“Hello, Christopher,” she greets him, voice and smile as smooth and cool as a Siberian lake in wintertime. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Lauren asked me. Insisted,” he responds with his own frigid smirk. “And I thought it’d be good to widen my cultural horizons.” Just go ahead and call me some uneducated buffoon, you bitch! You can take your ancient Greek plays and shove ’em!
“I do admire self-improvement,” Kay says after ordering a gimlet. “And you seem to have come quite a long way since I last saw you. Well done.”
“Thanks. I did it all for you.”
“No need for that. I do wonder, however, if you do it for Susan? I hope not.”
“Then your prayers are answered.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Susan has moved on, you know.”
“So I see.” He glances toward the dance floor, where Susan and Philip are twined around one another as if no one else exists. He’s starting to think he’ll need something a bit stiffer than the beer.
“It’s good for her. The poor girl’s been through so much.” Kay sighs. “We all want to see her happy. Don’t we?”
He takes his time answering. “I hate to see her sad.” He’s had a lifetime’s worth of that, and it still hurts to think about.
“Good. Then we’re agreed.” She sips her gimlet. “You really ought to thank me, you know, Christopher. In a sense, I did you a favor.”
He stares at her, incredulous. Does she really believe that?
Kay shrugs. “Where would you be now if I hadn’t done what I did? If I hadn’t taken control of the situation? You’d probably be dead. Or in prison. Certainly not here.” She gestures to the bar—a fancy one, with low lighting and premium booze and deep sofas where you can relax with your drinks and nibbles and trophy date. “And where would Susan be? You know I did what I had to do to protect her because I love her, and if you ever loved her, you’d see that and put it all behind you. I was, in a sense, the making of you both.”
Chris smiles in wonder at the woman’s gall, shakes his head, and finishes off his beer, snapping the empty glass back down on the bar. “Yes, Kay, I’m deeply grateful to you,” he spits out. “I’m deeply, deeply grateful to you for sparing me a lifetime of Christmas lunches with Bernard, and opening nights of your plays, and barbeques with Russell and Helen, and glare-offs with Julia. I am so grateful to you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart!”
Her haughty smirk never wavers. She just stares him down.
Chris spots Lauren in the crowd and waves to her. She dances over, throwing her arms around him and saying, “Here you are! Thought you were going to get me a drink?”
“I would, but they’re lousy,” he says. “Come on, let’s go somewhere else.”
“Oh, definitely! I heard the band on at The Liquid Room is really good! A friend of mine just sent me a video of them. Hang on …” She whips out her phone.
“Never mind, let’s just go,” Chris says. He hooks an arm around her waist, edges around Kay, and is out the door.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Morning After
The room is too perfect. That’s one thing Susan hates about posh hotel rooms: they’re always too perfect. They have no personality to them. They’re cold looking.
From her spot on the bed, she searches for it: that one little imperfection she knows has to be there. But all she can find are the ones created by two people in a hurry to get from door to bed: bright purple accent pillows strewn across the floor. A smear of vibrant lipstick on the snow-white duvet cover. An upended bedside table.
The shower’s going, and a moment later the sound of Julia’s tuneless humming begins to accompany the summer-rain sound of the water. Susan sets down the overnight bag she’s brought and wonders if she should just go. She has things to do. Someone from the council is coming by to do a final sign-off on the building works (God help them all if anything isn’t approved by this stage). Three ice cream bases need churning and flavoring, she’s working out some kinks in a crème caramel recipe, and she needs to get Rab started on choux pastry.
The relaunch is just over two weeks away. Two weeks! And she still needs to finalize their pastry offerings, run interference with the press, and make all the tarts, cakes, mini pavlovas, jellies, and sauces they’ll be serving. And here she is, sitting in a hotel room with her sister’s clothes, like a porter!
“Jules, I’m gonna go,” she calls.
“No, wait a sec,” Julia sputters, turning off the water. She opens the bathroom door a moment later, releasing a cloud of steam into the room, wrapping herself in a thick, white hotel robe. She leans down, picks up the bag, and begins rummaging around in it. “Just want to make sure you brought the right things,” she mumbles.
“Jules, I have things to do,” Susan says, hand on the doorknob.
“I said just wait a second.” Julia looks up at her sister and frowns. “What’s up with your eyes?”
“I couldn’t get the eyeliner off,” Susan answers. She’d scrubbed and scrubbed and removed some, but she’d also irritated her eyelids and eyes so badly it looked like she had conjunctivitis.
Julia clucks and shakes her head. “We really need to work on you,” she says, returning to the bag. “Oh, Susan, for heaven’s sake!” She yanks out a pair of high heels. “What were you thinking?”
“You said you wanted the gray ones.”
“Not these gray ones!”
“Julia, you literally have a dozen pairs of gray shoes. How was I supposed to know which ones you wanted?”
“Use your sense! These are suede, Susan, and look at the weather!” She flaps her hand in the general direction of the windows. Just beyond the sheer curtains, low, sulky silver clouds hover over the city. The roads and sidewalks are already slicked and shimmering with rain. “These will be ruined! Ugh!” She thrusts them back in the bag. “Never mind, I’ll take a cab.” She withdraws some lingerie from the bag and starts getting dressed.
“Whatever. Can I go now?” Susan asks, wondering if this faux pas will get her out of future walk-of-shame wardrobe summons.
“No, you may not. You’re going to tell me about your night.” Julia slips panties on underneath her robe, then goes to fetch a cup of coffee from the complicated-looking machine in the corner. She gives her sister a knowing look as she sips. “You and Philip seemed very cozy last night.”
Susan blushes. She’d been trying to have fun, and she might have overdone it. Hard to say, really. She’d been pretty drunk. Her head is not thanking her for that today.
“So, did you and he finally …?” Julia smiles coyly.
“Obviously not, Julia, since I was home when you called me this morning.”
“Well, not every guy lets a girl spend the night.” Julia’s smile is now a little smug as she goes back to her coffee.
“I wouldn’t know how Philip feels about that.”
“Oh God. You’re just determined to be miserable and alone, aren’t you?”
“What? No, of course not, I just … I don’t know. I just wasn’t in the mood.” Susan toys with a photo on the wall; she’s convinced it’s crooked. A couple kissing under a bright red umbrella. Everything in black-and-white, aside from the umbrella.