Page 89 of Mad About You

‘I wanted to be sure Jon and I were serious first.’

‘Oh yes, if it was only loads of naked horseplay, better to leave me in the dark,’ Harriet said, with a shout of unlaughter.

‘This is really proving that telling you from the start would’ve gone well,’ Roxy said, rolling lashed eyes.

Harriet had always known Roxy could be careless, but this nihilistic lack of any concern beyond herself whatsoever wasknocking the breath out of her. They’d always indulged Roxy, without ever thinking she was spoilt. It turned out they were also indulging themselves. They’d created a whole notion of who she was and what their friendship meant that wasn’t shared by Roxy. It felt like the tearing-up of a contract, except Harriet was now grasping that there had never actually been one.

‘You can’t have thought you could do this, and it not mean choosing him over us?’ Harriet said. ‘Did you think whether you stay with Jon or not, we’d come back from this?’

‘That’s up to you, isn’t it,’ Roxy said, piously.

She wasn’t even going to have the decency to cop to the consequences. It wasHarriet’sintolerance estranging them.

‘Right, thanks. You’re putting the responsibility on me? Then I’m never having anything to do with you ever again.’ She gathered her few things, heart stuttering.

‘So be it,’ Roxy said. She added: ‘You’ve got to do what feels right, too,’ in a resigned yet generous tone, as if she was the sole, white-gloved churchgoer in a den of vice, who hoped for better but knew better. Harriet clutched her coat, afraid that if she loosened her grip she’d slap her.

‘Same here I’m afraid.’ Lorna had stuffed everything back into the basket in seconds flat and linked her arm with Harriet’s.

A grisly additional realisation had dawned on Harriet.

‘The night at The Dive? The night of Scott’s post, when you sacked us off for a date? That was seeing Jon, wasn’t it?’ she said.

Roxy gave a small pout and shrug that was reluctant concession. Lorna let out a low whistle.

‘Wow. You are legitimately horrific,’ Harriet said.

‘You don’t choose who you fall in love with,’ Roxy said, and Lorna hooted.

‘Barbara fuckin’ Cartland here.’

‘That’s exactly what you did,’ Harriet said. ‘You made a very clear choice. Now I’m making mine.’

They strode out of the park in lockstep, leaving Roxy staring after them. Harriet didn’t look back.

41

‘Never seen the appeal of hot tubs. Glorified paddling pools for swingers,’ Lorna said. ‘A bubbling cauldron of suburban pervs. You always ponder what percentage of that tepid water is covert wees. You’d never get into abathwith your neighbours, would you? Brrrr.’

Harriet laughed, in a broken way.

After fleeing the park massacre, they’d got a cab to The Dive earlier than planned and installed themselves in a discreet corner. Harriet knew unfettered access to a liquor cabinet was going to make them lordly, revoltingly drunk, and she said:bring it on.

They’d made light work of some red wine and moved on to Lorna-shaken cocktails. Harriet was feeling blurry, and both heavy and light at the same time.

‘The girl in the backless dress,’ Lorna hissed, chin tucked into the side of her neck, as the last customers clattered past to the exit. ‘Big earrings. She’s the one who was in with your housemate. Cal?’

‘Oh!’ Harriet suppressed the potent churn she felt watching the graceful thirty-something-year-old, with long ombre hairgathered clear of her swan neck in a loose knot, disappear into the night. She was giggling and chattering and being casually fabulous, in a way that Harriet could never hope to be. Yes, she was Cal-equivalent.

‘Given how I feel about this turn of events with Roxy, I can’t imagine how you feel,’ Lorna said, as Harriet turned back. ‘Explains where all the hard-ass She Brought It On Herself stuff came from over Scott, though, eh? Jon was probably in the fucking room.’

Quite. Harriet recognised that for Roxy to make the transition to Jon’s girlfriend, Harriet had to be Othered, distanced, recast as a serial destroyer of men’s minds.You have to admit, you didn’t treat him the best.Pillow talk with Jon, pulling Harriet to pieces, Roxanne trading on her insider knowledge. Harriet imagined this was akin to how you’d feel working for British intelligence and discovering your desk mate was a Russian spy; a disorientating instability, and a review of every exchange you’d had with them over the pertinent period.

‘I didn’t want to say anything at the time, as I hoped I was wrong and I didn’t want to add to your worries, but for what it’s worth …’ Lorna said.

‘Oh no, what?’

Lorna bit her lip. ‘Handing your address over to Jon. She played it off as ditzy Roxy, but I didn’t buy it. It would’ve been the work of seconds to sense check it with you, I would have, the timing didn’t even make sense. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was sitting next to you at the cinema that night, texting him back. She was … disrupting, to see where it led.’

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