said Callum. ‘Time she learned to appreciate a good vintage. Now, Jodi here, she still prefers a Chardonnay spritzer. She’s a lost cause. What have you there?’ He examined the bottle of Muscadet I’d bought, knowing Callum preferred French whites. ‘Supposed to be a good little vineyard, that one.’ I knew it was his way of saying sorry for needling me about the TV interview.
‘Where’s Jake?’ I asked Cassie.
‘Pitching his tent.’ Oh God, his tent. Another spurt of anxiety – was this going to work, or would it all fall apart?
Jodi seemed to slump. ‘Can we take our bags up?’ A touch pointed, I thought. But there I went again, so tense I was seeing things that weren’t there. These were our friends. All of us together for the first time in years. Well, once Bill got here. Bill. My stomach tripped itself up in an odd nervy way, some very old echo in my blood.
‘Let’s do that now.’ I bent to pick up their wheelie-case, feeling something twinge in my back, and the passage of time suddenly left me dizzy. We’d been eighteen when we met, and now we were forty-three. Twenty-five years gone, lost like something dropping out of my pocket.
‘No sign of Bill yet?’ asked Jodi, lumbering up the stairs behind me.
I’d nipped ahead to make sure Benji had actually tidied up the apple cores and Minecraft toys he usually left strewn behind him. I saw, to my surprise, that the door of his room was open, and no sign of Karen or her things. Had Mike forgotten she was going in there? ‘Not yet. He’s biking down, you know.’
Callum came up behind us with the rest of the bags, puffing with the effort. ‘Classic Bill. And is it true the porn actress has given him the boot? The thigh-high boot?’
‘She’s not a porn actress, Callum, for God’s sake! She’s an artist. And yes, I think Bill and Astrid are no more.’
‘What a shame,’ said Jodi, looking round the room. ‘I really liked her when they came for our wedding. And we stayed with them out there once.’
Bill hadn’t come to my wedding. Too expensive to travel from Sweden, he said. It still niggled at me that he’d made it for Callum and Jodi’s two years later. Even though I understood why.
And then, just as I was thinking of him, a roar began on the edge of my hearing – a thrumming like a deep heartbeat – and Mike, shouting up from downstairs, yelled, ‘That’ll be Bill now.’ I looked out the window and saw the motorbike draw up the drive, the figure in leathers perched on top, and I recognised the set of his shoulders, the long lines of his back, and something inside me relaxed. Bill was here. We were all here, together, and the party could start.
Chapter Five
As the night slid forwards, and the bottles of wine were replaced on the table in rapid succession, I relaxed more and more. I’d served up the tagine, and although Jodi had said, ‘I do love Moroccan, so easy’, everyone seemed to enjoy it. Benji had thirds. He was being sweet, answering Jodi’s cutesy questions about school, and Cassie had even put her phone down and was chatting to Karen. Only Jake sat sullen, toying with his food and announcing a hitherto unmentioned vegetarianism. Poor Jake, his acne was awful. We’d taken Cassie to a private dermatologist at the first sign of hers, and here she was, smooth-skinned and perfect. Rich-girl skin. I imagined what my mother would say about that, and almost smiled. But I wasn’t thinking about Mum.
‘You see what I have to contend with,’ sighed Karen, watching Jake pick at his meal. ‘The teachers say he could be Oxbridge material, but he won’t even apply.’
‘Oh please. It’s sooo bourgeois,’ said Jake, sneering, and I tried not to smile, remembering how right-on we’d thought ourselves at that age. ‘It’s, like, a bastion of unearned privilege. No thanks.’
Karen leaned towards Bill, who was facing partly away from the circle as always, rolling what I hoped was just a cigarette. ‘Maybe you could talk to him, Bill. You know, float the idea that he doesn’t have to be an evil lawyer or a banker just because he goes to a good university.’
‘You didn’t even pass,’ said Jake, snapping at his mother, and we all fell silent. The subject of Karen’s failed degree – such a shock, when she was the smartest of us all, except for maybe