happy, and I just didn’t see the point, it was nothing really …’
‘Shit, Eva, TELL ME!’
‘OK. I’m telling you. It’s … well …’ She paused and blew out some air, then covered her face with her hands. ‘Danny made a pass at me once,’ she mumbled through her fingers.
‘Danny … he what?’
I suddenly felt light-headed. What? Seriously. WHAT? Had she really just said that Danny, my husband Danny, had made a pass at her, my best friend? Eva dropped her hands from her face again, looking anguished.
‘I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. I should have told you about it ages ago, but I just didn’t see the point. I mean nothing happened, nothing whatsoever, OK? I would never have done that to you, even if I did fancy Danny, which I didn’t. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s very attractive, but he just isn’t my type …’
Her voice tailed off, her face flushed. I stared at her.
‘Well, go on. When, how? What happened?’
She ran a hand across her eyes, then leaned forwards in her seat.
‘OK. It was at that crazy space restaurant opening in Soho, do you remember? Back in September. The one where robots served the pre-dinner nibbles?’
I did remember. I’d actually been given four tickets for the opening night of Space Soho at pretty short notice, and only Eva and Danny had been free to come with me; it had been on a Tuesday night, as far as I could recall. The restaurant, with glow in the dark menus, a slowly rotating dining area and small white robots moving jerkily between tables holding aloft trays of finger food, was owned by the brother of one of my Camille magazine colleagues, and although it was all as tacky and cheesy as hell, it had been a really fun night. But, I thought, casting my mind back, the three of us had been together all evening, hadn’t we? When would Danny have …?
‘It was towards the end of the evening, when you were invited into the kitchen to talk to the head chef, remember?’ Eva said, anticipating my question.
I nodded. Yes, I remembered that too. But I’d only been gone for ten minutes, fifteen tops … ‘So what happened?’ I said.
She sighed.
‘We were all really drunk, weren’t we? All those cocktails at the beginning, and then the champagne, and the espresso martinis, and … anyway, you went off, and we just chit-chatted for a few minutes, and then I think I said something about it getting late and needing to get home, because I had work early the next morning, and he just … he just said something like, “I wish I could take you home”.’
She stopped talking for a moment, looking at me with a wary expression, but I nodded at her. I was beginning to feel sick.
‘Carry on. It’s OK.’
‘Right. Well, I just laughed it off at first, you know? I said, well, that’s kind of you, but I’ll be fine, I can get a cab right outside. And then he … well, he slipped his hand under the table and started stroking my knee, Gemma. And he told me that wasn’t what he meant. He told me I was gorgeous, and that what he actually wanted to do was take me home and … take me to bed.’
She stopped again, her face flushing an even darker shade of red. I swallowed hard.
‘And … what did you say? What happened next?’
‘Well, obviously, I told him to bugger off. I didn’t want to make a scene, especially as I knew you’d be back any minute, but I asked him to get his hand off my leg and told him I was going to ignore what he’d said, just this once, because you were my best friend and I knew he loved you and he was only saying what he said because he was drunk. When you came back a few minutes later it was all over, and he was acting normally again, laughing and joking like nothing had happened. I felt dreadful the next day, and not just because of the hangover, which was a stinker. I just didn’t know what to do, didn’t know whether to tell you or not. But then the next time I saw him, a few weeks later, when we all went to the pub, he took me aside as soon as he got a chance and he apologized, told me he didn’t even really remember what had happened but he knew