‘And this?’ Laurie said, gesturing at their grand surroundings. ‘A figment?’
‘I’ve got a mortgage larger than the moon, Laurie, you know that. You are looking at debt. Debt with Hague Blue walls.’
‘You have a big mortgage because you have an even bigger salary because you are CEO of your own very successful business.’
‘Yeah and there’s not a day that goes by I don’t think it might topple over.’
‘That’s why you work so hard. That’s why you’re so good. You don’t take anything for granted.’
‘I’m right not to. Lost two accounts last week.’ Emily put bare feet on the edge of her coffee table and flexed her matching red toes. She was still every bit the overcaffeinated waif who buzzed around Laurie’s halls bedroom. Laurie hated her seeming so world weary. Brought low by a total tosser.
‘That’s work. That’s life. You’ll win three next week.’
‘It’s not only that though, Loz! You think I’m thin because I’m thin, right? Maybe I was, once. Now, if I’m not eating with clients or eating with you or whatever, I skip meals.’ She gestured over at a spotless kitchen. ‘It’s never seen a chopped onion. I’m not saying I have an eating disorder. I’m saying I’m thin because I work very hard at being thin and deprive myself and then pretend I don’t have to work at it. Even to you. I don’t know why. Why don’t I say, “I am thin because I try very hard to be”? Because my world runs on envy, you need to incite envy. Because I’m fake.’
‘You’re not fake!’ Laurie said, wilting a little in sympathy.
She sat down beside Emily and put her arm around her. Emily had the musky odour of the night before and it occurred to Laurie there were very few friends you could call before the shower.
‘I wouldn’t get too close, I smell like a monkey’s handbag,’ Emily said with a sniff.
‘Aye yeah you do.’ They both did the kind of weak stomach-laughing that sits right on the border with tears.
‘You’re very real, Emily. You’re dynamic and clever as hell and you never complain. Just because you don’t discuss the effort it takes, doesn’t make you fake. Would a man do that? What would your twin brother do?’
Emily smiled, wanly, at mention of an old catchphrase. At university, discussing with righteous fervour at the different treatment meted out to men, they always put it to this test – the hypothetical male twin in this man’s world, who had all the masculine advantages.
‘People will always need lawyers,’ Emily continued, voice tremulous. ‘They won’t always need what I sell. Or they won’t want it from some craggy fifty-something still cramming herself into her skinny jeans.’
‘Right, stop. What does bar man do?’
‘… Work in a bar?’
‘Right, work in a bar. There’s nothing wrong with that. But he’s what, thirty?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘You are four years older than him, Emily, you live here and you are a boss, and you depend on no one. Have you got any idea how threatening that is to the male ego, for women not to need them? Do you think it came from nowhere, Rob the thirty-two-year-old barman’s need to put you down, to break you in some way, to humiliate you?’
Laurie thought about her own working week. You were equal with these men so long as you didn’t make them feel unequal, lesser, challenged. If you stayed in your lane.
‘This is pure misogyny. Those tomatoes are highly relevant to his therapist’s notes, not yours.’
Emily nodded.
‘Then there’s the sex. What am I doing? The people I sleep with, we all have the same problem. The moment we find something is there for the taking, we don’t want it anymore. How fucked up is that?’
‘Is that what it is? You go off someone once they fancy you back?’
Emily nodded. ‘Kind of, yeah. I choose things that I know will short circuit. There must be some psychological blockage or self-loathing, else why do I hate myself so much to sleep with someone like him?’
They both glanced back at the tomato art.
‘You’ve had a scare,’ Laurie said, ‘But some of this is bad luck, playing the odds. Sooner or later you were going to encounter a nutter.’
‘Guess so. With my incredible numbers.’
‘I didn’t mean that!’
‘I know.’
‘Can I ask something? Do you think the thing with men is, you’re frightened of needing someone, of relying on them?’
Jamie had given her an insight.
‘Yeah, maybe?’ Emily said, pulling her hair off her face.
‘You always got the horror at your mum being so reliant.’
Emily had the most suburban, timid parents Laurie had ever met, and her mum used to have her housekeeping cash for the week put in a biscuit tin by her dad. In a way, no wonder Emily came blazing out of it like a comet. Her older sister had moved herself to Toronto, aged nineteen.
Emily sniffed. ‘I met a man through work recently and he asked me out and I said no, as I could tell he wanted a girlfriend. I liked him, but I thought, I’ll only mess it up. And: better I reject him and he carries on thinking I’m unattainable and great, than finds out the bitter truth. That’s wildly messed up, isn’t it?’
‘I think that’s something a lot of people do. What is the bitter truth?’
‘That I’m fake. That I’m dull. That sometimes, when I go to do a wee I do an unexpected fart instead that sounds like a bear complaining.’
Laurie rolled onto her side with the force of the laughter.
‘I’m serious!’ Emily said, through her own laughter. ‘If he gets to know me, he won’t love me.’
‘Or, he’ll love you even more?’
‘High stakes,’ Emily said.
‘That’s the deal, I think, with love,’ Laurie said. ‘But I got to know you, and only loved you more.’
‘Oh, you.’
They embraced.
‘Can I suggest something?’ Laurie said, ‘Can I suggest we spend a day in together, watching films, eating takeaway food, and completely erasing the lunatic tomato creep from memory?’
Emily nodded. ‘We could ask Nadia over, too.’
‘Yes!’
They put on music and Laurie made coffee and they did the kind of low key, chatting and pottering you could only really do with a very close, very long-term friend. Laurie felt there was a secret of how to live life buried in this unusual Sunday: they had turned a negative into a positive reason to spend time together, to remind themselves of how valuable they were to each other. Laurie had thought Dan was the source of the unconditional love in her life, but actually it was Emily: she wasn’t going to turn round and say sorry, she’d found a new Laurie.
It just happened. We shared Spotify playlists. She’s who I confide in now.
Nadia arrived half an hour later, in trademark hat. ‘Show me the crime scene,’ she said.
They pointed her to the counter.
‘Oh my God! Report him to the police, at once!’ Nadia bellowed.
‘What for, GROCERY REARRANGEMENT?!’ Emily shrieked.
When they’d finished laughing, Laurie said: ‘Did you get ’em?’