‘Shhhh, Zoe, don’t say that, they’ll hear,’ I whispered.
‘It is!’ she exclaimed, and then even louder, ‘For Christ’s sake!’
I turned the laptop volume down a bar or two. Yes, I was still in the box room. But I could explain. For one, the past month had gone by in a blur; from CreateSpace to surf lessons, the days had galloped by as winter was finally starting to fade. We’d fallen into a pattern: carpools to work, helping each other out around the apartment. It just seemed to be, well – working.
Unlike Sam and Jamie. Her happy-go-lucky façade had started to crack soon after the Sunday lunch that had seen Sam convince me to stay. The closer they drew to the wedding, the further apart they seemed to be. There was just under a month to go and at the rate they were arguing I was almost convinced that it wasn’t going to happen. They were just too different. Of course, for Zoe’s benefit I’d elected to share the edited explanation.
‘I’ve been so busy with work,’ I half-truthed. ‘The exhibition opens tonight; once it’s over, I’ll be finding my own place.’ I smiled and nodded, tilting the screen so that Zoe could see the blouse I was going to wear tonight hanging proudly against the outside of the wardrobe.
‘Finding your own place?’ Zoe’s face grew a little bigger in the centre of my screen as she reached forwards to take a closer look. I knew she wasn’t looking at the blouse. ‘I thought you had one, the one you’ve been waiting bloody ages to get into?’
‘Oh yeah, sorry.’ I pushed my hair behind my ears. ‘That’s what I meant.’
‘That’s bullshit,’ she cut me off. I knew the renovation fib was wearing thin – with her, with Jamie, most definitely with Joshua – but it only needed to hang on a day or two longer. ‘You just keep pushing it back, hoping that if you stick around long enough Sam will stick it to her.’ She always suspected the worst, but even Zoe couldn’t comprehend my fabricated life, that my apartment didn’t even exist. ‘You never change.’ Zoe shook her head.
I knew that. I’d kept up my end of the bargain, if only everybody else could do the same.
‘That’s not true,’ I objected, praying my confidence would convince her. It wasn’t, was it? I couldn’t help it if Sam kept inviting me for lunches, stealing little moments…
‘I say this with love,’ Zoe began, her classic precursor to some cold hard truth. ‘You really need to move on.’
I looked down at the screen, at my beautiful best friend in her beautiful new living room, happy and settled in Colchester. I had tried to move on, honestly. I had tried to leave my whole flipping life behind and start again in Sydney. And yet, here I was, and here he was – why could no one see that had to mean something?
‘Look, Zoe,’ I said matter-of-factly, gearing to say anything but truth. ‘That’s not why I’m here. Once the exhibition opening is over I’m out of here.’
Zoe raised her perfectly plucked eyebrow, unconvinced. I sighed, the distance between us feeling greater than ever. Friends always promise they’ll remember what it feels like to feel confused, directionless, like life isn’t playing fair. But then they start to navigate it all so well that they forget what it’s like to be lost in the first place.
‘How’s the house?’ I asked, knowing changing the subject would be easier than changing her mind. It was the perfect bait. She couldn’t help herself; talk of shower poles ensued until it was finally time for her to say goodbye, and for me to start my day. The day.
Stashing my laptop away, I forced Zoe’s words from my mind. I couldn’t think about leaving their apartment right now anyway, not with the exhibition opening tonight. I needed to get my head in the game. Reaching down to open one of the drawers of Sam’s bedside table, I reached for the brown A4 envelope I had stowed inside, hidden slightly by a handful of Sam’s odd socks that hadn’t made their way into the master bedroom. Unlike Sam, who would find his way into the master bedroom very soon, if the wedding went to plan – but I had to keep my sights on my own plan. I lifted the unsealed fold and pulled out the fresh print-outs displaying my credentials. The smooth opening of our exhibition was one thing; convincing one of our most notorious guests to give me a job without anyone else knowing was something else. I figured I’d only have enough time to cajole her into going for a coffee and a chat some other day. But it wouldn’t hurt to have my CV to hand, just in case. Checked, returned and re-stashed, I clambered over the mound of decorative cushions that had mercilessly been thrown towards the side of the room.
I reached down into the shopping bags crumpled in the far corner and pulled out a silk dress, light blue and almost invisible against the colour of the box room’s walls. Ignoring the itch of guilt shifting around my body, I proceeded to hang up a new skirt to match my blouse. Technically, my wages should be buying my ticket out of here, stockpiling that rent money until my place in this city was secure. But with Tim and Olivia as colleagues who seemed to be cut from the pages of Vogue, I knew I had to up the ante – especially for tonight.
‘Sam, can you please concentrate?’ Raised voices drifted into the room. ‘This is important.’
Jamie’s insistence that pre-work wedding planning trumped Sam’s wake-up surf had no doubt hit him where it hurt. It turned out Jamie didn’t spend her days lounging around in Lycra after all; her recent rotation was piling pressure higher than the cushions in my room.
‘I thought we sorted this yesterday?’ My ears picked up at Sam’s reply, as my eyes stayed fixed on the outfit displayed in front of me. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to look nice in front of Sam either. That was, if he was coming this evening. I had mentioned the exhibition plenty of times in passing; after all, Jamie had kindly got me my job at CreateSpace, and as far as she was concerned, it was the reason I was still in their hair. One of the reasons. But Tim had left inviting them to me and I hadn’t technically done that yet, buying time while I decided if I should. I had tried hard to make the exhibition a success, but I needed to corner Sommers to get a job they already thought I had and I didn’t want anything else to distract me; either Sam and Jamie being there, or Sam and Jamie’s refusal to be.
‘We did.’ Jamie’s voice reverberated against the thin box room walls, louder with each word. ‘But now two people have dropped out, which actually changes the seating plan, because we planned for them to be seated…’ Her words drifted off as she reclaimed her inside voice.
Maybe they wouldn’t even notice the exhibition come and go. But then again, they’d probably hear about it from Tim and wonder why I hadn’t invited them along – that was, if they hadn’t heard from him already. I looked at my watch. It was still early, hours before I had to be at the gallery, but I was up now; I needed coffee.
Stepping out of the bedroom, I prayed Tim hadn’t told them about anything else. No mysterious lunches with mysterious men. Jamie and Sam would know for a fact that I wasn’t spending time with any men other than…
‘Joshua?’ I walked into the kitchen-living room to see his familiar face grinning up at me from the end of the kitchen table, a mug of hot coffee clutched in his hand, his hoodie pulled over his messed-up morning hair.