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‘They were just jealous. You were annoyingly good at everything.’
‘I was asked to give up Art.’ She’d liked to think she’d been more of an abstract artist. The Kandinsky of the Greenside High School for Girls art department. So what if she couldn’t sketch a still life of a vase or a feather? She probably could have pickled a sheep or a cow in formaldehyde quite successfully, and with the right palette she was sure she might even have been able to give Mark Rothko a run for his money.
‘Fantastic. You’re not perfect after all. I’ve found your Achilles’ heel.’
‘No need to look quite so delighted. See, this is the problem.’
Sam’s mood had definitely shifted again. Gemma decided to return to non-controversial tales from the typing pool.
‘Anyway, the agency are going to send me somewhere new. The first few days anywhere are always the most fun…that’s when I get to save the day. Once I’ve mastered the software and company protocol, and lost a few incoming calls in the system, that is…’
Sam couldn’t imagine anything worse than being a temp—except maybe having Gemma as her temp. Still, she had to hand it to her. Her positivity was apparently unassailable. Gemma was one of life’s more buoyant passengers.
‘But it’s been keeping me in beer money since Australia, and something better will turn up—I’m sure of it. Only yesterday I met this woman at the bus stop…’
Gemma collected people as eclectically as some people collected fridge magnets.
‘…she was a photographer—nothing National Geographic would be bidding for, just weddings and family portraits, but tasteful. No soft focus airbrush or fake fabric weave…’
Sam nodded, to acknowledge that she was still listening. She prodded her neck and rolled it through one hundred and eighty degrees, first in one direction and then back again. There was no mistaking the tension. She was going to have to relax. She added it to her mental ‘to do’ list for the afternoon, but even she could see that ‘relax’ wasn’t something she’d be able to fit in to the five minutes between bill-paying, shower-head descaling and toenail painting.
‘She used to be an investment banker. Just woke up one morning and realised she wasn’t living the life she wanted and so she changed everything…’
Maybe if she ditched toenail painting? It was March: still far too chilly to get her feet out.
‘…downshifted. With no regrets. It really makes you think, and it just shows you never know what’s round the corner if you keep your eyes open to possibilities…’
‘Yup…alternatively you can just set yourself a goal and work towards it.’ Sam started sorting the papers and magazines on the coffee table.
‘That’s all very well if you’re as focused as you are, but most people don’t have as many objectives, goals, strategies and backup plans as a political party in an election campaign…nor do they get up at eight a.m. on a Saturday.’
Sam was sure there was a compliment in there somewhere, just fighting to get out.
‘But for the rest of us it’s good to see that life all works out in the end. She had a really good karma…’
The only karma Sam knew anything about had something to do with Culture Club in the early eighties. She kept it to herself.
‘Anyway, things do happen for a reason. If I hadn’t come back from Australia when I did, you and I wouldn’t be living together.’
‘Exactly.’ It had been meant to be a joke. Sort of. Smiling in an attempt to soften her tone, Sam got to her feet. ‘Another cup of tea?’
‘I’d love one…’
Silently Sam thanked India for providing the British with bottomless cuppas. There appeared to be no limit to their restorative powers…and no teabags in the jar.
‘Gemma Cousins…’
‘Mmm?’ From Sam’s tone, Gemma could sense trouble. And she could take a pretty could swing at why.
‘We seem to be out of tea.’
‘Ah.’ She did her best to be contrite. ‘Not to worry. I’ll just have an instant coffee, then.’
Sam muttered to herself as she let the cupboard door slam. Gemma clearly believed in teabag fairies, loo paper elves and waste disposal pixies, and her faith was always rewarded.
‘Luckily I went shopping this morning.’
Gemma’s voice wafted into the kitchen. ‘Let me know how much I owe you…’
It was only for six months, and then once again she’d be able to wax her legs in front of the TV, pluck her bikini line while on the phone to her mother and go the loo in the middle of the night without getting dressed.
‘You didn’t get a paper, by any chance…?’
Sam delivered her still pristine copy of The Times, along with fresh tea, to the sofa, separating the main body of the paper from its weekend sections and sitting down with it in the armchair opposite.
‘Thanks, love.’
George, having optimistically followed Sam to the kitchen and back again, just on the off-chance a roast chicken or spare salmon might inadvertently have fallen from the fridge when Sam was getting the milk, decided to sit with Gemma, and when he glanced across, apparently innocently, all smug purrs and green eyes, Sam narrowed hers to express her disdain. As he turned away Sam smiled victoriously before stopping herself. Who did she think she was? The cat whisperer?
Gemma was heading straight for her star signs in the magazine. Despite herself, Sam could feel herself listening to the general murmuring noises. Today’s sounded quite affirmative.
‘Hmm. Interesting. Do you want me to read out yours?’
Sam raised an eyebrow. ‘Now, let me guess… As the week begins, Saturn makes its way through Aries, popping in to Gemini and Scorpio on its way. Take care around the new moon on Thursday, when Pluto’s activity means business matters may not turn out the way you planned. Beware of friends who try and tell you what’s going to happen next. Shop thoroughly. Watch out for Capricorn rising and Venus wandering in and out every twenty-eight hours, when emotions may run high and someone close to you may not be who they seem… How did I do?’
‘You really shouldn’t be so dismissive. It’s a science. You’d be surprised how accurate this stuff can be. If you’d only let me draw up a personal chart for you… I just need your birth time and I can calculate your rising sign. You’d be amazed at—’
‘Then I’d know which days to stay in bed and which ones to bother with? Honestly, Gem, for someone as intelligent as you are I can’t believe you are so into this hocus-pocus, this planetary, may-the-force-be-with-you bollocks.’
