As Leila opens the front door, my heart drops. She looks shrunken and there are shadows under her eyes too.
“Hi, Leila!” I clasp her warmly, and I swear she’s lost half a stone. “It’s been ages! I just fancied a manicure.”
“I thought you were having dinner with Jakey?” she says, looking anxiously past me as though expecting to see Jake too.
“I left them to it,” I say easily. “You know what they’re like. Six bottles of wine each.”
“I’ve told Jake to stop drinking,” says Leila, and her face becomes even more drawn and I feel a swell of panic, because none of this feels good. I follow Leila into the living room and stop dead at the sight of the big empty wall in front of me, wires trailing from four points.
“What’s happened to the telly?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “Are you getting a new one?”
The words are out before I have a horrible, sinking suspicion.
“It went,” says Leila, after a pause. She picks up a plastic bowl from the coffee table and gestures to the sofa. “Sit down. I’ll get some warm water.”
“It ‘went’?”
“They took it away.” She flashes me a smile, which I don’t believe in for a moment. “It’s fine, I watch all the soaps on my laptop.”
I sit down warily, looking around at Jake’s flash pad, full of leather and glass and glossy magazines. It always seemed like the pinnacle of achievement, this flat. Now it all seems kind of…perilous.
As Leila sits down and instructs me to put my hands in the bowl of water, I eye her closely. She looks on edge. Frail, almost. I don’t want to freak her out by firing questions at her, but I have to know. I have to know.
“Leila,” I say, in my quietest voice. “Is Jake in trouble?”
For a long time, Leila doesn’t answer. She’s washing my hands, rhythmically, her gaze distant. Then she raises her head.
“Oh, Fixie,” she says in a trembling voice, and the look in her huge eyes makes me suddenly fearful. “Of course he is. But he won’t admit it. He won’t talk about it. I only hear bits and pieces. I’ve said to him, ‘Jakey, what’s going on?’ But he gets so angry….” She adds, more calmly, “If you could place your right hand on the towel?”
As she starts on my cuticles, I say, “He’s been taking money from Farrs.”
“Taking money?” Leila’s eyes widen. “Stealing?”
“No, not stealing,” I hastily assure her. “Just loans. But what I don’t get is, why does he need them?”
“He can’t get finance.” Leila’s hands quiver as she dunks my fingers back in the bowl. “That’s all he talks about, getting finance. If you could please place your other hand on the towel?”
“But I thought everything was going well? I thought he was doing something with manufactured diamonds?”
At once Leila starts. Her hands quiver even more and her eyelids flutter.
“Would you like me to clip or file?” she says, her voice jumpy.
“Er…don’t mind. You choose.”
I wait while she gets out her manicure implements and lays them carefully on the towel, side by side, as though trying to impose order on the world. Then finally she meets my eye.
“He doesn’t know I know this,” she practically whispers. “But the diamonds were a scam.”
“A scam?”
Leila nods, and for a moment we stare at each other. My mind is processing what a scam might mean. How damaging it might have been. How humiliating.
“Did he lose…” I can’t even say it.
“Loads,” she says, her voice not working properly. “He’s in big trouble. But he won’t see it, he won’t stop spending money, taking people out for lunch, trying to be flash….” Her eyes fill with tears and I stare at her, aghast. “Oh. We haven’t chosen you a color yet. I’ve got a lovely new amber shade. I think it would really suit you.”
She pulls her case of nail polishes onto her knee and a tear drips down onto it.
“Oh, Leila…” I put a hand on her arm, but she shoots me a bright smile.
“Or lilac,” she says, opening the lid. “With your lovely dark eyes. Or classic red?”
“Leila…” I squeeze her. “He’s so lucky to have you.”
“Oh, I don’t do anything,” says Leila, patting at her eyes. “I just do my nails and keep my head down. That’s it. Nails. That’s my life. But I understand nails,” she adds, looking up with a sudden passion. “I understand how I’m earning