know,’ Kate says, as the waiter comes over with the champagne in an ice bucket. ‘To an American agency. He’s going to make millions from it. My lawyer says he’ll have to give me at least half. Half of everything.’
My jaw drops open. ‘Oh my God,’ I whisper. What are you going to do with all that money?’
She shrugs. ‘I don’t know yet. Buy a house I think.’
‘Where?’ I ask.
‘Maybe Richmond,’ she says.
I look at her, astonished. She’s always looked down her nose at any place outside of Zone one and definitely at neighbourhoods she considers rich and rah. Kate’s a city person and likes to be in the bustling heart of things; she jokes that, like a black cabbie driver, she won’t go south of the river. For all her money and lifestyle, Kate grew up working class and scoffs at toffs and posh people, and Richmond’s bursting at the seams with them. I can hardly see her hanging out in her Barbour jacket and Hunter wellies walking her Labradoodle in the park.
‘Seriously?’ I ask her. ‘You’d give up living in Zone one and move to the sticks?’
She frowns at me. ‘Yes,’ she answers. ‘I think it’s time for a change. You can’t live the same way all your life. It’ll be nice to have a house and a garden. I might start growing my own veg.’
‘Next you’ll be saying you want two point four children.’ I giggle into my champagne, noticing I’m getting a little light-headed from drinking on an empty stomach.
Kate summons the waiter with a nod of her chin then turns back to me. ‘I’m starting to think I might,’ she says.
I almost choke on my champagne and have to set the glass down. ‘What? Want kids? Really?’ I ask, shocked to my core. She honestly couldn’t have said anything more surprising to me, not even that she was quitting the rat race and the male race to enter a nunnery.
Kate looks wounded. ‘Why’s that so shocking?’ she asks.
I shake my head, not wanting to upset her. ‘It’s not. It’s just … I didn’t think you wanted kids.’
‘I didn’t,’ she says, carefully folding the napkin on her lap. ‘Not until now. And thank God I didn’t have any with Toby. Can you imagine? He’d have been an awful father. What are you going to order?’ she asks, changing the subject and opening up her menu. ‘The octopus sounds good, doesn’t it? But I’ve heard the pork belly’s great too.’
We order, with Kate choosing the most expensive thing on the menu, oysters, followed by octopus – and me the cheapest, sardines, which I have heard are a local delicacy.
When the waiter has gone Kate smiles at me and raises her champagne glass once again, to chink against mine. ‘Here’s to being a mum.’
‘To being a mum,’ I agree, trying to wrap my head around Kate wanting children. I had always assumed she didn’t want kids. She’s said so multiple times over the years, talking about how she loves her job too much, as well as her freedom, and making it clear how boring she finds those friends who drone on and on about their kids. After hearing her mocking them I made sure to keep my own gushing talk about Marlow to a minimum around her. And though I did make Kate godmother and she did lavish expensive designer clothes and expensive handmade wooden toys on Marlow, I’ve never asked her to babysit or to change a nappy. I know what Kate’s limitations are but I also know – and argued to Rob, who had his reservations about choosing her to be a godparent – that when Marlow grows up Kate will come into her own as a godmother, or oddmother, as she likes to call herself.
Admittedly I have felt a little pique of envy at the thought that Kate will be the glamorous aunt figure in Marlow’s life, with her glittering career and enviable wardrobe and global travel to film festivals and the like, but until now I have never thought that Kate might be the one envying me. Does she? It feels strange to even imagine it.
I wonder at her age, forty-one, if it would be likely she’d even get pregnant. I certainly struggled to, though not just because of my age; I also have a duff uterus. But some women conceive at the drop of a hat, and who’s to say Kate wouldn’t be one of them? It would be typical of her. Everything