I bent down and placed my hands underneath the corners of the box. Carla was about to grab the opposite side when she stopped and nodded at my feet.
‘Are you going to be all right hefting this in those?’ she asked, eyeing up my red patent wedges.
‘These old things?’ I said, swivelling my ankle to better show off the height of the heel. ‘I could run marathons in these.’
‘No wonder you’ve got a dodgy back.’ She retook her position at the end of the box. ‘OK. One, two, three, go.’
As we lifted it into the air, the pots and pans inside clanked and shifted in protest. We staggered down the corridor into the kitchen and, as soon as we’d deposited it onto the floor, Carla stood up and placed her hands on her hips, triumphant.
‘Who needs men?’ I said and pulled a bottle of Moët from my bag. I hadn’t felt able to share it with Jason (too much of an unhappy prompt) and so it had been languishing in my car since that day at the off-licence. ‘Time to claim our reward.’
I popped the cork and was looking for something to pour it into when I realised Carla had a strange grin on her face.
‘Carla?’
‘Now you come to mention it,’ she blushed.
‘Carla,’ I said very quietly, so as to disguise my excitement. ‘Are you seeing someone?’
‘I don’t know if “seeing” is exactly the way I’d describe it.’ She looked to the floor, suddenly coy. ‘You can’t see much in the dark.’
‘You dirty cow,’ I said, abandoning my search for a glass in favour of drinking straight from the bottle. ‘So who is he?’ I asked, the fizz tickling the back of my throat. ‘I want to know everything.’
‘It’s early days,’ she said, unable to wipe the smile off her face, ‘and he’s …’ She hesitated. ‘He’s a fair bit younger than me. But he’s very mature,’ she reassured me, ‘and very good-looking.’
I offered her the bottle in a toast. ‘To good friends and new beginnings.’
‘And getting laid for the first time in two years,’ added Carla, taking a glug. Wiping the overspill from her chin, she laughed, her black corkscrew curls bouncing around her face. I laughed, too, enjoying the blood tingle of the drink as it made its way down to my feet.
‘Who lived here before you?’ I asked, gesturing at the orangey pine cupboards. ‘This place looks more like a sauna than a kitchen.’
‘Grim, aren’t they?’ she said, ruffling some vegetable crisps onto a plate for us to snack on. ‘Soon as I can afford it I’m going to rip them all out.’
I noticed that her ginger tom, Jasper, was snoozing on the sideboard, his tail scarfed snug around his body.
‘The cat seems really traumatised by the move,’ I said, rubbing his chin. Immediately, he started to purr.
‘As you can see. Which reminds me.’ She motioned to the kitchen counter and two shiny silver keys. ‘I got you a set cut. That is, if you don’t mind looking after him every now and again?’
‘Course not, you know that.’ I’d often gone over to her last place to feed and check on Jasper whenever she went away for weekends or conferences. Carla was an osteopath and often attended research seminars that might benefit her practice.
I stroked the cat’s ears, smoothing them down against his head, and soon he was squinting in pleasure. I realised Carla was watching me carefully.
‘How’s Jason?’ she broached. ‘Sounds like he’s had a pretty rough month?’
‘He has,’ I said, fixing my gaze on Jasper. ‘But if anything it seems to have made him even more determined to carry on with the search. It’s like the disappointment has given him this whole new injection of energy.’
I wanted to go on and tell her about the boy in the off-licence, but I’d promised Jason I’d leave the subject alone. Still, I hadn’t been able to forget the effect he’d had on me. It would be a relief to get someone else’s perspective, someone neutral.
‘And,’ – she came closer and placed her hand on my arm – ‘how are you? I was looking at the calendar before you arrived and I couldn’t help but notice the date.’
‘Oh, you know,’ I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.
‘Lauren would have been twelve?’
I felt my chest constrict and tried to breathe through it.
‘That’s right, almost a teenager.’
She scanned my face, trying to gauge how I was coping with the topic of conversation before she carried on.