precisely what she has done.
I told Si what Portia had said, and Si said I could tell her, as long as I swore her to secrecy. Of course she said she already knew it was Si, and that she wouldn’t dream of telling a soul, other than Eva, of course.