‘And I’m surprised that someone as intelligent as you can be so dismissive. I think you’re scared. You don’t want to think that things might be pre-ordained.’
Sam ignored her. She was doing her best to concentrate on an article about law reforms. Gemma, sensing the stalemate of the situation, tried to return to the chit-chat.
‘What’s that you’re drinking?’
‘Chamomile.’
‘Yuk. It smells like wee.’
‘Thanks.’ For a holistic, feng shui kid, Gemma was surprisingly hostile to the idea of herbal teas.
‘Well, it does.’
Sam put her paper down again. She was feeling like a rather irritable husband at the moment. All she wanted was a bit of quiet and a chance to catch up with the rest of the world.
‘No one’s asking you to drink it, but I’m trying to cut out caffeine at weekends for detox reasons and this is great for stiff joints and generally calming—allegedly.’ Sam rustled the broadsheet and turned the page pointedly.
‘Well, rather you than me…’
Clearly not pointedly enough.
‘And you wouldn’t have stiff joints if you didn’t go to the gym so often. Plus there are lots of free radicals in real tea that are good for you.’
‘And it’s full of caffeine and tannin, dehydrating, cellulite-inducing and addictive.’ Sam knew she was being crotchety. Let Gemma think it was Mars clashing with Mercury, or whatever fitted the picture best.
‘And delicious.’ Gemma took a big sip and Sam had to admit, if only to herself, that it did smell good. And finally a moment of peace. Just a moment.
‘Oh, before I forget—Soph called yesterday afternoon.’
Sam could have really used a chat with the most rational person she knew last night. When she and Mark got round to having them, their children would be sorted. As opposed to Gemma’s, who’d clearly be caked in snot and felt pen at all times.
‘Any message?’
Gemma looked up from the travel section and squinted as she tried to recall the moment. ‘No. Just to call her, I think…’
‘Anyone else?’ Sam was joking.
‘Your mum. I must have been on the phone at the time, but she left a message on the BT answer-phone thingy. She said she’d try your mobile.’
‘So that’d be two messages, then?’
‘Yup.’
Sam took a deep breath, doing her best to refocus on the world headlines and ignore the proximity of the accident waiting to happen opposite. The potential stain cocktail of English Breakfast tea, Marmite, cat and weekend newsprint on bespoke sofa was making her decidedly twitchy. She was just ascertaining that the world was still as flawed as it had been the day before, that there was still nothing she could single-handedly do about it and that no one famous or notorious had married or died, when the phone rang.
Sam leapt to her feet while George opened an eye, got up, performed a perfect three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn and sat down again. Without even really taking her eye off the page she was reading, Gemma retrieved the portable phone from between two sofa cushions just at the point that Sam reached its empty charging base in the kitchen.
‘Hello? Hi. How are you? Great. Just having breakfast. Yeah, she’s here. How did last night go? Great. No? Some people are unbelievable. Definitely. Yup, I’d be up for that. Tomorrow? Not sure. Send me a text if you decide to. Fab.’
Gemma passed the phone over, ignoring Sam’s muttering about keeping the phone charged between calls. ‘It’s Sophie.’
‘Hi, Soph. Lovely to speak to you. It’s been far too long.’ Sam folded up the section of the paper she’d been reading and retreated to her room, determined to retain at least a semblance of a private life.
‘You’re the one who’s been gallivanting across the Atlantic. Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. I left you a couple of messages, but then I had a job on and I only got home just before midnight—at which point I guessed you were asleep and Mark was determined to seduce me.’
‘No problem. Did your meeting go well?’
‘Yup. Really well. But to be honest anything will be an improvement on what she’s inherited. It was her husband’s father’s house. A gorgeous Edwardian from the outside, but the interior is a tribute to the seventies. There’s even a hanging basket chair.’
‘You’re kidding. Was he related to Alan Partridge?’
Sophie laughed. ‘The before and afters are going to be incredible.’
‘Well, congratulations. You really deserve a big project.’
‘Thanks. I have to say I’m really excited. Mark’s bored already. He’s more interested in whether the husband is after me.’
‘Is he?’
‘Of course not. Haven’t even met him.’
‘But it’s not like you’ve never met anyone through work before…’
‘It only happened the once. And I’m marrying him now.’
Sophie ignored Sam’s attempt to be playful. She’d asked far too many questions already. Definitely avoiding something. Textbook behaviour.
‘So, my little jet-setter, is everything hunky-dory with you?’
‘Yup. It’s fine.’
‘Really?’
‘Yup.’
‘So why did you call?’
‘Well…fine-ish.’
‘Sam…?’
This total understanding was why, at the tender age of seven, Sam had handpicked Sophie to be the sister she’d never had. It was one of the best choices she’d ever made.
‘Well, Gemma’s driving me mad, Richard made a pass at me in New York and I’ve lost my diary.’ There, she’d said it out loud now.
‘No way?’
‘Way.’
‘Oh, my God. Where do you want to start?’
‘I thought I’d left it at the hotel, but they’ve checked my room and nothing. Unless…’
Sam felt her pulse-rate double. Had she seen it since?
‘What was in it?’
‘Shit.’
‘What?’
‘I think Richard might have it.’ Sam’s stomach plummeted to her ankles. Her life was over.
‘Are you sure?’
She took a deep breath. But she’d only been in the bathroom for a couple of minutes…
‘What was in it?’
