Stiff Lips

But how could I have been so blind?

The look of genuine concern on Carolyn's face gave me heart; she hadn't been trying to catch me out. She gave no sign of having noticed my behaviour was any odder than usual.

'Robert's… not here?' I said haltingly.

'So I gathered,' said Carolyn.

Feeling like a fraud, I forced myself to ask if she'd bumped into him lately. 'Not for some time,' she said. 'Don't tell me you're not seeing him anymore.'

I burst out laughing. 'You could say that.'

'That's a shame,' said Carolyn. 'It's hard to find good-looking unattached heterosexual men these days.' She smiled warmly and started to move on. I clutched at her arm, not yet ready to let her go. 'Did you ever talk to him?'

'Of course,' she replied. 'You know I did.'

'May I ask what you talked about?'

Carolyn thought for a moment, eyes flickering back and forth. 'I can't really remember,' she said at last. 'But that's not to say he was boring. In fact, he was probably one of the most charming people I've ever met. What a shame you've split up.'

She patted me absent-mindedly on the shoulder and continued on her rounds, leaving me feeling more alone than ever. So now not even Robert sought my company. I looked wistfully across the room to where Sophie and the others were laughing and chattering in a cosy little huddle. My first instinct was to sneak home with a bottle of wine and ten packets of crisps, but I knew a binge like that would leave me feeling even worse. If that was how I was going to react, I might as well go back to Hackney right now.

The thought of having to return to the life I'd left behind fired me up. I was in Notting Hill, living a Notting Hill life among Notting Hill people, and if I couldn't hack it, then I might as well shrivel up and die.

So I took a deep breath and walked across the room and said, 'Hi.'

Grenville, now positioned a respectable distance from Charlotte, looked round and said, 'Hey there.'

There now, I thought. That wasn't so bad now, was it?

Sophie was a tougher nut to crack. I could tell she was trying not to snicker in my face. 'Been talking about anything interesting?' she asked breezily. 'Anything you'd like to share with the rest of us?'

'Oh, shut up,' said Charlotte. 'A girl can talk to herself if she wants to. Me, I do it all the time.'

This was a first. Charlotte was sticking up for me. I gazed at her as though she'd suddenly sprouted angels wings.

Sophie, on the other hand, was staring at her as though she'd made a bad smell.

Marsha turned up late with her boring boyfriend in tow. I hadn't been aware she even knew Carolyn, but they exchanged warm greetings and Marsha presented her with a charming little Balinese knick-knack.

'Exactly how old is Carolyn?' Marsha asked me later.

I said I didn't know, but would guess roughly the same as Sophie, which meant roughly the same as me.

Marsha called us babies. 'It's my birthday next month,' she announced.

'So how old will you be?'

Marsha pursed her lips. 'It's the big one.'

'The big what?'

'My fortieth. The twenty-seventh of October.'

'Congratulations.'

'Just imagine,' she said with a shudder. 'Forty.'

You don't look forty,' I said, though I thought Marsha looked her age, no more and no less. I wondered what it would be like when I too reached that stage, the age when people said your life began, though it seemed to me to be the beginning of an inexorable slide into decay and death. Would I be married, with a family, or would I be unattached, unloved, a dried-up spinster squandering her talents on pictures of blackberry cobbler and key-lime pie? Not for the first time, I envied Marsha. Forty or not, she had a steady boyfriend, a job she adored, and, unless she was the world's most accomplished faker, she was happy with the hand she'd been dealt.

'The big four-oh,' she went on, shaking her head in disbelief. 'Only one thing to do in the circumstances.'

I dutifully asked, 'What's that?'

Marsha beamed. 'Throw a bloody enormous party. I'm going to throw the biggest fucking party I've ever had in my life.'

'Oh, good,' I said, looking forward to it already. I could see it now. Marsha would hire Cinghiale for the evening and pack it with la crème de la crème of W11 society. We would swig champagne and nibble smoked salmon canapés and wiggle our hips to discreet jazz samba rhythms until some way past midnight, when we would link arms and stroll giggling back to the house, attracting envious glances from stray passers-by.

I was already planning what to wear.

'A Halloween party,' added Marsha.

I see,' I said, and suddenly it didn't sound like such a great idea after all. My gloriously sophisticated vision of smoked salmon and champagne evaporated — how could I ever have expected anything so stylish from a woman who wore faux snakeskin leggings — and was replaced by… what? Pumpkin pie? Barbecued shrimp? Shiny green apples a-bobbing in a barrel? Whatever refreshment Marsha came up with, it was bound to end in badly smeared lipstick and soggy décolletage.

'I thought you said your birthday was the twenty-seventh,' I said.

Marsha explained patiently that Halloween was on a Saturday, but her birthday was on the Tuesday, and it wouldn't be practical to hold a party during the week. No one would come.

I told her I would.

'But you and Sophie work flexible hours. Most of my friends have nine-to-five jobs. They have to get up in the morning.'

'I suppose so,' I said.

'You don't sound terribly thrilled,' said Marsha. 'I thought you'd be really excited. It's about time you met my friends. You'll like them.'

I tried to look keen, but it was difficult to summon much enthusiasm at the prospect of being introduced to people with nine-to-five jobs. I wanted to meet people who did as they pleased. I wanted to meet artists and thinkers and minor aristocrats. I wanted to meet the sons and daughters of celebrities, and people on private incomes.

'It'll be fancy dress, of course,' said Marsha.

Of course. Anything less would have been unworthy of Marsha. I tried to imagine her dolled up as Dracula's Daughter or the Bride of Frankenstein, but it was impossible. She was more the Annie Get Your Gun type, more of a thigh-slapping principal boy in a cocked hat with a jaunty feather. I shuddered at the thought.

'With lots of that aerosol cobweb stuff,' Marsha went on, eyes misting over like someone revisiting a scene from her childhood, 'and blood running down the walls, and fluorescent skeletons and bats dangling from the ceiling.'

My once-pure vision of a tasteful society gathering now degenerated into something distinctly low-rent. 'Do you really think Cinghiale will let you do all that?' I asked. I couldn't see blood meshing with all that tasteful Italian decor, unless of course the Mafia were somehow involved.

Marsha gaped at me. 'Clare, you've got to be kidding. I couldn't possibly hold a party at Cinghiale.'

I gaped back at her. 'Then where…?'

'The house, of course.'

'Our house?'

'Why not? There's loads of room. You and Sophie can invite your friends as well.' She clapped her hands with glee. 'We can convert the entire building into one big chamber of horrors.'

The idea gave me the shivers. Trying to sound as though I didn't care either way, I reminded Marsha that Halloween had never been an auspicious occasion for former tenants of the house. 'Wasn't it then that Ann-Marie Wilding kept her appointment with the iron railings?'