Page 88 of Mad About You

‘Oh, yes,’ Roxy said, as if she’d forgotten she’d put it on, playing with it. She looked unusually sheepish, possibly because it looked OTT for early days, even by the standards of men she dated. ‘White gold. Tiffany’s.’

‘Huh. That’s a coincidence,’ Harriet said, ‘I saw Jon with a Tiffany’s bag in town, a few weeks back. It’s the loaded man’s gifting choice of the season. I have a feeling Jon’s was destined for his horrendous mother.’

Roxy flushed scarlet, an extraordinary shade of claret grape that was so striking as to be impossible to politely ignore. Harriet had never seen someone change colour like that before. Roxy dropped her eyes down to her lap.

‘Are you OK?’ Harriet said anxiously, into her continuing silence. ‘Did I say something wrong?’

‘Oh God, is it a push present? A pre-push baby mama present? Are you up the stick?’ Lorna said, then frowned at the frothy second mug-measure of cava in Roxy’s cup.

Harriet replayed her own words.Jon had a Tiffany’s…

Her body froze, plummeting to an icy temperature, as a terrible (im)possibility occurred, and Roxy raised her eyes to meet Harriet’s. The look in them was a curdled mixture of guilt and a sort of petulant hostility, like a little girl who’s been caught with her hands in the Christmas trifle.

‘Holy shit,’ Harriet said. ‘That bracelet’s fromJon?”

‘Wait. I don’t understand. Your fella is Joseph?’ Lorna said.

For Harriet, there was a terrible clang.

‘Oh. He’s JonathanJosephBarraclough. JJ.’ Harriet paused, licked dry lips, heart racing. ‘I see what you did there.’

‘Please tell me this is a sick joke? Joseph is Jon?’ Lorna said. ‘You’re shagging JON?’

The rain started spitting at them again but now they couldn’t be more indifferent.

‘I knew you’d not take it well. I didn’t know when to mention it …’ Roxy said, in a tiny, hoarse voice, pulling at a blade of grass with a shaky hand.

‘You’re serious? You’re involved with Jon?’ Harriet said. She didn’t want to believe it until utterly forced.

‘Yeah, I am,’ Roxy said, smoothing her hair decorously behind her ear again, as if this was a delicate, sensitive admission being made by a fragile person. As opposed to the most unseemly and violent act of treacherous ugliness that Harriet could currently imagine.

‘He was thinking about putting his house on the marketand I went round for a valuation. We always got on great when you two were dating,’ Roxy appealed to a stunned Harriet, as if this was clear mitigation. ‘I think we really work well together.’

‘I feel sick,’ Harriet said. ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. What part of sleeping with my ex behind my back, right after we’ve finished, seemed OK to you? You realise he’s trying to get back at me?’

‘It’snotto get at you,’ Roxy said, in a tone of teacherly admonishment. ‘I’d not do that.Jonwouldn’t do that.’

Harriet jumped to her feet. She had taken a lot; so much, too much. But beingchidedby her friend – scratch that, her enemy – was so extreme as to finally provoke her to full battle cry. ‘Don’t fucking tell me what he would or wouldn’t do, based on a few weeks of giving him blow jobs in his hot tub!’

A family with young kids ambling past suddenly sped up, as if they’d hit fast forward in a comedy skit.

‘This is properly DISEASED, what is wrong with you?! What part of Jon being off-limits as your latest boyfriend slash benefactor wasn’t obvious to you?’ Harriet cried. She didn’t like fights but this wasn’t any old fight, there was no time to assess anything in the tumult of her feelings – Harriet had lost all inhibition.

Roxy stood up too, brushing grass from her legs, and Lorna realised she had to follow suit.

‘Look. Lorna’s thirty-five today,’ Roxy said, pointing at Lorna, switching tack from Little Girl Lost to drill instructor. ‘We’re almost thirty-five. We’re not kids anymore, we’resupposed to be having kids! There’s no point acting like we can play by cute little rules we had when we were twenty-two in nightclubs.’

‘Cute little rules?’ Harriet repeated, blankly.

‘Jon might not have been right for you, Harriet, but he is a genuinelylovelyman, who, if you’re honest with yourself for once, you’d admit you didn’t treat the best. He wants the things I want. Am I meant to throw that opportunity for happiness away?’

‘Wants the things you want! Wants to pay for things and you want to let him?’ Lorna chipped in.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Lore,’ Roxy spat. ‘Stop acting like you’re in charge of us, and know all the right answers to everything. You’ve found Gethin now, but it was more luck than anything. And look at Harriet, still hankering after the bad boy from her twenties. Yeah, girl power, and we’re all going to end up very bitter and poor and alone.’

Harriet did a double take at the word ‘hankering’. One tiny, microscopic mercy: she was no longer fearful of Roxy’s take on the Scott years. Roxy had misread them, and her, and him, at a profound level. In turn, Harriet had misread Roxanne.

‘When were you going to tell me?’ Harriet said, breathlessly.

---