Stiff Lips

'You're one of my best friends,' he said at length. 'Let's leave it at that, shall we? Let's not spoil things.'

This was really too much. 'It's a bit late to talk about spoiling things, don't you think?'

Graham was picking at an obstinate shred of tobacco that had adhered to his tongue. 'What do you mean?'

'Excuse me,' I said, 'but what do you mean? We've been going at it like rabbits for months and now all of a sudden you're playing hard to get?'

Graham stared at me with a look of such absolute horror on his face that I wondered if I'd inadvertently cast aspersions on his manhood. He said something I didn't catch, or maybe I just hadn't wanted to catch it. I asked him to run it by me again, and leaned closer to make sure I didn't miss it.

'No, we haven't,' he said.

When I heard these words I leaned too far and had to stick out a hand to halt my slide. Graham, assuming it was another amorous advance, promptly launched himself clear of the table, well out of my reach, and started to back towards the door.

'That's right,' I said. 'Deny it.'

'Clare,' he said. 'You and I have never been to bed together. I'll admit we came perilously close to it once or twice, but we never went all the way.'

'This is ridiculous,' I said. 'What about all those cups of tea in the morning?'

'For Heaven's sake,' said Graham. 'I can't believe you get that drunk. The only time I ever stayed the night was when you passed out and I had to put you to bed, and even then I slept on the cushions in here. Good God…' He'd come to the end of the joint and the filter was now giving off an acrid smell. 'You don't think I…'

His voice died away. By now he'd reached the doorway, and I was fighting off the urge to scream. 'Let me get this straight,' I said carefully, trying not to mangle the words. 'We never had sex? Not even once?'

Graham shook his head. 'I didn't realize it meant that much to you.' Now he was the one who looked as if he might burst into tears at any second.

'It doesn't,' I answered, now desperate to salvage a scrap of pride. 'It means nothing. When I said we'd had sex, I was of course… joking.'

Graham looked only slightly less upset than I felt. You see,' he said, 'if I'd thought…'

'I know,' I said. 'It wasn't very funny, was it? I'm sorry, I've had way too much to drink.'

Or maybe not enough. Not nearly enough.

'I'd better get back downstairs,' said Graham, still anxious to put as much distance between us as possible. 'See you later, OK?'

'Later,' I said.

As soon as he'd gone, I retouched my lipstick and followed him down. I didn't dare spend any longer on my own. I needed food and drink. I needed company, and lots of it. I needed anything but the opportunity to stop and think. That was something I really didn't need.

I'd definitely been having sex with someone.

But if not with Graham, then with whom?

For a while I operated on automatic, sipping my wine as I watched the armies of the undead gathering in Marsha's living-room. The guests were dressed as vampires and ghouls, but quaffed Chardonnay instead of blood, and picked at roasted peanuts instead of tearing at ragged chunks of raw flesh. I thought I recognized a couple of the waiters from Cinghiale, but they failed to recognize me back.

Since company didn't appear to be forthcoming, I had to fall back on oral gratification. Food was the closest thing to hand. I hovered over the snack bowls and hoovered up most of the cashews before graduating to the harder stuff — prawn vol-au-vents, bacon and mushroom quiche, and French sticks with salami and cheese.

I was feeding this food into my face as though there were no tomorrow when, as if in a dream, I noticed some sort of disturbance over by the door. A wraith-like creature detached itself from the scrum of kissy-kissing guests and came bowling across the room in slo-mo. Too late, I recognized Carolyn. In an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture, she flung her arms around my neck, trailing wisps of grey chiffon, and I was enveloped in a choking cloud of Miss Dior.

'There, there,' she soothed.

'What? Where?' I asked through a mouthful of French bread, trying to struggle free without getting my black satin shoulders smeared with her greasy white make-up.

'It's a bit much,' she said. 'Even when Miles and I were, you know, seeing each other, I would never have flaunted him in front of Sophie. I would never have dreamt of doing that. Not to a friend.'

'I'm sure you wouldn't,' I said, thinking that at any second Carolyn would say something that would cause this fuzzy conversation to snap into razor-sharp focus. I didn't have a clue as to what she was prattling on about, and was just starting to think that Lemmy's babbling was an infectious disease that Carolyn had caught, when we were joined by the Woman in Black. It was Charlotte, squeezed into a sexy black rubber sheath, with her natural shortish curly hair concealed beneath a straight black wig. Like me, she had made a halfhearted attempt to pass herself off as Morticia Addams, but she had an unfair advantage over me — she was thin.

I braced myself for a snide remark, but she merely looked me up and down and said, 'I see we share the same impeccable taste in old TV shows.'

I mulled over this sentence, trying to divine the hidden insult that indubitably lurked within. If I hadn't been on my guard before, my every nerve was now crouched in defensive mode. This was the second time Charlotte had taken my side. Carolyn was occasionally capable of random acts of niceness, but Charlotte had always been a Grade A, green-eyed, take-no-prisoners bitch. If both she and Carolyn were being friendly, then something was definitely up.

Was it a trap?

Had Graham been talking to them?

'Maybe she's trying to make Miles jealous,' suggested Charlotte.

The thought of Miles brought me back to earth. Miles was my mission. If I could land Miles, all this other stuff, the stuff I didn't want to think about, would fade quietly into the background where it could be buried and forgotten.

'We shouldn't pile all the blame on to Sophie,' said Carolyn. 'I mean, it's bad form on his part as well.'

'On Miles's part?' I asked, still ten steps behind the rest of the world.

Carolyn and Charlotte turned to me and chorused, 'Not Miles. Robert.'

I continued to look at them with the same expression, but my skin felt as though it had suddenly taken on many of the characteristics of deep-frozen poultry. After a while I said, calm as you like, 'Robert's here now, is he?'

Carolyn and Charlotte exchanged jittery glances.

'You mean you haven't seen him?' asked Charlotte.

'Not as such,' I said.

'Don't tell me you didn't know,' said Carolyn.

'Of course I knew,' I said, though I knew nothing.

'You didn't realize he was here with Sophie?' asked Carolyn. 'Smooching with her, and in front of everyone? It's a bit much. I do think they should have been more considerate.'

I felt myself being tossed up and down on an emotional roller-coaster. Part of me was humiliated that Robert had turned his back on me and reattached himself to Sophie. Another part wanted to see for myself. Was this really the man I'd glimpsed in the mirror? Was he the one who'd been sharing my bed as well?

And yet another part of me, the most charitable part, the part that had been submerged for so long that I sometimes forgot it was there, wondered whether perhaps I shouldn't be warning Sophie to watch her back. Did she really know what kind of man she was dealing with here? Did she know he'd been unfaithful on a regular basis? Did she know about the fork? And if not, shouldn't I be telling her about it? God knows, we had our differences, and enough of them, but she was still my best friend, after all.