There’s laughter again at this, though you can feel the tension in it.
‘No I hadn’t!’ Alice says, her voice suddenly a pitch higher. ‘Had I, babe?’
She looks at me and I shake my head. ‘No, not at all. Babe.’
‘I was totally surprised,’ she says again.
‘I think we all were!’ Phil nudges me with his shoulder. ‘We thought you were still moping over your ex!’
This time, there’s no laughter.
Dee looks at the floor. Marek coughs.
‘Phil,’ Becky says. But you can see a smile flickering on her lips.
‘Sorry.’ Phil holds his hands up. ‘It was just a joke. Backfired!’
Alice laughs tightly. ‘No, it’s fine.’
‘It’s fine,’ I agree, though it is currently taking everything I’ve got not to grab Phil by his Ralph Lauren shirt and demand that he expand on that comment. What did it mean? How did I get from ‘moping’ over Daphne to proposing to Alice on Broadway?
‘Anyway. Such a romantic story,’ Dee says finally.
‘So sweet,’ Becky agrees, the ghost of a smirk still lingering.
‘Anywhere I can smoke, Alice?’ Marek asks, jiggling a packet of cigarettes.
Becky clasps her bump protectively, and Alice frowns. I’m guessing her Parisian Gauloises-puffing days are now long behind her. ‘You can go out in the garden if you like,’ she tells him.
I see my chance for some fresh air, and a much-needed break from this dystopian nightmare.
‘Hang on, Marek … I’ll keep you company.’
We stand shivering in the little back garden as Marek lights his cigarette.
‘Do you want one?’ he says, offering me the pack.
‘No. Actually … yeah. All right.’ I haven’t smoked in about fifteen years, but right now, I feel like I need one.
He gives me a strange look as he hands it over and lights it. We both exhale and watch the smoke drift up towards the white-grey sky.
‘God, Phil can be such a dickhead sometimes, don’t you think?’ Marek says.
‘Er, yeah, I guess.’ Still moping over your ex. What did he mean by that?
‘I honestly don’t know how you can see those two all the time. I’d go mental.’
‘Yeah …’ I shrug. ‘They’re not so bad.’ Why the hell am I defending them? I take another puff. The cigarette is making me nauseous. I don’t know why I even asked for it. I feel like I’m not fully in control of my own actions. I wonder if I can just drop it on the floor. Would Marek notice?
He continues with what seems to be a pre-prepared monologue. ‘Just annoys me, that’s all. It’s so frustrating to talk about your work with people who have no idea what it’s like to be creative. Like, the stuff we’re doing right now with McCain is actually pretty ground-breaking. No one’s ever been this irreverent and playful and just fucking … surreal in the history of oven-chip marketing. We’re in totally unexplored territory here. So it pisses me off that Phil thinks he can just belittle my work like that when he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about.’ He exhales another plume of smoke and looks at me. ‘I mean, you get it because you’re … Well, you were sort of a writer, weren’t you? For a bit. Or you tried to be.’
‘Uh huh.’ At another time, in another life, this jab would probably have stung. But right now, I hardly feel it. I hardly feel anything.
I have to find out more about what Phil said. How long exactly was I moping over Daphne? Does Marek know what happened between us?
‘The guy’s a fucking accountant,’ Marek sighs. ‘It’s like: mate, just because your career’s unbelievably dull doesn’t mean you have to shit on everyone else’s.’
‘Yeah.’ I can’t take this any longer, and before I know what I’m doing, I force out what I hope is a casual chuckle. ‘Hey, it was funny what Phil said back there. About me moping over Daphne!’
Marek looks at the floor. ‘Ha. Yeah.’ A pause while he takes a drag on his Camel Blue. ‘Well. You did mope about a fair bit by the sound of it. But Alice got her way in the end!’
‘How d’you mean?’ I ask.
I’m aware that I’m now staring at him with what is probably an unsettling intensity. But I’m beyond caring how mad or odd I must look. I just need answers.
Marek clears his throat and fidgets on the spot. ‘No, nothing. Just … I think when you and Daphne split up, and then Alice moved back down from Manchester, we all thought that the two of you would probably get together. I mean, we all know she’s got serious staying power, that girl. Plus, she’d only split up with Seb a few months earlier, too, so y’know …’ He grins. ‘She was obviously on the lookout for a new fiancé. She ground you down eventually!’
He nudges me with his elbow as he says it: it’s clearly meant as a joke. But like every other comment at this godawful party, it feels like there’s something darker lurking behind it.
Is that actually what happened? When I saw her at Marek’s wedding, Alice had just split up with Seb, the bloke she was about to marry up in Manchester. Was she scrambling for a replacement and I just happened to be there?
I feel light-headed all of a sudden. I have to see Daphne. I just have to.
I put a hand against the wall to steady myself.
‘Ben? You all right?’ Marek is frowning at me. ‘You dropped your cigarette.’
‘Oh, shit. Sorry.’
‘’S’OK …’ He takes a final drag on his and then squashes it under his shoe. ‘Are you still in touch with Daphne?’ he asks suddenly.
I shake my head.
‘I always liked her,’ Marek says simply. ‘She was … nice.’ It’s the first time he’s sounded genuine all morning, and it tears something open inside me. How can I see her? I have to see her.
He opens the door and steps back into the flat. ‘Still. You and Alice got there in the end, eh?’
Chapter Forty-Four
Over the next few hours, the urge to speak to Daphne – to just hear her voice – snowballs into a kind of desperation.
I’m torn between the agonising desire to call her and the awful fear of what she might say when she answers. If she answers: that text message exchange shows she’s clearly in no hurry to speak to me.
In some ways, then, it’s a blessing that I don’t even get the chance to try.
As soon as Marek and I re-enter the living room, we are shuffled straight into our coats and out of the front door. Since Christmas lunch is – as Alice points out – ‘a total ball-ache to cook’, it transpires that we’ve booked a table for six at a posh gastropub on the cusp of Queen’s Park.
Twenty minutes later, we’re there: settling down in the oak-panelled back room in front of a roaring log fire, plates of steaming roast goose with all the trimmings being set down before us. The red wine starts flowing freely, and as midday bleeds into late afternoon, any hope I had of nipping away to phone Daphne fades into the ether.
The conversation over lunch is less a discussion and more a Royal Rumble of one-upmanship. Becky and Dee sweetly tell Alice that she must visit this new restaurant in Soho, because ‘anyone who’s anyone’ has been there – including the two of them. Becky delivers a long monologue about the best nurseries and school catchment areas, and when Dee and Alice offer differing opinions, she politely suggests that her research might be a little fuller because she’s actually expecting.