Page 87 of Mad About You

‘Keep my number, let’s stay friends! I hope Scott sees! Except he can’t, if we’re both blocked,’ Nina said.

‘How shit is it that the two of us together, backing each other up, probably still aren’t worth the word of one Scott?’ Harriet said.

‘You never know who else is out there,’ Nina said. ‘Perhaps others will call out his BS, like I did.’

This was a very good point.

‘If there’s anything I can do, you’ll let me know?’ Nina said. ‘I’m in Leeds pretty often. We could meet to brainstorm the perfect murder. Actually, no, I’m not having him relaxing in a nice burial plot, everyone crying and saying nice things about him. Chiselling TOP LAD on his headstone. I want Scott to face up to what he does.’

Harriet said: ‘Amen,’ while thinking,men like Scott never got their comeuppance.

However, she had also believed there was no flaw in Scott’s plot to turn the tables on her, and in fact, there was, and here it was.

Without his attack on ‘H,’ she and Nina would never have found each other. His newfound micro-fame was his undoing – like when the police reported an arrest to get other accusers to come forward.

Minutes later, she discovered Scott Dyer might be thinking the same way: the whole post about ‘H’ had been deleted. It was too late to save Harriet’s reputation, but it was something.

40

‘Whose prick idea was it to have a picnic again?’ said Lorna, as they nibbled dejectedly on soggy spinach and feta empanadas in Roundhay Park, the following Friday at dusk.

‘I recall some hectoring over it being your thirty-fifth birthday,’ Harriet said, as the rain spattered on the picturesque wicker hamper with leather buckles, and diluted their drinks like a splash of meteorological soda. ‘Despite Roxy pointing out the forecast was … uneven.’

‘The tea lights were pure hubris,’ Lorna nodded at the smoking holders nestled in the grass, which had flickered for all of a minute.

‘I hope this doesn’t affect the glue on my fresh set of lashes,’ Roxy said, from under her frilly umbrella. She looked like a smartphone-generation Eliza Doolittle. ‘At least the tiny Cornish pasties are nice.’

‘I got into my al fresco street-food recipes and wouldn’t hear sense,’ Lorna sighed, wrapping her rainbow angora cardigan around her pencil dress more tightly. She picked up the pink cava from its forty-five-degree angle in the grass, topping up their plastic cups.

It was an inconveniently timed birthday, if Harriet was honest: obliging Roxy to spend time in their company a mere week after the disastrous phone call, when it was hardly a sign of affection to attend, more an act of war not to. Harriet could’ve done with a little longer for her feelings to heal. Plus she’d taken no wedding bookings this weekend to keep it clear for this, and in her largerdownturn, she regretted it.

‘You should know our Roxanne was totally, totally different when I called back and said,what the hell,’ Lorna said, before she arrived at the picnic spot. ‘She was hormonal, she said, and I’d caught her at a wicked moment. We all have them. I reminded her of some of Scott’s greatest hits and she was very remorseful.’

Although Harriet trusted Lorna implicitly, she suspected some PR management. Lorna felt at fault for engineering a situation where Harriet got Roxy’s unvarnished views, ergo, this was the patch-up of the torn hull. She also noticed there was no mention of the girls’ holiday being resurrected.

‘You didn’t tell her about the speakerphone bork, did you?’ Harriet said, warily.

‘Absolutely not, framed it all as what I thought.’

The sky was a foreboding gunmetal-grey. Lorna had resolutely refused gifts or treats, at a generally skint time, and catered: there was no way of fighting the picnic plans.

There was also no Gethin to provide distraction from their wonky triangle: he had a formal work do, so was splitting the difference and meeting them at The Dive later.

‘House rules,’ Lorna had announced, as opener. ‘Discussion of the world’s shittest little tinpot ruler with the Madchester hair is banned. No mentions of Pol Pot Noodle, please.’

Both Harriet and Roxy avoided each other’s eyes and mumbled assent.

After a short squall, the sun came out and their respective pieces of outerwear came off, somewhat ambitiously.

‘How’s it going with the new man, Rox?’ Lorna said.

‘Oh, you know,’ Roxy said, tucking her hair behind her ear and stretching out her legs in her maxi dress. They might be in a park, but she was in delicate heels, as always. ‘Fabulous, but it’s early days.’

‘What does he do for a living again?’

‘Something important for banks. I don’t really understand it.’

‘That’s a nice little bauble. Joseph gift, was it?’ said Lorna, nodding to a slim white-gold bangle that Roxy had pushed up her now-exposed slender arm, like Cleopatra.

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